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Or, rather, the original design philosophy of the roach has been a thorn in the side of Starcraft 2.
I can't find the video now, but long ago (2007 or 2008) Dustin Browder introduced the roach. It was orignally a harassment-style unit with moderate damage, medium hitpoints, but insane health regeneration. Dustin explicitly described how players had to focus fire roaches to be able to kill them. This is one of many ways they hoped to encourage micromanagement through the game's mechanics.
As we now know, that idea failed catastrophically. I can't say exactly why, but there are many plausible reasons:
1. Speedlings are already fantastic harrassment tools, so there was too much overlap.
2. Roaches in small numbers were too strong against other small numbers of units.
3. Yet in medium sized battles, roaches were practically worthless.
4. It is too hard to balance for all skill levels. Skilled players deal with it easily, while beginners who don't understand the concept of focus firing will get steamrolled.
Whatever the reason, the roach never worked as intended. 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. This triumverate was discussed a lot in beta, so I don't want to rehash those arguments.
Instead, I think the roach symbolizes a deeper problem with Starcraft 2's design. Blizzard tried too hard to introduce micromanagement. With the introduction of multiple building selection, they got worried players wouldn't have enough to do, so they compensated by adding contrived abilities. All of the early videos demonstrate this thinking. Consider some of the new abilities in Starcraft 2:
- Blink
- Force field
- Cliff-hopping
- Graviton beam
- Corruption
To me, these and others are merely contrived excuses to encourage micromanagement. Blink and force field work better than others. Some of the abilities feel stolen straight from Warcraft III. Cliff-hopping has encouraged Blizzard to throw cliffs everywhere in their maps, with deleterious effects on gameplay.
They do their job, yet they are incredibly one dimensional. It's obvious how to use these abilities, and they don't leave much to be discovered. Ok, I can use blink to get onto cliffs or to save damaged units. Ok, I can use force field to block other units. Ok, I can lift other units off to save them or to shoot them. Great. But that's about it.
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.
When each race has several tricks that are overpowered, it doesn't matter how overpowered they are. If one trick is 5x better than what it counters, and another is 8x better, it doesn't matter that one is actually better than the other; in the end, it matters more how you use the abilities, and skill is brought to the forefront.
Yet in Starcraft 2 we're stuck with the roach. We have units whose role was designed from the start. There were extensive meetings contriving ways for skills to be micromanaged. Rather than letting things be overpowered, Blizzard is intent on squashing them. Some examples:
- Fazing let Void Rays counter marines and hydralisks. Blizzard nerfed it.
- 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.
Blizzard is taking a different route than in Starcraft 1. The "wait and see" approach to balance isn't working, because when something new and interesting arises that falls outside of Blizzard's specifications, they change it. They want the gameplay to conform to their original intentions for each unit.
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. Rather than letting balance arise from a mutually-assured-destruction circle of overpowered abilities, everything is brought to the same level, and this amplifies the effects of minor imbalances.
The roach is the symbol of this failed philosophy, and that's why I hate the roach.
Thoughts?
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I love my roaches....Just need to get better at having something to snipe obs vs toss and roach burrow will be soooo much fun.
Plus I just think the little guys are cute xD
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Roaches are cute though, however yes. I kind of agree to some points, it seems like they made maps for the units they create and not units for the maps. If that makes sense. If not I'm sorry I'm tired.
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it was never intended as a super fast in combat regeneration unit. it was always supposed to regen very quickly when burrowed though. thats quite a big difference..
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
Well, as a decent Protoss on SEA I can definitely say that Roaches encourage micro in the early game. If you're not using your stalkers to focus fire on his roaches and having them waste shots on lings, then yea.. you're going to lose.
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I agree with blizz nerfing units when they do something not originally intended. Takes away some creativity. Imagine if they fixed muta stacking in SC1, that would be awful
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I hate to reply tersely to such a large post but
1. This is the first of three expansions. Blizz has more room for tricky/cute combinations
2. I like the ability of the roach to burrow and regen quickly. Not many players will actually spend the time to burrow individually(at least i've never seen a match) to maximize their health regen.
3. Blizz made sc2, WOL to be an e-sport, which means there's quite a bit in the game already that the pros can exploit, but haven't been because they're still learning the game.
4. Kind of the same as 3, but we can't really say what blizzard's original intentions with any unit is/was, as we didn't develop the game. Queens and spine crawler nerf only makes them slower, which means you just have to invent something new if you really want that offensive spine crawler/queen strat to work. How do you know vults were never designed to counter goons? Was it just some mistake that the damage added to nicely from the mines to take them out? Blizz made it this way so that if you micro'd just right you could take out something that was better "on paper".
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I'm not sure how you go from "muta micro wasn't intended" to "stuck with roachs" to "they nerfed fazing"
This just looks like another nostalgic thread about wanting it to be the same as BW.
edit: after reading more i understand the first bit, but i still think you are just nostalgic. These are two different games that just happen to share the name SC. They dont have to be designed exactly the same.
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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.
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Pretty much agree with the OP.
I wouldn't say Blizzard tried to hard though, I just think they went the wrong way with patches, instead of buffing underpowered things they nerfed what was considered overpowered. This really leads to a situation where very few strategys and units are viable because most are so so so weak.
As opposed to having multiple strong viable strategies to select from there is generally only 1 or 2 build orders which are viable because so many units have been nerfed into oblivion.
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Great writeup. I'd prefer if they made roaches slightly weaker but 1 supply again, as it stands they suck and Zerg has no viable way to pressure without committing to some easy to scout all in.
Also, agree on their maps too. They replaced functionality with "OMFG LOOK AT HOW STRATEGIC OUR GAME IS HERE ARE 431772 PIECES OF TERRAIN YOU CAN ABUSE STRATEGICALLY IN OUR REALLY STRATEGIC GAME!"
