|
Okay, so you're just saying that if EMP is harder to land, it will be more exciting when it does land. Okay, true. On the other hand, there will be a lot fewer EMPs, meaning a lot more TvP fights will just come down to lots of bio units shooting, and then either winning or losing, which is frequently seen as deathball-ey and boring. So even just talking about excitement level, it seems like overall you're not improving the game by making EMP less present.
I guess I don't see the point of trying to remove smart-casting from the game at this point, since it would take a lot of work, since lots of matchups depend pretty heavily on spells and now it would be necessary to rebalance everything around this. Would TvP be balanced if EMPs and storms were both way harder to land? Probably not, although I'm not sure which side it would favor (I suspect P, but I'm not sure). And even if you did all that work to rebalance the game around... what would you call it? dumb-casting? it's not clear that the game is even better when all is said and done. It's certainly less accessible.
When I was little and playing Brood War, I remember even having the thought of "This game is really fun! I could see myself getting really into this! But there's parts of this that are just archaic and dumb, and I don't really want to invest the time to learn how to make them work. Like when I'm using high templar, why do they all storm the same spot when I have them all selected and tell them to storm? The game should just have the closest one do it." I think I (and a lot of other people) would have been a lot more likely to invest heavily in BW (I just played casually, and never became a part of the community) if the UI had been a little more accessible, for instance MBS and smart-casting. So if we're having some kind of identity crisis because SC2 as an e-sport is shrinking, and we want to make changes to become more accessible, this doesn't seem like the way to go about it.
|
Uhm, when did you first play Brood War? For some reason I doubt that you picked up the game in 1998 and thought to yourself: "this is so archaic it's just embarrassing". :o
|
I played BW when it came out (and I was in middle school) and while it was a lot of fun, I don't think I would ever want to go back after playing SC2 - mainly because of the things SC2 made easier. MBS, custom hotkeys, worker rally, larger control groups, smartcast, etc. Every game I play, I would rather those things be in the game than not be in the game.
I've played a lot of fighting games competitively, and one of the things I miss when playing SC2 is that when I want something to happen, it just happens; I never even have to think about how it gets input. In SC2, splitting off a ling to trigger mines, spreading workers against banelings, keeping my infestors back while fungal-locking a pack of mutas, etc.
It's all doable, but it's all really hard. I often wish I could skip the part where I learn to be better at clicking on certain points in the screen, or moving the camera from location to location, and get right to the part where I'm making strategy decisions and trying to outthink my opponent.
I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I would be having less fun if any tasks were strictly more difficult to perform. It would lower the playing level of everyone, and I find higher-level play more interesting.
|
I was five when it was released, I wouldn't have used the term "archaic." And I didn't say it was embarrassing, I just said that it was a tedious enough mechanic that I didn't feel like it was worth it to invest a lot of time and learn to do it properly, when it so clearly could have been designed differently to not be such a pain. To be clear, I was absolutely terrible – I don't think I virtually ever built more than one SCV per mineral patch. It was probably around 2005 when I was playing a lot of Brood War, anyway. Warcraft 3 was out by then and I knew things like multiple building select could be a thing – so why weren't they?
|
On September 04 2013 08:38 fdsdfg wrote:
I played BW when it came out (and I was in middle school) and while it was a lot of fun, I don't think I would ever want to go back after playing SC2 - mainly because of the things SC2 made easier. MBS, custom hotkeys, worker rally, larger control groups, smartcast, etc. Every game I play, I would rather those things be in the game than not be in the game.
I've played a lot of fighting games competitively, and one of the things I miss when playing SC2 is that when I want something to happen, it just happens; I never even have to think about how it gets input. In SC2, splitting off a ling to trigger mines, spreading workers against banelings, keeping my infestors back while fungal-locking a pack of mutas, etc.
It's all doable, but it's all really hard. I often wish I could skip the part where I learn to be better at clicking on certain points in the screen, or moving the camera from location to location, and get right to the part where I'm making strategy decisions and trying to outthink my opponent.
I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I would be having less fun if any tasks were strictly more difficult to perform. It would lower the playing level of everyone, and I find higher-level play more interesting.
