EPTI wish someone would make Blizzard aware of this and remind them that mech in principle was about the tank and the support for it, where now it looks more and more like the tank is the support unit. The tank could use some looking into, not sure exactly in what direction though.
Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 427
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Destructicon
4713 Posts
I wish someone would make Blizzard aware of this and remind them that mech in principle was about the tank and the support for it, where now it looks more and more like the tank is the support unit. The tank could use some looking into, not sure exactly in what direction though. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Just today Light used them vs HuK and I have seen quite some games where Terrans added Hellbats to their MMM. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On April 07 2013 21:16 Destructicon wrote: Not a balance complaint more like design worry, I really dislike how widow mines seem to be phasing out Siege tanks, in TvZ we are seeing less and less of them outside mech, in TvT its still going strong because of the positional factors but in TvP its non existent outside of the 1/1/1. I wish someone would make Blizzard aware of this and remind them that mech in principle was about the tank and the support for it, where now it looks more and more like the tank is the support unit. The tank could use some looking into, not sure exactly in what direction though. tanks suck vs high health units. They are strong when they can snipe small-medium units or have positional advantages (like against the huge & melee Ultralisks or the huge & slow Thor). Their current power is the range+burst combo. What they need is more damage to the maintarget to sustain this effect against high health units. Imo, something like: 50+25vs armored with only 50/25/15% splash area (instead of the 100/50/25%) would fit them better. | ||
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RampancyTW
United States577 Posts
On April 07 2013 20:01 Rabiator wrote: Broodwar was based heavily around different races/styles being strong at different timings in each matchup. TvZ especially, but it existed to a certain extent in all matchups.The whole problem of "race X is strong FIRST" is that it leads into "don't let them get there strategies" which might not allow the other race to reach their strong time. This is TERRIBLE but it is a core of the design and balancing process of SC2 ... All races need to be equally strong (or weak) at the same time and the only difference allowed should be coming from economic decisions of when people start to build an army. If you play too greedy and the opponent doesn't then you deserve to lose. The mechanics of Warp Gate and Inject Larvae (of the first possible Queen) and MULE (of the first Orbital) give specific timings which boost the power of their respective race for that time. This impacts at different times and is rather terribly designed. The game would be better off without all of them ... (and a few more stuff) because it would be easier to control and balance. It honestly makes the game more interesting when the game is being played at a high level. It gives the game an ebb and flow that can be really exciting to watch, and gives players a sort of pattern to base their play around. Without asymmetric balance you would just have armies moving around/attacking at more or less arbitrary times loosely based on expanding, a reduction of viable styles (some tech paths/strategies would just not be able to keep pace), and overall more boring games-- if there aren't really any moments of high or low tension, and it's just a flat medium level of tension, it's just sort of... boring. | ||
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wswas
16 Posts
On April 07 2013 21:31 Big J wrote: Just today Light used them vs HuK and I have seen quite some games where Terrans added Hellbats to their MMM. here's hoping terrans won't add hellbats to their bio mine army so that i can still win a zvt now and then. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On April 07 2013 22:08 RampancyTW wrote: Broodwar was based heavily around different races/styles being strong at different timings in each matchup. TvZ especially, but it existed to a certain extent in all matchups. It honestly makes the game more interesting when the game is being played at a high level. It gives the game an ebb and flow that can be really exciting to watch, and gives players a sort of pattern to base their play around. Without asymmetric balance you would just have armies moving around/attacking at more or less arbitrary times loosely based on expanding, a reduction of viable styles (some tech paths/strategies would just not be able to keep pace), and overall more boring games-- if there aren't really any moments of high or low tension, and it's just a flat medium level of tension, it's just sort of... boring. The thing is that in a "low econ and low unit count game" like BW it doesnt matter as much if one race is strong at a particular time, but what happens in a game where you can SUDDENLY swamp your opponent with units so he has not enough time to react and everything is "blamed" on "you didnt scout properly"? SC2 is simply too high production and economy to handle such sudden boosts of power and this should be apparent by all the massive rushes we had in the beginning of WoL. This has settled now due to the larger size of the maps, but you can nevertheless switch your whole army style as a Zerg in one production cycle and this gives them a tremendous advantage. Protoss has a minor advantge in being able to switch from Zealots to Stalkers or Archons pretty fast, but there it is limited to "infantry only" while Terrans are screwed because they only get to mass-produce the basic units. Thus it is the wisest choice to take out all of these production speed boosts because you cant create a level playing field without that. Those production speed boosts really push the game and the army into "throw away