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On January 19 2012 13:55 neoghaleon55 wrote:
I can't wait to read what you think about mules, EternalLegacy.
:D
spoiler:
+ Show Spoiler +he doesn't like them. Why? because they are something that BW doesn't have.
But he is going to give a bunch of reasons for it (which is pretty easy when talking about the mule) so that it sounds interesting. But then again, you can find a reason for everything in everygame, why it sucks from your point of view if you just think a little bit...
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I just had a great idea. What about giving the Phoenix a 100/100 Upgrade that let's him actually transport the lifted units with a punishment to be slowed down like 33% movement speed. This could result in some great micro stuff. Now when thinking about it i see that some of the situations you'd use that ability would make it somewhat similar to the new zerg casting unit that can grab and pull enemy units.
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I started readin the OP and I was like, wow someone actually bringing a more widened view on units of SC2.
Nice.
...
Then I kept reading, and it was the same (excuse the language) retarded whine we saw back 2 weeks after the game release.
Aside from that, here's my thoughts:
- Colossus
Yes, it might be "boring" because it has no abilities. But in its defence, it rewards decision making of when to start making them and when to stop making them. Also not microing colossus = their range makes them shoot supply depots and other random stuff, so, micro'd colossus > a-moved, I actually _always_ have them in a separate control group.
In pvp they have a distinct role, in beta it was a colossus race, now as the metagame has progressed you might actually loose the game if you try to get them. Again rewarding decision making rather than, 'herp getting ghosts tvp is always good and can't be punished - derp'. Its a different kind of skill.
Only regarding how the unit functions I agree it could be considered 'boring' compared to the micro fest that is ghosts-infestor-HT. But its not in any regard skilless.
- Roach
Zerg has alot of APM tied up into macro. They have been given a strong bulk a-move unit to help them actually play the game. Otherwise you'd be unable to play the race as a sub diamond player. Easy as that. Boring or not, its done to serve a greater good game design not just unit design. The unit actually have burrow and burrow movement to make it more interesting mid&late game.
- Thor
I agree 100%. It's clumsy, almost exactly no micro and is plain boring. I agree with Blizzards decision to 'remove' it.
- Forcefields
I think we all can agree that right now, GW units minus sentry gets mathematically hammered by T and P low tech units. Also their upgrades scale bad as sht.
So Blizzard figured they wanted an early-midgame function to keep the game go on without low tech 5min games. (see GSL S1) Forcefields helps bringing the game into later stages. And in those later stages there are perfectly fine ways to negate forcefields.
- Micro reducing
On the related topic of micro negating ingame abilities. They all require resources, time and micro to obtain. All those relate back to skill. (with the exception of forcefields, but forcefield is a separate topic, see above).
So I don't see an issue here, more about the whole concept of one player removing the other players ability to play the game, even its done through skill. Generally I'm on the fence on this one, but in the end, it makes for a better game to watch.
- Phoenix
So you bash on one of the most micro intensive units in the game?
The fire while moving is to help protoss actually use the unit. just imagine the uselessness that is graviton beam + a-move with miss clicks. People are already staying clear of the unit because it takes to much APM upkeep.
It'd be like microing mutas but you had to focus fire every unit or they wouldn't shoot. Delightful right?
- Zone control & siege tanks
Blizzard is currently giving zone control 2.0 to terran with that mine thing that will whipe whole minerals. Just like vulture mines, guess you're happy about that.
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
- Static defences
its a hard balance to walk. if static defences are to good, a good player won't be able to close out a game against a not so good player. you'll get stuck in the 'can't seem to finish out games' issue.
Also it would as you yourself pointed out increase cheeses and also keep people in their bases, as the game would switch from 'trying to win the game' to 'trying not to loose the game'. Dropping and harassing would make lesser impact, resulting in more high tech ball vs ball. Thus increasing what you are trying to get rid of.
So the static defences are quite balanced out right now in my opinion.
- Conclusion
You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design. Then when I actually start to read what you're trying to say, a few facts become so clear.
- You're just bring up old whine. And I mean REALLY old whine. Like, Beta whine.
- You're a BW nostalgia fag. Accept that sc2 is not bw. as a sequel I feel they have done a good job transferring the important stuff from BW, but still making this a unique game. Its obvious you wanted BW but with better graphics, guess what, the scene wanted change, and got change.
- You're Terran.
However, your post was well constructed and nice with all the pictures and stuff. Its the content I'm opposed.
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On January 19 2012 13:48 jellyjello wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 02:57 JayIsImbA wrote:On January 19 2012 00:20 jellyjello wrote:
First off, I'd like to applaud the OP for his effort. Enjoyed reading your post. Aside from all the micro debate, I do agree with the OP on one thing: SC2 is becoming too stale and predictable once the build order phase is passed.
I also cannot believe you didn't mention this. If you really look at the unit interface of SC2, the behavior of some of the ranged units is so unrealistic. For example, take a look at the marine death ball. You have marines basically firing through each other's back in multiple rows, and with such precision and speed. Or, how colossus can stomp through his own allied units without causing any damage. This gives so much power to ranged units over melee units which limits the game dynamics. are you seriously critizing the aspect of realism in a Fantasy-RTS-Game? You're kidding right? You are right. The hell with realism! Let's just make the marines fly and their rifles can fire unlimited nukes. After all, who really cares about the realism in RTS game? 