You dont realize then that "the things SC2 made easier" - some of them - are actually the reason why it is so crappy and hard to balance?
The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though.
Concerning Smartcast you should think about why Fungal Growth had become so terribly imbalanced. Was it due to the design of the spell? Not really. It was only because people started getting 25+ Infestors and ALWAYS had enough energy for a Fungal. Without Smartcast you would have to select individual Infestors for each of them, but with it there practically was no effort involved in using that over and over and over again ... which is really bad to have for a crowd control spell. There is a reason why Blizzard nerfed crowd control effects for PvP in WoW ... they are just too strong, but in SC2 they are fine? Nope.
SC2 ISNT a fighting game. Its about STRATEGY (well it should be) and that requires thinking and planning ahead and using a strategy to win rather than only reflexes. Sure enough micro and quick reflexes are important as well, but it should neither be dominant nor non-existant. The focus on mass battles in SC2 has completely killed the need for micro (except in the form of pushing your clumps into a better offensive position) due to the maximized killing speed.
To be able to balance the game well you NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield and the easiest example to explain this is the "Stalker vs Marine" one. Both units have roughly the same dps, but for the cost of a Stalker you get 3 Marines. Due to the fact that you get 2-3 Marines into the same space as a Stalker you have a Marine clump with approximately three times the dps of an equally expensive (completely ignoring the gas here) Stalker clump. The end result is that in a fight with larger clumps the Stalkers will lose, because the dps of the Marine clump is high enough to kill them fast while in a "1 Stalker vs 3 Marines" battle you can run your Stalker away and regenerate some shields and then take a shot at a Marine and kite them. Thus you absolutely NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield ... and limited unit selection is one of the tools to do it!
|
@Rabiator: Afraid of replying to my last comment, like always when someone actually does comment on your "BW was easier than SC2" and "prove me wrong" stuff?
|
On September 04 2013 15:16 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 08:38 fdsdfg wrote:
I played BW when it came out (and I was in middle school) and while it was a lot of fun, I don't think I would ever want to go back after playing SC2 - mainly because of the things SC2 made easier. MBS, custom hotkeys, worker rally, larger control groups, smartcast, etc. Every game I play, I would rather those things be in the game than not be in the game.
I've played a lot of fighting games competitively, and one of the things I miss when playing SC2 is that when I want something to happen, it just happens; I never even have to think about how it gets input. In SC2, splitting off a ling to trigger mines, spreading workers against banelings, keeping my infestors back while fungal-locking a pack of mutas, etc.
It's all doable, but it's all really hard. I often wish I could skip the part where I learn to be better at clicking on certain points in the screen, or moving the camera from location to location, and get right to the part where I'm making strategy decisions and trying to outthink my opponent.
I love the game, don't get me wrong, but I would be having less fun if any tasks were strictly more difficult to perform. It would lower the playing level of everyone, and I find higher-level play more interesting. You dont realize then that "the things SC2 made easier" - some of them - are actually the reason why it is so crappy and hard to balance?
You don't realize that this is an *opinion*, not a proven fact? I don't understand how people use words like "crappy" and try to pretend there's any amount of objectivity to that statement.
The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though.
What is this "reaction time for a defender" business? Reaction time is from when you see the enemy approaching to when you do something about it. High DPS is only in play once the battle starts, and by the time the battle starts, you really should have already had time to react. Unless you're talking about drops, in which case there's usually not enough units dropping for unit formations to impact DPS.
Concerning Smartcast you should think about why Fungal Growth had become so terribly imbalanced. Was it due to the design of the spell? Not really. It was only because people started getting 25+ Infestors and ALWAYS had enough energy for a Fungal. Without Smartcast you would have to select individual Infestors for each of them, but with it there practically was no effort involved in using that over and over and over again ... which is really bad to have for a crowd control spell. There is a reason why Blizzard nerfed crowd control effects for PvP in WoW ... they are just too strong, but in SC2 they are fine? Nope.
Fungal growth was designed with the SC2 engine in mind. It has a lot less damage output than AoE spells in a lot of other games for that exact reason (It takes a lot of fungals to equal the damage of a single Plague). The reason fungal was so strong wasn't the spell itself; fungal was balanced enough before hive tech. But then when the Zerg got brood lords fungal became way stronger because you could stop the opponent from approaching your brood lords (which still would have been a problem even without smart casting).
