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Uninteresting units.
+ Show Spoiler +1. Colossus - Powerful units with intensive micro demands are exciting to watch and to use (Vulture, Reaver). Powerful units that can obliterate entire armies in seconds by just being a-moved? Not so much. (Obviously this applies to several late game units, but none of them are as matchup defining as the colossus.)
2. Marauder - Really it's just a heartier marine, and has too much overlap with the roach and stalker. Concussive shells negates micro from the opposing player and does not belong in a game like Starcraft.
3. Roach - The roach is slow, has a high supply, and is very hearty. It’s a protoss unit in zerg clothing. BW hydras ought to return, and the roach needs to either be redesigned or scrapped.
Badly designed mechanics.
+ Show Spoiler +1. That units automatically clump into dense little balls is detrimental to every aspect of SC2: the way it plays, the way it looks, the way it has shaped Blizzard’s design choices (reaver for colossus, for example). It’s a giant obstacle in the way of SC2 ever becoming as great as BW, and needs to go. Period. (I agree with the OP that it works relatively well for banelings and zerglings, but for nearly every other unit it’s totally inappropriate.)
2. Forcefield isn’t inherently awful, but it should be a niche utility like hallucination, not something so ubiquitous and game defining. It also doesn’t really need to exist, since protoss already has a way to split up armies and trap units. It’s called blink. My suggestion would be to remove forcefield and merge the stalker and immortal into a single defensive unit that can block ramps and blink into enemy armies to split them up.
3. A lot of unit abilities are a bit dull. Guardian Shield makes little sense from a design perspective since units clump automatically in SC2. Infested Terran and Auto Turret are extremely uncreative, as if they were an alternative to having to come up with an interesting idea. As for 250mm Cannons, it’s hard to get excited about an ability that involves a unit standing in one place for 6 seconds. Seeker Missile, what is probably SC2‘s best new ability conceptually, is so undertuned that it's boring.
4. I’ve already mentioned Concussive Shells, but zealot Charge is like a mirrored version. Whereas Concussive Shells negates micro from the opposing player, Charge negates your own micro. Despite being less flashy zealot speed was a far more interesting upgrade.
Graphics tweaks.
+ Show Spoiler +1. The stalker is probably the most frequently massed Protoss unit, but its tall slender design is unappealing in large numbers. The unit clumping change would help, but really I think it just needs a more dragoon-like model that's lower to the ground. (The immortal looks very good massed, for example.)
2. I've never understood why zerg units look like they've been greased down with baby oil, but I think it’s time to try and replicate the appearance of the zerg in BW. Also the roach (if it does stay) ought to be made to look more the high-poly HOTS campaign roach we've seen. That is: with shorter spikes and with a more compact frame like a crab or beetle. (It also doesn't look shiny or slippery at all, and nor does any other zerg unit in cinematics or in concept art.)
3. Siege tanks still look like toys and thors look like they've been glued together out of pieces of siege tanks. Both are begging for a remodel. Additionally the thor has some serious clipping issues that could be solved by reducing the size of its model but not its detection box.
4. Units need to be brighter and easier to see overall. Give them some sort of native lighting so that shadows don't affect them and even on dark maps they remain equally bright. Also make team colors a little more pronounced on certain units, in particular the roach. ZvZ is a nightmare to watch on low quality streams, especially when played on dark maps. SC2's success as an e-sport with wide appeal depends to a high degree on its visual clarity. (Another reason that unit clumping is seriously hurting the game.)
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My three units would be: roach, viking/corrupter, and sentry.
Roach
My complaint about roaches is from a viewing perspective. They're fat, they take up a lot of supply, and when people get them, they get a huge number of them. Plus, they tend to be kind of indistinct and, imo, just boring to watch. I personally think that roaches should get a decrease in their dps (or possibly just their upgrades giving them +2 damage), but that lost damage should shift over to hydras, which would encourage a more mixed army where the roaches actually act as tanks and the hydras as glass cannons.
Viking/Corrupter
Okay, so I think these two units go together because they're extremely similar, except that the viking works amazingly well and the corrupter is really boring. Both units have a very rarely used secondary ability (people land vikings once in a while and corruption is nice to make immortal hardened shields go down faster). Both units are air to air only. The difference is that the viking has range 9 and has its bonus against armored units, whereas the corrupter has range 4 (I think? or is it 5?) and only has a bonus against massive units. What I think should happen is that the viking should get a range decrease, the corrupter should get a range increase, and they both should end up around range 6. The viking should also be a tiny bit better on the ground, so that it works more like a versatile fighting unit and less as pure air to air dominance, and corruption should probably just be reworked entirely into something different. Hopefully this would make it easier to use the units for some air dominance yet still have carriers and battlecruisers around.