On August 22 2010 07:06 Backpack wrote:
I'm not sure how you go from "muta micro wasn't intended" to "stuck with roachs" to "they nerfed fazing"
This just looks like another nostalgic thread about wanting it to be the same as BW.
edit: after reading more i understand the first bit, but i still think you are just nostalgic. These are two different games that just happen to share the name SC. They dont have to be designed exactly the same.
That's a stupid thing to say. Brood War did so many things right, I don't see why Sc2 can't elaborate on everything that worked without being a carbon copy. Also, "they're different games". Are you fucking serious? Let's list all the similarities:
- Exact same economy system: you get peons to mine minerals and gas and send them to your townhouse.
- You require a building on a geyser to get gas
- Terran builds anywhere, Zerg builds on creep, protoss builds on areas powered by pylons.
- Terran macro system (rax + factories + starports), zerg macro system (building opens up tech options, units come out of larva, which spawns from hatcheries) and protoss macro system (gateways and robo bay) remain largely unchanged.
- Pylons, ovies, and depots, exactly the same
- Terran units still in Sc2:
--- scvs, marines, dropships, tanks, battlecruisers, comsats, bunkers
- Units which are changed but obviously mirror the original:
--- Ravens (vessels), vikings (goliaths / wraiths), medivac (dropship + medic), helion (vulture)
Zerg units still in Sc2:
--- Queen, zergling, hydralisk, mutalisk, ultralisk, drone, overlord. Corrupters / broodlords are basically devourers and guardians, spine crawlers are sunken colonies, and infestors replaced defilers.
- Protoss units still in Sc2:
--- Zealot, probe, observer, dark templar, high templar, archon, carrier, cannons.
Recycled units: Collosus (reaver), Stalker (dragoon), mothership (a useless arbiter), pheonix (corsair).
That was quite a wall of text but I seriously hate it when people say that. Starcraft 2 borrows so heavily from the first (seriously...over half the new units are just modified versions of old ones in BW, except given an even more niche role) that saying its a completely new game is like saying Gears of War and Gears of War 2 or Halo and Halo 2 are entirely new games that happen to be under the same name.
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I'd say the Mutas is what's wrong with SC 2. It's a worthless unit with no purpose. Terran gets one thor and mutas are useless. Protoss get 2 cannons and same story. Mutas can't beat a stalker or marine army.
Mutas are tier 2 yet they cannot hope to beat or harass lower tier armies. Lastly, they are much less effective at harassing in SC2 as they were in BW.
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On August 22 2010 07:20 deadbutmoving wrote:
I'd say the Mutas is what's wrong with SC 2. It's a worthless unit with no purpose. Terran gets one thor and mutas are useless. Protoss get 2 cannons and same story. Mutas can't beat a stalker or marine army.
Mutas are tier 2 yet they cannot hope to beat or harass lower tier armies. Lastly, they are much less effective at harassing in SC2 as they were in BW.
Have you ever watched ANY high level zerg games?
I wanna know where people even get these idea's from.
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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.
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Nice OP. But I can't really blame Blizzard too much. If they were to just "let things happen" and see if it comes out balanced, then I think that's much riskier than purposefully trying to force balance.
It feels like for some things Blizzard just tries too hard and at the same time, not hard enough for others (chat rooms, post-release balance patches, etc), but I guess that's all depending on your own viewpoint.
On August 22 2010 07:20 deadbutmoving wrote:
I'd say the Mutas is what's wrong with SC 2. It's a worthless unit with no purpose. Terran gets one thor and mutas are useless. Protoss get 2 cannons and same story. Mutas can't beat a stalker or marine army.
Mutas are tier 2 yet they cannot hope to beat or harass lower tier armies. Lastly, they are much less effective at harassing in SC2 as they were in BW.
You're trolling, right?
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On August 22 2010 07:20 deadbutmoving wrote:
I'd say the Mutas is what's wrong with SC 2. It's a worthless unit with no purpose. Terran gets one thor and mutas are useless. Protoss get 2 cannons and same story. Mutas can't beat a stalker or marine army.
Mutas are tier 2 yet they cannot hope to beat or harass lower tier armies. Lastly, they are much less effective at harassing in SC2 as they were in BW.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145936
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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.
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Tell me have you ever seen WARP PRISMS. Now that's food for thought.
Roaches are sad, however as I've seen a small kill squad of roaches with burrow speed they completely throw me off and as well are annoying and can snipe nexii.
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<3 roaches.
I use them early and often. One of my favorite units.
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The one thin i can agree with you is one simple idea: With SC2, they try to control everything to work as intended, so that they don't get surprised or denounced because some weird new thing comes up.
With that mindset, they just might miss out on something crazy weird that just so happens to be good for the gameplay.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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I have no issue with the Roach. I like the unit and find it really fun.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Netherlands399 Posts
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.
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- 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.
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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!
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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).
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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On August 22 2010 11:02 awesomoecalypse wrote:
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.
120% agree here. This is one of the changes I've suggested for a very long time. The roach has no utility. It did at the start of beta and it became increasingly blander. Burrow movement on roach is actually a great way to fight midgame armies. The problem is that it's too slow/expensive to get, and it's definitely too slow movement-wise. It takes a minute to get your army into position. Wtf.
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On August 22 2010 08:29 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +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.
They had to nerf shuttle / reaver because it was way too overpowered. With perfect shuttle reaver control back then u were almost untouchable, and don't even get me started on dealing with reaver drops as terran. Its the same reason they made the scarab AI dumber. That being said, their patch merely fixed balance. Shuttles werent meant to shoot scarabs, so they could easily have nerfed it into oblivion but they decided to allow players to do it, just not as effectively for the sake of game balance.
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On August 22 2010 09:18 awesomoecalypse wrote:
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.
Nothing, but what is a problem is when blizzard decides "this is a units role" and nerfs any emergent depth for the sake of ensuring that unit maintains its specific niche.