No, but it's almost unplayable if you'd take care of such things. What do you want, that colossi moving above your army actually deal damage to the units? that marines MUST stand side-by-side in order to NOT kill other marines? that's just unplayable, sorry mate that just wouldn't work, not in a fast paced RTS.
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On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I started readin the OP and I was like, wow someone actually bringing a more widened view on units of SC2.
Nice.
...
Then I kept reading, and it was the same (excuse the language) retarded whine we saw back 2 weeks after the game release.
Aside from that, here's my thoughts:
- Colossus
Yes, it might be "boring" because it has no abilities. But in its defence, it rewards decision making of when to start making them and when to stop making them. Also not microing colossus = their range makes them shoot supply depots and other random stuff, so, micro'd colossus > a-moved, I actually _always_ have them in a separate control group.
In pvp they have a distinct role, in beta it was a colossus race, now as the metagame has progressed you might actually loose the game if you try to get them. Again rewarding decision making rather than, 'herp getting ghosts tvp is always good and can't be punished - derp'. Its a different kind of skill.
Only regarding how the unit functions I agree it could be considered 'boring' compared to the micro fest that is ghosts-infestor-HT. But its not in any regard skilless.
- Roach
Zerg has alot of APM tied up into macro. They have been given a strong bulk a-move unit to help them actually play the game. Otherwise you'd be unable to play the race as a sub diamond player. Easy as that. Boring or not, its done to serve a greater good game design not just unit design. The unit actually have burrow and burrow movement to make it more interesting mid&late game.
- Thor
I agree 100%. It's clumsy, almost exactly no micro and is plain boring. I agree with Blizzards decision to 'remove' it.
- Forcefields
I think we all can agree that right now, GW units minus sentry gets mathematically hammered by T and P low tech units. Also their upgrades scale bad as sht.
So Blizzard figured they wanted an early-midgame function to keep the game go on without low tech 5min games. (see GSL S1) Forcefields helps bringing the game into later stages. And in those later stages there are perfectly fine ways to negate forcefields.
- Micro reducing
On the related topic of micro negating ingame abilities. They all require resources, time and micro to obtain. All those relate back to skill. (with the exception of forcefields, but forcefield is a separate topic, see above).
So I don't see an issue here, more about the whole concept of one player removing the other players ability to play the game, even its done through skill. Generally I'm on the fence on this one, but in the end, it makes for a better game to watch.
- Phoenix
So you bash on one of the most micro intensive units in the game?
The fire while moving is to help protoss actually use the unit. just imagine the uselessness that is graviton beam + a-move with miss clicks. People are already staying clear of the unit because it takes to much APM upkeep.
It'd be like microing mutas but you had to focus fire every unit or they wouldn't shoot. Delightful right?
- Zone control & siege tanks
Blizzard is currently giving zone control 2.0 to terran with that mine thing that will whipe whole minerals. Just like vulture mines, guess you're happy about that.
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
- Static defences
its a hard balance to walk. if static defences are to good, a good player won't be able to close out a game against a not so good player. you'll get stuck in the 'can't seem to finish out games' issue.
Also it would as you yourself pointed out increase cheeses and also keep people in their bases, as the game would switch from 'trying to win the game' to 'trying not to loose the game'. Dropping and harassing would make lesser impact, resulting in more high tech ball vs ball. Thus increasing what you are trying to get rid of.
So the static defences are quite balanced out right now in my opinion.
- Conclusion
You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design. Then when I actually start to read what you're trying to say, a few facts become so clear.
- You're just bring up old whine. And I mean REALLY old whine. Like, Beta whine.
- You're a BW nostalgia fag. Accept that sc2 is not bw. as a sequel I feel they have done a good job transferring the important stuff from BW, but still making this a unique game. Its obvious you wanted BW but with better graphics, guess what, the scene wanted change, and got change.
- You're Terran.
However, your post was well constructed and nice with all the pictures and stuff. Its the content I'm opposed.
sorry but units role isnt to help player play but to be merely a tools in his hand AND player decides if they are gonna help him or not. There is no justyfing to introducing boring units or microless units(1a) or almost fully automated units, you bend the reality so your points and arguments can sound smart, and you think that already gives you a privilige of calling him nostalgia fag.
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On January 20 2012 05:42 bgx wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I started readin the OP and I was like, wow someone actually bringing a more widened view on units of SC2.
Nice.
...
Then I kept reading, and it was the same (excuse the language) retarded whine we saw back 2 weeks after the game release.
Aside from that, here's my thoughts:
- Colossus
Yes, it might be "boring" because it has no abilities. But in its defence, it rewards decision making of when to start making them and when to stop making them. Also not microing colossus = their range makes them shoot supply depots and other random stuff, so, micro'd colossus > a-moved, I actually _always_ have them in a separate control group.
