On November 18 2011 07:29 Golgotha wrote: i have to agree with the fact that the replicator is such an un-original idea.
I also think it is highly idiotic to take out the tempest for carrier. buff carrier but how can you get rid of it?! blizz even said during sc2 beta that carrier was a unit that HAD to be in the game.
I completely feel this way about the Carrier, although certainly not about the general qq of the OP. When you're 15, and playing a game that you can just sense in your budding gamer mind is going to be freaking amazing and better than Warcraft II, you open that user manual and start reading. You read about how the terrans came to exist in the Koprulu sector and you know there are just incredibly delightful ways to destroy things ahead.
The manual speaks of the basic units, the marine with his trusty gauss rifle. It goes on to firebats, whetting your appetite. You're like, "sweet, but where are the even more kickass units?" You read on, and they show you the siege tank and eventually the battlecruiser. Holy crap, and that's just the weak terrans. Zerg are supposed to be more advanced and Protoss even beyond them.
You retain barely enough self control to read through every lower tech unit and the history of each race, basically the whole manual, but (and I don't remember the exact order) what you really wanna see is what insane high tech and ultimate units the Protoss deploy. Terrans had BCs and ultralisks for Zerg. You finally reach it: The Carrier. This unit, along with the Arbiter, are the ultimate expressions of the zenith of Protoss technology and power. You cannot wait to mass these up and a-move the Overmind.
Then you finally begin playing the game, and you eagerly devour the terran and zerg campaigns gorging upon all of the wonders those races provide, and then with even more anticipation than you experienced reading the manual, you reach the level where you can build carriers. You're not yet aware that the enemy protoss holding Tassadar will stasis most of your early a-move efforts. It's all hope and ambition at this point, and wow! carriers are just as expensive as Battlecruisers, and much more complicated. In fact, you discover they are essentially more expensive with the cost of interceptors. "More expensive" easily translates into "I knew they were the best."
When you unleash that fleet of interceptors on the north middle protoss outpost, after your initial conquest of the base to your south finally gives you enough money to really start cranking out carriers and upgrades, the inimitable beauty of a swam of protoss interceptors razing enemy cannons in mere seconds becomes one of the highlights of your gaming life. I only wish I could have topped that thrill with actually seeing Boxer vs Joyo (spelling?) when it happened, or being witness to the original "good skill toi have" incident rather than hearing about it years later as SC2 brought me back into the fold, in a sense.
Blizzard the tempest is kinda cool looking, but it's not the carrier. Don't remove a unit as iconic as the siege tank without even trying to buff it. Besides, tempests appear to made only for countering mutas, which is a really expensive, high tech, and overly specific in game decision.
Units like the oracle, especially after hearing Artosis's opinion of it, really give me more faith about Blizzard's overall direction--just not the tempest. I'm that faithful blizzard fan guy that really tries to see the bright side, but seriously, the carrier needs to stay. + Show Spoiler +
Just send subliminal messages to zergs of whatever was going on in Nestea's head if mutas are that big a problem.
If that doesn't work, give psi storms a very brief lasting effect where it automatically seeks any (friendly or enemy) air units for an additional couple seconds (it would move relatively slowly, but give air units a little more of a scare and give the ground units a little more breathing room) as the storm disperses. Consider it the "mushroom cloud" effect of a psi storm.
But back OT, keep the carrier. Edit: I forgot one of the essential parts of the experience: "Carrier has arrived." This line instantly confirms the sense of pure ownage you're already expecting, only to be surpassed by the above experience of mass interceptors. It's one of the best, most nerd chill inducing unit creation shouts of all time. I want my "Ischk'nu?" I will not give up and say, "battles won."
Ever since seeing the new HoTS units revealed, I'm trying to picture in my head what a HoTS game would look like....... and it looks VERY stupid.....
We are going to see deathnights from zerg cruising around the map...
We are going to see units morhping into whatever unit... don't even get me started on the replicator. Protoss isn't Protoss anymore, it's "Proterrzerg." This is the most pathetic units I have seen in any RTS game.
