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On March 29 2013 06:35 Wombat_NI wrote:
That Nazuri guy on Reddit that you linked to actually had some interesting ideas about the Speedivacs and the DeathCannon (Voidray), hope it's at least looked into
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=388901¤tpage=63#1242 *cough*
edit: not sure if it's a good idea though, and Blizzard certainly won't implement it, so didn't want to mention it in the post. (not that Blizzard reads my posts, but it keeps me off the streets)
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
Hey look he plagiarised your idea man!  It's maybe not something that would work, but interesting.
My idea for 'fixing' Protoss deathballs has long been removal of charge, speedlots (with a bit more micro potential in that sense which would have knock-on effects in other matchups), slower collosi in terms of movespeed.
Literally a change you could pretty much drill up in no time at all, at least to test it. Divergent movespeeds would require Toss to re-position their army a lot more on the fly.
It's one like yours I guess, it mightn't fix the issues, if indeed issues really exist there, but it's very easily implementable just to see, rather than suggestions such as entirely changing collision spaces to mitigate AoE, unit selection limits etc.
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I really like the idea of making Emergency Thrusters require energy, mainly as it promotes more decision making and declares a tradeoff. It'll also make the drops a bit more stoppable given the Medivacs wouldn't have as much to energy to heal with.
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Blizzard doesn't implement whatever is suggested by us. If you seriously have a great idea, you'd better not post it anywhere. Blizzard does listen to the community, but they hate to hear "exactly" how they should balance the game. They want to be somewhat creative. Any great suggestion in TL or reddit is actually killing the possibilities that Blizzard could have used. That's how I see it.
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Indeed, blizzard is too arrogant to use any good balance ideas from the community. They prefer to come up with their own creative ideas such as the queen buff and the snipe nerf.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
They do, they just can't sift through the white noise of people spouting nonsense on balance, especially on their own forums.
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On March 29 2013 06:49 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 06:35 Wombat_NI wrote:
That Nazuri guy on Reddit that you linked to actually had some interesting ideas about the Speedivacs and the DeathCannon (Voidray), hope it's at least looked into http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=388901¤tpage=63#1242 *cough* edit: not sure if it's a good idea though, and Blizzard certainly won't implement it, so didn't want to mention it in the post. (not that Blizzard reads my posts, but it keeps me off the streets)
I'd rather have it that Speed is a Toggled abillity that costs x Energy per Second. That way its a trade off with Heal / Speed. Drawback is of course that you could use it all the time if the Costs are too low.
Also in TvP, a feedback would prevent the speed thing alltogether(wich is not nessecarily a bad thing), though as Z you have nothing to counter it ;o.
Another Side-Effect is that Terran has even more Micro-"responsibillities". Not sure if Terran has enough of little Micro-y things.
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On March 29 2013 07:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
They do, they just can't sift through the white noise of people spouting nonsense on balance, especially on their own forums.
Meh, they could just hire people that hang out on the forums a lot like the various TL writers (monk would be very good at this, for instance) to write them a monthly report of cool ideas from the community.