In pvp they have a distinct role, in beta it was a colossus race, now as the metagame has progressed you might actually loose the game if you try to get them. Again rewarding decision making rather than, 'herp getting ghosts tvp is always good and can't be punished - derp'. Its a different kind of skill.
Only regarding how the unit functions I agree it could be considered 'boring' compared to the micro fest that is ghosts-infestor-HT. But its not in any regard skilless.
- Roach
Zerg has alot of APM tied up into macro. They have been given a strong bulk a-move unit to help them actually play the game. Otherwise you'd be unable to play the race as a sub diamond player. Easy as that. Boring or not, its done to serve a greater good game design not just unit design. The unit actually have burrow and burrow movement to make it more interesting mid&late game.
- Thor
I agree 100%. It's clumsy, almost exactly no micro and is plain boring. I agree with Blizzards decision to 'remove' it.
- Forcefields
I think we all can agree that right now, GW units minus sentry gets mathematically hammered by T and P low tech units. Also their upgrades scale bad as sht.
So Blizzard figured they wanted an early-midgame function to keep the game go on without low tech 5min games. (see GSL S1) Forcefields helps bringing the game into later stages. And in those later stages there are perfectly fine ways to negate forcefields.
- Micro reducing
On the related topic of micro negating ingame abilities. They all require resources, time and micro to obtain. All those relate back to skill. (with the exception of forcefields, but forcefield is a separate topic, see above).
So I don't see an issue here, more about the whole concept of one player removing the other players ability to play the game, even its done through skill. Generally I'm on the fence on this one, but in the end, it makes for a better game to watch.
- Phoenix
So you bash on one of the most micro intensive units in the game?
The fire while moving is to help protoss actually use the unit. just imagine the uselessness that is graviton beam + a-move with miss clicks. People are already staying clear of the unit because it takes to much APM upkeep.
It'd be like microing mutas but you had to focus fire every unit or they wouldn't shoot. Delightful right?
- Zone control & siege tanks
Blizzard is currently giving zone control 2.0 to terran with that mine thing that will whipe whole minerals. Just like vulture mines, guess you're happy about that.
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
- Static defences
its a hard balance to walk. if static defences are to good, a good player won't be able to close out a game against a not so good player. you'll get stuck in the 'can't seem to finish out games' issue.
Also it would as you yourself pointed out increase cheeses and also keep people in their bases, as the game would switch from 'trying to win the game' to 'trying not to loose the game'. Dropping and harassing would make lesser impact, resulting in more high tech ball vs ball. Thus increasing what you are trying to get rid of.
So the static defences are quite balanced out right now in my opinion.
- Conclusion
You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design. Then when I actually start to read what you're trying to say, a few facts become so clear.
- You're just bring up old whine. And I mean REALLY old whine. Like, Beta whine.
- You're a BW nostalgia fag. Accept that sc2 is not bw. as a sequel I feel they have done a good job transferring the important stuff from BW, but still making this a unique game. Its obvious you wanted BW but with better graphics, guess what, the scene wanted change, and got change.
- You're Terran.
However, your post was well constructed and nice with all the pictures and stuff. Its the content I'm opposed. sorry but units role isnt to help player play but to be merely a tools in his hand AND player decides if they are gonna help him or not. There is no justyfing to introducing boring units or microless units(1a) or almost fully automated units, you bend the reality so your points and arguments can sound smart, and you think that already gives you a privilige of calling him nostalgia fag.
It's quite the other way round. The OP bends the reality so that his points sound true...
If the OP actually focused on what opportunities blizzard let slip(he mentions it shortly, especially with roaches, but there is a lot more...) I could agree a lot with him.
But the fact that he talks about unit design by comparing everything to broodwar and doesn't mention stuff like:
-) dragoons with SC2 pathing would have been even deathballier units then stalkers
-) cutting of the scout which would have been a completly skillless unit in SC2
-) Viking as Mech Anti Air is a more interesting concept than the Goliath (in an SC2 enviroment, the goliath would have been just another 1a unit)
-) pure bio should be just as viable as pure mech
etc. etc... just shows that he actually didn't think things through or didn't want to mention any forms of improvments or at least calling them "attempts for improvements" if he doesn't think they turned out as such. It's a completly biased post and he doesn't even try to reason why blizzard might have thought it was a good idea to implement X or Y. It's exactly like nn42 said: "You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design."
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I got to agree with Big J and nn42
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On January 20 2012 06:31 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2012 05:42 bgx wrote:On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I started readin the OP and I was like, wow someone actually bringing a more widened view on units of SC2.
Nice.
...
Then I kept reading, and it was the same (excuse the language) retarded whine we saw back 2 weeks after the game release.
Aside from that, here's my thoughts:
- Colossus
Yes, it might be "boring" because it has no abilities. But in its defence, it rewards decision making of when to start making them and when to stop making them. Also not microing colossus = their range makes them shoot supply depots and other random stuff, so, micro'd colossus > a-moved, I actually _always_ have them in a separate control group.
In pvp they have a distinct role, in beta it was a colossus race, now as the metagame has progressed you might actually loose the game if you try to get them. Again rewarding decision making rather than, 'herp getting ghosts tvp is always good and can't be punished - derp'. Its a different kind of skill.