We are going to practically see grenades move underground.
We are going to see some stationary unit that kills everything in an area around it (shredder).
We will be watching Transformers..... I will now call the hellion, "Bumblebee."
Oh, nearly forgot to mention, mix Transformers in with Mechwarrior (warhound)
We are going to see some unit introduced that is meant to counter the mutalisk..... all I can do is laugh @ the tempest.
We will see bubbles being casted over mineral lines.....
We are going to see units the size of Elephants burrow charge undergound.... this makes sense...
I'm sorry, but I don't see blizzard taking into consideration that SC2 is quickly climbing the ladder in the world of e-sports. Do we really want to see all this candy that will eventually make us sick? We don't need all these units with special abilites ffs. The only units I don't see gimmicky is the battle hellion, warhound and swarm host. The rest is just terrible.
The oracle is just a stupid idea imo, all it will do is force other races to all in. People are already complaining about Terrans all ining too much atm. Wait till zerg gets the viper and toss gets the replicator + oracle, I would be suprised if you see almost all Terrans all in only.
On November 18 2011 15:51 ZorBa.G wrote: Ever since seeing the new HoTS units revealed, I'm trying to picture in my head what a HoTS game would look like....... and it looks VERY stupid.....
We are going to see deathnights from zerg cruising around the map...
We are going to see units morhping into whatever unit... don't even get me started on the replicator. Protoss isn't Protoss anymore, it's "Proterrzerg." This is the most pathetic units I have seen in any RTS game.
We are going to practically see grenades move underground.
We are going to see some stationary unit that kills everything in an area around it (shredder).
We will be watching Transformers..... I will now call the hellion, "Bumblebee."
Oh, nearly forgot to mention, mix Transformers in with Mechwarrior (warhound)
We are going to see some unit introduced that is meant to counter the mutalisk..... all I can do is laugh @ the tempest.
We will see bubbles being casted over mineral lines.....
We are going to see units the size of Elephants burrow charge undergound.... this makes sense...
I'm sorry, but I don't see blizzard taking into consideration that SC2 is quickly climbing the ladder in the world of e-sports. Do we really want to see all this candy that will eventually make us sick? We don't need all these units with special abilites ffs. The only units I don't see gimmicky is the battle hellion, warhound and swarm host. The rest is just terrible.
The oracle is just a stupid idea imo, all it will do is force other races to all in. People are already complaining about Terrans all ining too much atm. Wait till zerg gets the viper and toss gets the replicator + oracle, I would be suprised if you see almost all Terrans all in only.
I don't get the point of your post at all. You list all these things we are going to see, but don't explain how they are bad. You assume that they explain themselves, but they really don't. You could easily make a statement like that about ANY of the units they added in BW, or hell, any of the units from the original SC.
Burrow banes will just die trying to go under forcefields while colos shred them. I would go bane drop over that anyday. I think it allows harass expo with no detection if you do not have infestors and also to constantly reposition baneling mines. Forcing terran to get ravens and toss will just have more than 1 obs.
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
Game shouldn't revolve around spellcasting units? . . . Not sure what to even say to this. Why exactly is "spellcasting" bad? There are several "spellcasters" (including replicant), compare that to the dozens upon dozens of units that are not spellcasters. Then the importance of said spellcasters... when you see HTs you don't immediately go "oh well, time to not go bio", it just makes you play differently (pay more attention to your positioning, get ghosts, etc). Certain units (not all of them are spellcasters mind you) make you react a certain way, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing. Decision making is an important aspect of Starcraft 2, a lot of the top gamers have solid mechanics, but the cream of the crop have impeccable decision making as well.
Don't really know where you're going with this one.
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta:
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4KQjw1B-WA
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
The version the corrupter had could shut down turrets, pf's, cannons, etc. that the overseer cannot. Also it lasted longer (twice as long I believe) **edit, this last part is wrong, both 30seconds
Listen to SotG episode 4; TLO NonY and Day talk about the change and how it ruined how interesting the unit was, but NonY voiced that he felt it was too strong before (because it shut down robotics indefinitely if zerg had air control). No, it wasn't a staple unit back then (besides the aforementioned colossus halting and shutting down PF's), but that's mainly because most people's multitask was shit.
