EPTDesignated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 413
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Duncaaaaaan
United Kingdom101 Posts
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Huragius
Lithuania1506 Posts
On March 29 2013 20:19 Grumbels wrote: [*]To control a large economy and to manage a large amount of production takes equal skill as to control smaller ones. This is not true. Maybe this statement somewhat has truth if we are talking about zerg race, but it's just false about protoss and especially terran. On March 29 2013 20:19 Grumbels wrote: A small number of bases gives you equal economy to a large number of bases, with fixed (realistic) worker numbers. Not true as well. You need to describe what is a small economy. This statement only applies to =>3 bases economy (Lets say 3 base protoss can make an army almost big enough as 5-6 bases zerg). And this problem was discussed N times on TL (solution such as reducing mineral patches count of each expansion by a margin of 2-3). | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 29 2013 20:19 Grumbels wrote: I think one of the main problems Starcraft 2 faces is that almost nothing scales. Here is a list:
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. ^_^ I partly agree and partly disagree with your analysis. Controlling a big army is much harder than controlling a small army. As a matter of fact, large army battle devolve into compositions fighting a lot on amove and using general movement positioning instead of doing neat tricks, because it is too hard to do those tricks in the big battle. But I think we agree on the problem: in big battles control becomes less relevant and it becomes a game of numbers. I think the two core problems are:
So what do I mean by that? Design/Balance feels very soft, because most of the time you don't have a lot of units that can trade blows against each other. E.g: In a typical TvP fight a Terran tries to eliminate the Protoss splash threats - Colossi/Templar - and when that job is done it's stim-move all the way. Same can be said about Protoss trying to soften the Terran ball and forcing an engagement for as long as the splash units are still going strong and then we are back to amove. (and the other matchups play similarily) What I think we would rather want to see is what Protoss players - most famously Parting - can do in the lategame (when they have a lot of money) with templar flanks, where it does not come down to 3storms and 3colossi anymore, but when you can effectively zone an opponent. It's a problem that a lot of combats come down to how singlefire units are balanced against each other, because then the one with the better singlefire army simply wins/loses if he can/cannot take out the enemy splash. The other one is pretty clear by now I think. A slight increase in bases needed and a bigger emphasis on positional gameplay/advantages would be cool. And for anyone who saw GSTL today: + Show Spoiler + Sound vs SSanaEE was an amazing display of how a game with a good balance of positional units - swarm hosts, widow mines harass capable units - mutalisks, zerglings, hellions, medivacs good amount of replaceable splash to avoid singlefire deathballs - banelings, widow mines, hellions, infestors does look like. We can only hope that HotS will be more about those things instead of singlefire roach/hydra, bio and Gateway meatshields bumping into each other without good ways to kill an army advantage. | ||
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StatixEx
United Kingdom779 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On March 29 2013 21:18 Big J wrote: I partly agree and partly disagree with your analysis. Controlling a big army is much harder than controlling a small army. As a matter of fact, large army battle devolve into compositions fighting a lot on amove and using general movement positioning instead of doing neat tricks, because it is too hard to do those tricks in the big battle. But I think we agree on the problem: in big battles control becomes less relevant and it becomes a game of numbers. Well, the rules I mentioned are all soft, I just wanted to highlight some issues I had with the game. It's relatively easy to control big armies in Starcraft 2 versus Brood War. In fact, in Brood War there is almost a linear relation in army size vs difficulty to control. I don't think it's necessary to make this relationship completely linear, but I do think it needs to not be flat. :p And this can be addressed with limited selection, but also through other means. