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The only unit that can keep bio in check is the tank and the mixture does actually matter a lot, as tanks do stack insanely. I am bio player so I have a lot of experience. He does want different styles and units to be used, and as I said his change / propose will kill mech. If you cannot afford as many tanks, you will be weaker. You will be slower to take your 3rd base, your production will be slower (or come later) as your tanks are more expensive.
You will need to spread yourself thin, as you won't have as many tanks. Engagements will go worse if forced earlier etc pp. I can see forGG style working in the beginning, but eventually he gets tanks as well and he doesn't get a bad amount so yeah. While changes are good, you have to think about more than one match up. I really don't mind, I hate mech, but you can go ahead and take a very good mech map (Akilon) and apply those changes. It will brutally murder mech. I would change it but I don't know about the editor and my friend who could make it isn't online.
If you want us to make a map, propose changes, we will gladly fix all the stats and host the map so you can try it out.
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Isn't one of the core problems here is that the widow mine makes it really hard for the zerg to directly engage the bioball? The zerg might try to activate the mines by using baits, but the baits get gunned down too quickly. The widow mine's range makes it so that when you stack them up, they cover a ton of ground and have a ton of room for error on the terran's part.
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective. Perhaps reducing the widow mine's activation range would encourage the terran to position mines better rather than just spam them all over open areas.
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On August 30 2013 03:36 fdsdfg wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 02:59 Thezzy wrote:
Balance isn't about forcing players to go down certain paths, it is to provide equal choices with equal strengths and weaknesses. Perfect balance would be where going Bio, Mech or something in between would all be equally viable in all match-ups.
Bio would be mobile, but be vulnerable to splash damage and high-tech army compositions.
Mech would be incredibly strong at holding a position and having massive firepower, but lacking mobility and adaptability. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I wish you elaborated on this point a bit more. Currently, 4M (in TvZ) has a proper answer for pretty much anything Z can do. Marines and Mines are extremely cost-effective against Mutas and Zerglings, and decent at kiting Banelings. So it can fight well against muta/ling/bane. Against roach/hydra, 4M has a huge mobility advantage, and Z gets dropped to death without being able to force a proper engagement. Vipers have nothing good to abduct, and blinding cloud is useless against something so fast. Ultras are good, but still can get kited and heavily outmaneuvered, and are still not cost-effective against mines. Broodlords are so immobile they will never force a proper engagement. Swarmhosts cannot handle a 4m ball on the offensive or defensive. So that's pretty much all the compositions Zerg has, and the one that works best is ling/bling/muta, and eventually ultra. What SHOULD be the answer? What should the weakness to 4M be? Right now 4M in ZvT has all the advantage of a traditional 'tanks, turrets, and bunkers' terran defense, but it's mobile enough to put the same force on the offense within seconds. It has incredibly good drop mobility, and can secure map control with minimal supply. In ZvT, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 4M has no exploitable weakness. If it had one, what should it be?
Mass ultra. Or the ultimate unbeatable zerg composition, Ultra infestor hydra with baneling and queen support. Zerg deathball beats Terran deathball any day. Terran has to constantly trade and out macro zerg to prevent the unstoppable zerg deathball.
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On August 30 2013 03:36 fdsdfg wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 02:59 Thezzy wrote:
Balance isn't about forcing players to go down certain paths, it is to provide equal choices with equal strengths and weaknesses. Perfect balance would be where going Bio, Mech or something in between would all be equally viable in all match-ups.
Bio would be mobile, but be vulnerable to splash damage and high-tech army compositions.
Mech would be incredibly strong at holding a position and having massive firepower, but lacking mobility and adaptability. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I wish you elaborated on this point a bit more. Currently, 4M (in TvZ) has a proper answer for pretty much anything Z can do. Marines and Mines are extremely cost-effective against Mutas and Zerglings, and decent at kiting Banelings. So it can fight well against muta/ling/bane. Against roach/hydra, 4M has a huge mobility advantage, and Z gets dropped to death without being able to force a proper engagement. Vipers have nothing good to abduct, and blinding cloud is useless against something so fast. Ultras are good, but still can get kited and heavily outmaneuvered, and are still not cost-effective against mines. Broodlords are so immobile they will never force a proper engagement. Swarmhosts cannot handle a 4m ball on the offensive or defensive. So that's pretty much all the compositions Zerg has, and the one that works best is ling/bling/muta, and eventually ultra. What SHOULD be the answer? What should the weakness to 4M be? Right now 4M in ZvT has all the advantage of a traditional 'tanks, turrets, and bunkers' terran defense, but it's mobile enough to put the same force on the offense within seconds. It has incredibly good drop mobility, and can secure map control with minimal supply. In ZvT, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 4M has no exploitable weakness. If it had one, what should it be?