units" where it isnt worth it to preserve a unit through micro because units simply die too fast anyways. This is a terrible style of play IMO. The asymmetric production speed boosts arent the only reason why Zerg have been favored in the late game. You have to look at the casters and you will notice that the Infestor is / was a ridiculously powerful caster which can focus all of its power in one small amount of time. BW didnt really have that level of power and I dont see where Protoss or Terrans have anything to compare with that. Even the Raven doesnt have that kind of power because its abilities are too expensive so you can't use your spells for a long time after you used one. Protoss dont even have an endgame caster unit and the High Templar is short ranged and its Psi Storm doesnt stack as the damage from Infested Terrans ... So the unit design (coupled with the production speed boosts and the high economy) is rather bad as well and abilities like Fungal and Forcefield are somewhat required to make some units work at all. Fungal is needed to protect Broodlords from Vikings and Forcefield is required to protect Stalkers from anything basically. A bold claim ... If you had no boosts for production / economy even Steppes of War would be a somewhat balanced map because no player could overwhelm the other and every battle would be decided through good micro and better tactical decisions. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On April 07 2013 23:18 Rabiator wrote: A bold claim ... If you had no boosts for production / economy even Steppes of War would be a somewhat balanced map because no player could overwhelm the other and every battle would be decided through good micro and better tactical decisions. Play me on Steppes of War. I'm not gonna build reactors or use mules, you are not allowed to inject. Let's see how this turns out ... | ||
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Reborn8u
United States1761 Posts
I actually advocate allowing terran to have 2 addons per building, (any two) to help with said disadvantage. Two tech labs on a factory would mean 2 tanks at a time and 2 upgrades (you could make 2 hellions while getting both upgrades at the same time), two reactors would mean 4 hellions at a time, or a tech lab and a reactor would be the same as two tech labs (two tanks at a time) I think this would give terran a much better ability to spend their bank on higher tech units and perform needed composition adjustments after a battle. The problem with it would be just like we saw in WOL, terran would be able to abuse this pretty hard with certain tech/composition timings/rushes. It would be very hard to implement this in a balanced way, and really require quite a bit of testing and thought to give terran better late game production/comp changes, without it becoming an early game nightmare for Z or P. Where I disagree is with what you said about casters in BW, that game had MANY casters that could focus their energy into a small period of time. Emp's from science vessels bathing a protoss army before a big fight, lots of stasis/storm/maelstrom changing a game in a matter of seconds, a dark swarm highway allowing crackling/ultra to close in on ranged units. The main and most important difference with BW's casters, was they were not stand alone "army killers". They were support and better used in small number to support an army. In Sc2, with fungal, storm, smart casting, massing casters is often the best option, especially with the production mechanics allowing protoss and zerg to remake many casters in 1 cycle. One huge design decision I very strongly disagree with was the decision to include infinite "free" units. It makes sense from a lore perspective that zerg is the race has this but not from a game play or balance perspective. The race with the biggest economy, fastest reproduction, is the last race that needs infinite free units. Blizzard was unable to balance the broodlord infestor in wol (I can't for the life of me understand why they didn't make more changes to the broodlord and were so intent on adjusting the infestor every 6 months) but after the disaster that was the last year of WOL, why the hell would anyone on the design team think it was a good idea to add another infinite free unit maker (the swarm host). Job security for the balance team maybe? vOv Also, who sat down and said "well we were never really able to make broodlords not broken in wol, better give protoss their own version" The decisions to give zerg 3 units that make more units for free, to make spell casters so powerful in their own right and not best used in smaller numbers as support, and instead of fixing the core issues with protoss (warp gate, FF, and stalker's weakness in the late game,as well as protoss' difficulty with expanding) and give protoss the hero unit momma core, the tempest. Not giving terran a production method to keep pace with protoss or zerg in the late game, were all grave and critical mistakes. HOTS is a great game, but a shadow of what it could have been if the design team made some better choices and more closely followed the lessons of BW earlier in SC2's development. I personally blame Dustin Browder for most of this, for almost the entirety of WOL his interviews showed again and again that he had no idea what he was talking about, yet was forceful in his misinformed philosophies. He definitely has improved his thinking by leaps and bounds, but really he is only now at the level of understanding he should have had 5 years ago to be in the position he was in during Sc2's development imo. I guess there is still the opportunity to change the game in fundamental ways for LOTV, we can only hope it's as big of an improvement as WOL was to HOTS. | ||
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Bagi
Germany6799 Posts
