EPTgreat read.
The Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design - Page 3
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fabiano
Brazil4644 Posts
great read. | ||
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Nerokas
Finland56 Posts
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Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
Warpgate Sentries Phoenix Voidray Carrier Collosus Stalker Zealot Immortal I agree that protoss is designed poorly but not everything is problematic. | ||
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laLAlA[uC]
Canada963 Posts
On January 11 2012 05:36 Spicy_Curry wrote: Blizzard needs to go back to the drawing board with the entire protoss race according to this article: Warpgate Sentries Phoenix Voidray Carrier Collosus Stalker Zealot Immortal I agree that protoss is designed poorly but not everything is problematic. The OP is not saying this at all... | ||
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UmiNotsuki
United States633 Posts
StarCraft II is a really good game that isn't quite as complex and perhaps developed as Brood War was. I'm not worried about it as a game for two reasons: 1. We have two expansions to go before it's finished. The game can and will change in that time, a lot. We should wait and see. 2. StarCraft II still leaves a lot of room for micro in less flashy and more subtle ways. Lemme give you an example: I was watching a Zerg player stream a ZvZ (I can't remember who it was... someone extremely good, they were Korean as I recall) and they got themselves into a seriously nasty situation in the early game, contained on one base and at one point reduced to only six drones due to banelings. Extremely good decision making, spine crawler placement, and conservation of units allowed him to rebuild. Eventually, the game went to roach/infestor vs. roach/infestor, but this player was still behind. A battle occurred when his opponent attacked him at his third, and the streamer had a significantly smaller army. Now, if roaches and fungal growth were so strongly anti-micro, then this battle would've ended in the favor of the guy with the large army and that would be that. Instead, the streamer positioned his roaches in an arch, leaving small holes for his infestors to get through, and at the perfect moment, he tossed a few infested Terrans at the perfect spot behind his opponent's wall of roaches; the eggs blocked the maneuvering of and eventually forced the relocation of his opponent's infestors, thereby not allowing them to ever get in range for fungals while the streamer's fungals landed easily, swinging the battle strongly into his favor and by the end of the fight putting him solidly again. Had he not micro'd his infestors versus his opponent's so skillfully, he would've lost. It took a mindful eye to catch this subtle micro, but it was there, it was difficult, and it was important. I think SC2 is doing just fine. | ||
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Tor
Canada231 Posts
Forcefield: The current iteration of forcefield does have a negative effect on unit control, however, this can be seen, not as a problem with instantaneous creation of invincible and impassable terrain, but more to do with the fact opposing players have difficulty countering it. Once your units are trapped forcefield denies micro, however, that doesn't mean a player cannot micro against it by simply avoiding the effective range of forcefield. I wouldn't be surprised if positive gameplay interactions could be developed simply increasing the risk (slower movement speed on sentries?) or reducing the effective area of influence of the sentry (shorter cast range?). -OP's comments on forcefield feel biased, but the OP does not suggest scrapping FF so I give him credit. OP's statement that sentries deny interaction is false since "avoid them and bait them as best you can, and hope to drain sentry energy" is an interaction. Fungal Growth: If ever there was a law about denying movement, than fungal growth would certainly be breaking it. However, any assessment about a lack of interaction is false. It does deny micro (and doesn't really add much) so compared to forcefield it's far more difficult to create healthy gameplay around. However, as a tool designed to counter certain interactions it can be viewed as healthy. This spell has a bit of an identity crisis, does it hinder harass? nuke marines? or trap small groups of out of position units? It's probably overpowered if it can fill too many roles, however just like FF it's not inherently bad game design, it's just harder to design around. Concussive Shells: OP's assessment is generally positive, OP generally displays bias against abilities that capitilize on player mistakes. Concussive shells do force opponents to think critically about their engagements. Micro-less units: The Colossus: Why is this unit microless? A moving is a symptom of overpowering unit compositions, of which the colossus can be viewed as taking part in. The fact colossus can stand on units does lead itself to deathball scenarios, however the unit encourages good micro outside of anything deathball scenario, and demands thoughtful engagements inside deathball scenario. The Roach: The roach is a vanilla unit like any other, the only problem then that can be found is a lack of units which interact positively with the unit. Either the units that support it are ineffective, or the units that counter it dynamically do not exist. This could suggest either changing the stats of the roach, or creating more ways to interact with the roach (by adding or changing units, by changing defenders advantage etc.) The Thor: Currently being removed, however, the concept of a slow moving unit that controls specific zones (much like the siege tank) is not in itself inherently flawed, Blizzard simply deemed the thor