Only regarding how the unit functions I agree it could be considered 'boring' compared to the micro fest that is ghosts-infestor-HT. But its not in any regard skilless.
- Roach
Zerg has alot of APM tied up into macro. They have been given a strong bulk a-move unit to help them actually play the game. Otherwise you'd be unable to play the race as a sub diamond player. Easy as that. Boring or not, its done to serve a greater good game design not just unit design. The unit actually have burrow and burrow movement to make it more interesting mid&late game.
- Thor
I agree 100%. It's clumsy, almost exactly no micro and is plain boring. I agree with Blizzards decision to 'remove' it.
- Forcefields
I think we all can agree that right now, GW units minus sentry gets mathematically hammered by T and P low tech units. Also their upgrades scale bad as sht.
So Blizzard figured they wanted an early-midgame function to keep the game go on without low tech 5min games. (see GSL S1) Forcefields helps bringing the game into later stages. And in those later stages there are perfectly fine ways to negate forcefields.
- Micro reducing
On the related topic of micro negating ingame abilities. They all require resources, time and micro to obtain. All those relate back to skill. (with the exception of forcefields, but forcefield is a separate topic, see above).
So I don't see an issue here, more about the whole concept of one player removing the other players ability to play the game, even its done through skill. Generally I'm on the fence on this one, but in the end, it makes for a better game to watch.
- Phoenix
So you bash on one of the most micro intensive units in the game?
The fire while moving is to help protoss actually use the unit. just imagine the uselessness that is graviton beam + a-move with miss clicks. People are already staying clear of the unit because it takes to much APM upkeep.
It'd be like microing mutas but you had to focus fire every unit or they wouldn't shoot. Delightful right?
- Zone control & siege tanks
Blizzard is currently giving zone control 2.0 to terran with that mine thing that will whipe whole minerals. Just like vulture mines, guess you're happy about that.
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
- Static defences
its a hard balance to walk. if static defences are to good, a good player won't be able to close out a game against a not so good player. you'll get stuck in the 'can't seem to finish out games' issue.
Also it would as you yourself pointed out increase cheeses and also keep people in their bases, as the game would switch from 'trying to win the game' to 'trying not to loose the game'. Dropping and harassing would make lesser impact, resulting in more high tech ball vs ball. Thus increasing what you are trying to get rid of.
So the static defences are quite balanced out right now in my opinion.
- Conclusion
You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design. Then when I actually start to read what you're trying to say, a few facts become so clear.
- You're just bring up old whine. And I mean REALLY old whine. Like, Beta whine.
- You're a BW nostalgia fag. Accept that sc2 is not bw. as a sequel I feel they have done a good job transferring the important stuff from BW, but still making this a unique game. Its obvious you wanted BW but with better graphics, guess what, the scene wanted change, and got change.
- You're Terran.
However, your post was well constructed and nice with all the pictures and stuff. Its the content I'm opposed. sorry but units role isnt to help player play but to be merely a tools in his hand AND player decides if they are gonna help him or not. There is no justyfing to introducing boring units or microless units(1a) or almost fully automated units, you bend the reality so your points and arguments can sound smart, and you think that already gives you a privilige of calling him nostalgia fag. It's quite the other way round. The OP bends the reality so that his points sound true... If the OP actually focused on what opportunities blizzard let slip(he mentions it shortly, especially with roaches, but there is a lot more...) I could agree a lot with him. But the fact that he talks about unit design by comparing everything to broodwar and doesn't mention stuff like: -) dragoons with SC2 pathing would have been even deathballier units then stalkers -) cutting of the scout which would have been a completly skillless unit in SC2 -) Viking as Mech Anti Air is a more interesting concept than the Goliath (in an SC2 enviroment, the goliath would have been just another 1a unit) -) pure bio should be just as viable as pure mech etc. etc... just shows that he actually didn't think things through or didn't want to mention any forms of improvments or at least calling them "attempts for improvements" if he doesn't think they turned out as such. It's a completly biased post and he doesn't even try to reason why blizzard might have thought it was a good idea to implement X or Y. It's exactly like nn42 said: "You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design."
What are you trying to say, i cant really understand your points. Reword your arguments because i dont know what are you comparing to what.
For example:
-) dragoons with SC2 pathing would have been even deathballier units then stalkers
So you mean that IF dragoon appeared in sc2 it would become deathball unit? But how its connected to OP and what we are talking about in this thread?
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4713 Posts
I don't agree with Big J and nn42, in fact I find that they missed the point of the thread, and the point the OP, way too many times, while selectively ignoring posts that seem to threaten their view or explaining what the OP said in a more accurate way.
Colossus
Colossus is a borring units and there is nothing special about it. The decision when to switch into colossus tech and when to switch out is a choice that almost all other races have to some extent. The colossus carries very little weight too it, its almost as borring as the thor, except its not so clucky.
