EPTThe Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design - Page 5
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shizaep
Canada2920 Posts
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Laserath
United States19 Posts
What I'm trying to say is that you are right, much of the game is A-move (at least at this juncture), but your article came across to me as very one-sided. While the micro-ability of the game could be dramatically improved, it is already doing some things well. | ||
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PetRockSteve
United States70 Posts
One could also argue that drop and harassment units offer a different form of space control. Dropping/harassing your opponent can require their units to deal with these actions, limiting the areas that can they can occupy and influence. | ||
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Chunhyang
Bangladesh1389 Posts
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NuclearWINtr
United States125 Posts
The lack of the defender's advantage and the importance of positioning is the root cause. In Brood War there were defenses that were almost unbreakable for every race in most matchups e.g. lurkers+swarm+simcity, tanks+turrets, reavers/storms+simcity; in sc2, zerg lacks any "unbreakable" defense except maybe spine+fungal, siege lines are a shade of their former self, and toss has forcefields which may help defend, but do not allow control of an area. This has lead to many other problems such as ball vs ball and a lack of small engagements for map control. One immediately put themself at risk with any concerted harassment effort because of the consequential weaker army. Compare this to say brood war tvt where gigantic dropship fleets moved around the map simply because only a fraction of the army was needed for defense. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On January 11 2012 06:17 MCDayC wrote: See, what you said about static d was backed up by fact, and therefore the debate actually becomes more interesting. In the case of Zerd static D, I would still disagree, as they have the ability to move the building, which more than the buildings being slightly weaker. I would still like to hear a clarification as to why Phoenix is an anti/bad micro unit. I honestly can't think of a reason why. The point of static D is to provide defense. If it doesn't do that very well, then why would anyone get it? Besides, the slow root timing on spines, combined with ridiculously slow movespeed off creep, basically forces them to be stationary unless you have 100% absolute map control and can safely move them. Phoenix aren't a bad unit, but the auto-shooting while moving mechanic is rather silly. How would you feel if hellions did that? Stalkers? All units in the game? Auto-shoot just doesn't fit in with the rest of Starcraft. Maybe it's a personal gripe from beta when everyone just facepalmed at the implementation, but I find it a very bad precedent and it wouldn't make sense on other units. | ||
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Pronkers
Australia13 Posts
The point of static D is to provide defense. If it doesn't do that very well, then why would anyone get it? Besides, the slow root timing on spines, combined with ridiculously slow movespeed off creep, basically forces them to be stationary unless you have 100% absolute map control and can safely move them. Phoenix aren't a bad unit, but the auto-shooting while moving mechanic is rather silly. How would you feel if hellions did that? Stalkers? All units in the game? Auto-shoot just doesn't fit in with the rest of Starcraft. Maybe it's a personal gripe from beta when everyone just facepalmed at the implementation, but I find it a very bad precedent and it wouldn't make sense on other units.[/QUOTE] +1 If they were any better they'd be pretty rediculus lategame though , since you can mass move them, but yeah, they need to be changed. | ||
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Phoose
Germany23 Posts
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deadmau
960 Posts
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Bleb
Croatia278 Posts
I especially liked the part about micro-killers! Ever since beta I was sure they're gona remake FFs and Con. shells... ah... maybe I'm just playing the wrong game | ||
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rpgalon
Brazil1069 Posts
On January 11 2012 13:39 Chunhyang wrote: How badly designed is the Colossus? This article made me see, thanks. I knew it was bad, but now I know it's pretty terrible. I mean, if you took away the cliff walking ability, people would just shrug. lol, you learned nothing about the colossus, because you just forgot about one of the biggest sinergys of Stalker-Colossus based armies... | ||
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KissKiss
United Kingdom136 Posts
Always wondered what ForceFields would be like if they had a fairly significant cast time, say up to a second or so. You could effectively bait P into wasting them without sacrificing too much of their strengths that P has to rely on. Thors frustrate me not just because they are big dumb unit that can't really be micro'd, but also because it really closes off a lot of micro/harass by Muta. Watching Jaedong or Savior dancing around the T push picking off marines at the edge or Tanks left too far behind was always really great to watch and was obviously pretty crucial from a balance perspective as well. If the lack of proper Muta stacking wasn't enough (and its not tooooo bad in SC2, you can still sort of ball your mutas if you spam click enough :3) Terran has this Unit that really prevents you from harassing his army at all. It feels like they pay some minerals and gas to completely shut off an avenue of play thats interesting to watch. Roach is a really problematic unit. I'd love it if that brought back the regenarative ability to allow it to be a strong early/midgame unit with a micro requirement even it it lost stats elsewhere. Hydras also fall under the micro-less catagory imo. Too small of an HP pool to bother conserving, and if they are off creep then once you've engaged thats it. They either win the fight or die trying. But hey, at least Ultras are microintensive units ^^ | ||