There is nothing wrong with a versatile composition having an answer to everything. That's what makes it standard.
The things we should talk about is:
1) whether it leads to balanced games
2) whether it leads to good gameplay
I think 1) could be achieved without balance changes, even if at the toplevel of Korea Terrans do have a tiny edge for some time now. Because I do believe Zergs are not playing as good as they could currently, as they are stuck in the Korean mentaility of playing dynamically.
For 2) I'm not sure. That's always a metagame question, yet I believe you can get a good feel for it from using unit testers (at least I haven't been disappointed by using unit testers). And that makes me believe there won't be huge jumps in game quality with the current unit balancing.
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:57 Lock0n wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:36 fdsdfg wrote:On August 30 2013 02:59 Thezzy wrote:
Balance isn't about forcing players to go down certain paths, it is to provide equal choices with equal strengths and weaknesses. Perfect balance would be where going Bio, Mech or something in between would all be equally viable in all match-ups.
Bio would be mobile, but be vulnerable to splash damage and high-tech army compositions.
Mech would be incredibly strong at holding a position and having massive firepower, but lacking mobility and adaptability. I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I wish you elaborated on this point a bit more. Currently, 4M (in TvZ) has a proper answer for pretty much anything Z can do. Marines and Mines are extremely cost-effective against Mutas and Zerglings, and decent at kiting Banelings. So it can fight well against muta/ling/bane. Against roach/hydra, 4M has a huge mobility advantage, and Z gets dropped to death without being able to force a proper engagement. Vipers have nothing good to abduct, and blinding cloud is useless against something so fast. Ultras are good, but still can get kited and heavily outmaneuvered, and are still not cost-effective against mines. Broodlords are so immobile they will never force a proper engagement. Swarmhosts cannot handle a 4m ball on the offensive or defensive. So that's pretty much all the compositions Zerg has, and the one that works best is ling/bling/muta, and eventually ultra. What SHOULD be the answer? What should the weakness to 4M be? Right now 4M in ZvT has all the advantage of a traditional 'tanks, turrets, and bunkers' terran defense, but it's mobile enough to put the same force on the offense within seconds. It has incredibly good drop mobility, and can secure map control with minimal supply. In ZvT, I don't think it's a stretch to say that 4M has no exploitable weakness. If it had one, what should it be? Mass ultra. Or the ultimate unbeatable zerg composition, Ultra infestor hydra with baneling and queen support. Zerg deathball beats Terran deathball any day. Terran has to constantly trade and out macro zerg to prevent the unstoppable zerg deathball.
Except that Terran deathball is BC Raven Ghost on split map. Mass ultra... good luck living until that if you are poor Korean zerg, trying to earn money with starcraft :D
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On August 30 2013 03:56 DigitalDevil wrote:
Isn't one of the core problems here is that the widow mine makes it really hard for the zerg to directly engage the bioball? The zerg might try to activate the mines by using baits, but the baits get gunned down too quickly. The widow mine's range makes it so that when you stack them up, they cover a ton of ground and have a ton of room for error on the terran's part.
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective. Perhaps reducing the widow mine's activation range would encourage the terran to position mines better rather than just spam them all over open areas.
Terrans don't "spam Mines all over open areas," and you do have to position carefully to get the most out of them; clump of Mines are for instance instantly punished by Banelings.
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On August 30 2013 04:00 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:56 DigitalDevil wrote:
Isn't one of the core problems here is that the widow mine makes it really hard for the zerg to directly engage the bioball? The zerg might try to activate the mines by using baits, but the baits get gunned down too quickly. The widow mine's range makes it so that when you stack them up, they cover a ton of ground and have a ton of room for error on the terran's part.