SC2 ISNT a fighting game. Its about STRATEGY (well it should be) and that requires thinking and planning ahead and using a strategy to win rather than only reflexes. Sure enough micro and quick reflexes are important as well, but it should neither be dominant nor non-existant. The focus on mass battles in SC2 has completely killed the need for micro (except in the form of pushing your clumps into a better offensive position) due to the maximized killing speed.
Fighting games are about strategy, too. Sure, a player with faster reflexes can beat out a slower player a lot of times, just like a player with higher APM can often destroy a low-APM player by either micro-ing better or by attacking on multiple fronts. But at the top level of fighting games, it stops being the faster player that wins. Instead games tend to be won on strategy and mind games.
Also, you keep pushing this idea that as battles get bigger, the need to micro shrinks. The bigger the battle, the more units there are to control. It also becomes more important to make AoE spells and units work, which in turn makes AoE denial more important, too. The only time big battles don't involve any micro is if both sides choose a composition of high-DPS, single-target damage ranged units (e.g. roach/hydra, marine/marauder, etc). If only one side chooses such a composition, then micro becomes the most important way of winning games (for instance, marine/marauder is quite micro intensive versus zealot/archon, ling/bling, etc.)
To be able to balance the game well you NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield and the easiest example to explain this is the "Stalker vs Marine" one. Both units have roughly the same dps, but for the cost of a Stalker you get 3 Marines. Due to the fact that you get 2-3 Marines into the same space as a Stalker you have a Marine clump with approximately three times the dps of an equally expensive (completely ignoring the gas here) Stalker clump. The end result is that in a fight with larger clumps the Stalkers will lose, because the dps of the Marine clump is high enough to kill them fast while in a "1 Stalker vs 3 Marines" battle you can run your Stalker away and regenerate some shields and then take a shot at a Marine and kite them. Thus you absolutely NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield ... and limited unit selection is one of the tools to do it! The bolded bit is pure assertion on your part. Yes, marines will tend to out-DPS stalkers. Yet at no point do you indicate why this is a balance problem. Different units scale better than others. Stalkers don't scale very well. Marines scale better. Colossi scale even better than that. Yeah, you can micro 1 stalker against 3 marines because the marines don't have stim or combat shield and there's no marauders with them. If Terrans stopped getting stim and marauders, you could do that lategame with big packs of blink stalkers, too. You don't even need to regenerate shields if you do it right, because technically you can take the shot, turn around, and run away in the time it takes the marine to close the gap and start shooting.
Unit selection limit wouldn't even necessarily change the clumpedness anyway. If its advantageous to be clumped, you can still clump with a 12-unit selection limit. If it's not advantageous to be clumped, you can not be clumped, but you can do that with unlimited selection just by splitting. If you change unit pathing back to the days where none of the units are aware that the other units are moving, and units can only move in 8 directions at any given time so they can't take a straight line to a destination, then sure, they'll declump. But that's not necessary to balance. SC2 has been plenty balanced at times, and it hasn't been more volatile than BW was. In fact, probably less so.
|
I actually wish SC2 bashing would be treated just like LoL bashing on these forums. You can't run around and tell everybody how "LoL is crap" etc. all day here on TL, yet somehow it's OK that some person opens that way about SC2 in each of his posts.
|
The "BW is better" faction on TL is bizarre. They're disproportionately represented here relative to the SC community as a whole, I think. And sometimes they have complaints about specific units or spells in SC2, but usually it's just they wish the UI were more archaic because they think it promoted interesting strategy. All of that is reasonable, I suppose, even if I don't agree.