Sentry
Honestly, I play protoss and I hate forcefield because the entire race is balanced around it. I'd much rather have slightly stronger zealots and stalkers, with the sentry providing guardian shield and some new ranged support spell (my suggestion would be an offensive version of guardian shield, where it increases your own units' damage in a field by +2, but you can only have 1 of the 2 abilities up at the same time). I hate having to rely on forcefield, I hate how much it pisses off everyone else when it sometimes feels like the only way to win, and I hate the fact that it makes all micro one-sided in any battle.
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I feel like if anything truly needs to be revamped, it's the ground-unit pathing mechanics that let everything degrade into deathball fights. It's such a simple change from BW to SC2 that they made: let allied ground units push each other around so that anyone with a move command can always have a clear line to wherever they're going.
It's a nice idea, but it led to such a huge difference, and one that ends up being quite silly at times. Can you really imagine a single marine walking through a giant outfit of tanks and saying, "b____ please, I gotta get through here", and shoulder bumping all the tanks out of the way?
If things were instead rejiggered such that an allied unit is seen as an obstacle in the shortest-past-possible, a few things would happen:
-- Terrain like ramps and chokes would instantly become so much more important (as they slow down movement and inhibit the ability to slam through and try to get a concave). Now, at least as protoss, all they are is a chance to throw down a single forcefield to delay the inevitable.
-- AoEs like psi storm would need to be increased in potency. While this seems like it's not a big deal, it's kind of huge.
<iframe width="960" height="750" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/F3IbwjeCx6U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Imagine seeing that many tanks in SC2: there is no way in hell anyone would think "oh, I'll just use psionic storm". But with storms and other AoEs becoming more powerful, they'll be viable options on more than just tiny units that tend to clump together (like terran bio).
-- Siege Units
Beyond that, I really with there were some siege units for Protoss and Zerg. In BW there was the lurker and the reaver, which basically said "I own this area. You can push in, but you are guaranteed to take heavy heavy losses". Without some additional tech (like the shuttle, or defiler), however, you can't really use these units to aggressively push forward. In SC2 however, the replacements (colossus/baneling) are necessarily weaker than these siege units because of their mobility, making their only real purpose offensive.
Really I just wish someone could make a mod for the traditional BW pathing. The anti-deathball maps were a good start, but there needs to be more physical demonstrations of what effects this new pathing mechanic actually has.
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On June 01 2011 07:44 Dystisis wrote:
I actually think Immortal is one of the best designed 'new' units in SC2. What makes it seem uninteresting is that it is rarely seen used extensively. Whenever it is used it is in few numbers and then either with good success or total failure. It could need to be altered so that its damage is less dependent on the target being Armored. Big problem is that they are hard to mass when each one takes about a minute to produce. So say you get a fast robo and observer out by 8 minutes and most games average say 15 minutes...that doesn't give you too many immortals even if you produce them non-stop. Their build time seriously has to be reduced.
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"""""""""""""" Blizzard made a stupid announcement. Marines are the most standard and boring unit in the game, should we remove them?
Seriously, they should start basing their decisions upon good competitive play and not interest. """""""""""""
this post right here really ended the thread for me
i dont care about what mechanics are interesting
i care about balanced competitive gameplay first, and mechanics that are interesting second
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On June 01 2011 07:47 Rococo wrote:
...
Good points. Graphics definitely need to be brighter and more high contrast. The slime factor is way overdone with the zerg...it's so cliche in the sci-fi art community to slime up aliens to make them look more creepy when they almost always look better with the stupid slime.
As for clumping...a solution might be to add a scatter option that other RTS games have. Too many game situations get you into trouble because your units are too close together.
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Whilst reading through this thread, I have an idea.
This idea, if I recall correctly was suggested by another member on TL a while ago, I think possibly on another "collosus balance" thread.
Instead of the colossi shooting two beams from left and right and ending in the center, have it so that the colossi shoot both beams from the left and sweep to the right.
This could allow some micro as units that haven't been hit yet a chance to escape the beams.
