EPTBasically, if you see a lot of sentries, you kinda have to try and bait FFs and lings are great FF bait if he doesn't want to lose any of his gas units to your mineral only cheap units. Then again, what do I know. I'm only theorycrafting here.
Abilities that nullify micro - Good or bad? - Page 15
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KotaOnCue
United States180 Posts
Basically, if you see a lot of sentries, you kinda have to try and bait FFs and lings are great FF bait if he doesn't want to lose any of his gas units to your mineral only cheap units. Then again, what do I know. I'm only theorycrafting here. | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
It does take skill to use force fields as well as MC did, but I still find it a hell of a lot more boring than most things you see in BW. What made BW balance so good was that there was skill involved for BOTH sides when it came to spells. It takes a lot of effort to cast good storms with the old UI, but it can also be countered with good unit spread and prediction. Same goes for BW EMP, dark swarm, and irradiate. That doesn't happen with SC2. EMPs can no longer be dodged in SC2. Neither can fungal growth, concussive shells, or force fields. The micro is purely dependent on the player casting it, and is almost completely independent of anything the opposing player can do. How do you counter good storm usage in SC1? You spread out your units and control them well. How do you counter good force field usage in SC2? You research burrow. Don't have burrow? You lose. See the difference there? With SC1 storms, even if you don't have the optimal unit composition and upgrades, you can still survive and win just by out-controlling your opponent. You can't out-control force fields though. Any unit that gets a good force field on them is dead, end of story. MC showed just how hopeless it to fight against good FFs when the opponent doesn't have the scissors (burrowed roach) to counter MC's paper. And strict rock-paper-scissors gameplay is precisely what SC2 should keep away from. I still commend MC's amazing skill, but at the same time I found the finals utterly boring. If games like these are the future of SC2 e-sports, then I'm going to be very worried. | ||
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jmack
Canada285 Posts
On March 19 2011 18:51 wonderwall wrote: Forcefield requires impossible amounts of micro from one player to deny the other player the ability to micro. Forcefield is probably bringing more micro into the game just from the other player. It also requires the receiver of the forcefield to consider positioning and how he is going to engage much more. If there is one thing forcefield isn't doing its dumbing down the game. This guy is spot on. Forcefields TAKE more "mirco" then simply backing up your concusive shell stimmed marauders. We should be talking about how amazing it is to turn an unfavorable battlefield into an advantageous one through MIRCO. This spell is also great entertainment, if you carefully watch the positioning of them. Bonus: EGIncontrol has great forcefielding, so fun to watch. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43759 Posts
On March 19 2011 19:12 Gingerninja wrote: Wider Chokes. Simple really. Protoss would need to wall off with buildings still but probably need the sentries to FF to defend. Would take a lot more FF to block a zergs ramp, and you couldn't indefinably keep them there like game 1 showed. Ofc if you get doughnutted in open field then that's your own fault. Then Protoss would die to fast rushes. Protoss need FFs for defense early game to counter fast roach rushes and concussive shell attacks. It's absolutely necessary in pretty much all match-ups if you get rushed super fast. | ||
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Kyuss420
Canada36 Posts
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-Archangel-
Croatia7457 Posts
On March 20 2011 03:31 jmack wrote: This guy is spot on. Forcefields TAKE more "mirco" then simply backing up your concusive shell stimmed marauders. We should be talking about how amazing it is to turn an unfavorable battlefield into an advantageous one through MIRCO. This spell is also great entertainment, if you carefully watch the positioning of them. Bonus: EGIncontrol has great forcefielding, so fun to watch. I am sure if streaming was popular (and around) in the early days of WoW griefing with Rogues would be fun to watch for other Rogue players... Each time I watched some Zerg streamer lose a game because of a infinite main ramp FF while natural hatchery dies made me not want to play Zerg or SC2 at all. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43759 Posts
On March 20 2011 03:51 Kyuss420 wrote: i think forcefield just needs to last for a shorter period. I think if there were ever to be a nerf to forcefield, then making forcefields last for a shorter period of time would be the only justifiable nerf. -Making them smaller would really make them useless (they wouldn't block anything, and they'd especially provide no defense on ramps against early pushes where they're necessary). -Making them breakable (a.k.a. if they had hp) would make them useless in the mid-to-late game (think of how fast a 150-200 food army would kill off a few forcefields, regardless of the hp). -Making them crushable by more units wouldn't work because of how frequently we already see so many units in SC2. Unless perhaps you made it like the archon, infestor, and siege tank? That being said, I don't think forcefield needs to be nerfed at the moment anyway. | ||
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TedJustice
Canada1324 Posts
So you've gotta think like a WC3 player. I'm not one, but I know there were stun spells in that game, and I know there were ways they dealt with them. | ||
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DusTerr
2520 Posts