I guess the part I don't understand is, whether or not the archaic UI's made games better, anyone who looks at things realistically understands they're not coming back. If a modern gamer plays a game that is going out of its way to make the UI abstruse, they're going to get frustrated and quit, because that kind of thing doesn't fly any more. If Psi Storm doesn't stack, there's no reason for boxing your templars and storming a spot to make all of them storm there. If you implement that, you're going out of your way to make the game harder to control, and people hate you when you do that. So once it becomes clear that whether you like it or not, developers aren't going to start doing that... what's the point of complaining about it all the time? What are you actually going to accomplish?
|
On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +To be able to balance the game well you NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield and the easiest example to explain this is the "Stalker vs Marine" one. Both units have roughly the same dps, but for the cost of a Stalker you get 3 Marines. Due to the fact that you get 2-3 Marines into the same space as a Stalker you have a Marine clump with approximately three times the dps of an equally expensive (completely ignoring the gas here) Stalker clump. The end result is that in a fight with larger clumps the Stalkers will lose, because the dps of the Marine clump is high enough to kill them fast while in a "1 Stalker vs 3 Marines" battle you can run your Stalker away and regenerate some shields and then take a shot at a Marine and kite them. Thus you absolutely NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield ... and limited unit selection is one of the tools to do it! The bolded bit is pure assertion on your part. Yes, marines will tend to out-DPS stalkers. Yet at no point do you indicate why this is a balance problem. Different units scale better than others. Stalkers don't scale very well. Marines scale better. Colossi scale even better than that. Yeah, you can micro 1 stalker against 3 marines because the marines don't have stim or combat shield and there's no marauders with them. If Terrans stopped getting stim and marauders, you could do that lategame with big packs of blink stalkers, too. You don't even need to regenerate shields if you do it right, because technically you can take the shot, turn around, and run away in the time it takes the marine to close the gap and start shooting. Unit selection limit wouldn't even necessarily change the clumpedness anyway. If its advantageous to be clumped, you can still clump with a 12-unit selection limit. If it's not advantageous to be clumped, you can not be clumped, but you can do that with unlimited selection just by splitting. If you change unit pathing back to the days where none of the units are aware that the other units are moving, and units can only move in 8 directions at any given time so they can't take a straight line to a destination, then sure, they'll declump. But that's not necessary to balance. SC2 has been plenty balanced at times, and it hasn't been more volatile than BW was. In fact, probably less so.
Umm ... and here I was assuming that people had basic skills at math.
It should be OBVIOUS that it is "unfair" for Protoss that their units have "advantages" [shield regeneration] which are irrelevant in a massive battle because the massive dps make microing individual units impossible and thus pointless.
It should be OBVIOUS that it is "unfair" for Protoss that they NEED TO USE and HAVE Forcefield and Blink as abilities.
My "Stalker vs. Marines" comparisons always assume basic units and thus include no Stim or other stuff. The basic difference should be enough "proof" of the problem that the "balance" shifts from "yeah, fairly balanced" for a 1 Stalker vs 3 Marines battle to "totally in favor of Marines" when you get a large clump ... this is a BALANCE SHIFT which can not be changed by adjusting the ststs of the units and it should be OBVIOUS.
On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +Concerning Smartcast you should think about why Fungal Growth had become so terribly imbalanced. Was it due to the design of the spell? Not really. It was only because people started getting 25+ Infestors and ALWAYS had enough energy for a Fungal. Without Smartcast you would have to select individual Infestors for each of them, but with it there practically was no effort involved in using that over and over and over again ... which is really bad to have for a crowd control spell. There is a reason why Blizzard nerfed crowd control effects for PvP in WoW ... they are just too strong, but in SC2 they are fine? Nope. Fungal growth was designed with the SC2 engine in mind. It has a lot less damage output than AoE spells in a lot of other games for that exact reason (It takes a lot of fungals to equal the damage of a single Plague). The reason fungal was so strong wasn't the spell itself; fungal was balanced enough before hive tech. But then when the Zerg got brood lords fungal became way stronger because you could stop the opponent from approaching your brood lords (which still would have been a problem even without smart casting).
Come on ... dont be stupid and assume that the damage is the bad part about Fungal ... it is the STUN, because in SC2 mobility is very important and being able to deny the ability to flee is simply awesome.