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective. Perhaps reducing the widow mine's activation range would encourage the terran to position mines better rather than just spam them all over open areas. Terrans don't "spam Mines all over open areas," and you do have to position carefully to get the most out of them; clump of Mines are for instance instantly punished by Banelings.
That is true but you can´t deny that setting up minefield and then controlling your marines is a lot easier that defusing that minefield. terran basically have automated baneling mines that have better range and can shoot up. Terran can usually also decide the place they want to fight and that way be on the offensive on the zerg´s sie of the map but still have a defensive stance cause they can force the zerg to attack them.
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On August 30 2013 04:00 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:56 DigitalDevil wrote:
Isn't one of the core problems here is that the widow mine makes it really hard for the zerg to directly engage the bioball? The zerg might try to activate the mines by using baits, but the baits get gunned down too quickly. The widow mine's range makes it so that when you stack them up, they cover a ton of ground and have a ton of room for error on the terran's part.
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective. Perhaps reducing the widow mine's activation range would encourage the terran to position mines better rather than just spam them all over open areas. Terrans don't "spam Mines all over open areas," and you do have to position carefully to get the most out of them; clump of Mines are for instance instantly punished by Banelings.
Of course I don't mean they are mindlessly placed. Doing a minor spread to maximize range and minimize baneling damage is already assumed. However, their 5 range allows for a lot of ground to be covered and the minor spread alone exponentially raises their effectiveness. It's much easier to catch armies that move around in the general area. Contrast that with baneling landmines where the positioning needs to be immaculate to do the same kind of damage. Not to mention widow mines are just more cost effective than banelings (need two for an effective landmine and they die).
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Uh, doesn't it seem appropriate that widow mines are more effective mines than burrowed banelings, given that that's actually the unit's intended design? Widow mines are pretty bad at charging into a clump of enemy units and doing maximum damage; that's banelings' specialty. Banelings are also better at chasing down workers, and at destroying buildings. But burrowing and acting as a mine is obviously more effective from the dedicated mine unit than from another unit that can kind of fill the role.
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On August 30 2013 04:25 ChristianS wrote:
Uh, doesn't it seem appropriate that widow mines are more effective mines than burrowed banelings, given that that's actually the unit's intended design? Widow mines are pretty bad at charging into a clump of enemy units and doing maximum damage; that's banelings' specialty. Banelings are also better at chasing down workers, and at destroying buildings. But burrowing and acting as a mine is obviously more effective from the dedicated mine unit than from another unit that can kind of fill the role.
Yes, that is its role. I'm not saying the effectiveness of the widow mine should be reduced to match that of the baneling landmine. The units have their own perks and downfalls. However, is it not fair to say that from how the matchup is currently being played out, the advantages the widow mine provides is far preferable to the advantages the baneling provides?
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On August 30 2013 03:56 DigitalDevil wrote:
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective.
Would you give up banelings for the ability to make widow mines though? I certainly wouldn't. The land mine ability of banelings is just one of the many aspects that make banelings great. The baneling mine is not the "equivalent" of the widow mine at all. It's okay for one to be stronger than the other.
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On August 30 2013 04:25 ChristianS wrote:
Uh, doesn't it seem appropriate that widow mines are more effective mines than burrowed banelings, given that that's actually the unit's intended design? Widow mines are pretty bad at charging into a clump of enemy units and doing maximum damage; that's banelings' specialty. Banelings are also better at chasing down workers, and at destroying buildings. But burrowing and acting as a mine is obviously more effective from the dedicated mine unit than from another unit that can kind of fill the role.
I don't think it's so much that it just having superior mechanics, as it is a more specialized unit (just like all of Terran units are more specialized), but the fact that the mechanics it has counters everything in a Zerg's arsenal so hard. The cloak requires a large amount of micro + investment to safely detect, the decent range outranges everything of Zerg's except upgraded hydras and broodlords, and the splash is exceptionally good against Zerg's anti-bio composition of ling/bling/muta.