Complaining about fundamental design decisions has nothing to do with realistic balance discussion that people are trying to do here. Talk about the damn game, not what could've been. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On April 07 2013 15:27 Rabiator wrote: Do you realize that this ISNT BALANCED? If one race is "strong at time X" then the game is not balanced ... because there arent equal opportunities to win at any given time. This is a systematic problem of SC2 due to the production speed boosts which kick in at different times ... A "balanced looking statistic" is not the same as a balanced game and the best example is the Broodlord-Infestor problem in WoL, where the "counter" to this was the overused "dont let them get there" strategy. Unitwise there isnt much you can do against Fungal plus path-blocking-Broodlings and especially for Terrans the Vikings are somewhat useless after they have killed off the Broodlords. Advantages at certain times are BAD because they usually mean that one race will have the advantage in the "end game" and especially there the chances should be equal! I think we can use a bit more nuance here. It would be very, very boring if at any point in time each race has the equal opportunities. Slight differences make the game much more interesting. The production boost is offset by other race features. | ||
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wswas
16 Posts
[QUOTE]On April 07 2013 22:08 RampancyTW wrote: [QUOTE]On April 07 2013 20:01 Rabiator wrote: [QUOTE]On April 07 2013 17:04 wswas wrote: [QUOTE]On April 07 2013 15:27 Rabiator wrote: [QUOTE]On April 07 2013 15:08 Wingblade wrote: The asymmetric production speed boosts arent the only reason why Zerg have been favored in the late game. You have to look at the casters and you will notice that the Infestor is / was a ridiculously powerful caster which can focus all of its power in one small amount of time. BW didnt really have that level of power and I dont see where Protoss or Terrans have anything to compare with that. Even the Raven doesnt have that kind of power because its abilities are too expensive so you can't use your spells for a long time after you used one. Protoss dont even have an endgame caster unit and the High Templar is short ranged and its Psi Storm doesnt stack as the damage from Infested Terrans ... [/QUOTE] this is about as true as saying tanks are balanced on steppes of wa- oh wait you actually think that! how silly of me. zerg is not favored in lategame (or any other time of the game) anymore. terran completely dictates the flow of the game from start to finish. there is literally 0 capability for zerg to do anything aggressive that doesn't hurt zerg eco more than it hurts terrans. coupled with speedvacs and super cost efficient terran units throughout all game which makes it possible to just get 10 spare ocs when you feel like it. it has been the same way in wol but then zerg had imba infestors. infestor isn't imba anymore. in fact it's not even that good of a unit. the rest of the zerg arsenal has always been bad. muta ling bling was played in the past, sure, but it has always been a bad playstyle with sub 50% win rate. now we have the same ling bling and slightly faster mutas with better regen that doesn't c hange much in tvz while terran has way better anti ling bling muta army. still, zerg is FORCED to go mutas or he will just lose to a dedicated drop heavy style of play. there is simply no reason for terran to lose a tvz right now. it's not even that much about widow mines being too strong. muta ling bling is simply a weak playstyle that never worked unless zerg severely outplayed his terran opponent. this is as true now as it was before stephano popularized ling infestor. sure it makes for way more exciting games to watch, but it has always been terran favored. and that was with tanks not widow mines. also, about ravens: have you ever seen mass hots raven endgame vs zerg? it's hilarious. every single army composition that zerg can make melts in seconds traded for energy. so please don't say these things about ravens. the only problem is getting them in large enough numbers. they're like wol infestors vs terran only with a weirder transition that doesn't really make as much sense so you can't get them right away. high templars are really fucking good and i don't know what you're talking about. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On April 08 2013 00:02 Reborn8u wrote: One huge design decision I very strongly disagree with was the decision to include infinite "free" units. It makes sense from a lore perspective that zerg is the race has this but not from a game play or balance perspective. The race with the biggest economy, fastest reproduction, is the last race that needs infinite free units. Since all those summoned units have a life timer, they are not units in the way one normally uses the term "unit". A unit (except for the baneling) has the potential to deal any amount of damage. A summoned unit with a timer is quite different. It rather acts a bit similar to a very fast regeneration (since shots on the summoned unit will not hurt the summoner.) Summoned units force the opponent to make a decision: Kill the summons as an easy short-term solution or kill the summoner as a more costly, but long-term solution? On April 08 2013 00:02 Reborn8u wrote: HOTS is a great game, but a shadow of what it could have been if the design team made some better choices and more closely followed the lessons of BW earlier in SC2's development. I personally blame Dustin Browder for most of this, for almost the entirety of WOL his interviews showed again and again that he had no idea what he was talking about, yet was forceful in his misinformed philosophies. I always love when a player thinks he has a better understanding of the game than a game developer with years of professional experience and a big team behind him. We, as mere consumers, have no clue about the difficulties of creating a good game. If it would be so easy to create a good RTS as some TL posters think, we would had a lot of those game available. | ||
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wswas
16 Posts