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On March 28 2013 14:39 Myrddraal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2013 00:02 Toadvine wrote:On March 27 2013 10:38 Myrddraal wrote:On March 27 2013 06:04 Toadvine wrote:On March 27 2013 05:31 sAxiS wrote:
HOTS is a dream so far, so much closer to the positional style of BW. It's not perfect yet, but they are making positive progress. Yeah bro, nothing screams POSITIONAL like medivacs teleporting around the map with afterburners. Okay bro, fill in the blank in these two sentences for me: Faster Medivacs allow you to punish your opponent more harshly when he is out of ________. He used boosted his Medivacs to get into ________ quicker. In all seriousness Medivac boost should encourage good positional play and discourage bad positional play, with an emphasis on quick decisions since you have less time to react to them. For example, someone who sees an opponents army out of position can punish them quicker with drops, while someone who sieges outside an opponents base (in TvT) must either make efficient use of their good position (rather than just sitting their sieged forever) and make sure any units at home are in a good position to defend against drops. Yeah, medivacs are amazing at punishing your opponent for being "out of position", aka moving out on the map with his army. It's great that Blizzard came up with such a good way of punishing someone for not turtling, it's bound to make games a lot better. And they also allow for such amazing displays of positional play as Bomber vs goswser at MLG. Right, because leaving your base totally undefended when your opponent has/may have medivacs is an example of genius positioning, the only solution is to leave your whole army in your base in case you get dropped. You actually have this backwards, it may not seem intuitive, but the vast majority of the time having weaker harassment options is what encourages turtling. Let me explain before you dismiss the idea, because it does seem strange at first. The weaker harassment options there are, the easier they are to defend, therefore a greedy opener followed by turtling up to a maxed army is a more effective strategy as you need to spend less on units or static defense early on. Case in point: Queen Range Buff, this allowed Zerg players to defend against pretty much all forms of early harassment much more easily, what did they do with this advancement? Generally they played greedier and turtled up to late game with an economic advantage. Generally the only kind of turtling that stronger harassment encourages is turtling on two bases, since it makes taking a fast third riskier, which I think is a good thing* because as we all know, two base play is on sustainable for so long so the "turtler" will have to make some kind of action or else risk losing the macro game. I honestly think the reason I stopped watching WoL was because they weakened many harassment and aggression options/players figured them out, such that the majority of games were passive for too long and builds/games became too similar to each other. *I say this is a good thing in the sense that it encourages players to play more aggressive strategies to try to force the other player to be restricted to two bases, of course if two base play became the norm this would not be a good thing, I'm not suggesting that players should never take a fast third base but just that it should carry some risk unlike the end of WoL where it felt like a given.
This isn't really about harassment, it's about mobility. No matter how you cut it, the player with the less mobile army is generally going to be more passive in a game - because, exactly, it's easier to punish a slower army for being out of position, and it's even easier to do it with a fast army. How would you feel about a unit that could teleport to any location on the map, with no cooldown? Surely it would promote even more positional play, since it would punish "bad positioning" even harder?
Like I wrote earlier, for something to count as "positional play" it actually needs to be positional for both players. Most of the new HotS additions basically force one player to worry about his positioning, while the other once can do whatever the fuck he wants, and if he gets into a bad position, he can just hit the magic escape button and be fine.
You know what's always a good indicator of how positional the game is? The extent to which the most positionally sensitive unit in the game - the siege tank - sees play. Thus far, they've been replaced by mines in TvZ, and we'll see how TvT shapes up when the really good bio players like Polt start abusing the new medivacs.
On March 28 2013 14:39 Myrddraal wrote:Show nested quote +
In all seriousness though, this isn't so much a problem with the medivac, but with maps having so much dead space everywhere. Thus, the "positional play" generated by medivacs is completely one-sided: Even if you have units spread out to defend against drops, the Terran can just retreat into dead space, and sit there forever. The only time medivacs actually encourage positional play is when the opponent has air units as well, which is why Muta ZvT makes for the best Hots matchup. If one party has all the mobility and is basically invulnerable, then what results is not "positional play", but a dumb benny hill chase.
It's not completely one sided, since units that are in Medivacs are not with the main army, if we are talking fairly early game this means that you could have quite a large advantage in a head to head fight with the rest of his army (ie the units in the drop were out of position). Making drops is always a risk, even if its not always a high risk of losing the drop, as the game gets later the risk is smaller, but their effectiveness should also lessen assuming the other player has adequate defenses.
That's a nice theory, but in practice you either choose to dedicate units to defending the drop, in which case your push won't do anything, or you basically choose to basetrade against a Terran with a headstart. Which usually doesn't work out too well. Used to be that if you defended very well and killed the drop off, you had a timing to do damage, possibly kill off the Terran natural. But nowadays, you'll never kill it.
On March 28 2013 14:39 Myrddraal wrote:Show nested quote +
Honestly though, if you people want to believe afterburners, abduct, recall and other fun additions actually make the game "positional", go right ahead. War is peace, freedom is slavery, and all that.