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On March 29 2013 20:17 Orek wrote: "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. While I understand your point of view I dont share it and would really like it if Dustin and his team came out and said that they were wrong to center the game too much on producing units and massive armies and that it didnt work out that well ... and then they could simply change it. The necessary changes would not be that huge and since we are humans we *should be* able to adapt. If we fail to learn from history - BW gameplay in this case - we are stupid and arrogant ... and if we fail to acknowledge mistakes we are that as well. What is the worst that would happen if they adopted the four changes I suggest? Some units would have to be adjusted (like the Queen, who would be a bit lost without inject larva or the Sentry, who would lose Forcefield, ...) and the campaign mission AI might have to be changed a bit. Other than that it would just be learning how to control multiple control groups instead of just one (not a big deal) and some new strategies. People always crave for change in the game, so that wouldnt be a bad thing, would it? And if the gameplay got better to allow for fun maps like BGH to make sense again it would be even better, right? If you try you might fail, but if you dont try you have already failed ... and this applies to pestering Blizzard for changes to improve the game and to pestering the not-understanding community into understanding why it makes sense to limit the unit selection again and add forced unit spreading and to take out the MULE, inject larva, chronoboost, warp gate, reactor and two gas geysers. On March 29 2013 20:19 Grumbels wrote: The main thing that really does scale is army strength. An army slightly bigger in supply will completely smash the smaller army. This is only true in an SC2 scenario with unlimited unit selection and super tight unit movement, because in BW it wasnt possible to "focus" all your army on one spot, so some units were always out of range. The lower unit density there also allowed for defenders to get an advantage by stacking their units more tightly for maximized dps. They did so at a risk of enemy AoEs and that was a good thing. In SC2 the AoE units had to be nerfed because the automatic tight unit movement was making them too powerful. The risk should be the choice of the player and not "mitigated by nerfs to AoE". Hence forced unit spreading with stronger AoE is a good thing, because it adds more choices and risks for the players. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25666 Posts
On the economy side, maxing on 3 bases with all the tech you need is an issue that could see some exploration. I'd like there to be more of an onus placed on smart expansion patterns than there is now. Too many maps, especially on ladder for me as a Protoss are over if I get my third up, I have the peak econ and I kill my opponent. I'd think it worth looking at making the choices harder through changing patched and gas a bit, not on main/naturals, but on subsequent locations. This would make constant expansion more important part of the decision making process. For example, the closest third/fourth could yield fewer resources per base, the fifth location could be a full stocked location. In this simplified idea, you wouldn't be able to max out on 3 bases as quickly and a fourth base might be necessary, adding more of a strain to your forces in terms of deployment. The fifth base would be 'normal' so you would try to sync your expansion timing to transfer your main base workers there. Completely retooling everything that we are familiar with is a bit unrealistic, but the economy/map side of things are something we as a community can properly test out. Indeed, Browder was fired that aforementioned lalush thread on Eco, and wasn't entirely dismissive of it either | ||
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Orek
1665 Posts
Not the best analogy, but that's my stance on unit selection limit. Sky can wait until SC3 blank canvas comes out. At this point in SC2, it's more about how to make this forest paint better rather than how to force it to be sky. | ||
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Stingart
122 Posts
On March 29 2013 20:19 Grumbels wrote: I think one of the main problems Starcraft 2 faces is that almost nothing scales. Here is a list:
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. ^_^ Nice post, but the list is false for Terran, thus it isn't a SC2 problem but more of a Zerg/Protoss problem. Lets see the list again from a Terrans perspective: Here is a list:
Terran just scales a ton when you're going through the mid ~ late game. If you play Terran you can easily see the difference on macro and micro levels. | ||
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Rossie
136 Posts
Every buff they gave Protoss or Zerg, they were uber-cautious about. "Oh no, maybe the mothership core will be too strong...let's give it the speed of a snail to compensate for its power by increasing the frustration level of Protoss players". " Whereas with Terran, they go whole hog with widow mines and doom drops and throw caution to the wind. Protoss is OP in PvZ. But that seems almost by accident and is more a question of old units from WoL reaching their full potential. On paper, the changes made to Protoss seems utterly piddling compared with widow mines, hellbats, improved medivacs, etc. | ||