Do you really think that the devs considered everything? If they had they would never have had to add a balance patch afterwards. They are only humans too and make mistakes.
|
On September 04 2013 16:18 ChristianS wrote:
The "BW is better" faction on TL is bizarre. They're disproportionately represented here relative to the SC community as a whole, I think. And sometimes they have complaints about specific units or spells in SC2, but usually it's just they wish the UI were more archaic because they think it promoted interesting strategy. All of that is reasonable, I suppose, even if I don't agree.
I guess the part I don't understand is, whether or not the archaic UI's made games better, anyone who looks at things realistically understands they're not coming back. If a modern gamer plays a game that is going out of its way to make the UI abstruse, they're going to get frustrated and quit, because that kind of thing doesn't fly any more. If Psi Storm doesn't stack, there's no reason for boxing your templars and storming a spot to make all of them storm there. If you implement that, you're going out of your way to make the game harder to control, and people hate you when you do that. So once it becomes clear that whether you like it or not, developers aren't going to start doing that... what's the point of complaining about it all the time? What are you actually going to accomplish?
Oh, i have no problem with people that think "BW is better". It's different, and different things always attract different tastes. I mean, even if those people were in the majority (which they aren't, just simply for the fact that much more people play/watch SC2 than have played/watched BW) and therefore would have a much greater claim to the things they are saying than they have now (note, I'm not saying that "more people" means that those are right in a discussion of tastes).
What bothers me is that people are allowed to start posts with "why this game is so crappy". No, it's not crappy. Such people may even have a point that it could be better if certain changes were implemented (e.g. I agree with Barrin's old post on balancing around maps with Fewer Resources per Base). But improving something doesn't mean that the thing was bad/crappy/shit before, and putting it that way is simply game bashing. And especially if it is done repeatetly, it gets very annoying.
|
On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though. What is this "reaction time for a defender" business? Reaction time is from when you see the enemy approaching to when you do something about it. High DPS is only in play once the battle starts, and by the time the battle starts, you really should have already had time to react. Unless you're talking about drops, in which case there's usually not enough units dropping for unit formations to impact DPS.
Just look at how long it took to kill a group of units in BW and compare the length of a battle in SC2. In BW the unit density was LOW and as a consequense the "kill speed" was equally low ... which gave the defender (or rather the loser) some time to react and adjust his units. In SC2 many fights betwee much larger armies are over in seconds ... and this means there is a very very short reaction time. The classic example is Marine splitting vs Banelings. Sure enough a progamer will have no problem doing the right thing in half a second - he trains this stuff all day after all - but what about those who only play a few games each day? This "extremely low reaction time" is very bad design, because it means the games are less fun for the not-so-pro players. Losing a game isnt bad, but you need at least have had a chance to affect the outcome. Fungal, Forcefield, Abduct, .... lots of effects are in SC2 which allow no counter and you have to "pre-defend" against them.
BW didnt have this problem because the unit density was not as high ...
|
On September 04 2013 16:18 ChristianS wrote:
The "BW is better" faction on TL is bizarre. They're disproportionately represented here relative to the SC community as a whole, I think. And sometimes they have complaints about specific units or spells in SC2, but usually it's just they wish the UI were more archaic because they think it promoted interesting strategy. All of that is reasonable, I suppose, even if I don't agree.
I guess the part I don't understand is, whether or not the archaic UI's made games better, anyone who looks at things realistically understands they're not coming back. If a modern gamer plays a game that is going out of its way to make the UI abstruse, they're going to get frustrated and quit, because that kind of thing doesn't fly any more. If Psi Storm doesn't stack, there's no reason for boxing your templars and storming a spot to make all of them storm there. If you implement that, you're going out of your way to make the game harder to control, and people hate you when you do that. So once it becomes clear that whether you like it or not, developers aren't going to start doing that... what's the point of complaining about it all the time? What are you actually going to accomplish?
It actually works both ways. On one hand, your reducing the skill ceiling cap but on the other, your making it easier for the casuals. To me its sort of like a double edged sword because you can't have the best of both worlds.
BW was an interesting case because the ingame UI which by today's standards is considered to be very archaic and counter intuitive (this actually is debatable and often reminds me of this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU) is one of the cruical part of the formula that made BW withstand the test of time in the pro-gaming scene.