I specifically said that I think abduct punishes bad positioning, and encourages good positioning, can you please explain to me how this is not the case? Since it seems to me that it is an ability that does nothing else but punish units that are out of position. I honestly don't understand how you think all these things that allow one player to gain a positional advantage or punish an opponents mistake in positioning somehow make the game less positional. When people think of positional play they tend to think only of slow powerful units like siege tanks but the thing is, Starcraft 2 is a fast paced game, so generally to use these slower units effectively you need something fast to either get your opponent out of position initially or to punish them once they are out of position. Besides if you were just after slow, powerful units, HotS has added Mines, Swarm Hosts, MS Core and Tempest.
I think you're right in your claim that the Viper makes good positioning more difficult. I just think that positioning a mobile, flying unit like the Viper or Medivac well is way easier than positioning a Siege Tank well. And that units like the Viper make "good positions" very flimsy and vulnerable, just another tool to crack those boring siege lines that Dustin Browder dislikes so much. Well, there's a point at which players just stop building siege lines and engage in benny hill chases instead, and I think that overall HotS has pushed SC2 closer to that point.
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Northern Ireland23814 Posts
On March 29 2013 07:06 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 07:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
They do, they just can't sift through the white noise of people spouting nonsense on balance, especially on their own forums. Meh, they could just hire people that hang out on the forums a lot like the various TL writers (monk would be very good at this, for instance) to write them a monthly report of cool ideas from the community.
I suggested this, nay spent a good two weeks trying to actually get such an idea off the ground. Kind of like the *SaveHoTS campaign, only not retarded and with actual nuanced discussion of certain issues. The problem I ran into was primarily ego-based, namely that too many people kind of wanted 'their' idea to be relayed or whatever, my lady fell pregnant so I kind of had to shelve it.
I still think it would be worthwhile, but I can't see how it can be done, the pros are the guys with access, but most will even accept themselves that they are pretty biased racially.
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One inevitable issue is that pros know the best about balance, but they are probably the most biased group of people because their income is on the line. Non-pros know less but are generally (not always) less motivated to defend their race because after all, it's just a game for your free time.
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On March 29 2013 07:11 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 07:06 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 07:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
They do, they just can't sift through the white noise of people spouting nonsense on balance, especially on their own forums. Meh, they could just hire people that hang out on the forums a lot like the various TL writers (monk would be very good at this, for instance) to write them a monthly report of cool ideas from the community. I suggested this, nay spent a good two weeks trying to actually get such an idea off the ground. Kind of like the *SaveHoTS campaign, only not retarded and with actual nuanced discussion of certain issues. The problem I ran into was primarily ego-based, namely that too many people kind of wanted 'their' idea to be relayed or whatever, my lady fell pregnant so I kind of had to shelve it. I still think it would be worthwhile, but I can't see how it can be done, the pros are the guys with access, but most will even accept themselves that they are pretty biased racially.
I guess pros are not suited to these things. I think IdrA on ITG said something about Blizzard not really using the secret pro forum anymore (probably because it's just posts by avilo) and there being limits to this approach.
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On March 29 2013 07:19 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 07:11 Wombat_NI wrote:On March 29 2013 07:06 Grumbels wrote:On March 29 2013 07:03 Wombat_NI wrote:
They do, they just can't sift through the white noise of people spouting nonsense on balance, especially on their own forums. Meh, they could just hire people that hang out on the forums a lot like the various TL writers (monk would be very good at this, for instance) to write them a monthly report of cool ideas from the community. I suggested this, nay spent a good two weeks trying to actually get such an idea off the ground. Kind of like the *SaveHoTS campaign, only not retarded and with actual nuanced discussion of certain issues. The problem I ran into was primarily ego-based, namely that too many people kind of wanted 'their' idea to be relayed or whatever, my lady fell pregnant so I kind of had to shelve it. I still think it would be worthwhile, but I can't see how it can be done, the pros are the guys with access, but most will even accept themselves that they are pretty biased racially. I guess pros are not suited to these things. I think IdrA on ITG said something about Blizzard not really using the secret pro forum anymore (probably because it's just posts by avilo) and there being limits to this approach.