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On August 30 2013 04:40 archwaykitten wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 03:56 DigitalDevil wrote:
If you consider the reverse scenario, the zerg's equivalent of the widow mine, a baneling landmine, has to be positioned very carefully to even be effective. Would you give up banelings for the ability to make widow mines though? I certainly wouldn't. The land mine ability of banelings is just one of the many aspects that make banelings great. The baneling mine is not the "equivalent" of the widow mine at all. It's okay for one to be stronger than the other.
I used equivalent in the sense that they offered similar functionality in that one area in order to provide a point of comparison, not that they are directly equivalent units. Obviously, lifting one unit and putting it into another race is shortsighted because it disregards the synergy with other units as well as unforeseen changes to the matchup. It could be better for one race or it could be worse, but there is no point theorycrafting this uncertainty.
In the areas of utility and synergy, the widow mine paired with bio medivac is certainly a much better composition than the zerg's muta ling bane.
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On August 29 2013 18:10 TheDwf wrote:Nice joke. Try to execute a harass opening like Hellions/Banshee vs Z or a Marines/Mines/Medivacs pressure vs P while managing your buildings and add-ons; can't wait to see you floating 1k while microing your units, or lose all of them when you watch in your main to lift buildings. You can also try one of those "easy" parade pushes and see if you maintain the insanely demanding regularity of the macro production cycles over several minuts while staying on top of your micro.
Nobody opens hellion/banshee... why risk a build like that when you can play a straight up 4m? Aside from that, try harassing with mutas (cant lose any mutas because of how much they cost), keep up on ling production, creep spread, injects, your front of the base, keeping a close eye on the T army to know when to make banelings (and making sure you always have enough banelings otherwise you just lose), avoiding mines with everything and targeting mines with mutas but making sure that overseers dont lag behind, and when you do lose banelings to morph your just hatched lings into more banelings to defend the parade push, etc.
Morphing banelings by themselves is practically harder than the T production cycle. If you dont keep up on morphing lings into banes quickly after they hatch vs parade pushes you can quickly fall behind and lose.
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I think many of the more interesting abilities can be seen as removing some restrictions from the game. From an extreme stance: chronoboost relieves you of time, medivacs of terrain, mules of workers, warpgate of reinforcing, larva of restrictions on unit production. I think it's tempting to play with this from a design point of view, since you are in some ways subverting the genre with potentially interesting results, but it's very risky.
I think it's important to make sure that all those abilities are strongly contained: there need to be trade offs, all races need to have them, and they should not be overly strong and dominant. In Brood War there were some genre breaking mechanics also, but they were often a weakness of the race, not a strength. Larva was more difficult to acquire in BW than SC2, dropships were harder to use than to defend (it's the opposite in SC2) etc.
I mean, it's inherently risky because you want to be as close to the edge while not jumping off the cliff. If you simply remove a restriction then at some point it just becomes boring and it's like losing out on something.
I think another interesting approach is to place restrictions on your opponent, like contaminate and forcefield. Forcefield of course is usually seen as an ability that makes you unable to micro and that makes sure that protoss always has favorable terrain, but it's two sides of the same coin. Good terrain for you is bad terrain for your opponent. It can be just as much seen as placing restrictions on your opponent (giving them extremely unfavorable terrain that's an enemy to them) as removing restrictions for yourself.
I haven't thought this through too much though.
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On August 30 2013 06:02 Grumbels wrote:
I think many of the more interesting abilities can be seen as removing some restrictions from the game. From an extreme stance: chronoboost relieves you of time, medivacs of terrain, mules of workers, warpgate of reinforcing, larva of restrictions on unit production. I think it's tempting to play with this from a design point of view, since you are in some ways subverting the genre with potentially interesting results, but it's very risky.
I think it's important to make sure that all those abilities are strongly contained: there need to be trade offs, all races need to have them, and they should not be overly strong and dominant. In Brood War there were some genre breaking mechanics also, but they were often a weakness of the race, not a strength. Larva was more difficult to acquire in BW than SC2, dropships were harder to use than to defend (it's the opposite in SC2) etc.
I mean, it's inherently risky because you want to be as close to the edge while not jumping off the cliff. If you simply remove a restriction then at some point it just becomes boring and it's like losing out on something.