[QUOTE]On April 08 2013 00:02 Reborn8u wrote: . If it would be so easy to create a good RTS as some TL posters think, we would had a lot of those game available. [/QUOTE] im not disagreeing with you but i think a big reason why we have so few rts is because it's kind of a niche genre nowadays. buuuuut i guess that's not really the discussion here. | ||
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Thor.Rush
Sweden702 Posts
- I also don't like that mines are replacing tanks - Oracles are ridiculously strong, and having to invest in ebay + turrets + bunker (for stalkers) so early is really bad. - Mech is countered too hard by vipers. - Hellbat drops are still too strong - I think reapers should require a techlab to make the reaper rushes less strong. Too much reaper rushing going on. TvZ and TvT - Ultras/infestor is incredibly strong. The zerg no longer has to be ahead in economy with this composition. | ||
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SlixSC
666 Posts
I still think there is something inherently wrong with a unit that can fly, has 35% more dps than a banshee, more health and builds up to 20 seconds faster than a banshee too (edit: hell they even move much faster than banshees too)! Oracles are pretty much banshees on crack and just breaking tvp early game for reasons mentioned earlier. | ||
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Sissors
1395 Posts
On April 08 2013 01:03 Thor.Rush wrote: - I think reapers should require a techlab to make the reaper rushes less strong. Too much reaper rushing going on. TvZ and TvT Then you need to change them back to their original form completely. It is not exactly unexpected, since the reaper is enormously nerved damage wise, but you can get them quicker, it has only two roles: Scout, and cheese unit. Adding tech lab requirement pretty much removes both roles, so they need more damage again. | ||
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Emzeeshady
Canada4203 Posts
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Fig
United States1324 Posts
On April 08 2013 01:58 SlixSC wrote: Going back to oracles again. I still think there is something inherently wrong with a unit that can fly, has 35% more dps than a banshee, more health and builds up to 20 seconds faster than a banshee too (edit: hell they even move much faster than banshees too)! Oracles are pretty much banshees on crack and just breaking tvp early game for reasons mentioned earlier. funny how you fail to mention the biggest weakness of the Oracle (the fact that you need energy to even attack with it), and you don't mention any of the things a banshee can do better (cloak, doesn't run out of energy to kill workers with, and can help win a base race.) Overall they are quite similar units. They even both have small lategame support roles, where the Oracle helps keep tabs on armies, while the Banshee helps deal with entrenched positions in TvTs and whatnot. The fact that Terrans barely use Banshees at all anymore is telling for what may happen to the Oracle as well. Although Terran's might not be using Banshees because they have so many other choices for harass throughout the game, whereas Protoss doesn't have that luxury. | ||
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SlixSC
666 Posts
On April 08 2013 02:17 Emzeeshady wrote: Well, the banshee's main strength is its cloak but I do agree with you to a certain extent. Right now they may be too good but they are kind of balancing out the op stuff Terran has (mines/turbovacs) to a certain extent. For now Protoss seems to be doing decent vs Terran (better then Zerg anyway) so I don't think that matchup should be tinkered with too soon. Right, but you need a turret vs. oracles regardless so cloak wouldn't even make that much of a difference anyway. and in all other areas oracles are superior to banshees in every single regard. faster movement speed, deal more damage, more health, build much faster and have 2 additional spells on top of that which can be used defensively. Like I said, oracles are banshees on crack. The two units are conceptually identical, but oracles are just superior. I would be more than happy to have speed medivacs nerfed if they heavily nerf oracles aswell, the unit is simply too strong (especially when compared to all other harrassment units in the game) @ Fig: I would be more than happy to trade 2 banshees for 1 oracle, wouldn't you? Realistically, the fact that the unit has energy isn't much of a disadvantage at all( and so do banshees by the way, so I don't really get your point). It's not like I have ever seen an oracle run out of energy before having killed 15 scvs. You have to remember that the unit deals insane damage (35% more dps than a banshee), so it is very unlikely that an oracle runs out of energy before having done significant damage. Another point I want to address is your baseless assertion that banshees aren't used much because terran has better options (not so much the assertion itself but your reasoning behind it: "because everything else is OP" lol, what a terrible argument, if this is your stance then please feel free to post on the blizzard forums instead, they will welcome you with open arms there). Well obviously, banshees at this point in time are the worst terran unit and absolutely useless in all matchups with maybe the exception of tvt. In TvZ zerg can now make spores without needing an evo chamber and in TvP protoss gets detection no matter what. They either have a robo or a stargate for oracles, they can scout with MSC and see banshees coming minutes in advance. Banshees are just absolutely useless (especially tvp, the combination of observer, nexus cannon or oracle, nexus cannon renders banshees obsolete) edit: Seriously if your stance is that Banshees aren't bad, it's just that all other terran units are OP we have absolutely nothing to talk about. This is a bnet forum level discussion I won't participate in. | ||
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BigAsia
Canada451 Posts
How many terran has: ![[image loading]](http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/239/d/f/forever_alone_by_foreveraloneplz.png) User was warned for this post | ||
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