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I agree that roaches aren't a great unit.
However, I really disagree that intentional depth is bad, whereas emergent depth is good. Why is it bad to build units to intentionally encourage micro, as opposed to building units without that intention but having it emerge naturally? Basically you're saying that if Mutas had been designed to stack, instead of it happening spontaneously, that would have been somehow inferior.
That just makes no sense to me. Depth is depth, whether it was built into the game or was "discovered" over the course of play.
And most of the examples you cite are actually really cool--Blink and Forcefield are fantastic abilities which allow for a lot of skill in their use. Even pros mistime their blinks from time to time, but when they get them right, its a beauty to behold. Cliffs are an overused map feature, but I don't think the units which can take advantage of them are a bad thing--Colossi are one of the coolest units in the game, and their ability to walk all over the map effortlessly is a big part of that.
I just don't get the idea that "if gamers discover it, its cool, but if Blizzard put it in there on purpose, it sucks". It sounds like pure BW nostalgia, tbh.
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Ill admit it: Im relatively new to Sc2 and played like only 50 games so far and am at 600 diamand level. I dont think Im any good, BUT:
I made one observation: 2 gate zealots get raped so hardcore by roaches..
I had to learn this the hard way a few times..
Its like ridicolous how good roaches are vs zealots
I dont think its a bad unit, though..
tbh what I think is the big problem right now, overall:
In Sc1 you could easily expand and still survive when an opponent played a 1 base style..
nowadays expanding is so unimportant + its not viable early.. ( except if u are zerg )
well im still not good enough to have a proper opinion..
but I had the feeling without roaches 2 gate zeal rushes are hard to hold for the zerg
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All this talk about waiting for the expansion to come out.... Heck, I'm still waiting for the first retail balance patch to come out.
But yeah, SC2 has the terrible terrible damage syndrome, which is unfortunate. IMO, I really think they should nerf damage, but buff cooldowns. That way, they still do the same amount of DPS, but it allows units to retreat.
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Actually agreed on most part except...
On August 22 2010 06:46 Sentient wrote:
- Shuttles weren't designed to shoot scarabs.
- 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.
Thoughts?
Reaver is incredibly slow, I am sure Blizzard considered players using shuttle when they designed the reaver. If you are talking about ability to quickly put reaver down then inside, well it was sorta intended anyway.
No the queen and the spine crawlers were nerfed, because they were literally unstoppable in Asian servers. However, I would want to see something changed, as burrowing time for spine crawlers is rediculous.
Also roaches are still cheap. SC1 had tons of a1 units. Except roaches can burrow move (though that's been nerfed to the max). The concept is somewhat there.
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There really isn't a problem with roaches themselves, the problem is Zerg is pretty helpless against air at the T1-1.5 stage. Roaches don't help with that problem, in fact making roaches sometimes only condemns you to a loss because of this.
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I agree with the OP, Blizzard's "let's wait and see" was not enough waiting and not enough seeing.
Fazing, Offensive Spine Crawlers and Spreading Creep were so much more interesting before having them nerfed respectively.
Blizzard really needs to stop thinking so 1-dimensionally, as OP has mentioned the beauty of Sc1 is that the players were able to discover what worked and didn't due to the vagueness of spells. ( Who knew Irradiate would counter muta clumps, who knew that Mines could be used both offensively and defensively, who though with a couple of well placed Dark Swarms and Lurkers you could decimate a Terran Tank line.)
It also helped that in Sc1 skills weren't so "Do-this-and-nothing-else," because honestly, Blink, Force Field, Fungale Growth, Graviton Beam, Corruption are not nearly as fun as Mines, Irradiate, Defensive Matrix, Dark Swarm, Plague or Maelstrom.
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On August 22 2010 09:54 RoarMan wrote:
Blizzard really needs to stop thinking so 1-dimensionally, as OP has mentioned the beauty of Sc1 is that the players were able to discover what worked and didn't due to the vagueness of spells. ( Who knew Irradiate would counter muta clumps, who knew that Mines could be used both offensively and defensively, who though with a couple of well placed Dark Swarms and Lurkers you could decimate a Terran Tank line.)