It's probably just Idra and Avilo arguing nonstop.
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On March 28 2013 20:05 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2013 19:36 Rabiator wrote:On March 28 2013 04:44 plogamer wrote:
Since everyone seems to be talking about balance at "woodleague". Well, banelings are OP at that level. You need to constantly babysit your marines or they all die in an instant. Since Joe Woodleague can't handle that, we need to buff marines.
See how stupid this is? :\ Yep ... if you handle it with your simple minded logic which only includes "buff unit X" it will remain a topic to laugh at. The whole thing would NOT be a problem if we had a 12 unit selection limit and forced unit spreading, because then those Banelings (or any other unit with "critical number") would not be as OP in a lower league due to a reduced unit density. In higher leagues the greater skill of the players could then "circumvent" this limitation and skill would have a chance to triumph over pure economic production capacity again. Balancing the game is about more than unit stats and the general mechanics must be included in the whole process! and they would be completly irrelevant, because with 12unit selection units would be spread out by default and banelings themselves would run in much less clumped, so they would get picked off 1by1. So you would have to buff them a fuckton and we would be back to start.
Noooo ... you would have to use them better to get the maximum efficiency. The whole point of a "change in unit density" is to reduce the efficiency without actually nerfing the unit. If you used them as "bombs" they wouldnt be as easy to use and still have the same efficiency as they have today; its just a useage which isnt as lazy as the current a-move clump. You can also still use the Baneling mine in the same method and buffing the unit would make it totally OP as bombs / mines.
Lower unit density reduces the "killing speed" of an army, which extends the duration of battles. Battles of 100 supply worth of units do NOT last four times longer than battles of 25 supply AND they are NOT four times as fun! Slower (killing) speed makes the game easier to control for everyone, especially the lower league players. With slower killing speed you can actually micro your individual units and try to save some of them (especially Protoss units for shield regen).
Lower efficiency of a unit does NOT make it necessary to buff units and in the case of Banelings the whole point is to make them less efficient and remove the rather stupid "the defender has two seconds to react correctly or he loses" problem of facing Banelings, which makes the unit OP in lower leagues and puts the "mechanical requirement" on the wrong player anyways. Forcing the Baneling user to drop them for maximum efficiency and thus require him to have mechanical skill is the right way to go.
Reducing the unit selection limit to 12 does not spread out the units on its own; we would need forced spreading of units while moving as well. With this forced spreading there is another skill to acquire for better players in trying to circumvent that limit. One control group with unlimited selection AND perfectly tight movement really makes the game too easy for progamers and too hard for low league players because you have your dps focused in too tight an area and overrunning your opponent is too easy.
In addition to these two "mechanical methods" of reducing the unit density the game would also need to take out all the economic and production speed boosts to really stop the mass production.
On March 29 2013 04:32 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 04:25 iky43210 wrote:On March 28 2013 19:36 Rabiator wrote:On March 28 2013 04:44 plogamer wrote:
Since everyone seems to be talking about balance at "woodleague". Well, banelings are OP at that level. You need to constantly babysit your marines or they all die in an instant. Since Joe Woodleague can't handle that, we need to buff marines.
See how stupid this is? :\ Yep ... if you handle it with your simple minded logic which only includes "buff unit X" it will remain a topic to laugh at. The whole thing would NOT be a problem if we had a 12 unit selection limit and forced unit spreading, because then those Banelings (or any other unit with "critical number") would not be as OP in a lower league due to a reduced unit density. In higher leagues the greater skill of the players could then "circumvent" this limitation and skill would have a chance to triumph over pure economic production capacity again. Balancing the game is about more than unit stats and the general mechanics must be included in the whole process! units micro definitely presents a bigger role in sc2 if anything. Skill definitely plays a huge part there 12 units selection limit is stupid The primary reason I'm against some kind of unit selection limit, is because the numbers differ greatly between the races. Zerg and Terran tend to produce a lot more units than Protoss do, especially the former so it would in effect 'punish' Zergs.