Roach
I don't think Zerg has more APM tied into micro than Protoss or Terran, I do believe the decision to give them a bulk unit was plain wrong. Even stalkers, which are bulk are more entertaining to use and watch because of blink micro, hell even marauders are more entertaining because of stutter step kiting. The roach could have been on the same leaf with burrow micro being a core part of the roach, but now its mearly a cutsey move to.
Micro reductions
Again, your argument has little weight behind it, almost every unit, or composition or spell requires an investment of time and resources. However, stim lets you're bio not only do more damage but also kite better, blink allows your stalkers to be more effective, EMP and Storm allows costs you micro but can give you a big advantage, etc.
However if you add FG and FF into the equation, suddenly one player invested a bit of APM, and the other one can't really do anything to react, he is blocked from investing his APM to save his army in any way shape or form without suffering critical damage.
So, what about this is good game design that all spells cost resources, time and APM to use, but there are some spells that simply block another player from doing anything?
There is nothing good about spells like that, when you see a FG land on a group of marines, you know for sure they are dead. All excitement and tension dies the moment the fungal hits. Once FF is placed to cut the army in half you know the other player is in huge trouble because he will most likely have his army killed in bits and pieces and never be able to recover by the time sentries run out of energy.
FF
So, instead of buffing the Protoss early game units, like Stalkers, Zealots, they prefer to leave them weak and apply a band-aid fix? I agree with you perfectly that sentries are needed as part of the GW army now, or it just falls on its side and dies, but this was the result of a choice. Either nerf FF, GW and Colossus and buff the GW armies or, keep Colossus, FF and WG the way it is and let the GW army scale like shit and be uterly useless without them.
So, do you really prefer Toss to be reliant on timing attacks and deathball tactics just because GW units are so bad?
There where and are tons of solutions on how to fix this.
- Make FF targetable with a fixed HP/Armor so they scale well in the begining and bad in the end.
- Make regular Gateways produce units faster, but still allow WG to teleport to where ou have power but with a production speed penalty (this would even solve the current 4 Gate PvP issues).
- And lastly nerf the damage of colossus so it doesn't destroy armies and maybe re-design it to be a more interesting unit.
What you basically said is that, FF have to be in the game or the protoss is screwed, without even trying to think up of ways to make the race work without them.
Zone Control
Just the mere fact that Blizz is willing to add more zone control in HoTS should be an indicator to you that, yes atm zone control is a big problem and one that won't go away.
And Siege tanks aren't the best zone control in the game. They are good, but incredibly fragile and expensive. They also aren't as massable as you seem to believe. Even with mining of of 3 bases you can only build 1 tank and a half per factory per minute. And once you lose them, it will take ages for you to get them back, because you can't mine all that gas back fast enough to re-max.
I also am getting the impresion you know little about mech if you think no race can go against a full 200/200 mech army. Protoss can do it quite effectively with, zealots that require 5 shots to kill, immortals that require 12 shots to kill each, archons that require 11 shots to kill. Incidentaly helions, the meatshield of tanks is terrible against all those and once the helions are dead the tanks will sustain heavy damage and it is likely the Protoss will be able to re-max even on pure Zealot/Stalker and still wipe the floor with the terran before the terran can even come close to re-maxing.
And no, a army of tanks won't ever be able to stand toe to toe with an army of immortals and come out ahead, immortals are build purely to counter tanks.
Static Defense
To solve the cheese problem, you can make these upgradable. Say, have the bunker stay the same, but implement anoter upgrade, or fold this into the bunker upgrade, to make them gain another 100 HP, -10 build time. Or an upgrade to give auto-turrets more HP and a 3rd attack etc.
Cannons and Spines can recieve the same treatment. Nothing too over the top, but just allow them to scale up with the damage units can do late game.
And to break a fortified position, you use siege units, tanks, brood lords, colossus etc. Basically if you ever get a person into a position, where he just fortified himself into a corner than you can just take the map, build up a bank and infrastructure, and just slowly and meticulously push trough his defenses until you kill him. It is a very winnable position and not that hard to achieve, it just takes more time.
Conclusion
While you did try to bring up your own arguments, I found them lacking substance and depth. And I get the feeling you are as anti-BW biassed as you claim the OP is pro BW biassed.
There wouldn't be as much "whine" if there wasn't some substance behind them, some of the shoody design choices have been spotted since beta, and the issues keep coming back because, they are probably more or less real. And heck, I could ignore them if, they didn't keep coming up month after month and, if even the pros didn't sometimes express their belief that the game is somehow less polished/broken.
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On January 19 2012 17:25 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 13:55 neoghaleon55 wrote:
I can't wait to read what you think about mules, EternalLegacy.
:D spoiler: + Show Spoiler +he doesn't like them. Why? because they are something that BW doesn't have.
But he is going to give a bunch of reasons for it (which is pretty easy when talking about the mule) so that it sounds interesting. But then again, you can find a reason for everything in everygame, why it sucks from your point of view if you just think a little bit...
This should basically be the only post in this thread.
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4713 Posts
I think that is unfair and just putting words in the OPs mouth. I'm not sure if Blizz either wanted to speed up the game, or they wanted to somehow replicate the more difficult macro of BW without going for an interface that wants to kill you, but they did a great job with the macro abilities. You basically can save them up to a certain extent, but they reward the player paying the most atention and using them consistently. MULEs and Chrono you can save up, but it is generally better to use them as they are available for the consistency of production and resource income.
