EPTThoughts on Design - Removing Gameplay for Balance - Page 6
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Arakash
Germany124 Posts
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Wrongspeedy
United States1655 Posts
The one that said its hard to balance a game around a new campaign? Which would make you think they are trying to balance a game slightly different than the one we are currently playing, while also trying to balance this one and every other game they provide constant support for. Even 1-2 new (or different) units a race and some other changes would dramatically alter game-play (add in even more knew maps too). | ||
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derpzzz
20 Posts
i dont even know where to begin in how many aspects this unit design is fucked up | ||
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Sek-Kuar
Czech Republic593 Posts
Since then, a lot of new thing was released. A lot of new games, new books with new sci-fi - and people were expecting something when waiting for SC2. This way, Blizzard was forced to add a lot of interesting (=hard to balance) stuff. Blackhole? Yeah just 1 click killing whole army... Banshees with splash killing 20 marines in like 3 seconds... Thors so slow to move and turt that it requires like 200 APM to control one, and with about 850 APM you could kill it taking no dmg. Remember alfa. All this stuff was very interesting - and often based on bad mechanics. A lot of this things vere so strong that 1 missclick could decide whole game. Nothing like that was in BW. Yeah, there were strong storms. But if you have 100 units and 1 storm can kill 10 of them like instantly, then its a lot about control on hoth sides. But archon toilet or Blackhole are nothing like this, its not about direct comparision of skills of two players. Its about one click deciding game. Blizzard was forced to add a lot if interesting stuff to this game, to make SC2 popular even before release. But then during alfa, beta and even now ae removing this stuff that is simply wrong or too hard to balance. | ||
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lunar3force
78 Posts
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Dommk
Australia4865 Posts
On March 07 2011 01:46 lunar3force wrote: Also one thing that makes SC2 that much more less exciting to watch and play then BW is almost complete lack of interesting abilities. BW had crazy deadly stuff like plaque,recolls all over map,stasis on half of your army, science vessel loaded with alway usable irradiate, emp and def. matrix, ect ect. Now in Sc2 when 1.3 go live its by-by HT for any less then 20min game, HSM... whats that?, Vortex? Recoll? 250mm? Fungal Grow? Corruption LoL Spells in SC2 are eather lame, nearfed to death or unexplainable ridiculous like Infested Terran. There is always stim i quess lol. Archon toilet is pretty darn deadly, if you can get a mothership it almost becomes impossible for Zerg to engage Protoss, or rather, incredibly difficult to engage Protoss. But alas, nerfed! But that was probably more deserving than others. Dunno about you, but Stim is a pretty deadly skill in sc2  | ||
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andrewlt
United States7702 Posts
Irradiate, plague, dark swarm, spider mines, etc. allows units to punch above their cost so much. However, their damage can be minimized by moving your army properly either by splitting or moving them out of the way. | ||
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DestroManiak
257 Posts
On March 05 2011 23:19 Rashid wrote: that's because Dustbin Browder is an idiot. SC2 gameplay and balancing has got to be the dumbest and most backwards in today's RTS standards, which isn't suprising since all the CnC games Browder was involved in were horribly inbalanced. As an example, back in the days of BW, all races have pretty much equal chances of winning whether it be early, mid, or late game. Of course, Dustbin Browder for some reason thinks that this is a bad thing, thus he changed it so that in SC2, certain matchups have racial specific strengths in early, mid, and late game. TvZ, ZvP is a freaking joke, since T has no hope of defeating Z late game while Z has no hope defeating P late game. I even remembered once in an interview where Dustbin Browder mocks the 2 rax SCV all-in as 'rubbish', when in fact it's his whole rubbish system that's forcing Terran players to all-in every game against every Zerg that goes 14 hatch. User was temp banned for this post. can you explain me then, how master's league zergs win %53 percent of their games (equal to other two races) ? http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/all ![[image loading]](http://media.skateboard.com.au/forum/images/my_hair_is_a_bird-257x300.jpg) | ||
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Byyk
457 Posts
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GiantEnemyCrab
Canada503 Posts
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parn
France296 Posts