On March 20 2011 04:11 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I think if there were ever to be a nerf to forcefield, then making forcefields last for a shorter period of time would be the only justifiable nerf. -Making them smaller would really make them useless (they wouldn't block anything, and they'd especially provide no defense on ramps against early pushes where they're necessary). -Making them breakable (a.k.a. if they had hp) would make them useless in the mid-to-late game (think of how fast a 150-200 food army would kill off a few forcefields, regardless of the hp). -Making them crushable by more units wouldn't work because of how frequently we already see so many units in SC2. Unless perhaps you made it like the archon, infestor, and siege tank? That being said, I don't think forcefield needs to be nerfed at the moment anyway. if, IF there was a change to FF I'd suggest the spell range go from 9 to 7 or something. (needing to get sentries closer to the target area would definitely make a difference but not totally nerf the value) the other ideas that aren't aweful. *reduce duration and cost by a % + Show Spoiler + this might actually BUFF FF by allowing it to be used more often but require more micro OR *making it a channeled spell - this would however severely (possibly overly so) limit the number of FF that could be used. | ||
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TedJustice
Canada1324 Posts
On March 20 2011 04:26 DusTerr wrote: OR *making it a channeled spell - this would however severely (possibly overly so) limit the number of FF that could be used. That would also indirectly make forcefields destructible, since if you kill the sentry, the forcefield would disappear. So no, that wouldn't work. | ||
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AndyBear
Canada132 Posts
I just think MC had a perfect strat that July just didn't know how to counter. Not that Forcefields are OP or imba. | ||
goiflin
Canada1218 Posts
Wether or not they're unbalanced is a different story, but it's definately something that takes away from the viewing experience. Same with fungal growth. When I see a bunch of banes chasing marines, it's kinda like a scourge chasing a shuttle. But when fungal goes off on a group of marines, there's no excitement; they're dead because he could hit F and plant a beacon down on the marines. It's really, really, boring to see that happen. I wouldn't fault the players for using them extensively; they're playing for money. By all means, abuse your opponent as much as you can, even if it creates boring matches. It's up to blizzard to change stuff so it's a little funner to watch. Maybe add in a catagory of unit that can break FF's besides massive? But that would basically kill protoss', who rely on FF's for early game defense. Or make ultras t1 >.> that'd be fun to watch, right? | ||
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Rokk
United States425 Posts
perfect force fields take a lot of skill but they also make it so your opponent cannot micro in return outside of roaches burrow movement. this is opposite of what a lot of abilities in bw did. as a quick example, dark swarm and devour took a good amount of skill by the zerg. the counter took even more micro to move your units out of the way to minimize damage. | ||
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Warrice
United States565 Posts
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Morphs
Netherlands645 Posts
But there is also the problem of protoss needing to forcefield their ramp to survive certain rushes. Also something that should not happen, it just sounds and feels lame/unintuitive. Maybe Protoss just needs to start scouting, just like Zerg has to. But FFing the ramp just feels cheap. This FF on the ramp while taking the natural is complete bs imo. On Xel Naga for instance. You cannot reinforce from your main because of that. It's so lame and with 3 sentries you can already FF the ramp indefinitely. Make it 75 energy for fairness. | ||
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RHMVNovus
United States738 Posts
On March 20 2011 03:02 42x10 wrote: "Terran beats Zerg in the GSL and has tournament success? MARINES IMBA!" "Protoss beats Zerg in the GSL and has tournament success? COLLOSSI, FORCE FIELD IMBA!" "Zerg wins GSL and has tournament success? A TRIUMPH OF INDIVIDUAL SKILL THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS IMBALANCE!" It's really frustrating how people refuse to be objective about this. The game isn't imbalanced, just play and get better. Stop letting your opinions on the game be influenced by which group of people cries the loudest and stop telling me my race is OP every time i beat you in a ladder game. Michael J. Fox, lrn2walk. Stop crying 'Parkinson's IMBA,' you're not UP, you just need to learn how to play Parkinson's better, and you'd walk just as well as the rest of us. Your reply is predicated on the notion that the match-ups *are* balanced and that the Zerg *doesn't* need to be significantly better than thon's opponent. I'm not trying to insult your intelligence here, but how likely is it that after one year of testing, a handful of patches, and a new devteam, we stumble upon the second completely balanced RTS in history? Not all cries of Imba are unfounded. I'm in Bronze, and I'm not trying to justify my poor league placement through imbalance. My late-game macro needs a lot of work. I sometimes get supply blocked. I can't micro for *shit.