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4KQjw1B-WA
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
The version the corrupter had could shut down turrets, pf's, cannons, etc. that the overseer cannot. Also it lasted longer (twice as long I believe) **edit, this is wrong, same time
Listen to SotG episode 4; TLO NonY and Day talk about the change and how it ruined how interesting the unit was, but NonY voiced that he felt it was too strong before (because it shut down robotics indefinitely if zerg had air control). No, it wasn't a staple unit back then (besides the aforementioned colossus halting and shutting down PF's), but that's mainly because most people's multitask was shit.
Shows how much I use contaminate, I thought it could still shut down PFs. You could/can still shut down robotics indefinitely, it just stopped working on PF's as the main thing. Still, pretty much the same spell though.
To OP, you should not be talking about balance, and how the meta game in HoTS will be at this point before the Alpha/Beta is out. If you havnt watch the interview with Dustin Browder at BlizzCon you should, he pretty much says that he dont know if some of the unit is even going to be in HoTS, he just showed them at BlizzCon because its BlizzCon... Youtube link:
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4KQjw1B-WA
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
The version the corrupter had could shut down turrets, pf's, cannons, etc. that the overseer cannot. Also it lasted longer (twice as long I believe) **edit, this is wrong, same time
Listen to SotG episode 4; TLO NonY and Day talk about the change and how it ruined how interesting the unit was, but NonY voiced that he felt it was too strong before (because it shut down robotics indefinitely if zerg had air control). No, it wasn't a staple unit back then (besides the aforementioned colossus halting and shutting down PF's), but that's mainly because most people's multitask was shit.
Shows how much I use contaminate, I thought it could still shut down PFs. You could/can still shut down robotics indefinitely, it just stopped working on PF's as the main thing. Still, pretty much the same spell though.
The main difference is you had to make corrupters, then if/when you had air control, you could force him to be in his base or you will forever shut down his stuff (shuts down cannons, remember), and you'll never get air control back unless you sit in your base and gaurd your stuff, in which case you can just get a ton of bases because he can't leave his (also, obviously gives you a huge timing to kill him because he had no colossus). Sure, an overseer can do something simmilar, but is shut down by a few cannons, and it's a pretty big risk to dump that much gas to shut down something for a long time becuase if it doesn't pay off, it can't do anyting else (not the case with the oracle or corrupter)
On November 18 2011 17:16 Pusekatten wrote: To OP, you should not be talking about balance, and how the meta game in HoTS will be at this point before the Alpha/Beta is out. If you havnt watch the interview with Dustin Browder at BlizzCon you should, he pretty much says that he dont know if some of the unit is even going to be in HoTS, he just showed them at BlizzCon because its BlizzCon... Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWUdMJVMvkY
He's a professional player voicing his opinion on why the idea behind some of the new spells/units are bad, not the balance (which he specifically said in the OP).
Also, they just spent the better part of a year creating these units, there's a pretty low chance they're just going to throw them out. Yes, they said they can throw anything out, but to be realistic, if they throw something out, they have to create something new and spend more time/resources on that. It's probably not going to happen.
Blizzard, don't be so stubborn, just give us the Reaver! The Reaver will help us defend 111 and you will give us an harrass-unit we need. I just feel like why have a awesome unit like the Warp Prism without somthing to drop? Give Phoenix the overpower ability and we have an decent answer to mass muta too... Also, like orb said, we cant wait to Beta cause units in Beta won't go away, they will get tuned and balanced... we need to prevent the current Protoss-build in HOTS to reach Beta cause atm its only silly gimmicky units...