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On August 22 2010 10:43 SlowBlink wrote: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.
Fazing was OP?
Rofl....
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Fazing was OP?
Rofl....
Honestly...yes. Void Rays rock against almost everything. As is, if a Protoss goes air, 90% of the time he just builds Void Rays, and the other 10% he builds void rays and some pheonixes--Carriers are downright pointless because Void Rays are so damn good, especially with the speed upgrade.
Fazing allowed them to be even MORE powerful. And not just a little bit. By a huge amount.
The issue wasn't one or two void rays. it was when you had a bunch, you could literally kill any T1 bio just by clicking on it once, with no cooldown to click on the next. In other words, you could kill entire armies almost instantly just by clicking on each unit.
It was broken. It was cool, admittedly, and fun. But it was also broken. And keeping it in without it being broken would require dramatically redesigning the void ray.
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On August 22 2010 11:16 SubtleArt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 09:18 awesomoecalypse wrote:
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. Nothing, but what is a problem is when blizzard decides "this is a units role" and nerfs any emergent depth for the sake of ensuring that unit maintains its specific niche.
You'll have to trust that they have a plan for it both now and later on.
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ITT: Baseless speculations on Blizzard's motivations, with only a handful of beta changes to back up the claims.
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This is dumb. So you're saying Blizzard added arbitrary abilities to BW and it magically added glitches that people exploited that magically balanced? If so, then yes, the best way to go about approaching a 2010 game is to blindly give them bad skills and see how magically players will manipulate them into something cool instead of having a design plan. Yes, surely. Definitely.
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I think it's good that plain weird things like fazing is removed. It has its cool factor, but in the long run, I think it's better to be rid of it. Also I don't really see a problem with the roach's role now. I think it should go back to being 1 supply (maybe with a small nerf to make it balanced)... it's just that Z armies need to feel overwhelming in terms of numbers and they just don't right now
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I purchased SC2 knowing Full well that it would take an expansion to settle the score on balance and gameplay.
How can you stand that? Why is that okay? Blizzard can balance the current game, and they should.
I do think the Roach is a unit that doesn't work well in the Zerg lineup. The whole point of the unit is just that it has a lot of HP. It doesn't have good DPS, does not benefit from much micro due to slow move speed and short range. It's just an attack move unit that beats mass marines due to out-HPing them, but loses by a big margain against marauders and tanks and everything else (and against marines most people use banelings instead anyway). I understand they are better against Protoss though simply because they can stand up to zealots.
I also think the unit looks uninteresting visually but that's a side concern.
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On August 22 2010 11:32 Roe wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 11:16 SubtleArt wrote:On August 22 2010 09:18 awesomoecalypse wrote:
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. Nothing, but what is a problem is when blizzard decides "this is a units role" and nerfs any emergent depth for the sake of ensuring that unit maintains its specific niche. You'll have to trust that they have a plan for it both now and later on.
No you don't
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On August 22 2010 08:44 FarbrorAbavna wrote:
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).
And.. following suit with the post you were angry about.. you are even more wrong.
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"Our intent is also to not apply knee jerk fixes based on the first few weeks as understanding of the game and strategies are still in flux." - Bashiok.
So the problem is that they did opposite in the beta, rushing for changes.
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On August 22 2010 06:56 N3rV[Green] wrote:
I love my roaches....Just need to get better at having something to snipe obs vs toss and roach burrow will be soooo much fun.
Plus I just think the little guys are cute xD So you like disgusting little whack-a-moles that burrow to hide from you, then puke green acid on you when you find them? Cool, I need a new baby sitter.....
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On August 22 2010 12:02 kingcomrade wrote:
It's just an attack move unit that beats mass marines due to out-HPing them, but loses by a big margain against marauders
Two marines cost less than a marauder, build faster (assuming reactor instead of tech lab, obviously) and deal more DPS (to armored targets, mind you) than one marauder, Please get your facts straight.
On August 22 2010 13:57 pechkin wrote:
"Our intent is also to not apply knee jerk fixes based on the first few weeks as understanding of the game and strategies are still in flux." - Bashiok.
So the problem is that they did opposite in the beta, rushing for changes.
They did the opposite in the beta because it's the beta. If there's an appropriate time to make lots of sweeping changes in a short amount of time, it's before the game is released.
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Good post by OP.
The roach completely messed up the zerg tiers. The reason why burrow and hydras got moved to tier 2 is because they wanted to introduce roach to tier 1. So stupid.
I like how they introduced multiple building selection, auto rally harvest, auto build interceptors, etc. But I hate the new micro layer gimmicks. It is so forced and not at all elegant.
Queen spawn lavae is just punishing players for not doing a repetitive action perfectly. As for corruption, acid spores was fine if they wanted corruptors to counter large units.
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I actually dont mind that making a bunch of roaches early game is all-in. If you think about it in SC1 making Hydras before lair and doing a hydra bust was an all-in vs Protoss.
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On August 22 2010 14:32 thezergk wrote:
I actually dont mind that making a bunch of roaches early game is all-in. If you think about it in SC1 making Hydras before lair and doing a hydra bust was an all-in vs Protoss.
And vs Terran. Remember game 3 of the last MSL finals, Flash vs JD?
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it seems like Op is on to something, they nerf stuff whenever it's unintended and use of units that was 'unintended' is by far the coolest thing in BW.
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I kind of agree and disagree. Talking about how the roach was OP and how it was bad, and then talking about how OPness made BW more interesting I think is the wrong approach. The difference is in the mechanics. BW had much deeper mechanics that were non-existent in other RTSs. It wasn't the obvious spell-casting and focus-firing, it was the intricacies of the core mechanics that existed in every unit that turned what looked like plain units, into really interesting ones. Such as the void ray.