I think another interesting approach is to place restrictions on your opponent, like contaminate and forcefield. Forcefield of course is usually seen as an ability that makes you unable to micro and that makes sure that protoss always has favorable terrain, but it's two sides of the same coin. Good terrain for you is bad terrain for your opponent. It can be just as much seen as placing restrictions on your opponent (giving them extremely unfavorable terrain that's an enemy to them) as removing restrictions for yourself.
I haven't thought this through too much though.
I think you're looking at this too high level, and losing sight of what's important. All of these are abilities that define the 'flavor' of a race, composition, or unit. Some make things easier for you, some make things harder for your opponent. Making decisions on the grand philosophy behind the presence of these abilities is missing 99% of the content that defines how these abilities work.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
One thing I found fascinating about Starcraft 2 is that it remained the "lore" throughout the high-level play. What I mean by this is that you often see the Zerg rushing at a Terran's position from all sides, trying to overwhelm him. You see Terrans fortifying a position and Zerg has to think twice if they want to attack there. Or even, Terran has their base camps and are slowly gaining ground throughout a match, while Zerg is trying to expand every which way and that disgusting creep is engulfing the map. Protoss, on the other hand came there to reclaim the map and are cautious at moving forward and like to be clumped up with enormous firepower to purify the map. Even Terran drops feel more awesome in SC2 than in BW because it kinda "fits" the Terrans to drop a small squad behind enemy lines and try to make something happen.
Why did I bring this up? For example, when I see Stephano's or Scarlett's surrounds on some maps, they look awesome. The game looks awesome and even if a Terran is in a sieged-up position, all the massive effects, microing units, chaos starts and even in the lore, if either race is trying to move out of the comfort of their base they have to be very careful with Zerg around. But Widow Mines turned this around. Zerg is the one that cannot engage wherever they want, nor can they engage whenever they want, their engagements have been cut enormously because Terran is the one who says "ok, I'm ready now, come at me or I win". And if the Zerg does come, they get obliterated by the Widow Mines.
As someone already said, 4M has all the tools to deal with whatever Zerg can throw at you (unless you do not micro your Marines and hug them Banelings). Currently, on ladder, I just allin every Terran I see, since I know I cannot win against 4M, one slight mistake and all of my Banelings get blown up.
I'd like someone from Blizzard to fix that animation they are using for HotS when Ultras and Lings are attacking a Siege Tank/Marine line and just put Widow Mines between the two.
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On August 30 2013 06:12 fdsdfg wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 06:02 Grumbels wrote:
I think many of the more interesting abilities can be seen as removing some restrictions from the game. From an extreme stance: chronoboost relieves you of time, medivacs of terrain, mules of workers, warpgate of reinforcing, larva of restrictions on unit production. I think it's tempting to play with this from a design point of view, since you are in some ways subverting the genre with potentially interesting results, but it's very risky.
I think it's important to make sure that all those abilities are strongly contained: there need to be trade offs, all races need to have them, and they should not be overly strong and dominant. In Brood War there were some genre breaking mechanics also, but they were often a weakness of the race, not a strength. Larva was more difficult to acquire in BW than SC2, dropships were harder to use than to defend (it's the opposite in SC2) etc.
I mean, it's inherently risky because you want to be as close to the edge while not jumping off the cliff. If you simply remove a restriction then at some point it just becomes boring and it's like losing out on something.
I think another interesting approach is to place restrictions on your opponent, like contaminate and forcefield. Forcefield of course is usually seen as an ability that makes you unable to micro and that makes sure that protoss always has favorable terrain, but it's two sides of the same coin. Good terrain for you is bad terrain for your opponent. It can be just as much seen as placing restrictions on your opponent (giving them extremely unfavorable terrain that's an enemy to them) as removing restrictions for yourself.
I haven't thought this through too much though. I think you're looking at this too high level, and losing sight of what's important. All of these are abilities that define the 'flavor' of a race, composition, or unit. Some make things easier for you, some make things harder for your opponent. Making decisions on the grand philosophy behind the presence of these abilities is missing 99% of the content that defines how these abilities work.