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4KQjw1B-WA
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
The version the corrupter had could shut down turrets, pf's, cannons, etc. that the overseer cannot. Also it lasted longer (twice as long I believe) **edit, this is wrong, same time
Listen to SotG episode 4; TLO NonY and Day talk about the change and how it ruined how interesting the unit was, but NonY voiced that he felt it was too strong before (because it shut down robotics indefinitely if zerg had air control). No, it wasn't a staple unit back then (besides the aforementioned colossus halting and shutting down PF's), but that's mainly because most people's multitask was shit.
Shows how much I use contaminate, I thought it could still shut down PFs. You could/can still shut down robotics indefinitely, it just stopped working on PF's as the main thing. Still, pretty much the same spell though.
The main difference is you had to make corrupters, then if/when you had air control, you could force him to be in his base or you will forever shut down his stuff (shuts down cannons, remember), and you'll never get air control back unless you sit in your base and gaurd your stuff, in which case you can just get a ton of bases because he can't leave his (also, obviously gives you a huge timing to kill him because he had no colossus). Sure, an overseer can do something simmilar, but is shut down by a few cannons, and it's a pretty big risk to dump that much gas to shut down something for a long time becuase if it doesn't pay off, it can't do anyting else (not the case with the oracle or corrupter)
No... I still dont remember any real complaints about it. Sure, you could shut down cannons... but thats still 75 energy from a corruptor that isnt used on another building. A protoss would have at least 5 pure buildings you need to shut down (gates and the robo) and to keep those 5 on lock permanently you would need like 20 corruptors. If he adds in cannons you would never have enough energy to perma stop production. I cant hear TLO/NonY/Day9 talk about it (blip.tv is sucking atm and is loading at 10 kb/s), and I find it hard to believe that nony would really say its too strong, though that may just have been a knee jerk response.
I mean, even the situation report was going with what the community was saying with corruptors, in that they were largely useless... so they tried to give them a more active role in any given fight instead of just using them to shut down tech. Overseers ended up with that exact same ability in terms of shutting down production, it was cheaper, easier to get, provided detection and had no impact on your army size... yet you never saw anybody complain about that... right?
@ all people saying: "lol, the beta isn't even out and you already start complaining about the new units... calm down and wait until beta!"
Exactly this is what me concerns the most. SC2 was out for a year until Blizzcon. That means they had about 1 year to design, create and test new units for the upcoming expansions, so they integrate well in the game we know to this point. I know that they have been balancing and patching the game in this time too, but really, 1 year time and all they have to show are such ugly and imo not well thought out units with a ton of spells we never asked for.
This game is already full of hard counters (banelings/colossus/ghost) that makes luck a much bigger factor than actual strategy and positioning. I really hoped they address this problems with the expansions instead of adding more of them. And I really dont get why protoss needs a counter to mutalisk. If a zerg player builds in the first 10 minutes of the game only zerglings you have enough time to prepare and get a good unit compositon against incoming air. If you keep up with your Pheonix production I dont see any problems with beating mutas. Sure its to late to build Phoenix when already got 20 mutas. Sure its really hard to defend against that. But you got 10 minutes time to figure out whats coming. Its like complaining about Protoss after losing to a 4-Gate. Only that a 4-Gate kick in much earlier...
Yep thats what I think about the direction of the game. Feel free to correct me.
On October 26 2011 12:31 MorroW wrote: i dont wanna totally dive into everything u just said but theres 1 thing i wanna ttalk about
u talk about them simplifying the toss race with this arc cannon. now i wanna compare this to supply drop that terran can do. the terran supply drop has a strategic purpose where there are timing windows you can "boost" your "money" instantly by using supply drop. (for example the korean 3rax allin which is extremely calculated and timing based). it also has a purpose of saying, well mules remove my bank (the total money on my side of the map/the mineral sources i can access this game) but supply drop "gives" me "money" for free. this all sounds cool but in reality its acutually almost only used for easying up the game, you forget a supply depot, you have energy and u drop a supply and feel abit ashamed because you know its not optimal and you only use drop supply because your macro is bad
now lets get back to the arc cannon. im not sure if this is what you meant by this unit but it might be very similar to the supply drop. it has strategical uses such as say, there are optimal positions of the game in my build vs certain things where i should save energy incase of an attack where i need arc cannons. there are timing windows in my build where i need to save energy for arc cannon. another calculated and logical way of using it could be for example j ust like the 3rax supply drop terran marine rush, you might use arc cannon as an aggressive way to put pressure (or call it allin i dont care just trying to explain an example here with no much detail). now just like the supply drop, the first thought that comes into mind is, wow that is great. this is really strategical and brilliant people who can optimize this can really stand out from others, just like is same thought of supply drop.