ineffective at fulfilling the anti-air role it was intended for. The Pheonix: Suggesting this unit requires no micro is laughable. Shoot and move is shoot and move, you may be able add more actions, but what really matters is the attention paid towards the unit, and to micro this unit effectively full attention is still required. The Siege Tank: Yes the tank has problems in TvP, however it's actively important in TvT and TvZ. I would agree that with the role shift of the immortal as hp tank to a damage dealer would suggest removing hardened shield, since it has no effect on most relevant units with the exception of perhaps the roach. Question: Is there something wrong with units that can only be used in specific match-ups? I'd say 2 out of 3 is not bad. 2) Banelings, Burrow, and Detection: OP's opinions on this are preference based. Suggesting what zerg needs is an abract argument. I'd agree that burrow is an interesting mechanic. Blizzard also agrees and has put quite a bit of effort in designing units with burrow in mind. Creep spread actually turned out to be an effective way to force detection. As it stands, I imagine the reason lurkers aren't in SC2 is largely the same issues as the siegetank. They were just too fragile or ineffective. Static Defense and the Non-Necessity of Siege: Static defence seems like one of the harder design elements to get right. Blizzard has to weigh the power of harassment, the power of cheese, the ability to turtle and the ability to control the map, when designing static defence. Too strong static defence makes turtling for too long, too easy; it makes harassment impossible; it makes cheesing too strong OR it denies any form of dynamic early game; and it allows for map control to easily gained (sort of like when zerg go mass spine crawler after they hit 200/200). Scaling static defence is a reasonable response, and i'd agree that Blizzard hasn't quite hit the nail of static defence. However, you cannot immediately rule out using units defensively as a viable gameplay mechanic. Thors or sentries or siegetanks or infestors etc. could all be seen as fulfilling the roles of static defence. In conclusion: The OP's assessment that SC2 if balanced too heavily around denying interactions is not entirely accurate. SC2 units, more often than not, are designed to create and encourage interactions, some of them may have missed the mark, while some of them are probably not as bad as you'd think. Furthermore, judging by the units Blizzard presented in the HotS preview, it appears Blizzard largely has identified many of the same weaknesses the OP suggests (which kind of makes his entire post pointless). The largest issue with OP is his belief that many of his assumptions are slightly off the mark. He assumes forcefield is bad because it denies interactions, when in fact it creates interactions and enables different strategies and counter strategies. While many of the OP's assumptions are very close to being accurate, they seem to ride on the idea there are inherent game design laws that Blizzard is breaking, when in fact these game design ideas might actually be very good for the game, if their execution could be properly balanced and they matched the intended role they were designed for. | ||
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Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
OP says Warpgate: removes defenders advantage Sentries: forcefields are too strong Pheonix: no micro Voidray: 1 a Carrier: negated by collosus Collosus: 1 a massive splash Stalker: blink > siege Zealot: charge> siege Immortal > siege | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7032 Posts
Something that's nice about Starcraft 2 are the attention to base mechanics. Queens, overlords, creep tumors, tech labs, supply depots, pylons all have some attractive features, not to mention more interactive aspects like wall-offs and missile turret placement. I think it would be nice if Blizzard expanded on this just a little and added some more features. We're all so excited about the new units in HotS, when we should also be excited about new base features and upgrades, in my opinion. I think a good example of something that has potential to interact with bases in a fun way is the Oracle's contaminate+ ability. As a zerg player you can outright lose if you can't be able to produce zerglings/roaches at a critical moment, so perhaps zerg wants to safeguard their production by creating duplicate tech buildings. Then protoss can build more oracles, use observers to scout for duplicates, and so on. It gives more importance to scouting and base management, which gives the game a lot of depth in my opinion. It's an entirely new dimension of gameplay compared to just units fighting each other after all. The second lacking thing is map control, which they seem determined to address in HotS, which is nice. Micro seems to be the focus of the OP, and that's yet another issue. I think he's wrong on basically all his examples - at least the way he described them, but at the same time it's true that micro is not too important in this game and is often either pointless or made impossible by certain abilities. (forcefields on ramps are so obnoxious and shouldn't be in the game). I've sometimes wondered whether Blizzard made this game with something like a 250ms standard response latency in mind, as I think they used to have it that high at the start for battle.net. A lot of units certainly feel slightly unresponsive and I think it's often their stats that make them just slightly hard to micro. You can't really dodge air attacks with a viking too well, but what if it was just a bit easier because Blizzard tweaked the stats a small amount? Or how about turning rates, acceleration and animation speeds for some units? I think it'd be nice if Blizzard made a pass on all units to see if they could find ways to make them a bit more responsive in such ways. | ||