The problem with the Roach I think is that it doesn't really fit with the paradigm of the zerg, it was basically like giving the Zerg a dragoon.
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On August 22 2010 07:01 Zekke wrote:
I agree with blizz nerfing units when they do something not originally intended. Takes away some creativity. Imagine if they fixed muta stacking in SC1, that would be awful
that is a contradicting statement, is it not? you said you like it when blizzard nerfs things that had unexpected outcomes, then you say muta stacking was good.
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I hated roaches more than any other unit in the game from the reveal to now. They're still by leagues the worst unit in the game. It's not even close. However, I don't think the roach has much to do with the problems facing the game itself. Sure, changing the roach could fix some problems, but Starcraft 2 has far worse problems than the poor unit design it's full of. But this is purely opinion. hi5
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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.
I'll give you a reason why forced balance is worse than natural balance. WoW. Blizzard has been trying to "balance" that game for years and it has failed utterly. The same one combination has been dominating for years and years.
Ultimately, mapmakers know best. Blizzard needs to open up the map system and have mapmakers do the balancing. Getting rid of cliffs, reducing mineral patches, moving to a more open terrain, shrinking bases all are options that deal with balance. This has worked in the Korean scene and races are balanced not by Blizzard's design but by mapmaker design.
We've seen what Blizzard can do when it tries to balance(WoW) and we've seen what mapmakers can do when they balance(BW). I'll take BW balance over WoW balance any day.
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I only see the Roach as a flawed design because its not fun to play with.
But for the sake of argument, you can consider this:
The Roach is a tier 1 tank, which is just silly to begin with because obviously any tier 1 tank is going to be overpowered (which the roach was) unless serious provisions are made to stifle some aspect of the unit - The Queen's mobility is a good example of how a strong unit can be balanced out like that. The concept behind the Roach is awkward considering Zerg is the race that has a racial attribute of being quick, cheap, and weak. This contradiction of racial attribution is comparable to the Reaper for Terran - a fragile, hyper-aggressive tier 1 harasser in a race that is regarded as the slow and lumbering defensive race.
The Roach has its limitation in the early meta because of its two food count, but it also has a hard time in the mid/late meta because it just doesn't scale with the power of other units. It has three upgrades, which exhibit tautology with many other evolutions (there are three speed upgrades for Zerg in tier 1 - Roach, Ling, Bling) and the strangely codependent Tunneling Claws evolution that does nothing without the Burrow evolution, either of which you don't get until Lair (my point here is that is you need to upgrade your Roaches ASAP, you'll have to wait way too long). That is too much of an investment for a unit that won't hold up well in combat later in the game.
It seems like there were a lot of different ways to include the Roach in the Zerg tech tree without sacrificing its usefulness. A tier 2 Roach would probably have been an easier fix for scaling purposes. Making it stronger would have made players gladly pay the two food. Anyways, I really hate the Roach. I find it to be a unit whose usefulness comes in small doses.
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They didn't nerf things because they weren't working as intended. They nerfed them because they were breaking the game. Fazing made voidrays way too strong. Queens moving off-creep quickly and spine crawlers made certain strategies unstoppable. It does matter how overpowered something is, especially when it's fairly easy to use.
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The more and more I play, the more I start to go away from the roach again.
It's just such a 'wrong' unit, especially in ZvZ.
I want zerg to be about low hp, fairly high-dmg fast and swarming units, but they have really lost that, the roach is basicly like a zealot/dragoon equivalent for Zerg.
I want ZvZ to be a micro-intensive matchup with lots of movement, and where making micro-mistakes could cost you the game.
To bad that on ladder the other guy goes roaches 99% of the time, in my last let's say 25 ZvZ's I only had one game were it was ling/bling/muta.
I just don't want it to be focused around this mini-dragoon, it's just so retarded.
In other MU's the roach had atleast some "flavour" to it in the beginning stages of the beta, this sort of wolverine guy that regenerated health, could burrow and so on, it was OP they nerfed it.
What we now have left is just a bland 2food high-hp auto-attacker.
With some expensive upgrades to make it atleast do something interesting, but that is fairly easy shut down.
This together with hydra speed, are just examples of how blizzard just completely lost control of the idea of where to go with Zerg in overall gameplay/units.
The hydra getting moved to t2 for the roach, etc.
But in blizzards eye it's fine, because in their eyes we have this cool unit that can "infiltrate" enemy lines, that can pop up at unforseen places, and so on.
But that is not the issue or thing we like, we don't want more buttons to press, we don't want cool spells, we want zerg to be zerg again. And let micro evolve from there.
I mean when Idra did his muta stop thing over Tarson thor's that got a lot of reaction, a lot of people were going fairly crazy over it, it was good to see, and these are the things that make playing fun, or dimaga's amazing control with muta/bling/ling/infestor,
not some roaches where you press R when he walks over you.
Anyway, that was my little rant concerning some points that were brought up in this topic.
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You clearly underestimate the power of blinking stalkers.
It's one of the greatest new abilities in the game. I would seriously reconsider your argument there.
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On August 22 2010 06:46 Sentient wrote:
Blizzard is taking a different route than in Starcraft 1. The "wait and see" approach to balance isn't working, because when something new and interesting arises that falls outside of Blizzard's specifications, they change it.
There hasn't been any patch yet for game balance since release. So you're "omg they nerfed everything good" approach doesn't apply (yet). Quick changes happened in beta because well... it was beta.
Sentient wrote:
They want the gameplay to conform to their original intentions for each unit.
I'm not sure what is wrong with that
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On August 22 2010 15:15 junemermaid wrote:
You clearly underestimate the power of blinking stalkers.
It's one of the greatest new abilities in the game. I would seriously reconsider your argument there.
I said that blink works better than the other abilities. I agree that it's one of the best new abilities, but it's still clear that they designed it to be micro-intensive from start. It worked well for blink, but failed for other abilities.