but perhaps it will have the same problem, perhaps it just makes the game more noob friendly. "oh im being dropped my army is out of position and i forgot to chroonoboost, well lets put down some arc cannons".
so what u have here is an idea initially that is great, but it turns out just not to be practical at all, its just forgiving, as u said "basic mechanics" which is an extremely important part of the game to display skill and raise from the others.
so my personal opinion about arc cannon, i have none. i actually have to wait and see what actually happens, but i hope i got to explain both sides of things how it ideally turns out and how it can actually turn out in reality whether or whether not this is a good "feature" of the game
gotta ask u TT1, is this what u meant about the arc cannon? do u understand what im talking about here?
again, im just focusing on a very few parts of the discussion here but in great detail and core because maybe all the problems u have right now with sc2 is the core, and its all based around this
I agree about the supply depot. I've always wondered how come only terran gets it. Blizz can't possibly defend it but they still don't make any changes ^^
On November 18 2011 05:47 Arisen wrote: I agree that several new units/spells are very problematic. In my mind, this is true only because of the reason blizzard is putting them in the game....
to completely SHIT on something that race is having problems with.
I hate that. Why? Why does 1 unit need to completly shit on any number of mutalisks? Maybe mass mutas in lategame is starting to be really strong, but there's no TIME given to protoss players to adjust. Do you remember the bisu vs savior match? Zerg was at like 56% winrate and then went down to like 43% afterwards for a year and a half. No patches came, and zergs FIGURED IT OUT. That doesn't happen anymore. People don't figure stuff out, blizzard tells them how to do stuff.
Here is a list of the new things I have a problem with...
The Viper: I really want darkswarm back. It's so hard to force a great backstab to happen w/o darkswarm (or lurks), and the way you hold off midgame pushes is pretty much limited to having a big army as opposed to BW where you could invest in tech (defilers) or an army to hold off a midgame push. Creating something like swarm is obviously the intention here, but they wanted to make it different, and here's the result... I can completly shut down all his tanks. I can yank out colossus and never have to worry about a deathball again.
Moving Burrowed banelings: Sounds cool, and crowds will love them, but this is a bad idea. It would be like if a DT had a nuke that took 0 time to deploy. Lategame, you're just not going to be able to cover everything and killing all your workers is as simple as shiftclicking 4 banes across map?
Shredder. This thing is a fucking tradgedy. Yeah, other things have filled the rolethe shredder aims to fill, but in different ways. Sure; mines, lurkers, etc could shut down a patch from counterattack, but there were drawbacks. Mines are finite. After you detonate a mine, it's gone. This thing is going to stay there until you have an ARMY to come kill it as zerg as it does enought to just make it impossible for lings to kill it. Mines also had a drawback. You could just drag them into your units. Lurkers could fill this same role, but have one firing arc, you could spread out and pick off a lurker. Also a lurker is big sacrifice to the zerg. They're sacrificing a unit that could be contributing to their army to defending. You should not be able to set this thing up and compltely shut down all counters.
Replicant. As already stated, this is just about being able to copy tech to stop tech heavy all ins. However, beyond what TT1 was talking about, how do you win with tech against protoss anymore? All of a sudden that infestor ling timing you were doing...gone. He now has a few infestors too, guess you should have made roach hydra. PDD timings? Sup, I have PDD too! This is just a horrible idea of a unit, and I really hope all the casuals who think that copying a unit sounds cool will not influence blizzard into putting this into the game.