Blizzard failed about units special abilities, by removing all the good ones (mines, reaver scarab, lurker shot, etc ...) and adding those we know. But, the more i think about it the more i understand that those abilities are, in fact, quite ok, which in a way, makes us wrong. To explain myself, not so long ago while reading those kind of threads I just realized how much Blizzard is freaking out about those new features, they don't know how to deal with, so they nerf , or even worst, delet upgrades/abilities. This is, as most agree, a critical mistake, and i think Blizzard should really have the exact opposite policy: overboosting all abilities mechanics AND THEN, work on numbers (duration, dmg, cooldown, etc ...) to adjust those. By overboosting all abilities mechanics i mean, for example and not to be taken seriously, but just enough so you get what i'm thinking: - Give the Thor a really strong 250mm dmg cannon / 400 dmg in 2-3 sec, but with a long casting time and/or cool down - Give the sentry guardian shield a really higher ... shield bonus, like +5, but a higher mana cost, or reduced effect area - Give the infestor the ability to cast neural parasite while burrowed but again at a higher mana cost or infestor cost or whatever - etc ... I think they need to make (ALL) unit abilities ... real abilities, strong abilities, key abilities, and not just little buff/toys. Try to imagine SC1 with vulture mines dealing 20 dmg to a single unit, lurker having a really small area of damages or reaver's scarab going straight ahead to the target to deal 30 dmg on 3 max units. This would be truly bad. The problem is that Blizzard will never make those changes, they play safety and will play safety for one, two, maybe three years before they start taking some tiny risks. Once again, we need a pro mode. | ||
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suejak
Japan545 Posts
On March 06 2011 23:43 Toadvine wrote: Allow me to venture a guess: You are a Terran player, are you not? You can already see people complaining about PvX being boring to spectate and repetitive in the recent GSL LR threads. And you know what, I play Protoss, and I mostly agree. And removing KA is obviously only going to make it worse. It's a huge nerf to non-Colossus builds in PvX. They might still be viable, but I wouldn't be surprised if all Protosses basically opened with Colossus play in all matchups after this change goes live. So, yeah, it does remove a fair bit of strategic variety. No more Double Forge, and no more Immortal/Stalker/Templar in PvZ, most likely. As a sidenote, it's hilarious how Idra and Artosis lobby for a Colossus nerf with their new show, citing Templar builds as possible alternatives, and the next thing Blizzard does is nerf Templar. This is actually interesting, because that IS how SC2 feels to me right now. Small mistake, battle lost, no comeback possibility, game over. I've lost PvZs because I looked away from my army/the minimap for ~2 seconds, after having played very well up to that point. This is me being bad, of course, and I do deserve to lose. But it never really felt like that in BW. Sure, you could react slowly to a reaver behind your mineral line, or walk into a mine field like a total retard. However, even if you did fail, it just put you behind, and you had the possibility of making a comeback if you did something equally damaging, or just expanded and macroed really well. In SC2, if I don't deny a Blue Flame Hellion drop really decisively, I lose 20+ probes and may as well leave. If I lose a big lategame battle, the opponent walks into my natural and the game is over. It's just really, really easy to lose, at any skill-level. Huh...? I play zerg when I play at all -- and I watch sc2 farrrrrr more than I play. It's the only game I enjoy watching. I wouldn't be surprised if all Protoss players opened colossus in every game after this goes live either, because people completely overreact to any change. People will open colossus and become predictable, leading to an overall weakening of protoss that people will blame on the amulet removal, and then protoss players will realize that templar are still useful and things will balance back out. | ||
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QuestSeekers
United States39 Posts
On March 06 2011 23:47 branflakes14 wrote: The Immortal adds the possibility for the Protoss player to draw Siege Tank fire away from his army for a long enough time to crush through a position. 2 Siege Tanks on a cliff? Move a single Immortal into range of each one at the same time. The tanks won't change target from the Immortal until it dies unless told to shoot something else, meaning your ground army has a long, long time to take them out. That's possible micromanagement for both the Protoss and Terran player in a situation that most players would attack move. There's a ton of possibility for little nuances of micro in Starcraft 2, you just need to give time to let the game develop. I don't think it helps having effectively unlimited units per control group though, it just leads to 1a syndrome at all levels of play, hampering the development of micromanagement. I agree the Immortal provides opportunities to micro. I am not arguing there is no micro in sc2. I do not think most of the micro options open to us in sc2 are as dramatic OR interesting as those in BW. That is not to say there are no examples of dramatic and powerful units in sc2. I think Banelings are great, they are very dramatic and very effective, the burrow explode is dramatic, they are more powerful in a battle if you micro other units to keep the enemy from moving, creep helps them get to the enemy, etc. I think the design philosophy of 'counter units' has resulted in units that relate to each other largely by their damage type (though there are exceptions), instead of relating to each other because of their interesting and powerful abilities. I am thinking TvP, of mines and siege tanks, both of which would often do hugely more damage than they cost when used well (or they could do huge amounts of damage to their allies). Their abilities led to battles that could be very one sided depending on how the players engaged INSTEAD of depending on (largely) who built the 'right counter units' . Also, not that it is terribly relevant to your point, but the Immortal would take out those siege tanks well enough on its own, without the help of the other units. | ||