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Zerg units, including the Roach, take up too much PSI and are too strong.
They are also too slow.
So in this respect, the Roach is indeed a representative of the fail in design with Zerg.
Most everything is 2 food or more- when you compare the masses of Zerg in SC1 its very annoying.
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SC/BW was the way it was because of a bunch of random bugs. You can't recreate buggy behavior and expect it to work properly. Secondly, a lot of the cool micro tricks are only cool because of the limitation of the UI. The game should be about player vs player, not player vs player vs UI. Finally, Blizzard never intended SC/BW to be e-sports viable. Hell, esports didn't even exist when SC/BW was first coming out. It was just a cool game with some random tournaments, not this gigantic power with sponsors and people who make their livings playing the game.
It's kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa being so popular. If it was just a normal tower, it would be cool and all, but probably not world famous. However, because the tower leans and is still stable (which was not intended by the architect), it has somehow become a worldwide phenomenon.
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The problem that Blizzard is doing is that when there is a balance issue, their solution is to nerf that unit, instead of buffing other races. This is the wrong approach to creating a dynamic and balanced game.
By nerfing the "imba" unit, Blizzard is limiting the roles of the unit while allowing the other two races to still do their same push but to a greater success rate since said "imba" unit is not as strong anymore. This encourages a smaller and slower change in the meta-game and thus is not something we want for an e-sport.
Blizzard should take the buff approach by giving other races. Sure, you may create matchup problems in the other matchups, but that's how the meta game changes and does not stagnate the evolution of the game. Buffing just creates opportunity rather than limit.
Blizzard was also lazy in terms of designing this game in this beginning stages. Almost everything in this game is "unit A counters unit B because unit A has a bonus damage to unit B or unit A will completely outrange unit B". This is how the holy roach-marauder-immortal business came up. These units completely wrecked the spirit of Starcraft of how even soft countered units can micro their way to victory. It's not as clear cut as rock paper scissors. Mass hydras get destroyed by storm and reavers in BW, but with great micro, you can overcome it. Now storm and colossus destroy hydras, and there's almost nothing you can do about it. Everything does too much damage too quickly and don't even allow the opportunity to effectively micro.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On August 22 2010 15:36 0mar wrote:
SC/BW was the way it was because of a bunch of random bugs. You can't recreate buggy behavior and expect it to work properly. Secondly, a lot of the cool micro tricks are only cool because of the limitation of the UI. The game should be about player vs player, not player vs player vs UI. Finally, Blizzard never intended SC/BW to be e-sports viable. Hell, esports didn't even exist when SC/BW was first coming out. It was just a cool game with some random tournaments, not this gigantic power with sponsors and people who make their livings playing the game.
It's kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa being so popular. If it was just a normal tower, it would be cool and all, but probably not world famous. However, because the tower leans and is still stable (which was not intended by the architect), it has somehow become a worldwide phenomenon.
Bugs like what? Seriously, you people have no idea about what makes SC:BW so good. Muta stacking isn't a bug, it's working exactly as the game intended (read up on magic boxes if you don't know what I'm talking about). Muta micro still takes a lot of skill AND it existed before muta stacking.
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Never liked the roach. In my eyes it is suppose to shift zerg somewhere i think isn't really interesting to play with / against. The lurker + zergling, muta + zergling were some of the best and most interesting synergies to watch and play with. It encouraged and required flanking. Anything lategame zerg was a whole different control game that had units that had to work together every attack / flank or the weakness of the individual unit would bring down the whole chain. Strong togheter, weak and countered easily if alone. Every bw zerg will tell you that once they started to understand and master these synergies and flanking tactics zerg was sooo much fun to play with.
Now everything is all over the place. And by looking at the big picture i just dont see why anyone would like the roach, in terms of gameplay you zergs got the bad end of the stick in my opinion. And i dont see how any bw zerg could argue against it.
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On August 22 2010 16:00 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 15:36 0mar wrote:
SC/BW was the way it was because of a bunch of random bugs. You can't recreate buggy behavior and expect it to work properly. Secondly, a lot of the cool micro tricks are only cool because of the limitation of the UI. The game should be about player vs player, not player vs player vs UI. Finally, Blizzard never intended SC/BW to be e-sports viable. Hell, esports didn't even exist when SC/BW was first coming out. It was just a cool game with some random tournaments, not this gigantic power with sponsors and people who make their livings playing the game.
It's kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa being so popular. If it was just a normal tower, it would be cool and all, but probably not world famous. However, because the tower leans and is still stable (which was not intended by the architect), it has somehow become a worldwide phenomenon. Bugs like what? Seriously, you people have no idea about what makes SC:BW so good. Muta stacking isn't a bug, it's working exactly as the game intended (read up on magic boxes if you don't know what I'm talking about). Muta micro still takes a lot of skill AND it existed before muta stacking.
Muta stacking was a side effect of how air units stacked. Things like patrol micro, lurkers being dodgable, "magic box" are things that are basically exploits/bugs in the engine. I'm pretty sure Blizzard never sat down and whiteboarded those features. They just happen to be unintentional side effects of how the engine was coded and interacted with the player.
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As a zerg player, I disagree.
The Marauder is the epitome of everything wrong about sc2.
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On August 22 2010 17:40 0mar wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 16:00 Plexa wrote:On August 22 2010 15:36 0mar wrote:
SC/BW was the way it was because of a bunch of random bugs. You can't recreate buggy behavior and expect it to work properly. Secondly, a lot of the cool micro tricks are only cool because of the limitation of the UI. The game should be about player vs player, not player vs player vs UI. Finally, Blizzard never intended SC/BW to be e-sports viable. Hell, esports didn't even exist when SC/BW was first coming out. It was just a cool game with some random tournaments, not this gigantic power with sponsors and people who make their livings playing the game.