Arc Shield. As TT1 stated, this shuts down mutaplay and drops, but also, backstabs. Traditionally, zergs had a hard time in this matchup and started to swing back by either A) using late gas to get a ton of drones early and do overwhelm styles, or B) using a lot of drops/ling backstabs to combat the stronger but less mobile protoss. All of a sudden, if I punish a protoss by running my lings into your main while he mispositions his army while taking his third...all his shit are cannons and I can't do any damage. This is also just really bad design. Protoss is supposed to be able to be strung out, if you just remove any risk of getting dropped, backstabbed, etc, how are you going to stop a protoss army (unless you're terran and have EMP)
REcall: for many of the same reasons, this just removes risk from doing something stupid with your army. Also you can defend any drop NP. I like the idea of recall, but it's much better on a high tech unit like the arbiter/mothership that you have a finite amount of becuase they cost a lot.
Tempest... The idea that one unit just completely shits on anything in the air forever is so stupid. Yeah, scourge were in BW, but you had to spend 75 gas to kill one thing and only could kill it if there wasn't something defending it. WIth this thing, you pay the money and you shit on any number of air units. This is horrible game design.
Oracle... The idea of shutting down some mining but you can destroy the crystals is cool. The problem i have is that there's no way to defend this. YOu can only stop this by having units at a base to defend. This is not C&C, armies aren't parked in their base all game. Static defense is there for a reason. Also, being able to compltely stop production of a unit by zerg (if you use it's ability on a roach warren, you can't make roaches) is stupid. We already had a unit (the corrupter) with the same spell, and it was horrible. You could indefinately shut down colossus production; it just isn't a fair spell, they can brute force into your base (unless they have a lot of units there) and just stop you from making something you need to make and win because they couldn't make what they need to make to win.
I really hope the community speaks up and tells blizzard they don't want these silly hard counter units/functionalities. HotS will be so unlike SC if it comes out with some of these units, and will make me very sad.
actually it was the overseer, not the corruptor if corruptors could do that.... it would make them more useful then siphoning
Actually, it was the corruptor. THey removed it in the beta because everyone complained about it (particularly protoss, ironically). Don't correct someone if you don't know what you're talking about.
Corruptor had it originally. It was removed from corruptors and given to overseers, it is now known as contaminate. I dont remember people complaining it was overpowered, I remember people complaining because it was put on a useless unit at the time.
The corrupter actually had a more powerful version of the spell given to the overseer. Protoss complained because you could make enough corrupters to kill all their colossus and then shut down their robotics pretty much indefinitely. Terrans complained because you could shut down PF's for a pretty good amount of time giving you time to kill it.
I played in the beta, it is the exact same ability as the current contaminate on the overseer. It cost 75 energy and disabled the building (though contaminate now costs 125 energy). Demonstration from the beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4KQjw1B-WA
Most people in the beta complained that corruptors basically sucked. You had to waste army supply on a unit whose only use at the time was to disable buildings (and kill colossus, but at that stage you were using them to kill colossus not disable buildings... in general... they came too late), at a time when protoss and terran would easily have enough AA to kill them off.
The alpha version of contaminate was different. I dont know what it did, but from what I remember it like disabled units and made them hostile for the other player, so they would shoot down their own units.
The version the corrupter had could shut down turrets, pf's, cannons, etc. that the overseer cannot. Also it lasted longer (twice as long I believe) **edit, this is wrong, same time
Listen to SotG episode 4; TLO NonY and Day talk about the change and how it ruined how interesting the unit was, but NonY voiced that he felt it was too strong before (because it shut down robotics indefinitely if zerg had air control). No, it wasn't a staple unit back then (besides the aforementioned colossus halting and shutting down PF's), but that's mainly because most people's multitask was shit.
Shows how much I use contaminate, I thought it could still shut down PFs. You could/can still shut down robotics indefinitely, it just stopped working on PF's as the main thing. Still, pretty much the same spell though.