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apeiro
United States27 Posts
In any occasion, I am a Toss player and looking at the balance at the moment, I would suggest that these things may need adjusting: Protoss__ Oracle may need to do a little less damage or damage to light might just need to be adjusted a bit. In lower leagues, doing the micro with two or three oracles has an enormous payoff and the effort by the enemy player to respond properly is very high. If you decrease their damage, you could just make the focus cost of the beam a bit less and it would pay off pretty well, allowing the Protoss to do more Envision. I admit this is delicate, because if the oracle gets nerfed, the Protoss sky army will not have any early game feasibility and it may hamper SG openings completely. Mothership Core probably needs to move a little bit faster. It is very frustrating that the core will sometimes go up a cliff and get insta-killed by a handful of marines and there is almost nothing I can do about it due to its exceedingly slow acceleration. Or, for that reason, make them move the same speed but have a faster acceleration. Even that would help. Terran__ Medivac speed either needs to cost energy, boost a bit less, or do something similar to locking down the medivacs healing capability for a short period. There needs to be some trade off for having lightning fast drops. I definitely think this is delicate, because it's the Terran's mineral line harass response on par with the new Mutas and Oracles; but it seems that this harass is quite a bit better than any regen Muta ball or Oracle harass as soon as you move into the mid and late game. Widow Mine health could probably stand to be a bit lower. Even without Tunneling Claws I find that I can usually not kill a WM as long as it begins burrowing right when it sees my units, in fact even if I get a head start shooting it before it burrows in the early and mid-game it will still successfully burrow and then I am just area denied or going negative minerals. With Tunneling Claws I understand this dynamic and accept it completely (that's the point of getting the upgrade), but without it seems like the Terran should be punished for letting his mines get caught unburrowed. I have long felt that the Ghost Nuke ability needs to be improved somehow. I am almost never that beat up when I realize a Nuke is dropping and it is very difficult for an enemy to drop that nuke to begin with. In reality I usually just end up killing the ghost first. If you are going to make a squishy unit and give it such an ability which has the longest cast time in the game, give the enemy an indicator visually as to where the ability will land beforehand, but it is aimed toward being high-power, it seems to me like it should be -VERY- high power. In BW, it was 500 damage or 75% health, whichever was higher, right? That sounds pretty reasonable to me. Zerg__ I admit I am least knowledgable about Zerg, yet I have a good win percentage toward them so I may have a bias to suggest they seem pretty balanced to me. That being said, I am not sure why they took the charge ability away from Ultralisks; it seemed to make them serve their purpose quite well (breaking contains, killing melee units, destroying siege tanks). Making them do ludicrous amounts of damage is one way to fix this, but it seems a little less dynamic. Oh well, Ultras are really good now so I guess it's all good. Swarm Hosts are great and I love the dynamic they add to the game, however I feel like the locusts have a bit too much health. It seems a bit excessive to have to land two fully sustained psionic storms on a group of them to kill them. If they do 1 damage per wave and that entire wave dies the instant after; that was 1 risk-free damage to the swarm host. Tweaking the health of the locust would just mean that you could push the waves back a little more easily before enduring locusts and then after enduring locusts they would still retain the same ability for suffocating contain. Take this all with a grain of "this guy is only top Silver", but these are my longwinded observations. | ||
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GaNgStaRR.ElV
Canada535 Posts