* I have trouble with TvP, yes, but that's more a factor of me being unable to macro than imbaimba Force Fields. That it's not a legitimate complaint for my level of play, however, doesn't mean that legitimate complaints of Imbalance don't exist. It took an amount of mechanical skill, yes, but not the same amount of overwhelming skill that it would take to do anything close to that in BW, and as the game progresses, this sort of 'perfect' Force Fielding will become commonplace among the elite echelon of players. I don't think I need to emphasize how bad that is. When you have anyone being able to do something consistently perfect in an RTS, it means a skill ceiling has been achieved. If meeting that skill ceiling means you can kill your opponent without him having any reasonable recourse, as I think this series demonstrated, you have a serious balance problem. A compelling RTS should not be based on 'Well, if MC fucks up, July has a shot.' This 'L2P' nonsense becomes meaningless when spells like Force Field, Conc, and Fungal are doing their damnedest to prevent that. The difference between the three is that FF is absolutely pivotal to Protoss success. Concussive's removal would harm Terran, yeah, but not to the degree that the removal of FF would harm Protoss. It's a function of flawed design, and you can't nerf FF without buffing the crap out of other gateway units. The best solution I can think of, stop-gap though it is, would be to buff Burrow/Burrow Move in some way. Either decrease research time or cost. Either that or decreasing Zerg drops cost. Probably would increase the popularity of baneling mines in ZvT and the necessity for Ravens in that MU (which needs to happen, because Ravens are awesome - HSM + one-sided Dark Swarm? mmmm). ZvP is messed up. Perhaps July was worse than MC. Very plausible, as it is absolutely foolish to say MC isn't skilled. That said, I don't entirely understand the insistence that because the better player won *this particular match* that the game is balanced. Correlation does not imply causation. The better player winning does not imply that this occurred *because* the game encourages the better player winning. The better player can indeed win despite (or because of the cushion created by, depending on which end they're on) imbalance. The game will grow, people will get better, but if balance issues do exist, they won't go away on their own. That's why we need to determine whether imbalance exists. Because if imbalance isn't resolved within a year or so after the release of the final expansion, it never will be. So we have time. We have time to fix imbalance. This post is less about current imbalances than about the fallacious mindsets that lead people to out-of-hand deny that imbalance exists. L2P is at times useful in addressing lower-level complaints of '2-stargate-Phoenix Imba' or some other ridiculous shit. But for strats that haven't actually been beaten when executed correctly, L2P is a cop-out that avoids addressing the issue at question. Is this the case for FFs? Possibly not. But people seem far too eager to use 'L2P' than provide any sort of logical rebuttal to the existence of imbalance. And much like Michael J. Fox playing Jenga, this is bad. | ||
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goiflin
Canada1218 Posts
On March 20 2011 04:47 Morphs wrote: Maybe Protoss just needs to start scouting, just like Zerg has to. But FFing the ramp just feels cheap. This FF on the ramp while taking the natural is complete bs imo. On Xel Naga for instance. You cannot reinforce from your main because of that. It's so lame and with 3 sentries you can already FF the ramp indefinitely. Make it 75 energy for fairness. + Show Spoiler + Actually, you need six sentries to hold a ramp indefinitely. Protoss has no easy way to scout; solo gateway units get eaten by zerglings and barracks units, and GL getting a probe into your opponent's base when he's got speedlings or marines out on the field. Zerg have overlords, which they can camp near your base so that they can sac it to get info, and terran have scans if they have a dire need to get info. Protoss has the observer after they get a robo, and most timing attacks that threaten protoss are going to come out before your observer, or you'll need an immo to survive, so no obs. Protoss kinda does need FF to help with rushes. It'd just be nice if 12 sentries and 4 stalkers couldn't kill infinity roaches. | ||
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eluv
United States1251 Posts
This could be the start of exactly what you've been asking for. A spell that seems absolutely ridiculous, and will take time to develop counters too. With that in mind, the thing you should all be asking for isn't for a nerf to FF, but rather some sort of micro based answer for zerg. Is that adding a spell to overseers to disable casters? Is that giving burrow movement to more units like zerglings and hydras? I don't know, but what I do know is the last thing SC2 needs is more nerfs. | ||
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Rokk
United States425 Posts
On March 20 2011 04:53 goiflin wrote: + Show Spoiler + Actually, you need six sentries to hold a ramp indefinitely. Protoss has no easy way to scout; solo gateway units get eaten by zerglings and barracks units, and GL getting a probe into your opponent's base when he's got speedlings or marines out on the field. Zerg have overlords, which they can camp near your base so that they can sac it to get info, and terran have scans if they have a dire need to get info. Protoss has the observer after they get a robo, and most timing attacks that threaten protoss are going to come out before your observer, or you'll need an immo to survive, so no obs. Protoss kinda does need FF to help with rushes. It'd just be nice if 12 sentries and 4 stalkers couldn't kill infinity roaches. by the time zerg has speedlings, you should be very close to having hallucination researched. Until then you should be able to get all the scouting information you need with a couple of probes. Not saying that make your point moot, but still. | ||
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neo_sporin
United States516 Posts
On March 20 2011 02:56 mordk wrote: Bad idea, it makes ramps impossible to defend early game against lightning fast zerglings and stimmed marines*. I'll hold position a marauder in the ramp and deny all hope of protoss surviving early game against terran. I think my idea beats yours. IF there's one nerf I'd apply on FF, it would be giving it a cooldown. *Considering an average mid-skilled dude. MC could definitely pull it off on perfect timing  My only problem with the CD fix is that it still only takes 1 FF to block a ramp. | ||
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