I don't know how effective it will be with multiple colossi firing though.
If not, even just allow the colossi to do more damage but have a slower beam sweep with the ability for units to escape.
Just a suggestion.
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I'm 100% sure the mothership will be removed, and probably replaced with an arbiter or similar.
Dream? Yes, you're right. :D
Edit: Oh, yes.. the overseer, too. Blizzard said it.
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Terran definitely does NOT need more drop options.
OP makes some valid points, but doesn't really offer the best solutions. We'll just have to wait and see what Blizzard has to come up with..
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1.Corruptor
2.Viking
3.Collosus
Roach is so core to zerg at the moment if they removed it ALOT of the race would need to be changed.
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United States2503 Posts
Guys, I think far too many of you think that "uninteresting" means something different than what Blizzard does. The example was of the Overseer. Units that really just don't have a role in the multiplayer. Colossus, Marauders, and Roaches are far too central to the kit of each race to remove. They aren't "uninteresting" in the way that Blizzard is talking about, no matter how "unfun" people may believe they are to watch.
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My only complaint about any Starcraft 2 units is that Overlords cannot act as detectors. Therefore, it means that Zerg either HAS to rush lair, or throw down a potentially unwanted Evolution Chamber in order to detect anything.
All that I ask is that we get our Overlords back to the way they were... granted, I do love the Contaminate ability in ZvZ, although I never get around to using it.
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On June 01 2011 02:18 videogames wrote:
my top 10 boring units would be colossus, roach, colossus, hydra, colossus, corruptor, colossus, marauder, colossus and colossus
I like this.
Roaches and Hydras really need to be combined back into one unit. Splitting them was a weird idea that I really don't like.
Lings were made relatively obsolete by Roaches, and Hydras have gone to becoming very, very weak and situational units.
Roaches and Marauders are both just too strong as general-purpose units.
The Colossus is really just a terrible idea I want to see get axed from the game.
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On June 01 2011 08:14 teh_longinator wrote:
My only complaint about any Starcraft 2 units is that Overlords cannot act as detectors. Therefore, it means that Zerg either HAS to rush lair, or throw down a potentially unwanted Evolution Chamber in order to detect anything.
All that I ask is that we get our Overlords back to the way they were... granted, I do love the Contaminate ability in ZvZ, although I never get around to using it.
Do you really think it's fair other races must pay for detectors, while zergs don't?
Yes, I used to play BW... but bringing BW as a reason doesn't seem persuasive to me.
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What are your top 3 uninteresting units in the game?
1. Collosus
Colloxen the #1 most uninteresting unit in the game? Shocking, I know. No unit with that much power should also be fairly durable, highly mobile and capable of winning fights with 1a. I'm not violently opposed to 1a units in general, but the 'power units' should at least have some sort of interesting feature, like the whole siege mode thing, or the inherent drama of banelings. Yes it gets hit by air units and can't hit them back, but that hasn't mattered since about GSL3. Protoss players have learned to keep blink stalkers under them. Plus, even if that is a big thing, it's hardly an excuse for the lameness of the collosus. You know a unit is badly designed when the only time it's ever even slightly exciting to watch is when it's dying.
2. Corruptor
Ewwww. Air-to-air unit? Blech. No proper anti-ground skill? Blech. It lacks the mobility and raw ground killing power of the phoenix but also doesn't have the viking's range and anti-armoured DPS. Its only saving grace is its HP, which only actually matters in air-to-air battles, which we all know occur... never. The only practical purpose of the corruptor is to kill colloxen, which in a perfect world would be replaced by, say, the reaver, and it also renders the carrier and battlecruiser obsolete. So overall it's a horribly boring unit that prevents interesting units from seeing the light of day.
3. Void Ray
Yep, two Protoss units. I considered doing one from each race, but in the end I just couldn't find a Terran unit this bad. Void rays are pure 1a deathmachines, but that's not always a problem - marines are that, and they're kinda cool I guess. No, the problem with the void ray is that it's such a gimmicky unit. They're used for all-ins against Terran, never used in PvP and are currently only ever used in gimmicky stargate play against Zerg. Not only is it a boring unit, but there's no stable strategy that works even when scouted that uses them in any way, shape or form. Also, air units really shouldn't have raw killing power, because it's just so polarising - either you have enough anti-air and win or you don't and you lose. With units like the medivac it's more that you have enough anti-air and get an advantage or don't and have a disadvantage, which is fine.