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lilky
United States131 Posts
what if they made it so that high templar warped in by pylon have 75 energy (w/ khaydarin amulet researched of course) but high templar warped in by warp prism receive 62 (or maybe even 50!) this would eliminate storm drops but still let protoss deal with terran drops because the main concern of protoss players if amulet is removed is that we wont be able to warp in DEFENSIVE high templar | ||
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savagebeavers
Canada108 Posts
Blizzard was completely OK with removing Terran cheese Umm.. what??I dont really understand where that comes from. If you play as zerg on the ladder you will find Terran cheese every second game. just becuase they cant make a barracks before a supply depot doesn't mean they dont go 3 rax and pull all there scv's. I woud say they slightly toned down the power of Terran cheese, because i cry myself to sleep after watching 2 rax after 2 rax after 2 rax... | ||
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Nightfall.589
Canada766 Posts
On March 07 2011 06:28 lilky wrote: idea: what if they made it so that high templar warped in by pylon have 75 energy (w/ khaydarin amulet researched of course) but high templar warped in by warp prism receive 62 (or maybe even 50!) this would eliminate storm drops but still let protoss deal with terran drops because the main concern of protoss players if amulet is removed is that we wont be able to warp in DEFENSIVE high templar Defensive high templar are what's broken about amulet. If anything, storm drops are nowhere near as devastating as blueflame hellions. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10382 Posts
You leave out and do not consider one important point; you assume that the states of SC1 and SC2 when they were first released were both states of "perfect" game design. However you can't assume this. If SC2 happened to have just been released with poorer design, then you pointing out that SC2 changed design more than SC1 did design doesn't really mean much. | ||
bkrow
Australia8532 Posts
The problem with your entire post is that you seem to assume that SC2 should follow the same path as SC1 (i assume you are referring to BW, not SC1) .. As much as people refuse to acknowledge it - these are two completely different games, with severely different game designs.. This game is in it's infantile state; while these changes seem HUGE to us now, we need to be patient while Blizzard, who are in the best position to do so, work out the kinks in this game. The current state of game really isn't as terrible as some people claim.. A lot of it is outrage based on racial bias.. So these changes may seem drastic; but we all just need to chill..  | ||
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Toadvine
Poland2234 Posts
On March 07 2011 06:35 savagebeavers wrote: Umm.. what??I dont really understand where that comes from. If you play as zerg on the ladder you will find Terran cheese every second game. just becuase they cant make a barracks before a supply depot doesn't mean they dont go 3 rax and pull all there scv's. I woud say they slightly toned down the power of Terran cheese, because i cry myself to sleep after watching 2 rax after 2 rax after 2 rax... That's not cheese. A lot of Zerg players have taken to calling all-in builds from other races "cheese", when it doesn't really fit the definition. Proxy reapers or 6pool are cheese, but there's nothing cheesy about 2 rax - it's just a strong, flexible opening that can transition into an expansion or an all-in with scvs. Calling it cheese, or calling 4gate cheese, makes about as much sense as calling a 10 pool into baneling nest in ZvZ cheese. The fact that you don't like a particular all-in, does NOT make it cheese. | ||
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Dhalphir
Australia1305 Posts
On March 05 2011 21:31 arbitrageur wrote: I disagree with the spirit and theme of the OP. If they perceive an imbalance, what's so bad about making favourable changes to the metagame as a side consequence of balancing it. 5 rax reaper? Lol. If the reapers were never changed, there may have been a period of some weeks where Terrans dominated Zerg with the 5 rax reaper. Then someone would have inevitably come along with a strategy that completely denied it without being bad against any other Terran build too. And it would have evolved the metagame again. And Blizzard is not letting such things happen. | ||
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