The Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design - Page 4

The OP suggests that there are particular game-design laws that make certain units and abilities inherently wrong regardless of their implentation. This is a mild exaggeration and typically ignores the intent of each unit design. So let's break it down one by one.

Forcefield: The current iteration of forcefield does have a negative effect on unit control, however, this can be seen, not as a problem with instantaneous creation of invincible and impassable terrain, but more to do with the fact opposing players have difficulty countering it. Once your units are trapped forcefield denies micro, however, that doesn't mean a player cannot micro against it by simply avoiding the effective range of forcefield. I wouldn't be surprised if positive gameplay interactions could be developed simply increasing the risk (slower movement speed on sentries?) or reducing the effective area of influence of the sentry (shorter cast range?).
-OP's comments on forcefield feel biased, but the OP does not suggest scrapping FF so I give him credit. OP's statement that sentries deny interaction is false since "avoid them and bait them as best you can, and hope to drain sentry energy" is an interaction.

Fungal Growth: If ever there was a law about denying movement, than fungal growth would certainly be breaking it. However, any assessment about a lack of interaction is false. It does deny micro (and doesn't really add much) so compared to forcefield it's far more difficult to create healthy gameplay around. However, as a tool designed to counter certain interactions it can be viewed as healthy. This spell has a bit of an identity crisis, does it hinder harass? nuke marines? or trap small groups of out of position units? It's probably overpowered if it can fill too many roles, however just like FF it's not inherently bad game design, it's just harder to design around.

Concussive Shells: OP's assessment is generally positive, OP generally displays bias against abilities that capitilize on player mistakes. Concussive shells do force opponents to think critically about their engagements.

Micro-less units:

The Colossus: Why is this unit microless? A moving is a symptom of overpowering unit compositions, of which the colossus can be viewed as taking part in. The fact colossus can stand on units does lead itself to deathball scenarios, however the unit encourages good micro outside of anything deathball scenario, and demands thoughtful engagements inside deathball scenario.

The Roach: The roach is a vanilla unit like any other, the only problem then that can be found is a lack of units which interact positively with the unit. Either the units that support it are ineffective, or the units that counter it dynamically do not exist. This could suggest either changing the stats of the roach, or creating more ways to interact with the roach (by adding or changing units, by changing defenders advantage etc.)

The Thor: Currently being removed, however, the concept of a slow moving unit that controls specific zones (much like the siege tank) is not in itself inherently flawed, Blizzard simply deemed the thor ineffective at fulfilling the anti-air role it was intended for.

The Pheonix: Suggesting this unit requires no micro is laughable. Shoot and move is shoot and move, you may be able add more actions, but what really matters is the attention paid towards the unit, and to micro this unit effectively full attention is still required.

The Siege Tank: Yes the tank has problems in TvP, however it's actively important in TvT and TvZ. I would agree that with the role shift of the immortal as hp tank to a damage dealer would suggest removing hardened shield, since it has no effect on most relevant units with the exception of perhaps the roach.

Question: Is there something wrong with units that can only be used in specific match-ups? I'd say 2 out of 3 is not bad.

2) Banelings, Burrow, and Detection: OP's opinions on this are preference based. Suggesting what zerg needs is an abract argument. I'd agree that burrow is an interesting mechanic. Blizzard also agrees and has put quite a bit of effort in designing units with burrow in mind. Creep spread actually turned out to be an effective way to force detection. As it stands, I imagine the reason lurkers aren't in SC2 is largely the same issues as the siegetank. They were just too fragile or ineffective.

Static Defense and the Non-Necessity of Siege: Static defence seems like one of the harder design elements to get right. Blizzard has to weigh the power of harassment, the power of cheese, the ability to turtle and the ability to control the map, when designing static defence. Too strong static defence makes turtling for too long, too easy; it makes harassment impossible; it makes cheesing too strong OR it denies any form of dynamic early game; and it allows for map control to easily gained (sort of like when zerg go mass spine crawler after they hit 200/200).

Scaling static defence is a reasonable response, and i'd agree that Blizzard hasn't quite hit the nail of static defence. However, you cannot immediately rule out using units defensively as a viable gameplay mechanic. Thors or sentries or siegetanks or infestors etc. could all be seen as fulfilling the roles of static defence.

In conclusion:

The OP's assessment that SC2 if balanced too heavily around denying interactions is not entirely accurate. SC2 units, more often than not, are designed to create and encourage interactions, some of them may have missed the mark, while some of them are probably not as bad as you'd think. Furthermore, judging by the units Blizzard presented in the HotS preview, it appears Blizzard largely has identified many of the same weaknesses the OP suggests (which kind of makes his entire post pointless).

The largest issue with OP is his belief that many of his assumptions are slightly off the mark. He assumes forcefield is bad because it denies interactions, when in fact it creates interactions and enables different strategies and counter strategies. While many of the OP's assumptions are very close to being accurate, they seem to ride on the idea there are inherent game design laws that Blizzard is breaking, when in fact these game design ideas might actually be very good for the game, if their execution could be properly balanced and they matched the intended role they were designed for.