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MavivaM
1535 Posts
On a side note (and this is coming from a protoss fan), potentially, the forcefield is the most gamebreaking mechanic in sc2. I can't help but cheer whenever I see a good player destroy the opponent's army with well-placed FFs... but in all honesty a STRATEGY game should let a player the chance to do something about his opponent's moves. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On January 11 2012 04:57 MCDayC wrote: Much better than the first. In, as a guy who normally hates these kinda threads (90% are fucking terrible) this was pretty good. I agree with you on quite a bit of this, some of the points you make are good. The colossus is indeed a terrible unit, concussive is bad design straight up. Some of this is true, and all of it is well written. However, it still has the problems that all of these types of articles have. There are statements that you make here that you do not back up at all. You say that static defences are worse, without any statistical or even anecdotal evidence of this, you claim the tank is bad, despite the fact that it is a key unit in 2/3 matchups, there more. This is well done, but it needs more. Also note, since when did Phoenix become a low micro unit? Just because it doesn't require the micro you expect it to, doesn't mean that in the arms of an expert it isn't infinitely more powerful than in the hands of a n00b. I think it was ToD vs Sheth at Dreamhack Winter 2011 where I saw this. The game on Tal'darim displayed truly amazing Phoenix micro, a level above any pheonix play I have seen on any Toss streams. It most certainly is a mircoable unit, what you are saying is absurd. Oh, and as the guy below me pointed, BW had anti micro moves as well, that never seems to be mentioned. I'm not for concussive shell, but I think that properly responded too forcefield provides an interesting dynamic. Watch Select (medivacs picking up and dropping bio behind the forcefields or Stephano (3 control groups (I know, who does that!) of roaches for constant flanks) for how forcefields cause good micro and positioning. Sunken colonies were much stronger than spine crawlers are, both because marines only took 2 shots instead of 3, and the higher dps of marines in this game, and the existence of marauders. Cannons fired faster in BW, though they did get a major hp buff in beta (50% more total hp!). No spider mines for terran is certainly a glaring weakness (I certainly think they're static defense). In general, unit dps is much higher, and units are tougher. The stopping power of static D is much weaker relative to the power of the units in the game than in BW. As for stasis, since I see multiple people commenting on it: Stasis, for one, was really hard to aim properly, was extremely high tech, and extremely costly. You couldn't micro against it, but you also were completely safe from enemy fire as well. It's a strange mechanic that could help and hurt depending on how it was used. Lastly, I'm pretty surs stasis had friendly fire as well. | ||
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1st_Panzer_Div.
United States621 Posts
Forecfields have led to the mmm ladder maneuvering which is quite technical and awesome. Fungals have led to more splitting of units, which gives TvZ a nice more sprawling giant battle feel to it. And the phoenixes are crazy micro intensive. Your write-up sounds like something that people feared from the beta, not like someone who has spent time using phoenixes. Collossi require micro; perhaps at levels of play where people only 1a they are stronger at 1a than other armies... but they are rather expensive glass cannons that require plenty of support. Also your complaints sound a lot like balance whining. Siege tanks suck, protoss units are so good. Fungal growth is dumb, roaches take no micro. | ||
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ChaosTerran
Austria844 Posts
On January 11 2012 05:42 Tor wrote: The Colossus: Why is this unit microless? A moving is a symptom of overpowering unit compositions, of which the colossus can be viewed as taking part in. The fact colossus can stand on units does lead itself to deathball scenarios, however the unit encourages good micro outside of anything deathball scenario, and demands thoughtful engagements inside deathball scenario. You can't be serious.... The collossus takes absolutely no micro at all, in fact it's actually most effective when just a-moved into the opponent's army. and the fact that the collossus can stand on top of other units makes it even easier to 'micro' because it doesn't matter if it's poorly positioned inside the protoss army pre-battle because it can just reposition itself once it's a moved without any micro being required by the player. With that being said, I almost agree with everything the OP said and I would definitely add chargelots to the units that require no micro. If there is one unit in this game that requires absolutely no skill to use it definitely is the chargelot. On January 11 2012 04:16 Scootaloo wrote: For one, not a single line about the ghost and it's absurdly powerfull spells in the vZ and vP matchups, both of which require minimal micro and are almost impossible to counter. I'm sorry but this is 100% wrong. You are arguing that the ghost doesn't require much micro? Name a single unit in SC2 that actually requires more micro than the ghost to be used effectively? Using mass snipes is quite possibly one of the most micro-intensive actions in the game and casting EMP requires micro too. I really don't see your point, especially not the claim that ghosts aren't micro intensive. Question, have you ever used mass ghosts before? You also claim later that bio is not micro-intensive. Well, again. You are extremely wrong. Stutter-stepping is not hard to do, I give you that, but it's extremely time-consuming and very micro-intense. It's not always about the difficulty, but about the intensity and bio micro is quite intense, because it can take ages, especially against chargelots (which by the way only have to be a-moved, so if you want to complain about no-micro, why not complain about the unit that actually takes no micro, but complain about the units that have to be microed - doesnt really make sense) | ||