It's kind of like the leaning tower of Pisa being so popular. If it was just a normal tower, it would be cool and all, but probably not world famous. However, because the tower leans and is still stable (which was not intended by the architect), it has somehow become a worldwide phenomenon. Bugs like what? Seriously, you people have no idea about what makes SC:BW so good. Muta stacking isn't a bug, it's working exactly as the game intended (read up on magic boxes if you don't know what I'm talking about). Muta micro still takes a lot of skill AND it existed before muta stacking. Muta stacking was a side effect of how air units stacked. Things like patrol micro, lurkers being dodgable, "magic box" are things that are basically exploits/bugs in the engine. I'm pretty sure Blizzard never sat down and whiteboarded those features. They just happen to be unintentional side effects of how the engine was coded and interacted with the player.
Don't get the word exploit and bug/glitch mixed up. Exploit is a technique available in the game used in a different fashion to create an advantage for the player (muta stacking, lurker hold) while bug/glitch is the game itself having errors in the coding (drone floating anyone?).
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I agree with you about spine crawlers the 13sec burrow time feels like a bad way to 'fix' offensive spine crawlers
but about roaches, I don't think they're nearly as one-dimensional as you make them out to be, sure they function as a 'tank' for hydra line but really I think there's loads of ways to use the burrow regen/move on roaches that have not yet been discovered
the fact that you consider a unit one-dimensional now doesn't mean it'll be one-dimensional a month from now
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GOD I HATE THE ROACH! GO AWAY!
No but seriously I play zerg to zerg stuff. If I wanted a tier one unit with 145 hp, 16 damage and taking 2 psi I would play protoss. Seriously, roach is a fucking protoss unit with an identity crisis and I refuse to use it. Also please give me my 1 pop hydra back with whatever nerfs necessary.
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1 pop hydra would be op, dont you known?
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On August 22 2010 18:37 Rockstar25 wrote:
1 pop hydra would be op, dont you known?
.... protip: at least TRY to read complete sentences. Seriously it is awesome, sometimes it even helps you to understand what people are saying.
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Yes its one of the things wrong with sc2. Zerg does not need roaches if they only had a decent all purpose 1.5 tier ranged unit like the hydralisk.
I believe the most resonable thing to assume is that blizzard felt they had not done anything with the zerg early game and it felt to similiar to broodwar that they felt the need to add something (roach baneling).
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Looks like they have found a solution for us...
+ Show Spoiler +
... I love the faint shapes in the background too. LOL
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How about give Roaches Heart of Tarrasque????
EDIT: That is to say, increased, increased regeneration rate outside of battle. Ceased regeneration rate in battle. It's a DOTA mechanic.
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On August 22 2010 19:19 nihoh wrote:
How about give Roaches Heart of Tarrasque????
EDIT: That is to say, increased, increased regeneration rate outside of battle. Ceased regeneration rate in battle. It's a DOTA mechanic.
They do, it's called burrow regeneration, nobody gets burrow, arguing it's useless.
the truth is it's not useless, it's just hard to incorporated into a solid build. (you know since mass roach is meh)
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im sorry, are you complaining about the roach? you can one-base roach rush for a quick win, or transition to a more stable build after...
you can use roaches to defend against helions/reapers/zealots etc
you can use roaches to soak damage/do heavy damage since they're an armored/highish health unit
and since they're T1.5... theyre a great beefy unit similar to marauder (not utility wise, lol, just beefyness)
however yes they have been toned down, mostly b/c you could one-base roach your way to victory every game with the crazy regen and insane armor (2 i believe it was)
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On August 22 2010 08:29 NicolBolas wrote:Show nested quote +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.
CBA to reply to everything youve written, but the Abilities you seem to love actually ABUSE the current map design and puts the other races at a disadvantage, especially zerg (what else  ). Seruously, blinking or cliffwalking on the current - EXTREMELY cramped up - map pool is hardly balanced. And destroy any real need to think about best unit positioning - heck, you can just jump on that cliff and be fine, why do you have to bother thinking of what can go wrong with your current position, you can simply abuse that terrain and move out of harms way. So yeah, promoting micromanagement at the cost of limiting the need to think. Nice.
You make force fields sound THAT difficult to use, well, they are not. I do find the kind of understanding required to make the proper decision of which building to Corrupt MUCH deeper and non-one-sided as your beloved force fields. And yeah, seriously, ramp blocking is supposed to be a deep tactical move???WTF?
As a side note, I love ZvP matches.
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Good write-up. Lots of good points. At this stage of SC2, I really don't know what to say.
I'm not even sure if it's a better game than SC1. And with the whole Kespa fiasco, I don't even know if SC2 has as big of a future.
The game just feels boring  and I think the days of Sc1 style micro highlights are over.
All the highlights for Sc2 are pretty much 150 food armies going toe-to-toe with other 150 armies with a few spells going off. The only micro being dragging the armies back and forth for positioning.
I guess it's just a waiting game. Let's wait and see how everything goes.
I'm excited for GSL but I can't help but think Blizzard doesn't realize how influential Kespa was with the whole korean esports scene.
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The roach is the symbol of this failed philosophy, and that's why I hate the roach.
...Hmmm, I never liked the Roach from the first time they introduced it, even in theory. I never feel good about making them, fighting with them, or fighting against them -- they just feel like they're being forced "into the spotlight" as the new Zerg mascot,.
My main problem is that you need to upgrade them to be useful. Why doesn't Terran have to upgrade the ability for Vikings to transform? Or for Ravens to place down auto-turrets? Roaches whole appeal -- being regenerating and tunneling -- requires so many upgrades that it sucks.
I know that Stim Packs, Marauders, Warp Gates, and Seige Mode are some examples of upgrades that are practically necessary if you're going to get the units, but I at least think that as soon as you get burrow, Roaches should be able to tunnel and regenerate. But nope, every Zerg unit requires an upgrade to be as useful as a vanilla flavor T or P.