On March 30 2013 00:44 Rossie wrote: It seems a broken game at the moment. Every buff they gave Protoss or Zerg, they were uber-cautious about. "Oh no, maybe the mothership core will be too strong...let's give it the speed of a snail to compensate for its power by increasing the frustration level of Protoss players". " Whereas with Terran, they go whole hog with widow mines and doom drops and throw caution to the wind. Protoss is OP in PvZ. But that seems almost by accident and is more a question of old units from WoL reaching their full potential. On paper, the changes made to Protoss seems utterly piddling compared with widow mines, hellbats, improved medivacs, etc. Are you kidding me? They turned Oracle from a mineral-forcefielder to a unit that massacres SCVS. They gave Void Rays a huge damage boost. And mothership core speed is balanced, jesus you have a flying unit that can scout everything opponents do at 4:30 and your whining because it's slow? How is it in anyway frustrating? And how is the game broken? These are the change I would make(not all my ideas). Terran: Widow mines get priority of templar/infestor. So that it is easier for zergs to kill them with lings without affecting their actual power(which seems pretty appropriate). Zerg: I think zerg is pretty balanced to be honest, the one thing I would like from a perspective is transforming Blinding Cloud to act like Dark Swarm. I only suggest this because I think it would make it a much more positional spell by letting Zerg position units for attack/approach and also to be able to manipulate terran positioning. At the moment BC is just too strong against tanks and is more of a "a-move into his formation while casting BS on pockets of units". Protoss: Slight nerf to Oracle damage, something VERY small. Still should be a potent option but just not so "if you don't notice it for 5 seconds all SCVs dissapear". At the moment TvP is too orientated around finding if oracles are coming your way or not. Frankly if you scout 2 gas you need to just assume oracle, on the bright side it offers you anti-DT protection atleast...can't wait for Protoss to start meta-gaming this with blink stalker builds lol I also have to suggest as a nerf to Void Rays: keep their ability the same in terms of damage, however I was thinking it would be interesting if Prismatic Alignment would nullify a Protosses shield when activated in exchange for an armor boost while activated; this would strenghten it as the DPS core of an army but would make the ability for mass VR to just run in, hit PA, and smash through everything in sight. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On March 29 2013 22:14 Wombat_NI wrote: You don't necessarily need limited unit selection, you just need to make it advantageous to use multiple groups and split armies up, vs the guy who us death balling it up. From what I've seen so far HoTS is definitely a step up, especially TvZ, but this might be due to the formative nature of the gamestate. On the economy side, maxing on 3 bases with all the tech you need is an issue that could see some exploration. I'd like there to be more of an onus placed on smart expansion patterns than there is now. Too many maps, especially on ladder for me as a Protoss are over if I get my third up, I have the peak econ and I kill my opponent. I'd think it worth looking at making the choices harder through changing patched and gas a bit, not on main/naturals, but on subsequent locations. This would make constant expansion more important part of the decision making process. For example, the closest third/fourth could yield fewer resources per base, the fifth location could be a full stocked location. In this simplified idea, you wouldn't be able to max out on 3 bases as quickly and a fourth base might be necessary, adding more of a strain to your forces in terms of deployment. The fifth base would be 'normal' so you would try to sync your expansion timing to transfer your main base workers there. Completely retooling everything that we are familiar with is a bit unrealistic, but the economy/map side of things are something we as a community can properly test out. Indeed, Browder was fired that aforementioned lalush thread on Eco, and wasn't entirely dismissive of it either How do you push people into wanting multiple control groups? Dustin Browder said in one of those China interviews that the players WANT THE DEATHBALL because it is the most efficient way and there are only two ways I can see to make it less desirable:
The economy part is the smaller part of the problem IMO and the production speed boosts is the wayyy bigger one, but if you remove inject larva from the game + Show Spoiler + Nerfing the production speed boosts doesnt make sense for most of them, so its a choice of "take them all out OR do nothing". There is no way leading around a unit selection limit coupled with forced unit spreading while moving and removal of economy and production speed boosts. + Show Spoiler + The one chance I see for an implementation of this is probably after the last implementation when Blizzard wants to make a last ditch effort of a BIG change to make headlines and create more interest for the game again. Since you can sell anything with the right advertising they could make even the "boohoo, I want my unlimited unit selection because technology has advanced" people cheer for such a change. [1]This is the reason why it is wrong to base the selection limit on supply cost. It would change nothing, because 24 Zerglings could still overrun 6 Stalkers. They would STILL need Forcefield to make the Stalkers viable and that is a bad thing. The "crutches" must be removed! | ||