In BW, you could differentiate yourself as a micro orientated player or a pure macro player or bit of both. The UI allowed this to happen and as a spectator you could clearly see what type of a progamer they were based on their micro control or macro. Pros could clearly differentiate themselves with others from mechanics alone e.g. Boxer as oppose to Oov.
The UI also allowed unbelievable OP spells to be in the game (not watered down like SC2) with devastating effect. Every viewer knows that if storms are casted, things were going to literally die and get shredded. But what made it even more spectacular is that you know the pros were selecting each and every HT individually to get the storms off..
But funnily enough, this didn't mean that massing spell casters or "rush to them" (with the exception of science vessels) were a viable strategy. They simply remained as a mid/late game support units or sometimes even ignored all together as it was more effective to have more normal troops during the heat of a frantic game. This points to another important BW quality. Your core troops have much more emphasis in the game than the spell casters. That is why I always find it strange to talk about "tiers" in SC because this just doesn't work like it does in war3.
But going back to the topic of UI, for a casual, its frustrating to no end and its understandable because I felt the same. But as a spectator it was simply unreal when storms were somehow all over the screen.
The last bit of the UI comes to unit selection. I personally think this is a good idea because controlling one big army is going to be hard vs 3~4 split mini armies. It works against deathballs, encourages more skirmishes and much more lasting battles seeing as the units will stream line in instead of all being balled up. The pathing in BW also effected this quite abit but its something that should be at least thought about vs because its more convenient for the casual player.
I tend to think Blizzard Dev team overlooked on how pathing, UI and all the other aspects of the game engine indirectly affected game balance and design. Its only now that they fully understand the drawbacks of what they decided was "good" and an improvement to BW at the time of their development phase..
On a side note.. some spells in BW can actually be smartcasted like the dark archons feedback (correct me if im wrong).
|
On September 04 2013 16:31 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:To be able to balance the game well you NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield and the easiest example to explain this is the "Stalker vs Marine" one. Both units have roughly the same dps, but for the cost of a Stalker you get 3 Marines. Due to the fact that you get 2-3 Marines into the same space as a Stalker you have a Marine clump with approximately three times the dps of an equally expensive (completely ignoring the gas here) Stalker clump. The end result is that in a fight with larger clumps the Stalkers will lose, because the dps of the Marine clump is high enough to kill them fast while in a "1 Stalker vs 3 Marines" battle you can run your Stalker away and regenerate some shields and then take a shot at a Marine and kite them. Thus you absolutely NEED a limit on the unit density on the battlefield ... and limited unit selection is one of the tools to do it! The bolded bit is pure assertion on your part. Yes, marines will tend to out-DPS stalkers. Yet at no point do you indicate why this is a balance problem. Different units scale better than others. Stalkers don't scale very well. Marines scale better. Colossi scale even better than that. Yeah, you can micro 1 stalker against 3 marines because the marines don't have stim or combat shield and there's no marauders with them. If Terrans stopped getting stim and marauders, you could do that lategame with big packs of blink stalkers, too. You don't even need to regenerate shields if you do it right, because technically you can take the shot, turn around, and run away in the time it takes the marine to close the gap and start shooting. Unit selection limit wouldn't even necessarily change the clumpedness anyway. If its advantageous to be clumped, you can still clump with a 12-unit selection limit. If it's not advantageous to be clumped, you can not be clumped, but you can do that with unlimited selection just by splitting. If you change unit pathing back to the days where none of the units are aware that the other units are moving, and units can only move in 8 directions at any given time so they can't take a straight line to a destination, then sure, they'll declump. But that's not necessary to balance. SC2 has been plenty balanced at times, and it hasn't been more volatile than BW was. In fact, probably less so. Umm ... and here I was assuming that people had basic skills at math. It should be OBVIOUS that it is "unfair" for Protoss that their units have "advantages" [shield regeneration] which are irrelevant in a massive battle because the massive dps make microing individual units impossible and thus pointless. It should be OBVIOUS that it is "unfair" for Protoss that they NEED TO USE and HAVE Forcefield and Blink as abilities. My "Stalker vs. Marines" comparisons always assume basic units and thus include no Stim or other stuff. The basic difference should be enough "proof" of the problem that the "balance" shifts from "yeah, fairly balanced" for a 1 Stalker vs 3 Marines battle to "totally in favor of Marines" when you get a large clump ... this is a BALANCE SHIFT which can not be changed by adjusting the ststs of the units and it should be OBVIOUS. Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:Concerning Smartcast you should think about why Fungal Growth had become so terribly imbalanced. Was it due to the design of the spell? Not really. It was only because people started getting 25+ Infestors and ALWAYS had enough energy for a Fungal. Without Smartcast you would have to select individual Infestors for each of them, but with it there practically was no effort involved in using that over and over and over again ... which is really bad to have for a crowd control spell. There is a reason why Blizzard nerfed crowd control effects for PvP in WoW ... they are just too strong, but in SC2 they are fine? Nope. Fungal growth was designed with the SC2 engine in mind. It has a lot less damage output than AoE spells in a lot of other games for that exact reason (It takes a lot of fungals to equal the damage of a single Plague). The reason fungal was so strong wasn't the spell itself; fungal was balanced enough before hive tech. But then when the Zerg got brood lords fungal became way stronger because you could stop the opponent from approaching your brood lords (which still would have been a problem even without smart casting). Come on ... dont be stupid and assume that the damage is the bad part about Fungal ... it is the STUN, because in SC2 mobility is very important and being able to deny the ability to flee is simply awesome. Do you really think that the devs considered everything? If they had they would never have had to add a balance patch afterwards. They are only humans too and make mistakes.
Why is it imbalanced that some units scale better than others? The way a unit scales as armies get bigger depends on damage, range, and collision radius (smaller collision radius -> scales better in big fights). Notably it doesn't really depend on hit points (that is, a hit point advantage becomes less important as army sizes get bigger). Then you add in AoE, and you get a relationship in the other direction – suddenly, larger collision radii scale better than small ones. Pretty much anything AoE scales better than anything single-target, so the relatively few AoE options for Terran are what make lategame battles so difficult (that's why you can't survive without EMP).
But what's "unfair" about this? You claim this is a conclusion of basic math, but it just sounds to me like some units are good in small numbers, and other units are good in large numbers. That's a perfectly acceptable strategic fact (and one that was just as true in BW, by the way). Siege tanks are much better in large numbers, because they have high range, high damage, and AoE. Roaches are better in small numbers, because they have lots of hit points, but low DPS, low range, and a fairly big collision radius. If Protoss has abilities like blink and force field, why shouldn't they have to use them?
And yes, shield regeneration is less important in big battles. So is medivac healing. Healing effects are always diminished by scenarios where DPS is high. That's part of why with MMM you want to do lots of small fights all over the map, rather than one big fight – the smaller the fight, the more effectively medivac healing can keep up with the enemy's damage output.
Of course the devs don't think of everything. But from the beginning of SC2 they worked on balancing fungal with the unit pathing and unlimited unit selection as a given. That's why the damage component was so low at first. Then they decided to buff the DPS by having it act over 4 seconds instead of 8, which bumped the DPS so high they actually had to nerf it later. Both damage and stun are quite powerful aspects of the spell, but neither were especially broken until combined with the brood lord (in this case, yes, the stun was the important part, not the damage).
Incidentally, fungal is pretty good for preventing your opponent from advancing, but not all that good for preventing them from retreating. In order to be able to prevent him from retreating, you have to either have your infestors so far forward that they're really vulnerable, or you have to flank with them. Neither is all that ideal.
|
Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well.
|
Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 04 2013 16:36 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:18 ChristianS wrote:
The "BW is better" faction on TL is bizarre. They're disproportionately represented here relative to the SC community as a whole, I think. And sometimes they have complaints about specific units or spells in SC2, but usually it's just they wish the UI were more archaic because they think it promoted interesting strategy. All of that is reasonable, I suppose, even if I don't agree.
