Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 355

On August 13 2012 07:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:


The fundamental design concept of Warp Gates creates a massive problem for Protoss.

At the core of its philosophy, the Protoss race is supposed to be few but strong. However, if you can warp in strong units across the map in no time at all, then obviously the race is going to be stupidly overpowered. Just think if Dragoons and fast Zealots from BW were able to be warped in across the map. This has forced Blizzard to heavily nerf individual Protoss units, but to keep the race as a whole powerful enough, these units synergize very well together. This all culminates in an incredibly boring race that can only fight in a deathball; we're seeing T and Z split their armies more in matchups that don't involve P, but any matchup with P just results in massive deathballs and boring games. It all just goes straight back to the Warp Gate; it's a fantastic idea that's really cool, but it's an absolute disaster for balance.

On August 13 2012 08:33 tskarzyn wrote:
Think of what the game could be without warpgate. PvT would be constant streams of units running across the map which opens up new dynamics like cutting off reinforcements, gateway all ins would most likely disappear, defender's advantage will actually matter, one battle wont determine the winner of the game (oh you lost your army? proxy zlot warp in GG!") PvT and PvZ would have so much more back and forth, and they could start to rebalance the game by nerfing Zerg late game and possibly nerfing terran bio.

Almost forgot- PvP would be watchable!

On June 19 2012 21:29 Coffee Zombie wrote:
http://seanmalstrom.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/the-core-gameplay/



This is an interesting blog post. Very, very interesting actually. Extremely good, too. Many games nowadays feel pretty bad because they're built on things that are not fundamental to playing a game. Much of this is just focusing on the how instead of the why, though. People make stuff instead of gameplay, and if gameplay is made, people tend to focus on elaborate systems instead. If both are avoided, the ugly problem of overt simplicity for it's own sake can rear it's head. But really, building a solid foundation and then expanding on it is very good.

A few brilliant examples from Starcraft 2, as examples of very simple, but very interesting things:

Farms: Terran and Zerg farms are very interesting contraptions. The zerg farm, called an Overlord is actually a flying unit instead of a building and can thus be used to scout (it can also later be upgraded into a makeshift dropship. Cheap and massable due to not consuming population cap, but slow), while the Terran farm (Supply Depot) can lower itself to the ground so it can be walked over. This is extremely useful in building walls on chokepoints near your base.

Point-based armour system: The presence of this alone creates an actual difference between the cannon and the machine gun. While the machine gun may deal great damage, armour rapidly kills off it's effectiveness. Far less so for the cannon. A percentage-based armour system needs attack types because it mostly cares about the DPS.

No-nonsense units with different numbers: This is one readily underestimated thing in modern RTS unit design. Consider the Marine and the Zergling. Both deal about equivalent (and quite high) damage with quick weak attacks, making them bad against heavy armour. The Zerglings come in two-packs, and move very fast, but attack only in melee. Meanwhile, the Marine has more HP and shoots at range (it is also marginally better against armoured targets). These kinds of traits readily synergize with the very basic traits of the species' different farms, allowing Zerg great map control (the ability to have a lot of map vision and the ability to project force around the map), while the Marines' range and Terran's natural wall-offs trivially fend off the Zerg. The range also allows Marines who find good places to hole up in to achieve 300-esque feats of endurance and slaughter.

The different character of the races is easily evident with such simple things as these, and they are also very interesting and versatile. Yet they also do one very important thing: All these traits respect the fundamental character of an RTS game: That of troop production and movement, which allow for rough simulations of real-life strategy.

The racial traits of the Protoss are, in contrast, designed to completely circumvent these basic kinds of rules. In an RTS, troop production is usually done in steps such that:
1. The player orders the unit
2. The unit's cost is paid.
3. The unit is produced, forcing the player to wait.
4. The unit is ready and emerges from the production facility, heading for the battlefield.

The Protoss process works differently. They have a mechanic called the Warp Gate which allows them to produce their units directly at any Pylon (the name of the Protoss farm) they have on the map. The Warp-in process works like so:
1. The player orders the unit.
2. The unit's cost is paid.
3. The unit emerges at the chosen Pylon.
4. The Warpgate goes on cooldown, forcing the player to wait.

This sounds like a simple adjustment but serves to undermine a great number of the natural dynamics arising from the game's foundations:
1. Protoss reinforcements are completed much faster. They can get units immediately when getting free population cap whether due to a new farm or units dying. The Terran and Zerg have to wait half a minute for their units to even come out.
1b. This means that an even army trade favours the Protoss because he has units out first. If you win narrowly you may not even have the advantage, let alone a large one.
2. The Protoss player can build his unit-producing structures later because the first unit comes out immediately. As we all know, time is man- I mean money.
3. The natural concepts of reinforcement times and resulting defender's advantage (based on which basic tenets of strategy work) cease to apply to a great extent. Regardless of how far the Protoss opponent's base is, his troops are at your door immediately and you cannot intercept his reinforcements by way of ambush. You, conversely, are bound by these basic rules of strategy.
4. The system is ridiculously efficient. Normally these kinds of abilities require taking insane risks like placing your production structures near the enemy base (called proxying them). Protoss needs a single Pylon. This is an insanely cheap cost (100 minerals for Pylon, 150 for a single production facility, 50 for a Worker/Marine or a pair of Zerglings), and has none of the other traditional disadvantages like having no production in your home base.