It wouldnt punish the Zerg if everyone would produce fewer units ... like in BW. It worked there, so it should work for an adjusted SC2. A lower unit density (and lower unit numbers) would make certain "crutches" unnecessary.
+ Show Spoiler +The Stalker has roughly the same stats as the Dragoon in BW and the same is true for the Marine and yet the Stalker is severely disadvantaged in a mass encounter due to the increased dps of a larger amount of tightly stacked Marines. Thus Protoss NEEDS Forcefield and Blink to even make that unit viable. Since Forcefield limits mapmakers to "open battlefields only or Protoss can slice armies too easily" it would be great if it could be removed from the game. With lower unit density and killing speed you could micro your Stalkers and withdraw the ones without shield ... something which is impossible in todays mass battles.
Expensive and high hit point units like Thors or Ultralisks would become more important because you could more easily save them due to non-existant super-tight clumps of Marines / Marauders / Zerglings.
The asymmetric nature of the production speed boosts ON TOP OF the already asymmetric nature of the unit production for each of the races is too much anyways IMO because there are "timings" when they "kick in".
- Zerg have problems early when they need to produce Drones and cant really afford to make units.
- For Protoss there is the "Warp Gate timing" which is most important in PvP, but the whole upgrade is mandatory and there is no point to keeping your Gateways ... which means there is no CHOICE to make.
- Terrans are disadvantaged because only the most basic units of them are built with a Reactor and this affects the choice of units since they need the most structures of the three races already. Sure there is the possibility of Terrans winning an early game by mass-producing units and simply overrunning the enemy, but what happens if that fails? He more or less loses automatically because the production speed boosts of the two other races can make more powerful units and are in general more flexible. This is bad design right from the start IMO because you rather need to "beat Zerg before Broodlords" instead of having a chance even after that. (Yes, that is a rather simple way of putting it, but for many people on the lower levels who can not handle Broodlords it is true.)
Taking all of this out of the game would make it much simpler and you cant really fiddle with only one of the four things I mention ... its all or nothing really.
On March 29 2013 04:42 Orek wrote:
Although I am for unit selection limit, it is too late anyways. We are already too "spoiled" with no limit, and there is no way we can go back now. If SC2 had started with, say, 24 units max in 2010, then things would have worked out around such mechanics. However, even as an advocate, I don't think it's realistic to implement unit selection limit as of 2013.
Why not ... if it is necessary and the logic behind it is made clear? The principle is rather easy ...
lower unit density = lower killing speed = easier to control
Since this works for both sides I do not see the problem and the whole "oh it is 2013 and technology has improved" is just bad propaganda ... since they "dont bother" with "adjusting the scales of the units to the correct amount - which should be possible with todays technology - we are still playing a game with "artificial restraints" (just as the 200 supply limit and the non-existant but really easy "just push an asteroid on this Zerg planet to wipe them out") ... one more wouldnt matter.
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On March 29 2013 18:15 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2013 20:05 Big J wrote:On March 28 2013 19:36 Rabiator wrote:On March 28 2013 04:44 plogamer wrote:
Since everyone seems to be talking about balance at "woodleague". Well, banelings are OP at that level. You need to constantly babysit your marines or they all die in an instant. Since Joe Woodleague can't handle that, we need to buff marines.
See how stupid this is? :\ Yep ... if you handle it with your simple minded logic which only includes "buff unit X" it will remain a topic to laugh at. The whole thing would NOT be a problem if we had a 12 unit selection limit and forced unit spreading, because then those Banelings (or any other unit with "critical number") would not be as OP in a lower league due to a reduced unit density. In higher leagues the greater skill of the players could then "circumvent" this limitation and skill would have a chance to triumph over pure economic production capacity again. Balancing the game is about more than unit stats and the general mechanics must be included in the whole process! and they would be completly irrelevant, because with 12unit selection units would be spread out by default and banelings themselves would run in much less clumped, so they would get picked off 1by1. So you would have to buff them a fuckton and we would be back to start. Noooo ... you would have to use them better to get the maximum efficiency. The whole point of a "change in unit density" is to reduce the efficiency without actually nerfing the unit. If you used them as "bombs" they wouldnt be as easy to use and still have the same efficiency as they have today; its just a useage which isnt as lazy as the current a-move clump. You can also still use the Baneling mine in the same method and buffing the unit would make it totally OP as bombs / mines.
ok... stopping right there as you think trying to drop onto marines is a good idea which just shows that you are completly out of touch with the game.