Larva inject is the only mechanic that truly punishes you for not timing it right.
Overall though, the macro abilities aren't bad at all, in fact we could probably even use some more. I'd prefer the SC2 interface with more active macro abilities than the BW interface that just makes you want to kill yourself. I'm quite sure that is the way forward and anyone can appreciate that as well.
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I think one fact that every god-forsaken thread like this needs to drive home is this:
Brood War is a fluke in every single way. Koreans and others broke BW over their knees and keyboards, with hold lurkers, muta stacking, patrol micro. BW will never ever be repeated, in both a design and an ESPORTS sense. The confluence of circumstances that lead to the rise of BW in Korea will likely never be repeated. I can't see another ESPORTS movement like it coming for a long, long time.
In relation to SC2, I feel Blizzard have done a fairly mediocre job in designing it as an ESPORT.
Protoss especially is a horrifically badly designed race in terms of excitement and watch-ability with the focus on building a ball of nearly every single unit protoss has with insane DPS and spell-casters, leading to the now infamous one huge engagement into GG moments so prevalent in PvT especially. Smart-casting has removed all the excitement from spells; only forcefields really shine as a spell where we notice big gaps between the pros and the high level amateurs and it is an inherently flawed spell in itself, removing micro potential from the other player. Blink can make a case for itself but in the TvP matchup it ceases to be the intensive, constantly blinking away hurt stalkers, after early game (usually used as an allin also) This along with the warp-gate mechanic means protoss ground units are quite weak which leads to the need to ball up and rely on either storms or mass collo to provide DPS.
Warp Prism harass is either early game gimmicks (special tactics if you will) or warping in 6/8 chargelots in late game and A-moving them to a Terran expo, often to meet their doom at the hands of Planetary Fortresses. Charge in itself is simply an a-move ability with the Protoss player given no real room to micro zealots otherwise. Immortal micro used to consist of trying to get them to stop getting stuck behind stalkers but then Blizzard decided that was too taxing on players and buffed range. Reduced upgrade costs which encourages even more turtling from Protoss.
I won't go on and on but without some enormous changes (which Dustin Browder has come out and publicly said they won't make in his TL interview with Kennigit) Protoss matchups are going to be very very stale and nigh on un-watchable forever.
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This is a great read.
Very well written.
I think that all too often these aspects are not realized by the general public and, more importantly, Blizzard themselves.
I hope that this gets noticed by many people.
I agree with every single point.
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On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
You have clearly never tried mech in tvp. its bad. even if you have 20 tanks, zealots still kill you
"However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc,"
Marine tank is terrible in tvp. just amove zealots and collosi and you win.
Please actually try mech in tvp before commenting on how good it is.
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On January 20 2012 13:29 kofman wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
You have clearly never tried mech in tvp. its bad. even if you have 20 tanks, zealots still kill you "However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc," Marine tank is terrible in tvp. just amove zealots and collosi and you win. Please actually try mech in tvp before commenting on how good it is.
Please actually try reading before quoting.
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On January 20 2012 08:16 Destructicon wrote:
I think that is unfair and just putting words in the OPs mouth. I'm not sure if Blizz either wanted to speed up the game, or they wanted to somehow replicate the more difficult macro of BW without going for an interface that wants to kill you, but they did a great job with the macro abilities. You basically can save them up to a certain extent, but they reward the player paying the most atention and using them consistently. MULEs and Chrono you can save up, but it is generally better to use them as they are available for the consistency of production and resource income.
Larva inject is the only mechanic that truly punishes you for not timing it right.
Overall though, the macro abilities aren't bad at all, in fact we could probably even use some more. I'd prefer the SC2 interface with more active macro abilities than the BW interface that just makes you want to kill yourself. I'm quite sure that is the way forward and anyone can appreciate that as well.
It would be unfair, if I hadn't read this in another thread (something about gold minerals) before:
On January 16 2012 01:36 EternaLLegacy wrote:
The problem isn't just the gold mineral, it's the mule itself.
On January 20 2012 07:31 bgx wrote:Show nested quote +On January 20 2012 06:31 Big J wrote:On January 20 2012 05:42 bgx wrote:On January 20 2012 04:25 nn42 wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I started readin the OP and I was like, wow someone actually bringing a more widened view on units of SC2.
Nice.
...
Then I kept reading, and it was the same (excuse the language) retarded whine we saw back 2 weeks after the game release.
Aside from that, here's my thoughts:
- Colossus
Yes, it might be "boring" because it has no abilities. But in its defence, it rewards decision making of when to start making them and when to stop making them. Also not microing colossus = their range makes them shoot supply depots and other random stuff, so, micro'd colossus > a-moved, I actually _always_ have them in a separate control group.
In pvp they have a distinct role, in beta it was a colossus race, now as the metagame has progressed you might actually loose the game if you try to get them. Again rewarding decision making rather than, 'herp getting ghosts tvp is always good and can't be punished - derp'. Its a different kind of skill.