The mechanic is interesting, and feels cool, yes, but a simple examination exposes all kinds of problems. These can somewhat be masked away by balance tweaks like making Protoss units weak (which was done but leads to another host of problems) but the core issues are still there and will inevitably rear their ugly head somewhere.
The reason I chose this example is to highlight two things:
First, how a certain sense of rules to be respected is necessary for things to make sense and the players to have expectations. In this case, the Warp Gate tramples on established rules of how the game works at a very fundamental level.
The second one is to highlight how antagonistic multiplayer raises the bar for the cool stuff to be included. Imagine Kirby Wii as a competitive more than co-operational game, like a race to the finish for example. Kirby himself may be broken, but him being super cool does not limit the other characters' ability to be cool to a great degree at all. It's still a big bummer but not a complete catastrophe.
In a game where the players are direct enemies, however, it is a catastrophe because what you can do very drastically affects what your opponent is allowed to do. It is not enough for the unit to be cool and fun to use - it also has to be fun or interesting to face. Numbers tweaks are possible but in the end the fundamental nature of the inclusion should be "right". This is something I feel Blizzard is nowadays very much slipping on*.

*If they were ever good at it in the first place - as far as I know, the Frozen Throne expansion was directed by a WarCraft 3 pro or a similar outsider who basically went "goddamnit let me fix your game" and included things with a very distinct gameplay job to fulfill instead of just making cool stuff up and including it (Blizz's admitted MO with Heart of the Swarm). The game is still broken, balance-wise, to the point where a famous Undead pro just picked Orc against Orc. Starcraft: Brood War's famed balance is in large part a result of saner unit designs combined with professional Korean mapmakers and the near-inhuman effort and work ethic of the progamers from said country. An argument could be made that Blizzard was only ever really good in the art direction and general content department, where they have been very clearly slipping as of late (Exhibits #1, #2, #3)

On August 13 2012 08:43 Shiori wrote:
I think Blizzard is actually just walking on a path that's going to lead to the gradual death of the eSports scene. A combination of their obsession with turtle styles, too much rhetoric about "everyone having a solid lategame" and not enough about everyone having solid early game harassment, an understanding of harassment as being tied to raiding units (which misses the fundamental point: MMM is awesome harassment because it flows naturally out of the army; same for Infestors and Lings. Adding Stargate Reapers isn't going to be interesting; it's just an alternate Phoenix) and underemphasis on micro in favour of "terrible terrible damage" is just sending this game more and more down hill.

I appreciate that they want the game to be balanced at all levels, but the fact is that if you keep giving easy a-move alternatives to help out shitty Gold leaguers, that's going to have an effect on the pro scene, and it's almost always going to be a bad effect. I don't understand why they couldn't have made more units like the Marine, which can be microed to counter things, or the HT, which requires micro to use effectively, instead of retarded shit like the Infestor, Roach, Marauder, Colossus, and other deathball stuff that can never possibly be used in any really interesting way because they're just simplistic and boring fucking units.

This Queen change is just the latest in a long string of changes designed to produce more "macro games." You know what? Macro games in Sc2 are a dime a dozen, and roughly half of them are extremely boring split map scenarios which culminate in an unsatisfying (but pretty, I'll give them that) 200/200 deathball bonanza that is virtually devoid of micro beyond basic positioning. It's actually funny to consider that the most well-designed parts of matchups are the ones players want changed. I am, of course, talking about lategame PvT. How many Terrans lamented (and still lament) that micro baseline required to do well against Protoss in the lategame? How many Protoss players find the effects of EMP on clumped up Templar unfair? How many of them struggle to hold lategame drops, or prevent their Colossi from getting sniped? And yet, of all the non-mirrors, PvT is the only one in which the better player tends to win in a macro situation. But no, instead we have calls for stupid units like the Warhound, or buffs to the Ghost to make it easier to use.

I mean, come on. The most competitive games are difficult. That's what makes them competitive. If any idiot can pick up Sc2 and master every matchup in a year by learning 1 builds that works against everything, Sc2 isn't going to last. In that respect, we desperately need HotS to come around and fix things. But it's not looking like it's going in the right direction. Basically every unit except the Mothership Core is a bandaid for players who don't know how to control properly. Oh, you're having difficulty fighting against Colossi pushes? Here's the Viper, so now Protoss players' meticulous positioning is irrelevant. Can't macro or engage well enough to beat a Chargelot army? Here, take the battle Hellion and Warhound. Now you can a-move every game with a super boring mech army (yes, mech in Sc2 is unbelievably boring; the only interesting/skill based unit is the Siege Tank). Protoss is getting some utterly stupid unit to deal with BroodLords in the Tempest.

Look, I know none of the units in HotS are final, but they do show you Blizzard's mindset, and, right now, it isn't pretty. The problem with the Queen buff isn't so much that it makes Zerg overpowered (though I'd argue that it does) but that it makes the game simpler and means that the early and mid games are more telegraphed. It's just not interesting to watch TvZ anymore, because nothing actually happens until like 10 minutes in, and at that point it's just a macro contest and posturing until Infestor/BL faces off against whatever the Terran army has. It's not fun because none of those engagements are interesting. I greatly enjoyed Muta/Ling/Blind vs Marine/Tank because it was so mobile and dynamic and scaled so well with skill. Rather than Vikings getting Fungaled being the deciding factor in the engagement, it was about who controlled their units in such a way that they acquired the better positioning. It wasn't "oh, he got all of his Vikings caught by Fungal. GG." But instead of fostering that type of gameplay, Blizzard apparently wants to see Infestor/BL bullshit in every matchup, because I've yet to see them acknowledge how stale and skilless that composition (and similar compositions, mind you) has become.

On August 13 2012 11:53 Wombat_NI wrote:
I posted this in another thread, figured it might be relevant to stick in here as well.

3. The maps are bigger, so it's pretty tough. As a Terran you're going to want to stop the Zerg just droning incessantly and you'll have to do some kind of pressure unless you're doing one of those insane macro mode builds that only Korean Ts seem to be able to do. That pressure is easier scouted, and if it isn't scouted at all, is still defended better blindly than before with the Queen buff.