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Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
On January 11 2012 05:57 ChaosTerran wrote: You can't be serious.... The collossus takes absolutely no micro at all, in fact it's actually most effective when just a-moved into the opponent's army. and the fact that the collossus can stand on top of other units makes it even easier to 'micro' because it doesn't matter if it's poorly positioned inside the protoss army pre-battle because it can just reposition itself once it's a moved without any micro being required by the player. With that being said, I almost agree with everything the OP said and I would definitely add chargelots to the units that require no micro. If there is one unit in this game that requires absolutely no skill to use it definitely is the chargelot. actually if you micro the collosus its splash increases. Not exact numbers but you get the idea EX: target a marine= the splash width is 1 EX: target a maruader= splash width is 2 | ||
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Dizzy.exe
Romania11 Posts
Why doesn't anyone write about how SC2 is a deeper and better RTS game than BW? I would really like to see something like that used as a reply. | ||
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Dizzy.exe
Romania11 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:03 Spicy_Curry wrote: actually if you micro the collosus its splash increases. Not exact numbers but you get the idea EX: target a marine= the splash width is 1 EX: target a maruader= splash width is 2 The marines die so fast and deal so much dps it is hardly worth it. And it requires no micro because its' damage is linear and the units auto-arrange in a line when shooting. | ||
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Pronkers
Australia13 Posts
Spot on. | ||
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ChaosTerran
Austria844 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:03 Spicy_Curry wrote: actually if you micro the collosus its splash increases. Not exact numbers but you get the idea EX: target a marine= the splash width is 1 EX: target a maruader= splash width is 2 Focus-firing is standard with pretty much every unit, but since focus fire can be shift-queued it doesn't really classifiy is micro intense, you could basically say the same about every unit, even the thor, it's also better to focus fire with thors, but it's kind of obvious that focus-firing is not intense micro. | ||
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Spicy_Curry
United States10573 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:10 ChaosTerran wrote: Focus-firing is standard with pretty much every unit, but since focus fire can be shift-queued it doesn't really classifiy is micro intense, you could basically say the same about every unit, even the thor, it's also better to focus fire with thors, but it's kind of obvious that focus-firing is not intense micro. the point is that if you target a maruader with a collosus you can hit two rows of marines as well where as if you target a marine you will not hit a second row of marines... | ||
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ddrddrddrddr
1344 Posts
On January 11 2012 05:48 Spicy_Curry wrote: OP says Warpgate: removes defenders advantage Sentries: forcefields are too strong Pheonix: no micro Voidray: 1 a Carrier: negated by collosus Collosus: 1 a massive splash Stalker: blink > siege Zealot: charge> siege Immortal > siege by that logic, every marine thread is saying every other unit in the game is problematic because everything else: countered by marines. He's not saying all of those things are bad, for example, he was talking about siege tanks when he mentioned immortals, but it was still a statement about tanks, not immortals, ditto with carriers, stalker, zealot. | ||
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MCDayC
United Kingdom14464 Posts
On January 11 2012 05:53 EternaLLegacy wrote: Sunken colonies were much stronger than spine crawlers are, both because marines only took 2 shots instead of 3, and the higher dps of marines in this game, and the existence of marauders. Cannons fired faster in BW, though they did get a major hp buff in beta (50% more total hp!). No spider mines for terran is certainly a glaring weakness (I certainly think they're static defense). In general, unit dps is much higher, and units are tougher. The stopping power of static D is much weaker relative to the power of the units in the game than in BW. As for stasis, since I see multiple people commenting on it: Stasis, for one, was really hard to aim properly, was extremely high tech, and extremely costly. You couldn't micro against it, but you also were completely safe from enemy fire as well. It's a strange mechanic that could help and hurt depending on how it was used. Lastly, I'm pretty surs stasis had friendly fire as well. See, what you said about static d was backed up by fact, and therefore the debate actually becomes more interesting. In the case of Zerd static D, I would still disagree, as they have the ability to move the building, which more than the buildings being slightly weaker. I would still like to hear a clarification as to why Phoenix is an anti/bad micro unit. I honestly can't think of a reason why. | ||
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