It also helped that in Sc1 skills weren't so "Do-this-and-nothing-else," because honestly, Blink, Force Field, Fungale Growth, Graviton Beam, Corruption are not nearly as fun as Mines, Irradiate, Defensive Matrix, Dark Swarm, Plague or Maelstrom.
If everything was as vague as BW you or some other bitches would be whining even louder about lack of micro or skill in the game, seriously.
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SC2 has been so long waited that they can't have it unbalance in the way SC1 was whne it came out, SC1 was the first RTS that was this popular and good when something became OP they will fix it ASAP, in SC2 they can´t have OP, ppl will rage and quit SC2 because they hope SC2 does what it take 10 years to BW... This is bussines and we the fans are the ones causing this.
Sure will be nice how the game goes with OP and then fix, but they can't do it cause they will losse the players base if the games goes completly OP even for a week.
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I really think Blizzard failed with the roach, too. Its stats scream tank unit but its abilities say harass unit. When people want to harass, they want fast moving units that are designed to do damage, not soak damage.
The cliff thing is annoying as well. Blizzard added two units that can walk/jump through cliffs. In order to justify that decision, they went way too cliff happy with their current maps.
The reaper is another failed unit. Late game, the hellion can do almost everything a reaper can do better than it. Reapers are only good for extremely early game harass or for catching noobs off guard.
Blizzard also tried too hard with unit counters. The immortal and void ray are two of the worst examples. Both of them get an insanely high 150% bonus against the unit type they counter. For the immortal, especially, it makes it almost useless against units that are not armored. Contrast that with the lurker, which is supposed to counter mass marines but can be beaten by good marine micro.
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Forcefield is not one dimensional at all.
In fact, its one of the most multi-dimensional spells in either SC2 or Broodwar.
It can be used defensively, by walling off ramps.
It can be used to tip the balance of a fight against a mixed force, by walling off certain segments so you can deal with them one at a time.
It can be used to decimate melee with ranged units that otherwise lack protection, because you can wall your own units into an impenetrably box and then fire away at the zerglings or zealots hammering at you from outside.
It can be used to stop a retreat, by putting one behind a harassing force, or a force you know you can beat.
It can be used to force clumping by units that would otherwise spread out, setting them up for decimation by storm or other splash damage.
Force field can do a ton of shit. To call it "one-dimensional" is such a misguided view as to border on myopia. And the thing is, it really needs to be used intelligently. I can't tell you how many times a smart opponent has goaded me into using a forcefield to mess with what I *thought* was his main force, only to have another force show up behind me when I can't lay them down.
We need *more* spells like force field in the game. Not less. Force field is an example of everything SC2 got *right*.
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They tried to make their game better in the way the saw fit. Whats wrong with that??
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There is still no way you can make offensive queens impossible. Blizzard is making some units in the game struggle into this little niche. It never works.
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Why is everyone here (besides a few exceptions) being so damn literal?
This post isn't about the roach, the Mutalisk or any spells, this post is about the deeper concept of forcing dynamism in SC2 by Blizzard. THe OP is suggesting that by deliberately making spells interact with each other, Blizzard should let SC2 naturally evolve and let strategies emerge as the game matures.
However, i think that is complete bullcrap. The OP doesn't offer any reason to why this is a better approach than to force interrelationships of units and buildings upon this game. I just don't see the so called "one-dimensionalism" of all these spells, and I think they are all quite brilliant, making SC2 not quite as boring as SC, while giving it an amazing potential to mature on its own.
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On August 22 2010 10:40 Baguette wrote:
making SC2 not quite as boring as SC
I hope you're trolling.
I'm not sure where I stand in regards to the OP's post. Sure I'd like to see blizzard play hands off for a while, but if something obviously OP (fazing) shows up, I'm happy that they'll fix it.
