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:
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.
As I've already explained, there is no benefit to writing extensively on the good parts of SC2. The article was enormous already, and I wasn't about to write a book for an internet forum. If someone else wants to do it, by all means do it. If you think everyone is hypercritical and nobody talks about the good stuff, you should write an article on how SC2 is awesome. Don't come into my thread and bitch and moan that I'm not writing the same OP you would've wrote.
The thread is about design problems, so that's what I wrote about.
Wombat, just because you can't play without colossi is not a criticism of the game. It's a criticism of you. Time and time again these complaints reek of "if I fuck up then I lose." quit it already. Rather than complaining, why don't you actually try to figure out how to pull these things off.
The game is hard and unforgiving. Stop complaining and try to figure it out. You'll have a lot more fun.
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.
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.
As I've already explained, there is no benefit to writing extensively on the good parts of SC2. The article was enormous already, and I wasn't about to write a book for an internet forum. If someone else wants to do it, by all means do it. If you think everyone is hypercritical and nobody talks about the good stuff, you should write an article on how SC2 is awesome. Don't come into my thread and bitch and moan that I'm not writing the same OP you would've wrote.
The thread is about design problems, so that's what I wrote about.
First of all this a forum. If you don't want people to come in here and discuss about your opinion, then you better don't post it. Second: The thread's title is "The Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design" and not "Why Starcraft 2 sucks". So you simply miss the topic if you only discuss the downsides. And it's not as if you didn't realize this. You simply want to make it sound as if SC2 is objectivly worse than BW.
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.
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.
As I've already explained, there is no benefit to writing extensively on the good parts of SC2. The article was enormous already, and I wasn't about to write a book for an internet forum. If someone else wants to do it, by all means do it. If you think everyone is hypercritical and nobody talks about the good stuff, you should write an article on how SC2 is awesome. Don't come into my thread and bitch and moan that I'm not writing the same OP you would've wrote.
The thread is about design problems, so that's what I wrote about.
First of all this a forum. If you don't want people to come in here and discuss about your opinion, then you better don't post it. Second: The thread's title is "The Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design" and not "Why Starcraft 2 sucks". So you simply miss the topic if you only discuss the downsides. And it's not as if you didn't realize this. You simply want to make it sound as if SC2 is objectivly worse than BW.
My purpose was to write about things that need addressing in the next 2 expansions to improve the quality of the game. It was not to simply have a nice chat about what is good and bad about SC2. You seem to have a very big problem accepting that it is my article and so it's going to be what I want to write about, not you.
On January 21 2012 00:34 DoubleReed wrote: Wombat, just because you can't play without colossi is not a criticism of the game. It's a criticism of you. Time and time again these complaints reek of "if I fuck up then I lose." quit it already. Rather than complaining, why don't you actually try to figure out how to pull these things off.
The game is hard and unforgiving. Stop complaining and try to figure it out. You'll have a lot more fun.
When did I complain and blame my losses on excluding that tech? I was experimenting because I was sick of the unit, and had success with 2 base all-ins, but couldn't win in non-gimmicky, 'straight up' macro games without their AoE, at least against certain compositions.
Note that I have no problem with templar, the other half of the 'required' AoE partnership. These are units that require more pre-planning, especially since the amulet nerf, and they need to be well positioned to maximise their potential.
The collosus as a unit has none of these requirements and is a crutch for the Protoss race. I have no issue with units that aren't obligatory in many situations but that require some ability to use. It's a fucking stupid unit that requires no micro, indeed a unit that can punish you for attempting to micro it by not dealing optimal damage. I just 4gate now every PvP so I don't have to deal with, or partake in collosus wars which are just obnoxious. Don't even care if I get forcefielded out and lose, nothing annoys me more than players turtling and making collosus and a-moving, nothing. Not getting blind 6-pooled, not getting 'rine SCV all-inned, literally nothing in the game irks me to that degree.
If other races' players are allowed to complain about deathballs, surely Protoss players complaining about the unit should be extended the same courtesy without criticism of their perceived skill-level.
I completely agree with most of the things you said but maybe not everything exactly as you put it. Blizzard just never wanted to make any of the drastic changes they needed to take to fix some of the bad design choices they made early on. Force fields and fungal growth are big problems with the game in my opinion that kind of creates other problems when you try to get around the problems they make. They were cool ideas, but not all good ideas make good units or abilities. That being said they made a good try and topping brood war might not even be possible. Its like capcom trying to make a fighting game better then street fighter 2 turbo its just not possible.