The main difference is you had to make corrupters, then if/when you had air control, you could force him to be in his base or you will forever shut down his stuff (shuts down cannons, remember), and you'll never get air control back unless you sit in your base and gaurd your stuff, in which case you can just get a ton of bases because he can't leave his (also, obviously gives you a huge timing to kill him because he had no colossus). Sure, an overseer can do something simmilar, but is shut down by a few cannons, and it's a pretty big risk to dump that much gas to shut down something for a long time becuase if it doesn't pay off, it can't do anyting else (not the case with the oracle or corrupter)
No... I still dont remember any real complaints about it. Sure, you could shut down cannons... but thats still 75 energy from a corruptor that isnt used on another building. A protoss would have at least 5 pure buildings you need to shut down (gates and the robo) and to keep those 5 on lock permanently you would need like 20 corruptors. If he adds in cannons you would never have enough energy to perma stop production. I cant hear TLO/NonY/Day9 talk about it (blip.tv is sucking atm and is loading at 10 kb/s), and I find it hard to believe that nony would really say its too strong, though that may just have been a knee jerk response.
I mean, even the situation report was going with what the community was saying with corruptors, in that they were largely useless... so they tried to give them a more active role in any given fight instead of just using them to shut down tech. Overseers ended up with that exact same ability in terms of shutting down production, it was cheaper, easier to get, provided detection and had no impact on your army size... yet you never saw anybody complain about that... right?
Look, take my word for it, they talked about it in the podcast and players did complain about it then. NonY DID say he thought it was too strong. Back then you made your corrupters to kill his colossus, flew by his main, shut down his robo, and rushed in and killed the protoss. NO, they didn't shut down all their gates, etc, they just removed the thing that was best at dealing with their army (colossus). ONce colossus were gone, you rushed in with a bunch of hydralisks and herp derp you win. It was good, and probably too good.
As to blizzard saying they thought the corrupter was useless, well, I never put much weight into anything Blizzard says. At one point they released a statement that talked about how they viewed marauder stimming as uneconomical for the terran....
On October 26 2011 11:34 TT1 wrote: I felt like I had to give my thoughts on the new expansion because I'm worried about where our game is heading. For example, units like the newly introduced replicant go against what StarCraft is about. I'm pretty sure that one of the main reasons this unit was added was so that protoss could hard counter 1basing terrans (please note that I am not talking about how OP or UP the replicant may be, but rather about how its role/function has no place in SC). Adding a unit to the game just so that it can hard-counter a specific style is simply just horrible game design.
The reason that the Replicant was added into StarCraft II is that it gives players sitting on substantial amounts of resources (which has become an unnecessary quirk in the Wings of Liberty playstyle) an option for diversifying their armies and making their armies more interesting to use while enabling niche playstyles and strategies that will become common in the early-to-mid-game. The unit is being added into the game because the most interesting video games tend to be more complex and offer more possible strategic options. When cost isn't an issue, the Replicant effectively triples the number of units available to Protoss players. The Replicant wasn't added into the game in order to counter any hypothetical strategies. It was added into the game because that increase in unit complexity should make the Replicant a fun unit to use. (All this talk about whether or not these new units can exist in the StarCraft II template, whether they will be balanced or will balance matchups, and I don't see anyone talking about whether or not these new units will be interesting to use.)
Assuming that the Replicant will simply hard-counter specific strategies is dumb in the same way that assuming Warcraft III's Town Portals act as nothing more than a reset button. A Town Portal cost 350 resources and resets your position on the map. While we can't necessarily speculate on the final tallies, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Replicant will cost at least 300 resources, a significant amount of which will probably end up being gas. In order to make the Replicant ineffective, all you have to do is force the opposing player into creating the wrong units with those Replicants, and I expect that players at the highest levels of play will find a way to do that. (If Blizzard ends up allowing the Replicant to transform into a different unit after assuming a specific form, then they are complete fools. The way that the player uses Replicants has to be an exceptionally conscious decision in order for them to be effective and I would even suggest placing their replication phase on a construction phase similar to the Archon in order to prevent the "oh crap, he has X, I'll get Y" situation that could happen in the heat of battle.) The mindgames involving the Replicant should be fascinating, they just need to be properly balanced and designed and it's pretty difficult to speculate on any of that. However, the base design of the Replicant should increase complexity and that should make the game more interesting to play.