Only regarding how the unit functions I agree it could be considered 'boring' compared to the micro fest that is ghosts-infestor-HT. But its not in any regard skilless.
- Roach
Zerg has alot of APM tied up into macro. They have been given a strong bulk a-move unit to help them actually play the game. Otherwise you'd be unable to play the race as a sub diamond player. Easy as that. Boring or not, its done to serve a greater good game design not just unit design. The unit actually have burrow and burrow movement to make it more interesting mid&late game.
- Thor
I agree 100%. It's clumsy, almost exactly no micro and is plain boring. I agree with Blizzards decision to 'remove' it.
- Forcefields
I think we all can agree that right now, GW units minus sentry gets mathematically hammered by T and P low tech units. Also their upgrades scale bad as sht.
So Blizzard figured they wanted an early-midgame function to keep the game go on without low tech 5min games. (see GSL S1) Forcefields helps bringing the game into later stages. And in those later stages there are perfectly fine ways to negate forcefields.
- Micro reducing
On the related topic of micro negating ingame abilities. They all require resources, time and micro to obtain. All those relate back to skill. (with the exception of forcefields, but forcefield is a separate topic, see above).
So I don't see an issue here, more about the whole concept of one player removing the other players ability to play the game, even its done through skill. Generally I'm on the fence on this one, but in the end, it makes for a better game to watch.
- Phoenix
So you bash on one of the most micro intensive units in the game?
The fire while moving is to help protoss actually use the unit. just imagine the uselessness that is graviton beam + a-move with miss clicks. People are already staying clear of the unit because it takes to much APM upkeep.
It'd be like microing mutas but you had to focus fire every unit or they wouldn't shoot. Delightful right?
- Zone control & siege tanks
Blizzard is currently giving zone control 2.0 to terran with that mine thing that will whipe whole minerals. Just like vulture mines, guess you're happy about that.
Tanks, they're pretty good. Agreed that protoss has many units that are actually good against specifically tanks. However, tanks as a single unit is totally fine. Couple them with marines and you can lol @ immortals, etc etc, and now we're into what's commonly referred as "Unit compositions". A subject you have completely ignored through out your whole post.
How a unit functions coupled with another unit and their totalled interaction with the oppositions totals.
Tanks DOES give you map/zone control. And not a single race can just run into 200/200 full mech. Its a fact, and its largely due to the tanks. Infact, I think you can have ONLY tanks, and any other equal value, of the correct scale and up, of ground army (even immortals) won't get near the tanks. They are massable and would the game not consist of anything else than ground army and maps that forced straight up engagements, tanks would win any given day against any given unit composition.
This all brings us to the Mech vs Protoss discussion, and its a completely different one. I won't bring it any further than saying: You are wrong, tanks are good for zone coverage and they're the best value for the buck ground against ground army straight up fighting in the game.
- Static defences
its a hard balance to walk. if static defences are to good, a good player won't be able to close out a game against a not so good player. you'll get stuck in the 'can't seem to finish out games' issue.
Also it would as you yourself pointed out increase cheeses and also keep people in their bases, as the game would switch from 'trying to win the game' to 'trying not to loose the game'. Dropping and harassing would make lesser impact, resulting in more high tech ball vs ball. Thus increasing what you are trying to get rid of.
So the static defences are quite balanced out right now in my opinion.
- Conclusion
You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design. Then when I actually start to read what you're trying to say, a few facts become so clear.
- You're just bring up old whine. And I mean REALLY old whine. Like, Beta whine.
- You're a BW nostalgia fag. Accept that sc2 is not bw. as a sequel I feel they have done a good job transferring the important stuff from BW, but still making this a unique game. Its obvious you wanted BW but with better graphics, guess what, the scene wanted change, and got change.
- You're Terran.
However, your post was well constructed and nice with all the pictures and stuff. Its the content I'm opposed. sorry but units role isnt to help player play but to be merely a tools in his hand AND player decides if they are gonna help him or not. There is no justyfing to introducing boring units or microless units(1a) or almost fully automated units, you bend the reality so your points and arguments can sound smart, and you think that already gives you a privilige of calling him nostalgia fag. It's quite the other way round. The OP bends the reality so that his points sound true... If the OP actually focused on what opportunities blizzard let slip(he mentions it shortly, especially with roaches, but there is a lot more...) I could agree a lot with him. But the fact that he talks about unit design by comparing everything to broodwar and doesn't mention stuff like: -) dragoons with SC2 pathing would have been even deathballier units then stalkers -) cutting of the scout which would have been a completly skillless unit in SC2 -) Viking as Mech Anti Air is a more interesting concept than the Goliath (in an SC2 enviroment, the goliath would have been just another 1a unit) -) pure bio should be just as viable as pure mech etc. etc... just shows that he actually didn't think things through or didn't want to mention any forms of improvments or at least calling them "attempts for improvements" if he doesn't think they turned out as such. It's a completly biased post and he doesn't even try to reason why blizzard might have thought it was a good idea to implement X or Y. It's exactly like nn42 said: "You've dressed up your post in nice words and dropped allot of what at first sight might look insightful remarks about general unit design." What are you trying to say, i cant really understand your points. Reword your arguments because i dont know what are you comparing to what. For example: -) dragoons with SC2 pathing would have been even deathballier units then stalkers So you mean that IF dragoon appeared in sc2 it would become deathball unit? But how its connected to OP and what we are talking about in this thread?