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dnld12
United States324 Posts
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On January 12 2012 01:01 KissKiss wrote: Nice article. Disagree on some things but for the most part agree. Always wondered what ForceFields would be like if they had a fairly significant cast time, say up to a second or so. You could effectively bait P into wasting them without sacrificing too much of their strengths that P has to rely on. Thors frustrate me not just because they are big dumb unit that can't really be micro'd, but also because it really closes off a lot of micro/harass by Muta. Watching Jaedong or Savior dancing around the T push picking off marines at the edge or Tanks left too far behind was always really great to watch and was obviously pretty crucial from a balance perspective as well. If the lack of proper Muta stacking wasn't enough (and its not tooooo bad in SC2, you can still sort of ball your mutas if you spam click enough :3) Terran has this Unit that really prevents you from harassing his army at all. It feels like they pay some minerals and gas to completely shut off an avenue of play thats interesting to watch. Roach is a really problematic unit. I'd love it if that brought back the regenarative ability to allow it to be a strong early/midgame unit with a micro requirement even it it lost stats elsewhere. Hydras also fall under the micro-less catagory imo. Too small of an HP pool to bother conserving, and if they are off creep then once you've engaged thats it. They either win the fight or die trying. But hey, at least Ultras are microintensive units ^^ Thor is a good example of a Juggernaut unit that exists to actually limit interaction between players and reduce the game complexity, I agree. It didn't always have AOE anti air, and it was a lot more enjoyable to use back in early beta, especially with a much slower but more powerful ground attack that actually made it almost like a reaver (and you saw thor-drop like reaver-drop too, it was pretty cool!) As for the hydra being a micro-less unit, I agree, but hydras also don't perform every role, and so at least you need other micro intensive units to support them. On January 12 2012 01:09 dnld12 wrote: Its good but SCRAPPING EVERYTHING AND GOIGN BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD IS... TO LATE RIGHT NOW. wE Deal with what we got. Warcraft 3 underwent a HUGE redesign in TFT. I don't think there's any reason to believe that it's too late. | ||
Destructicon
4713 Posts
While SC2 does have a lot of well designed and fun to use units, I do believe that some units/abilities really ruin some of the dynamics. In particular I hate FF, WG and Colossus, not the ideas themselves but they way they are implemented, in such a way that all the other units of Protoss had to be nerfed and are forced most of the time into deathball situations. Its not surprising that protoss suffers from so many problems and has been the center of controversy for so long when they have the most controversial and talked about units/mechanics in the entire game. People keep saying Protoss need a strong raiding unit, something that is strong without adding to the deathball. I think what Protoss really needs is for WG, FF and Colossus to re-designed in some way or another in such a way that it permits the buffing of the GW units, and actually allows for units to be strong on their own, then you'd see way more raiding parties, counter-attacks and such from Protoss. | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
I wish Blizzard would read this blog and completely rethink the way they think about the game, in time for HOTS. The anti-micro aspect that was brought up is a very important flaw, and even professional players have been known to bring that up. This blog deserves more than 5/5 and a spotlight. | ||
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Valckrie
United Kingdom533 Posts
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iky43210
United States2099 Posts
It simply becomes a strong opinionated post when first thing you do is make a thread and do a one way comparison of X game with Y game, just let it go. Broodwar is not popular and did not kick off anywhere else but Korea. Just a food for thought | ||
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ALnoivmee
United Kingdom1 Post
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Destructicon
4713 Posts
And, I really don't see where the progress is in the RTS genre when you have a unit that fills 99% of the roles other units fill and just makes half your repertoire redundant. Or when you have units that limit interaction. The Colossus is the main culprit of this, its so powerful that the other Toss units had to be nerfed to compensate. Look at sentries, super strong because of FF, so strong in fact that the the other toss units had to be nerfed (again), to balance them. There really is no coincidence that Protoss has been the center of talk and controversy for the entire life of SC2 thus far, wheter it was for them being OP or UP. | ||
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