On October 26 2011 11:34 TT1 wrote: The beauty of sc1 was that the game revolved mostly around melee/ranged attacking units while a few spellcasters (granted they were extremely strong units) acted as supporting units. Players would focus more on micro battles with their attacking units rather than on their spellcasters. Obviously, spell usage still played a huge role but the emphasis was on unit vs unit engagements. I know that it's impossible to have the same type of unit on unit engagements as we did in sc1 simply because the unit ai is so good, but I feel like blizzard is trying to overcompensate for the lack of micro within the game by adding spellcasters.
I feel like they're going overboard with it. Starcraftt is not WoW, and our game should not revolve around a shitton of spellcasting units. I know that they're trying to promote more micro/skillsets to the game, but at the same time they're going against what they're aiming for by constantly removing key game mechanics that allow good players stand out.
What did you expect to happen? This message board (amongst other StarCraft message boards) mercilessly campaigned against any change that was a significant deviation from StarCraft: Brood War. Once players ceded on the issue of multiple building selection and automining and Blizzard couldn't make any reasonable decision to replace the loss of mechanical skill with more complexity, the only way that mechanical skill could be added into the game was to create more units with very specific micro-intensive skills and abilities. They couldn't add more unit types to the game ala Total Annihilation or Supreme Commander because "its role/function has no place in SC". They couldn't add more complexity into the map designs because "its role/function has no place in SC". And while Blizzard could have gone ahead and did what they did in The Frozen Throne and allowed players to create larger armies (reducing the cost of units, decreasing their food cost, and slightly increasing the food cap in order to compensate for improving computer technology that could render more units), I haven't seen anything about taking the supply cap to 250 or 300 and I haven't seen anything expecting that's going to happen.
Brood War's relative lack of strategy (compared to other, more complex games in the strategy genre, both turn-based games such as Civilization and real-time strategy games such as Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander) worked because a very, very significant amount of mechanical skill and execution was required in order to perform even basic strategies. If you can't convince the player base that the mechanical skill should be replaced with more complexity in map design and higher unit counts, then you have to go with more overt and obvious complexity in the design of the units themselves. Something has to be added back in and because the player base is so stubborn, Blizzard is going with a bad option. That's your answer. (Although in fairness, I read the thread discussing the fact that all of the units in StarCraft II generally have the same movement properties and are much easier to micromanage as a result. If there's any valid place to begin discussing the issues with StarCraft II, that would be an excellent place to start.)
On October 26 2011 11:34 TT1 wrote: - allowing banelings to move burrowed removes ovie/bane drop vs gate unit/collo balls micro battles in PvZ. Having burrowed banes in the late game just makes ff's useless so zergs wont need to upgrade drop anymore.
Overlords shield those Banelings and act as a meat shield for that damage, so Baneling Drops will still have significant utility, particularly in the late-game where players are throwing 200-food armies at each other and need something to use the additional resources on, particularly in a matchup that is defined by the ability for Zerg players to overload and overwhelm that Protoss Death Ball before its sheer damage output takes over. Burrowing your Banelings and plodding them through the battlefield is a one-way ticket to watching them burn up in a wall of Psionic Storms or Colossus fire.
On October 26 2011 11:58 Hoodlum wrote: I would just say that we can hope that pros get their two cents with blizzard during beta and maybe things like this can be dealt with by the people who understand the game the most.
"Best players" does not equal "understand the theory behind the game the best". They're the players who can best manipulate the existing variables. Being able to play the game at a high level is certainly a bonus for understanding how the game works (since you have to perform less projection in order to understand how the game plays at its optimal levels) but if anyone here (and this is just one of many examples) thinks that IdrA knows game design and real-time strategy design better than Day9 because IdrA currently plays StarCraft II at a higher level and can manipulate those variables as a higher level, then they're fooling themselves.
EPT
replicant