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Yeah, reduce the unit selection limit to 12 and watch +50% of the player base suddenly disappear. A great freaking idea! (NOT!)
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You can not just add a unit selection cap. To do that the whole game has to redisgned.
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On March 29 2013 18:15 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 04:42 Orek wrote:
Although I am for unit selection limit, it is too late anyways. We are already too "spoiled" with no limit, and there is no way we can go back now. If SC2 had started with, say, 24 units max in 2010, then things would have worked out around such mechanics. However, even as an advocate, I don't think it's realistic to implement unit selection limit as of 2013. Why not ... if it is necessary and the logic behind it is made clear? The principle is rather easy ... lower unit density = lower killing speed = easier to control Since this works for both sides I do not see the problem and the whole "oh it is 2013 and technology has improved" is just bad propaganda ... since they "dont bother" with "adjusting the scales of the units to the correct amount - which should be possible with todays technology - we are still playing a game with "artificial restraints" (just as the 200 supply limit and the non-existant but really easy "just push an asteroid on this Zerg planet to wipe them out") ... one more wouldnt matter.
"Change for the better is better because it's better." is not something I agree. Drastic change from the current state can be be worse even if what's intended by the change is clearly for the better, whether it is SC2 mechanics, politics, social structure or whatever IMO. You cannot just ignore 3 years of development in SC2 without unit selection limit. I think HotS was a good chance to implement the change as many other things changed as well, but Blizzard didn't. I would love to see SC3 with unit selection limit, but SC2 can try without limit. It's never about technology is there or not. Unit selection limit is better for the reasons you listed and such. I am on that side, but that's something I hope for SC3. I don't pursue ideal when current reality is too far from it.
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On March 29 2013 19:32 Assirra wrote:
You can not just add a unit selection cap. To do that the whole game has to redisgned.
Completely agree with this.
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I think one of the main problems Starcraft 2 faces is that almost nothing scales.
Here is a list:
- To control a large army takes equal skill as to control a small army.
- To control a large economy and to manage a large amount of production takes equal skill as to control smaller ones.
- The supply cap is so low that a large economy and a small economy produce an equal army.
- A small number of bases gives you equal economy to a large number of bases, with fixed (realistic) worker numbers.
- A smaller army takes up equal space to a larger army. This is particularly egregious when you start mixing air units that have no collision (colossi).
The main thing that really does scale is army strength. An army slightly bigger in supply will completely smash the smaller army.
I don't really like to talk about ideas that won't be implemented, such as the unit selection limit, but let's just say that it would be introduced. It could be part of a number of changes to address these scaling issues (assuming they are a problem), and the endgame would be that the scope of your play style (army size, number of bases etc.) depends largely on your mechanical ability. Pro gamers could play on big maps where you would get five or six bases, new players would play on maps with just two bases. And I think this won't be acceptable to Blizzard, because they don't want to punish a large portion of their player base by closing off certain play styles.
In any case, there are other ways to change the scaling without introducing limited selection. Simply replacing units like the colossus should go a long way, as would Blizzard taking a look at LaLush's economy proposals. I don't think it's necessary to go all the way with reintroducing the sort of parity that existed in Brood War, however. I don't see the need for a big intervention to completely remodel the game, for alienating a part of the player base at the expense of catering to the pro scene is not needed when we already have repeat champions and star players and the like. (look at it from Blizzard's perspective, a suggestion is worthless if there is no way that Blizzard is ever going to add it to the game)
And by the way, if the selection limit unfairly favors protoss, they could make zerglings, broodlings, locusts, marines take up only half a space. I had a fun idea that the selection limit could be 16 spots, with buildings taking up a 4x4 block, so that there would be limited multiple building selection. It's all a bit clumsy though. ^_^
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EPT