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TimENT
United States1425 Posts
Minor tweaks I hope for: -Mine splash radius SLIGHT nerf (lings/banelings/mutas are shut down a little bit too much) -Mine attack priority changed to be targeting before marines/marauders -Medivac booster cool down increase -Void Rays nerfed v Corruptors ONLY From there I'd say we have an even better game and we could let balance play out for a very long time. Keep in mind this is after watching hours of KR streams & every Kespa/ESF player | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On March 30 2013 14:27 TimENT wrote: Why are KR tosses still going gate expand robo 2 gate -> colossi in PvT? None of them are even attempting to adapt. I want to see more oracle -> 6 Phoenix for drop defense play. Oracles and Phoenix are "tricksy play" and require lots of attention. It is far easier in SC2 to go for the MASS UNIT COMBO because you do not need to babysit those units and dont need to trigger every attack. That is just common sense of game design and the only way to make such skill based play more viable is to make the massive armies less prevalent by getting rid of the big economy and the production speed boosts. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2013 16:49 Rabiator wrote: Oracles and Phoenix are "tricksy play" and require lots of attention. It is far easier in SC2 to go for the MASS UNIT COMBO because you do not need to babysit those units and dont need to trigger every attack. That is just common sense of game design and the only way to make such skill based play more viable is to make the massive armies less prevalent by getting rid of the big economy and the production speed boosts. Bullshit. The moment Infestors were nerfed in the beta every Protoss started to go Stargate in PvZ. Stargate is simply not as figured and/or as strong/safe in PvT. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On March 30 2013 17:17 Big J wrote: Bullshit. The moment Infestors were nerfed in the beta every Protoss started to go Stargate in PvZ. Stargate is simply not as figured and/or as strong/safe in PvT. And which units did "everyone" build out of those Stargates? Oracles? Phoenixes? Those were the two units I was talking about and replying to ... not Void Rays (which are a "non-tricksy unit"). | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On March 30 2013 17:36 Rabiator wrote: And which units did "everyone" build out of those Stargates? Oracles? Phoenixes? Those were the two units I was talking about and replying to ... not Void Rays (which are a "non-tricksy unit"). Sontimes an oracle, sometimes a void ray. Always 5 or 6 phoenixes. | ||
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Rossie
136 Posts
On March 30 2013 11:57 GaNgStaRR.ElV wrote: The simple fact of the matter is that, same in WoL, the hard counter to Protoss units by Terran is completely uncomplicated. Oracles harassing a mineral line is far easier to shut down than drops in the base. The counter to void rays is spamming marines -- the kind of thing that Terrans have been doing since the beginning of time. The mothership core is stopped by (you guessed it) a few marines. Maybe that is too difficult for you?Are you kidding me? They turned Oracle from a mineral-forcefielder to a unit that massacres SCVS. They gave Void Rays a huge damage boost. And mothership core speed is balanced, jesus you have a flying unit that can scout everything opponents do at 4:30 and your whining because it's slow? How is it in anyway frustrating? On the other hand, Protoss have to go for complicated unit compositions to even stand a chance against Terran bio. Widow mines add yet a different layer of extremely taxing and strategically non-trivial precautions that Protoss have to take. It's almost as if Blizzard seems to think that Protoss is the race of highly intelligent nerds, Terran is the race of Modern Warfare jocks who can only understand the most blatant hard counters like "vikings against colossus" or "marines against almost everything". | ||
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ETisME
12477 Posts
Maps have become larger in general. My stance on it is just that it comes too early in the game, but I am not a high ranked player so my opinion isn't necessary right. But I would like to see a small change just because how it works feels very unpolished. Two changes or both: 1. a time lag between you activate the boost and the boost starts. A sort of count down system. Terrans are currently just using it to boost almost whenever they could. I don't like this approach for the speed boost. 2. a gradual increase in the medivac speed. It will look more logical and less "press for more speed now" type of ability. If the nerf feels too powerful, maybe a boost for the ability time can be given? | ||
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