Consolation Prizes
Other units I considered but didn't include.
- Thors: Slow, very strong and lacks any real interesting uses. The only reason I didn't include it is because they never get used (and when they are they get the nerf bat, so clearly Blizzard is fine with this state of affairs...), so I don't know whether they have any potentially interesting uses that haven't been discovered yet. The reaver, for instance, looks the same at first glance, but ended up being one of the most interesting units in BW.
- Marauders: Blech. They're just so... boring. But unlike the three that did make the cut, they have an overall positive effect on the game. Well, actually, it's possible that without them bio would be useless in TvP and Blizzard would have had to make mech usable instead, which would be excellent, but that's too hypothetical for my liking.
- Banshees: Good for stupid 'durr i hope he has no detection lol' rushes and little else. Terrible unit overall. However, their one saving grace is their role in avoiding late game TvT from turning into a stalemate, so I couldn't put them in the Top 3.
- Sentries: See Mechanics.
- Dark Templars: At least one intelligent, attractive and highly reasonable pillar of the Starcraft community has been complaining about them since BW (and has since become a filthy traitor, grumblegrumble), and it's because the unit is bad. Like the banshee, it's great for gimmicky cheeses and that's about it.
- Mothership: It's an awfully designed unit. Unfortunately, the OP asked for uninteresting units, not bad ones, and there's a slight distinction. The mothership is of course pretty interesting to watch, simply because it's such a train wreck of design that it actually being used is impressive.
- Roaches: Same as the marauder.
Yeah, there's a lot of bad units in this game. Fortunately the basic framework of the game is strong enough that it works anyway.
What mechanics do you find needing tweaks? or badly designed.
Warp Gates
They're a cute idea, Blizzard. We know it's super-cool that Protoss units just appear. Good job. But it's really, really awful as a game mechanic. The raw power of the 4gate means gateway units need to be nerfed into late-game uselessness, which means other late game options like colloxen and spamming infinity force fields need to be stupidly powerful to compensate. Simply removing the warp gate mechanic would allow Blizzard to make Protoss so much more interesting as a whole. Unfortunately we're pretty much stuck with it at this point, so all I can hope for is significant balance changes, like putting them on the twilight council, upping the cost to 200/200 and making them build at the same speed as regular gateways, then buffing the gateway units.
Force Fields
What graphic/misc tweaks do you want to see?
Artosis Bots should scream "THAT'S SO IMBALANCED!" when you kill them. Other than that, not much.
What type of new units/buildings would you like to see?
Tricky. I'd say Terran needs some sort of damage-over-time AoE spell to match fungal and storm. Doesn't have to be as strong, of course, there should be some sort of limitation because Terran really doesn't need to have something that just nukes an area. I like the idea of the raven, it's cool that Terran air is all about support and having various abilities, so probably put it on a flying caster.
Zerg has two problems I think. The first is that they die too easily late game. They really need some sort of second caster, since they're the only race that only has one (queens don't count), so maybe something that makes it harder to kill your units? I dunno how, but it sounds kinda cool to me. And the second problem is the total fail that is burrow movement, I can see how it's meant to work but in practice Zerg just doesn't have anything to punish a lack of detection. So yeah, Blizzard should really do something with burrow. Not sure what, but something.
Protoss? Replace collosus with something interesting. Maybe make them a LOT slower, but keep the whole 'over 9000 aoe damage' thing. I guess they'd need to have their vulnerability to air removed then, otherwise they'd auto-die if a viking came anywhere near them.