On January 11 2012 03:45 Markwerf wrote: Pff alot of these are just disguised balance whines. First of all you don't seem to know that much about gamedesign I'm realising. Complexity is not the holy grail in game design which your article does make it seem to be. Depth while remaining clarity is important. Chess is a great game because it's complex but still relatively easy to understand and thus strategize for, you don't have to know how to win directly for example by simply focussing on winning pieces allowing for people to plan strategies while not being experts. Go on the other hand is by many players especially in more Western societies deemed as too complex because it's very hard to set intermediar goals for the game because the game is more difficult to set subgoals for.
Microless units are needed to create important units, if each unit had many abilities etc it would become too chaotic or complex. The microless units you mention are not poorly designed at all imo in fact many of them have interesting abilities i think. Roach for example may look like a boring vanilla unit but wasn't the hydra in BW as well? Roaches being no AA means there is much more room for air units to play a crucial role in XvZ matchups a great design choice imo. The only poor unit design mentioned in this article here is the colossus, not per se because it's boring in itself but because of the counterunits (viking and corruptor) that there are which invalidate other cool units (battlecruiser and carrier).
In the same vein I don't see units that restrict micro as poor either. In the case of the sentry there is plenty that can be done about it for example, flanking, dropping, burrow, fungal, emp, etc.etc. Losing to it is aggrevating perhaps but that doesn't make the design poor, it's just a hidden balance whine.. Stasis and lockdown where liked abilities as well how are stuff like fungal etc different? If truly nothing could be done about these abilities then it might be problematic but there really is plenty you can do, for example marauder kiting can be solved by forcefields so these 'unfun' mechanics can perfectly solve eachother.
The point about a slight lack of zone control units I agree with but saying siege tanks don't fulfill that role now is silly. The entire TvZ matchup and TvT matchup revolve for a large part about zone and map control because of the siege tank. Saying this doesn't work properly is just silly, breaking siege lines is still very hard. The problem is just that you seem to be comparing the game to BW too much, yes PvT is not the same and the PvT there is now might not as good the BW variant but that doesn't mean the tank is broken.. they just chose an other path for sc2.
All this pretending to be some game design guru while it's just an elaborate balance whine basically is annoying. The conclusion is also just complete bogus.
Would all have to agree with everything said, sadly.
On January 21 2012 00:34 DoubleReed wrote: Wombat, just because you can't play without colossi is not a criticism of the game. It's a criticism of you. Time and time again these complaints reek of "if I fuck up then I lose." quit it already. Rather than complaining, why don't you actually try to figure out how to pull these things off.
The game is hard and unforgiving. Stop complaining and try to figure it out. You'll have a lot more fun.
When did I complain and blame my losses on excluding that tech? I was experimenting because I was sick of the unit, and had success with 2 base all-ins, but couldn't win in non-gimmicky, 'straight up' macro games without their AoE, at least against certain compositions.
Note that I have no problem with templar, the other half of the 'required' AoE partnership. These are units that require more pre-planning, especially since the amulet nerf, and they need to be well positioned to maximise their potential.
The collosus as a unit has none of these requirements and is a crutch for the Protoss race. I have no issue with units that aren't obligatory in many situations but that require some ability to use. It's a fucking stupid unit that requires no micro, indeed a unit that can punish you for attempting to micro it by not dealing optimal damage. I just 4gate now every PvP so I don't have to deal with, or partake in collosus wars which are just obnoxious. Don't even care if I get forcefielded out and lose, nothing annoys me more than players turtling and making collosus and a-moving, nothing. Not getting blind 6-pooled, not getting 'rine SCV all-inned, literally nothing in the game irks me to that degree.
If other races' players are allowed to complain about deathballs, surely Protoss players complaining about the unit should be extended the same courtesy without criticism of their perceived skill-level.
I'm so confused. Your second sentence blatantly contradicts your first sentence. Ow my brain.
And all right, fair enough. I'll extend you courtesy on deathballs because they are rather idiotic.
sorry sawamura i meant greatest sc2 game ever. but ill have to watch that BW game fore sure
edit: that was such a good game sawamura, thanks for the video. awesome back and forth action, something we dont see in sc2. looked like lurkers and dark swarm were the two reasons for that. what was blizzard thinking when they decided not to use those two units from starcraft2
Hmm, I think it would be hilarious to have a playable race of all the units we miss from broodwar. Firebats, medics, lurkers, dragoons, vultures, defilers, reavers, shuttles, wraiths, corsairs, arbiters, science vessels, guardians, and scourge.