It's been my suspicion that Blizzard wanted to have larva be more plentiful to prevent new players from feeling frustration at not being able to build any units, as opposed to brood war where zerg production was quite complicated for beginners. Because larva allows you to freely max out on economy and ignore other aspects of the game (other races have restrictions on where you can spend your resources on due to their production building design) it has a risk factor associated with it that should be obvious to anyone that comes up with the ability from scratch. If, however, you simply accept it as a legacy mechanic that you want to preserve for the sequel it's easy to lose sight of these potential complications.
I have always felt that, say, warpgate and larva (in sc2) are just too powerful and they have you almost lose out on some dimension of the game because of their nature to remove restrictions. I like the design of those two abilities, but they have to be weaker so they don't threaten the stability of the game so much.
I would imagine that playing with subverting genre rules has been an inspiration for many of these abilities, I think designers are drawn to them because they seem inherently interesting as they enable some amount of 'looseness' in the design that's conductive to creativity. (I'm being a bit too speculative I guess) The danger is when the designers are so in love with how interesting their design is that they don't practice basic risk management and try to at least have strong trade-offs for these abilities.
I think the game could benefit from a pass where some of these type of abilities are looked at and toned down if necessary, I think that reverting to more basic rts gameplay with less subversion is a healthy starting point for the expansion. I think if the design of abilities is correct then the gameplay will show this type of behavior eventually, since the actual goal is not complete subversion of the design (core rts design is great after all) but rather to have some chaos within an existing framework to allow creativity to shine. i.e. you don't want to topple the framework and I think that if this doesn't prove true after several years of high level play then your first offenders should be toning down these abilities that remove restrictions and maybe experiment with new, hopefully improved, ones.
Sorry if this is super theoretical, I know that in the end I'm only saying: "if the gameplay is bad you have to make changes" but maybe it's a good way of looking at the issue.
edit:
I think it's worthwhile to find some theoretical aspects to abilities and take those to extremes, but it's tricky since you can end up losing any connection to the real world, so that none of the theories reflect any real concerns.
In any case, I felt that contaminate would be a good candidate for an ability to strengthen to create more balance, because you can apply it to your opponent's most powerful characteristics and weaken it. On the other hand, chronoboost is unbalancing, since you wouldn't use it to cover a weakness but rather to exploit a strength. But I guess you could say that you could also use contaminate to prevent your opponent from building a counter to something you are doing, which would cause imbalance, so it's a dubious thought.
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Not sure why people bring up Symbol v. Reality series as reflecting anything about balance. Both players were terrible by Code S standard and accordingly dropped out of their group. I suppose we could argue who played shittier between the two, but is it really productive?
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On August 30 2013 03:36 fdsdfg wrote:
Currently, 4M (in TvZ) has a proper answer for pretty much anything Z can do.
Having a flexible army which can deal with many / all things is a requirement, because otherwise the game would be pretty boring by determining wins through "build order losses" only. Those are the worst kinds of losses and have nothing to do with actual playing skill.
You also need to remember - in your Zerg point of view - that Terran does not have the flexibility to change production as much as Zerg has. The Zerg can switch from Zerglings/Roaches to a massive number of Mutalisks in one cycle, but Terrans are actually very limited in what they can "mass produce" with Reactors. Casters have always used "thats an army he cant lose" when they are talking about a mech army and getting a high Siege Tank count is hard while losing it is easy. Mech also does not really have a decent AA unit because the Thor is pretty much rubbish ... unless you play against a noob who clumps his Mutalisks. Even the single-target AA of the Thor (12 dps) deals less damage than a Goliath (20 damage every 22 frames with the usual playing speed at 30 frames per second or so) from BW.
Zerg usually dont need a flexible army, because they are dictating the pace. Lately though Zerg have lost the initiative against bio due to the "scare factor" of the Widow Mine and have been limited in their freedom of movement. They need to find some way to get back this freedom to go and threaten where they choose and personally I think attacking Factories or Contaminating them is a good way to start too. Limit the production of the WIdow Mine at all costs and in any way you can manage.