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- Fazing let Void Rays counter marines and hydralisks. Blizzard nerfed it.
And with good reason. It allowed one Void Ray to destroy 2 Hydralisks in less time than it normally took to kill one. That is a HUGE balance problem. Void Rays are already incredibly powerful. We don't need an incredibly easy micro mechanic to make them even more so.
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This weird idea that BW just spontaneously popped out of clear blue sky with a set of mechanics that are totally divine (like valkyries not firing because of excessive stuff in the game, amirite?) is really getting out of hand. Newsflash: Blizzard knew perfectly well what shuttles and reavers were capable of together. They knew it so well that even their *AI* in the *original Starcraft* used reavers in shuttles.
Some things were changed, some things were removed and some things were kept. It applies to the Divine Gift of the Unfailable Brood War as well. Void Ray-fazing was removed because it was a horrible "mechanic" that completely broke the unit. Just because something isnt originally intended does not make it a good idea. And just because something *was* originally intended does not make it a *bad* idea. Neither Blink nor Graviton nor many of the other unit abilities are equally bland to Corruption just because they are abilities added intentionally with specific purposes in mind.
This design philosophy critique is blowing things way out of proportion.
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On August 22 2010 21:43 Grimjim wrote:And with good reason. It allowed one Void Ray to destroy 2 Hydralisks in less time than it normally took to kill one. That is a HUGE balance problem. Void Rays are already incredibly powerful. We don't need an incredibly easy micro mechanic to make them even more so.
And this is why SC2 will never be as good as BW. Why don't you let Fazing and all the other little tricks stay in the game and let each unit take on its own role rather than one blizzard designed for them? What if blizzard patched muta stacking in BW, shuttle/reaver micro, dropship/tank, or worker glitching?
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I´m quite confident that Blizzard would have patched mutastacking if that would have more than doubled mutas DPS...
"Discovered" roles and strenghts are fine as long as the game can "surivive" with them. But they are merely to be tolerated, not be designed upon.
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Roach, immortal, and marauder should've never made it past beta. They warp game balance so much.
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On August 22 2010 22:08 dhe95 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 21:43 Grimjim wrote:- Fazing let Void Rays counter marines and hydralisks. Blizzard nerfed it. And with good reason. It allowed one Void Ray to destroy 2 Hydralisks in less time than it normally took to kill one. That is a HUGE balance problem. Void Rays are already incredibly powerful. We don't need an incredibly easy micro mechanic to make them even more so. And this is why SC2 will never be as good as BW. Why don't you let Fazing and all the other little tricks stay in the game and let each unit take on its own role rather than one blizzard designed for them? What if blizzard patched muta stacking in BW, shuttle/reaver micro, dropship/tank, or worker glitching?
Rapidly clicking back and forward on two units is paltry compared to the intense micro of Brood War, and the reward it grants is borderline overpowered, and far too much for what it requires.
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On August 22 2010 22:08 dhe95 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 21:43 Grimjim wrote:- Fazing let Void Rays counter marines and hydralisks. Blizzard nerfed it. And with good reason. It allowed one Void Ray to destroy 2 Hydralisks in less time than it normally took to kill one. That is a HUGE balance problem. Void Rays are already incredibly powerful. We don't need an incredibly easy micro mechanic to make them even more so. And this is why SC2 will never be as good as BW. Why don't you let Fazing and all the other little tricks stay in the game and let each unit take on its own role rather than one blizzard designed for them? What if blizzard patched muta stacking in BW, shuttle/reaver micro, dropship/tank, or worker glitching?
They did patch shuttle/reaver micro to include a cooldown time.
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On August 22 2010 07:13 SubtleArt wrote:Great writeup. I'd prefer if they made roaches slightly weaker but 1 supply again, as it stands they suck and Zerg has no viable way to pressure without committing to some easy to scout all in. Also, agree on their maps too. They replaced functionality with "OMFG LOOK AT HOW STRATEGIC OUR GAME IS HERE ARE 431772 PIECES OF TERRAIN YOU CAN ABUSE STRATEGICALLY IN OUR REALLY STRATEGIC GAME!" Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 07:06 Backpack wrote:
I'm not sure how you go from "muta micro wasn't intended" to "stuck with roachs" to "they nerfed fazing"
This just looks like another nostalgic thread about wanting it to be the same as BW.
edit: after reading more i understand the first bit, but i still think you are just nostalgic. These are two different games that just happen to share the name SC. They dont have to be designed exactly the same. That's a stupid thing to say. Brood War did so many things right, I don't see why Sc2 can't elaborate on everything that worked without being a carbon copy. Also, "they're different games". Are you fucking serious? Let's list all the similarities: - Exact same economy system: you get peons to mine minerals and gas and send them to your townhouse. - You require a building on a geyser to get gas - Terran builds anywhere, Zerg builds on creep, protoss builds on areas powered by pylons. - Terran macro system (rax + factories + starports), zerg macro system (building opens up tech options, units come out of larva, which spawns from hatcheries) and protoss macro system (gateways and robo bay) remain largely unchanged. - Pylons, ovies, and depots, exactly the same - Terran units still in Sc2:--- scvs, marines, dropships, tanks, battlecruisers, comsats, bunkers - Units which are changed but obviously mirror the original:--- Ravens (vessels), vikings (goliaths / wraiths), medivac (dropship + medic), helion (vulture) Zerg units still in Sc2:--- Queen, zergling, hydralisk, mutalisk, ultralisk, drone, overlord. Corrupters / broodlords are basically devourers and guardians, spine crawlers are sunken colonies, and infestors replaced defilers. - Protoss units still in Sc2:--- Zealot, probe, observer, dark templar, high templar, archon, carrier, cannons. Recycled units: Collosus (reaver), Stalker (dragoon), mothership (a useless arbiter), pheonix (corsair). That was quite a wall of text but I seriously hate it when people say that. Starcraft 2 borrows so heavily from the first (seriously...over half the new units are just modified versions of old ones in BW, except given an even more niche role) that saying its a completely new game is like saying Gears of War and Gears of War 2 or Halo and Halo 2 are entirely new games that happen to be under the same name.