I guess the part I don't understand is, whether or not the archaic UI's made games better, anyone who looks at things realistically understands they're not coming back. If a modern gamer plays a game that is going out of its way to make the UI abstruse, they're going to get frustrated and quit, because that kind of thing doesn't fly any more. If Psi Storm doesn't stack, there's no reason for boxing your templars and storming a spot to make all of them storm there. If you implement that, you're going out of your way to make the game harder to control, and people hate you when you do that. So once it becomes clear that whether you like it or not, developers aren't going to start doing that... what's the point of complaining about it all the time? What are you actually going to accomplish? Oh, i have no problem with people that think "BW is better". It's different, and different things always attract different tastes. I mean, even if those people were in the majority ( which they aren't, just simply for the fact that much more people play/watch SC2 than have played/watched BW) and therefore would have a much greater claim to the things they are saying than they have now (note, I'm not saying that "more people" means that those are right in a discussion of tastes). What bothers me is that people are allowed to start posts with "why this game is so crappy". No, it's not crappy. Such people may even have a point that it could be better if certain changes were implemented (e.g. I agree with Barrin's old post on balancing around maps with Fewer Resources per Base). But improving something doesn't mean that the thing was bad/crappy/shit before, and putting it that way is simply game bashing. And especially if it is done repeatetly, it gets very annoying.
Less people watched BW just because they simply didn’t have internet at that time or it was too slow and pro scene and esport just didn’t exist.
Blizzard spends millions to promote SC2 as esport.
How much money did it spend to promote BW as esport? – Zero!
|
On September 04 2013 18:50 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:36 Big J wrote:On September 04 2013 16:18 ChristianS wrote:
The "BW is better" faction on TL is bizarre. They're disproportionately represented here relative to the SC community as a whole, I think. And sometimes they have complaints about specific units or spells in SC2, but usually it's just they wish the UI were more archaic because they think it promoted interesting strategy. All of that is reasonable, I suppose, even if I don't agree.
I guess the part I don't understand is, whether or not the archaic UI's made games better, anyone who looks at things realistically understands they're not coming back. If a modern gamer plays a game that is going out of its way to make the UI abstruse, they're going to get frustrated and quit, because that kind of thing doesn't fly any more. If Psi Storm doesn't stack, there's no reason for boxing your templars and storming a spot to make all of them storm there. If you implement that, you're going out of your way to make the game harder to control, and people hate you when you do that. So once it becomes clear that whether you like it or not, developers aren't going to start doing that... what's the point of complaining about it all the time? What are you actually going to accomplish? Oh, i have no problem with people that think "BW is better". It's different, and different things always attract different tastes. I mean, even if those people were in the majority ( which they aren't, just simply for the fact that much more people play/watch SC2 than have played/watched BW) and therefore would have a much greater claim to the things they are saying than they have now (note, I'm not saying that "more people" means that those are right in a discussion of tastes). What bothers me is that people are allowed to start posts with "why this game is so crappy". No, it's not crappy. Such people may even have a point that it could be better if certain changes were implemented (e.g. I agree with Barrin's old post on balancing around maps with Fewer Resources per Base). But improving something doesn't mean that the thing was bad/crappy/shit before, and putting it that way is simply game bashing. And especially if it is done repeatetly, it gets very annoying. Less people watched BW just because they simply didn’t have internet at that time or it was too slow and pro scene and esport just didn’t exist. Blizzard spends millions to promote SC2 as esport. How much money did it spend to promote BW as esport? – Zero!
I agree that the situations are not comparable. But does it matter for my argument what is the reason for that fact? Not at all.
|
Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 04 2013 18:33 ysnake wrote:
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well.
That is the main reason I stopped watching SC2.
It’s just like a football game that ends not after full time, but when any team scores first.
|
On September 04 2013 18:33 ysnake wrote:
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well.
Comebacks are only possible if the winning side makes huge mistakes or if the game is very volatile. The first does not happen a lot in pro games because those guys do not make a lot of mistakes, and the second would be pretty bad for every competitive game.
|
Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 04 2013 19:26 submarine wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 18:33 ysnake wrote:
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well. Comebacks are only possible if the winning side makes huge mistakes or if the game is very volatile. The first does not happen a lot in pro games because those guys do not make a lot of mistakes, and the second would be pretty bad for every competitive game.
There is third option it is when there is defender advantage in the game. In BW defender had advantage therefore comebacks were possible there. In SC2 its attacker who has the advantage thus no comebacks.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