The easiest way to adjust the Widow Mine production to a lower number would be to fiddle around with the production speed, BUT Terrans could just build an additional Factory and simply get the same production again. The only change would be the early game and that is not a way to "fix the problem". Cost seems to be the real solution and increasing the cost from 25 to 50 gas might do the trick ... although an increase of 100% for the gas is pretty radical. Changing the trigger time of the mine or reducing its attack seem like bad suggestions, because they will nerf the mine in small and acceptable numbers AND it is too much luck based already. The solution has to be adjusting the amount of mines produced and we are currently in the same phase as we were when Zergs just built 25+ Infestors and won easily with Fungals and Infested Terrans. Reducing the damage AND the cooldown (to try and keep the power level at the same level) makes the unit too much like a Siege Tank AND it becomes too good due to being able to fire more often; the current high damage is total overkill on Zerglings and Banelings.
Once again we seem to be at a spot where the problem really exists only because of the number of units built and the super high concentration of units due to autoclumping and unlimited unit selection.
On August 30 2013 02:25 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2013 02:18 Rabiator wrote:On August 30 2013 02:01 Big J wrote:On August 30 2013 01:48 NarutO wrote:On August 30 2013 00:11 Big J wrote:On August 29 2013 23:32 CosmicSpiral wrote:On August 29 2013 23:26 bo1b wrote:On August 29 2013 23:11 CosmicSpiral wrote:On August 29 2013 22:56 bo1b wrote:On August 29 2013 22:45 CosmicSpiral wrote:
[quote]
That wasn't the original purpose of the unit. It was meant to be a way for zerg players to break a terran that was entrenched without waiting for hive tech or sacrificing their entire army. But now there's no reason for terrans to stay behind a wall of bunkers and siege tanks in the first place. But making those changes wouldn't remove that possibility, it would just take more skill, be more interesting to play, be more interesting to watch, and would allow people to play against the cooldown that the swarmhosts would have. Sort of like how zergs send in a zergling to bait siege tank fire. Locusts already have high DPS. They do twice as much base DPS as a marine. Locust health doesn't really play into the unit being too strong as a siege unit unless you mean lategame ZvZ. Everything else would be nice but compensating for troublesome design in the first place. And we haven't even talked about how poor SH synergy is with the basic zerg cast. You're probably right, I think I'm just clutching at straws in hope of a change towards more interesting units, and less a-movy units/boring units like the collosus/voidray/tempest/swarmhost/marauder/roach/hellbat etc You shouldn't have played SC2 in the first place. ;] Or generally any RTS games. There is basically no RTS game out there that has units that are really interesting in themselves. It's the unit relations that make units interesting. E.g. a Siege Tank in itself is not really an interesting unit. It can move, attack and siege. If my basic units have bigger range than the Siege Tank the relations simply won't make tankplay interesting. Or marine micro is only possible for as long as the marine has high speed and superior range to his enemies. The moment you fight marines against other singlefire units with similar speed and range it becomes nothing but an amove battle. etc. Broodwar Ghost, Broodwar Queen, Broodwar Defiler, Science Vessel all interesting  yeah, that's true. Spellcasters have a quite easier time being inherently interesting. Though again, Ghost and Queen weren't used that much due to lacking useful interactions against a lot of units/compositions. Spellcasters in SC2 have become less interesting due to the fact that they are a "mass unit". There was no smartcast in BW and thus you didnt have "blanket storms" across whole armies; each storm actually meant something AND took a bit of effort/skill on the part of the user, because you had to select one unit and use it. I would also add any units that required skill to use to the exciting ones and Reaver drops and 2-group Mutalisk could belong in that group. Another exciting/entertaining group of units is completely missing from SC2 and those are the "comical relief" ones: Spider Mines and Reaver shot .... which were both capable of "aaaahhhh" and "awwwwww" moments. "Imperfect" unit pathing made these two units / abilities rather unpredictable and thus exciting as a lottery. as always, predictable post that doesn't really respond to the topic I was talking about and just tries to force a discussion about SC2 game mechanisms.
As predictable as your post which totally ignores the influence of game mechanics on a unit being exciting. If the game mechanics are so unimportant why dont you PROVE THAT and make me shut up? If you cant you might want to shut up yourself with these comments about "game mechanics being irrelevant to the discussion".
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