What I was trying to say is: blizzard didn't just introduce 1a units but rather cut a lot of those as well.
They did a good job with a lot of units and even things that one could argue that they turned out bad, usually have an upside. Or at least a reasoning behind them.
EternaLLegacy doesn't try to look at things from both sides in his OP. He only talks about things that are bad (from his point of view) and therefore misses the topic. Instead of being objective he only talks about the things he can bash on, not about the things that turned out well. That makes the topic biased.
Also if you go through this very thread, you will find a question about broodlords and he answers it with something like:
What about it? The broodlord is a fine unit.
WHY THE HELL IS THIS NOT IN THE OP? Why does he not discuss the Broodlord in the OP, when it is actually a new unit. It is what this topic should be about: Unit design in SC2. But he doesn't give a shit about well designed units or being objective. He just wants to write a rant about SC2!
Edit: It is related with the dragoon, because the Stalker is such an example of a unit that has way more microability than a dragoon in an SC2 enviroment. There is no way around an objective discussion, without mentioning such examples.
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Its pretty funny to read how protoss players defends game design and terrans critics it :_D
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Northern Ireland25995 Posts
Yeah but MurdeR plenty of Protoss complain as well.
My biggest beef is how micro and its importance just doesn't scale at all well as armies increase in size. In the early to midgame you see some really intense micro-battles, I remember Huk holding off a 2 rax in some GSL with almost no units whatsoever just with some great control. My point of contention is deathball syndrome.
Look at the PvTs in the GSL this week, all of the late-game ones that I saw devolved into spellcaster wars. Alive gets one EMP off on Brown who had thoroughly outplayed him for the entire game, taking out his aoe and he instant-loses. Can't recall what set it was, think it was the first one though. There were games were Terrans played extremely well, EMPs missed templars and all the bio melted with no hope of a comeback.
It's the lack of ANY kind of even-trade when mid-lategame Toss armies come up against against a Terran of equivalent skill. Almost without exception whichever army wins the battle, CRUSHES the other army and the game is over unless some miracle occurs.
In addition, another problem I have is how design impacts upon a race's style. People all-too-often forget that the reason Tosses turtle and only move out at critical mass, or hit 2-base all-ins is because they can't retreat from a battle that goes wrong. Concussive shells can make an even early-game skirmish result in the Protoss losing his entire army. Zerg's movespeed and spells like fungal do the same. Protoss have a similar mechanism with forcefields too.
The natural consequence of this is to play defensively until you have a critical mass of units to outright crush your opponent, and people whine about it?
I find it sad as well that when I was trying to play a macro style and exclude Collosi from all my matches, I was getting trounced routinely. To rely on a stupid, gimmicky a-move unit that requires no skill to use as a crutch is saddening and reduces strategic variety.
For those who disagree with me on any of these points, please address what I have said with your own opinions rather than say 'Blizz won't do anything' or 'go back to BW' (which I didn't really play btw). Would be interested to get a debate going.
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On January 20 2012 18:54 Wombat_NI wrote:
For those who disagree with me on any of these points, please address what I have said with your own opinions rather than say 'Blizz won't do anything' or 'go back to BW' (which I didn't really play btw). Would be interested to get a debate going.
You make it clear! I agree with you in almost everything.
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On January 20 2012 05:33 JayIsImbA wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 13:48 jellyjello wrote:On January 19 2012 02:57 JayIsImbA wrote:On January 19 2012 00:20 jellyjello wrote:
First off, I'd like to applaud the OP for his effort. Enjoyed reading your post. Aside from all the micro debate, I do agree with the OP on one thing: SC2 is becoming too stale and predictable once the build order phase is passed.
I also cannot believe you didn't mention this. If you really look at the unit interface of SC2, the behavior of some of the ranged units is so unrealistic. For example, take a look at the marine death ball. You have marines basically firing through each other's back in multiple rows, and with such precision and speed. Or, how colossus can stomp through his own allied units without causing any damage. This gives so much power to ranged units over melee units which limits the game dynamics. are you seriously critizing the aspect of realism in a Fantasy-RTS-Game? You're kidding right? You are right. The hell with realism! Let's just make the marines fly and their rifles can fire unlimited nukes. After all, who really cares about the realism in RTS game? No, but it's almost unplayable if you'd take care of such things. What do you want, that colossi moving above your army actually deal damage to the units? that marines MUST stand side-by-side in order to NOT kill other marines? that's just unplayable, sorry mate that just wouldn't work, not in a fast paced RTS.
I'd like to add to this that Starcraft is sci-fi in the sense that it uses science as magic. There could easily be any number of justifications for anything (augmented aim via the marine suit, just off the top of my head). Realism simply does not apply to such a world.
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EPT