On January 21 2012 15:38 napkinlad wrote: sorry sawamura i meant greatest sc2 game ever. but ill have to watch that BW game fore sure
edit: that was such a good game sawamura, thanks for the video. awesome back and forth action, something we dont see in sc2. looked like lurkers and dark swarm were the two reasons for that. what was blizzard thinking when they decided not to use those two units from starcraft2
You might want to watch the whole series which is in my opinion is the best starleague finals between these two players . Iris was at his prime and GGplay is also at his best during these starleague finals . Well let's just say blizzard want's to do something different so people can differentiate between broodwar and sc2 although by doing that they removed a whole lot of unit's which are really crucial for standard ,cheesy and awesome play like the defilers,science vessels,vultures with spider mines , goliaths , really bad ass siege tank's and etc .
Was the removal of this unit's who played crucial roles in each races worth it ? Maybe to some , Maybe no to some .
On January 21 2012 00:34 DoubleReed wrote: Wombat, just because you can't play without colossi is not a criticism of the game. It's a criticism of you. Time and time again these complaints reek of "if I fuck up then I lose." quit it already. Rather than complaining, why don't you actually try to figure out how to pull these things off.
The game is hard and unforgiving. Stop complaining and try to figure it out. You'll have a lot more fun.
When did I complain and blame my losses on excluding that tech? I was experimenting because I was sick of the unit, and had success with 2 base all-ins, but couldn't win in non-gimmicky, 'straight up' macro games without their AoE, at least against certain compositions.
Note that I have no problem with templar, the other half of the 'required' AoE partnership. These are units that require more pre-planning, especially since the amulet nerf, and they need to be well positioned to maximise their potential.
The collosus as a unit has none of these requirements and is a crutch for the Protoss race. I have no issue with units that aren't obligatory in many situations but that require some ability to use. It's a fucking stupid unit that requires no micro, indeed a unit that can punish you for attempting to micro it by not dealing optimal damage. I just 4gate now every PvP so I don't have to deal with, or partake in collosus wars which are just obnoxious. Don't even care if I get forcefielded out and lose, nothing annoys me more than players turtling and making collosus and a-moving, nothing. Not getting blind 6-pooled, not getting 'rine SCV all-inned, literally nothing in the game irks me to that degree.
If other races' players are allowed to complain about deathballs, surely Protoss players complaining about the unit should be extended the same courtesy without criticism of their perceived skill-level.
I'm so confused. Your second sentence blatantly contradicts your first sentence. Ow my brain.
And all right, fair enough. I'll extend you courtesy on deathballs because they are rather idiotic.
First bit was badly worded, what I meant was I am not mechanically at the level where I can just do what I want. The racial balance in the game is pretty good at present, but from a design perspective I dislike getting railed down one particular tech path to get one unit that becomes a near-necessity
God knows how Terran feel having to go MMMVG every game against Protoss
On January 11 2012 03:45 Markwerf wrote: Pff alot of these are just disguised balance whines. First of all you don't seem to know that much about gamedesign I'm realising. Complexity is not the holy grail in game design which your article does make it seem to be. Depth while remaining clarity is important. Chess is a great game because it's complex but still relatively easy to understand and thus strategize for, you don't have to know how to win directly for example by simply focussing on winning pieces allowing for people to plan strategies while not being experts. Go on the other hand is by many players especially in more Western societies deemed as too complex because it's very hard to set intermediar goals for the game because the game is more difficult to set subgoals for.
Microless units are needed to create important units, if each unit had many abilities etc it would become too chaotic or complex. The microless units you mention are not poorly designed at all imo in fact many of them have interesting abilities i think. Roach for example may look like a boring vanilla unit but wasn't the hydra in BW as well? Roaches being no AA means there is much more room for air units to play a crucial role in XvZ matchups a great design choice imo. The only poor unit design mentioned in this article here is the colossus, not per se because it's boring in itself but because of the counterunits (viking and corruptor) that there are which invalidate other cool units (battlecruiser and carrier).
In the same vein I don't see units that restrict micro as poor either. In the case of the sentry there is plenty that can be done about it for example, flanking, dropping, burrow, fungal, emp, etc.etc. Losing to it is aggrevating perhaps but that doesn't make the design poor, it's just a hidden balance whine.. Stasis and lockdown where liked abilities as well how are stuff like fungal etc different? If truly nothing could be done about these abilities then it might be problematic but there really is plenty you can do, for example marauder kiting can be solved by forcefields so these 'unfun' mechanics can perfectly solve eachother.