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On June 01 2011 07:35 Fungal Growth wrote:Most uninteresting units? Immortal, roach, and marauder. Immortal needs to be more unique...maybe reduce their hp but increase their hardened shield effect to say 5. For being the 'tank unit' the opposition loves to prioritize them for focus fire. Roach...needs to have their range nerfed back. As they are right now, they are too cost effective, too boring and lack any particular weaknesses. Their short range before was what made them unique and this should come back. Marauder...it's an A attack unit with no unique weaknesses and is more cost effective then its higher tech sibling units at the factory. Worst unit in the game. Would love to see it's hp nerfed and/or a stronger stim damage. Close 2nd place goes to the marine...right now they are essential to fend off mutas, so I say nerf muta speed so you can nerf marine hp's (as T1 units they should not be as strong as they are). Graphics? Get rid of the stupid purple creep...it offers very poor contrast and can make it difficult to see what is going on top of creep. Less polygon art please and more art with rounded corners. Less unit art that looks like anorexic demon elves with exaggerated body parts/weapons like from W3 and more art that resembles the amazing sci-fi art we saw from SC BW. Game design? Many things need changed here. You just have to do too much APM busywork to stay competitive and that's not fun. High level pro's largely lose chrono-boost energy after roughly the 12 minute mark because it is too APM intensive to use (eg Huk and he has amazing APM). CB needs either an auto-assignment cast option or an option to super dump all CB energy into one building for a super boost (so say 150 energy increases production speed by +150% of 20 seconds. Warpgate mechanics are also messed up as again even pro's miss warpgate cycles because it is too APM intensive. We need to be able to warp in on the mini-map, have auto-assignments to hotkey grounds and/or a warp in rally point. Zerg by far needs the most overhauling as far as mechanics go. Shouldn't have to waste keystrokes doing boring stuff that doesn't have to do with the strategies in the game. We need overlord rally points (separate from resource/military rally points), auto-inject (maybe compensate by slowing down the injection process) and auto-creep tumors (click a spot on the map and the tumors automatically extend themselves in that direction...would probably need to nerf tumor speed though). Many more things need to be able to be done from the mini-map or wireframe selection. You should also not be able to cast a spell on a unit that can't receive the effect. eg CB'ing an already CB'ed Nexus, feedbacking an already drained ghost, or having a queen heal an already full hp utlralisk (these things happen in battle when things get hectic which Blizzard can fix). The hotkey system has to be dramatically improved. The toggle keys (ctl and shift) need to be assignable ANYWHERE but they aren't. This is a huge design problem as these toggle keys should be controlled by the thumb to better enable APM (spacebar/alt/super key are in much better locations then ctrl/shift). Much has to be done to fix SC2, but there is very little hope that any of this will be 
im just going to comment on what you said about apm intensive, how can u compare this to scbw? where u cant even hotkey all ur buildings to produce? sc2 should not be made anymore easier to micro/macro, infact it should be made much harder
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What 3 units are very uninteresting ??
+ Show Spoiler +Collosus -- It's a great unit, i love it to bits, but you get this unit to win games easier, its easy to get 5 collosus and a click, or you could go mass gateway/micro intensive stuff, needs something to make it a cool unit as tier iii. Reaper -- It's a very useful, harass intended unit. One thing i think we don't see enough is reaper drops against toss to just snipe a few probes/ buildings  Since they were nerfed immensely, not tons of usage now. In my opinion they still haven't been to their potential yet, could still be used a bit more but still good. Corruptor -- Not sure what to put this unit under. It's main purpose at this moment is to kill off air units, and turn into broods. I think there is some sort of thing that this unit should have to make it a really useful unit, like the phoenix has gravitation beam to pick off things like tanks, terran has viking to harass a little with coming down etc. All the corruptor has is Corruption
- What mechanics do you find needing tweaks? or badly designed.
+ Show Spoiler +Harassment units to start off the game. Any unit can be a harass unit, or they can be a big key in your strategy. I think terran has a big part of harassment with drops, but really i can't make judgement, people make judges like, OMG OP they can drop 3 places at once, where that's VERY hard to do and their just outplaying you etc. PS: I think mid-game just passes by, like there isn't tons of games where mid-game is harassment-filled and an all around great game. Seems like mid-game is just skipped overall, since all it is, is macro up and not any fun-filled excitement
- What type of new units/buildings would you like to see?
+ Show Spoiler +Fun-filled exciting units that can be used to change the meta-game and explore new strats that not a lot of people would think of. Something new that comes out of the stargate or the gateway, maybe even a unit like the dark archon, those units were amazing . In my opinion the robo,factory,tier ii units overall could all have +1, like in B.W it was vulture, lurker, reaver, now its not there It would be nice to have some units like these overall ) Like Defiler but possibly new??
protoss biased, im sorry but its the race i play !
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I want super low graphics BW style I have an absolute shit computer.
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The mule. 25% extra minerals on equal bases is just stupid.
Gas geysers. They give less than half the amount of gas as in broodwar. You need six workers to match 3 in broodwar limiting tech options further.
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This is totally on topic. I feel for the guy.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XtO8j.png)
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EPT