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However, i think that is complete bullcrap. The OP doesn't offer any reason to why this is a better approach than to force interrelationships of units and buildings upon this game. I just don't see the so called "one-dimensionalism" of all these spells
Exactly. He hasn't done *anything* to establish why emergent depth is better than intentional depth.
Moreover, many of these abilities are not actually one dimensional at all. Force field *really* isn't even one dimensional in the slightest. Blink is "one dimensional" in that its a method to give your unit the best positioning possible...but determining what that position is can be tricky, and timing your blink right is really important. Even pros screw it up all the time, blinking before they should have, or later, or blinking to the wrong area. That cooldown really adds a lot of depth in terms of knowing exactly when/where to deploy blink.
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i posted something like this on blizzard's forums about the roach very much like this.
i argued that the roach has become a bad unit because when it was nerfed, its counters were not. the roach was designed to be a 1 supply unit, so blizzard gave terran and protoss units that could hold their own against twice their number in roaches (marauder and immortal, and even gave stalker a bonus vs armored). blizzard then decreased their armor because they were still very overpowered. but then they made them 2 supply. that broke everything, because the counters (which are available very early on) were designed to fight twice the number of roaches. then they only had to deal with a similar number of roaches, effectively eliminating the roach as a useful unit.
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I don't think there's anything wrong with the Roach. It's a good survivability unit that comes at a cost. It forces your opponent to micro heavy to avoid facing its cost effectiveness. As a race, I feel like most of the Zerg units are too involved in a-moving and need a mechanic that accentuates their swarming nature.
For Terran, I feel that Stim applying to multiple units is dumb. Every unit should have unique abilities. Any blatant homogeneity is a step in the wrong direction.
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On August 22 2010 10:40 Baguette wrote:
Why is everyone here (besides a few exceptions) being so damn literal?
This post isn't about the roach, the Mutalisk or any spells, this post is about the deeper concept of forcing dynamism in SC2 by Blizzard. THe OP is suggesting that by deliberately making spells interact with each other, Blizzard should let SC2 naturally evolve and let strategies emerge as the game matures.
However, i think that is complete bullcrap. The OP doesn't offer any reason to why this is a better approach than to force interrelationships of units and buildings upon this game. I just don't see the so called "one-dimensionalism" of all these spells, and I think they are all quite brilliant, making SC2 not quite as boring as SC, while giving it an amazing potential to mature on its own.
Right now, BW is much, much deeper than SC2 is. Many of the strategies being employed were not thought of by Blizzard. The metagame keeps changing as strategies and counterstrategies are being thought of all the time. The problem with forced interrelationships is that the game is largely static. Warcraft 3 is an example of that, which is why the skill cap is so much lower than in BW.
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On the more specific issue of roaches...
honestly, I think one change would dramatically boost their usefulness.
Tunneling claws should NOT require an upgrade, beyond unlocking burrow.
Simply put, 150/150 is WAY too expensive, and requiring two upgrades makes no sense.
By comparison, frikkin Stim, one of the most devastating abilities in the game, and one that applies to TWO units (which together can comprise a significant portion of your army), costs 100/100.
Burrow should need to be researched. But once it is, Roaches should be able to tunnel.
This would really turn them into a devastating early game harass unit, and could absolutely muck with a lot of builds by forcing the opponent to get fast detection.
Right now, Zerg harass is pretty limited. Wall-in effectively, and Zerg can't do anything to you in the early game. They can outexpand and beat you in the mid or late game. But that fear of an early push, which exists when fighting both terran and protoss, is just gone. When I play aginst zerg, I'm worried about killing him before he outexpands me and gets too much map control...but I'm NEVER worrying about him killing me in the early game.
If roaches could tunnel as soon as you had burrow, this would definitely change. Every Terran and Protoss would have to scout the *hell* out of their Zerg opponent, and if there was even a hint of early roaches, they'd have to invest in observers or start saving for scans. It would reintroduce the idea of Zerg as being really, really scary in the early game as well as later.
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EPT