The point about a slight lack of zone control units I agree with but saying siege tanks don't fulfill that role now is silly. The entire TvZ matchup and TvT matchup revolve for a large part about zone and map control because of the siege tank. Saying this doesn't work properly is just silly, breaking siege lines is still very hard. The problem is just that you seem to be comparing the game to BW too much, yes PvT is not the same and the PvT there is now might not as good the BW variant but that doesn't mean the tank is broken.. they just chose an other path for sc2.
All this pretending to be some game design guru while it's just an elaborate balance whine basically is annoying. The conclusion is also just complete bogus.
That is balntantly wrong, micro-less units are just plain borring and bad, they require very little input to be successful while dealing tons of damage. And there is a perfect example of a late game unit that, was strong, but still micro-able, the carrier, BW version of course. A unit that was fragile vs goliaths but could be used to hit and run, snipe key units/buildings, had to abuse terrain etc. Just because we don't have more imagination to envision better ways for these micro-less units to work, doesn't mean they don't exist, and the game wouldn't become overly complex if all units where micro-able, the game would gain depth, because you could do way more with your units if you used them effectively.
And micro-reducing abilities are bad because, flanking, dropping, burrow and EMPs happen regardless of these, the pre-battle micro and dance will always take place between two good players, trying to size themselves up and find the perfect oportunity to engage. The big difference is that, once engaged one player will not be able to do anything but lose his entire army if there are FF and FG present.
I don't mention concusive shells and Marauders because, they require a great deal of continous APM to pull off, and there are still ways to micro against it even so, like setting up flanks and such, FF and FG however, once they hit, there is nothing you can do, you will lose a big chunk of your army.
I got one simple idea for the infamous Colossus splash:
Many splash damage spells in Star2 can't stack, for example Fungal and Psi-storm. What if Colossus splash also couldn't stack, wouldn't that fix some parts of what makes Colos so horrible design wise?
And on top of this, another great idea:
Make sentries only able to place FF's within pylon radiuses. This would make it possible to block ramps to avoid early runby's, but the spell wont work aggressively anymore as the worst spell in Blizzard's history, unless they pre-emtively build Pylons everywhere. Or, the cool micro trick Genius used to win the final in GSL May 2012, the WarpPrism - Sentry Combo to be able to use aggressive FF's.
On January 25 2012 10:15 HowardRoark wrote: I got one simple idea for the infamous Colossus splash:
Many splash damage spells in Star2 can't stack, for example Fungal and Psi-storm. What if Colossus splash also couldn't stack, wouldn't that fix some parts of what makes Colos so horrible design wise?
And on top of this, another great idea:
Make sentries only able to place FF's within pylon radiuses. This would make it possible to block ramps to avoid early runby's, but the spell wont work aggressively anymore as the worst spell in Blizzard's history, unless they pre-emtively build Pylons everywhere. Or, the cool micro trick Genius used to win the final in GSL May 2012, the WarpPrism - Sentry Combo to be able to use aggressive FF's.
FF only in pylon range? that is rediclious.. If you get attacked with a bunch of roaches you're dead, because if you do a standard wall-off at the ramp with gateway and cybercore, the pylon won't cover the lower ramp, so roaches could just walk UP the ramp and start pounding the core/gate... worst idea ever, sorry bro.. (and that's just the first reason which came to my mind immediately) Protoss NEEDS sentries and FF, because they cannot deal with masses of units, therefor they MUST always fight vs. equal or lower amounts, because you get overwhelmed otherwise. Even roach/hydra would beat colossi army without FF..
Regarding your non-"stacking"-colossi damage: that makes little sense either, as colossi attack is not a "spell". Therefor, making colossi attacks "not stack" would mean essentially the same as if the attack from two different stalkers could not damage one marine. That's nonsense. It's like complaining that 3 tanks one-shot stalkers.
I always try to spread word about this imho underrated(relatively) OSL finals, this is one of the highest skill level zerg play in bw... There is no second to this, when it comes to defending the indefensible, one of the most clutch OSL finals, one of the most impressive showcases of player endurance, first + Show Spoiler +
3 set comeback
in OSL history. sneak peak"terrible" is just mistype)
I always try to spread word about this imho underrated(relatively) OSL finals, this is one of the highest skill level zerg play in bw... There is no second to this, when it comes to defending the indefensible, one of the most clutch OSL finals, one of the most impressive showcases of player endurance, first + Show Spoiler +
I always try to spread word about this imho underrated(relatively) OSL finals, this is one of the highest skill level zerg play in bw... There is no second to this, when it comes to defending the indefensible, one of the most clutch OSL finals, one of the most impressive showcases of player endurance, first + Show Spoiler +
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee22/WanSzeOnn/ggplayviris2.jpg)