I may not be one in a position to argue, but what about warcraft 2 and warcraft 3? didn't 3 introduce heroes, making the game pretty darn different?
edit: My point just being that sequels can be pretty different to their previous iterations despite their similarities.
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I'm sad that people have taken my post so literally. It was never meant to be a discussion about the roach, or even about Zerg for that matter. I was targeting Blizzard's design method of boxing units into very specific roles, and I only used the Zerg as an example. Perhaps I should have been more clear.
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Pretty silly OP. Apparently Blizzard isn't allowed to have a vision for their own game.
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On August 23 2010 13:04 Sentient wrote:
I'm sad that people have taken my post so literally. It was never meant to be a discussion about the roach, or even about Zerg for that matter. I was targeting Blizzard's design method of boxing units into very specific roles, and I only used the Zerg as an example. Perhaps I should have been more clear.
some people have, but there's a lot of legitimate criticism of weaknesses in your post
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On August 23 2010 13:34 UniversalSnip wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2010 13:04 Sentient wrote:
I'm sad that people have taken my post so literally. It was never meant to be a discussion about the roach, or even about Zerg for that matter. I was targeting Blizzard's design method of boxing units into very specific roles, and I only used the Zerg as an example. Perhaps I should have been more clear. some people have, but there's a lot of legitimate criticism of weaknesses in your post
I don't know about that, OP's post is pretty solid imo, the title of the thread is very mis-leading however.
A lot of people who seem to be arguing against the OP seem to just say "It's Blizzard's game, spell's are fine." I tend to disagree.
Spells are a lot more one dimensional in Sc2. Compare Fungal Growth to something like Dark Swarm. Fungal Growth is instant cast, and is one dimensional as it simply deals damage and stuns the units in place, giving the enemy player no time to really react or try to counter it after it is cast.
Dark Swarm on the other hand acts more, errm, openly? Once cast it does nothing to force players to take any direct action, the players can remain in the Swarm but obviously it may not benefit them as ranged attacks do not work in it.
Basically spells in Sc2 once cast, you can only react in a couple of ways. Force Field is a great example, if the opponent ramp is choked with it, you can only just run away.
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On August 22 2010 07:12 Necrosjef wrote:
Pretty much agree with the OP.
I wouldn't say Blizzard tried to hard though, I just think they went the wrong way with patches, instead of buffing underpowered things they nerfed what was considered overpowered. This really leads to a situation where very few strategys and units are viable because most are so so so weak.
As opposed to having multiple strong viable strategies to select from there is generally only 1 or 2 build orders which are viable because so many units have been nerfed into oblivion.
So what you`re saying is it`s easier to buff 20 units instead of nerfing 4....clearly you don`t understand how much time that would take. There`s lots of strong strategies if you understand how to use your units and micro. If you don`t agree, go watch the recent Raleigh tournament. There`s generally a basic build order you use and then you branch to react to scouting information. I wouldn`t want 8 different build orders, because building to react in advance to something you haven`t scouted is suicide and just plain stupid.
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On August 23 2010 14:13 RoarMan wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2010 13:34 UniversalSnip wrote:On August 23 2010 13:04 Sentient wrote:
I'm sad that people have taken my post so literally. It was never meant to be a discussion about the roach, or even about Zerg for that matter. I was targeting Blizzard's design method of boxing units into very specific roles, and I only used the Zerg as an example. Perhaps I should have been more clear. some people have, but there's a lot of legitimate criticism of weaknesses in your post I don't know about that, OP's post is pretty solid imo, the title of the thread is very mis-leading however. A lot of people who seem to be arguing against the OP seem to just say "It's Blizzard's game, spell's are fine." I tend to disagree. Spells are a lot more one dimensional in Sc2. Compare Fungal Growth to something like Dark Swarm. Fungal Growth is instant cast, and is one dimensional as it simply deals damage and stuns the units in place, giving the enemy player no time to really react or try to counter it after it is cast. Dark Swarm on the other hand acts more, errm, openly? Once cast it does nothing to force players to take any direct action, the players can remain in the Swarm but obviously it may not benefit them as ranged attacks do not work in it. Basically spells in Sc2 once cast, you can only react in a couple of ways. Force Field is a great example, if the opponent ramp is choked with it, you can only just run away.
Learn to scout. What does fungal growth do if you already know it`s coming. People can`t just blame blizzard for their inability to play properly. As for forcefield, it`s an incredible offensive skill when used properly. choking off a ramp is hardly a life saver. any smart player will react and have it countered in 2 minutes with a tech switch. Just because gold league and under don`t understand how to use the game`s mechanics doesn`t mean it`s designed wrong, it just means they haven`t yet learnt how to use them in unique ways.
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I agree with the general thesis that Blizzard's SC1 "design cool units, balance later" philosophy was better than SC2's "design units for special roles (harass, tank, etc) and nerf/buff them if players aren't using them in their proper role" method. SC2 does feel a bit contrived and the creativity is being crushed by pigeon-holed units that can't be used outside of their designed role lest blizzard nerf them.
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On August 22 2010 06:46 Sentient wrote:
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. ...yeah, their only purpose is to be... the most used zerg strat in SC2.
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United Arab Emirates492 Posts
On September 04 2010 11:06 figq wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 06:46 Sentient wrote:
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. ...yeah, their only purpose is to be... the most used zerg strat in SC2.
rightfully so.
They are the only damage absorbers till t3 ultralisk. plus they aren't handicapped off creep.
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