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On January 19 2012 07:12 Arterial wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 06:51 BrassMonkey wrote:
If you think spines are bad then you have never played zerg my friend
Spines are literally amazing
see: any good zerg out there OP isn't wrong when he says that a spine crawler can't kill marine with medivac support. Spine crawlers are pretty bad. Rough approximations of how many units you'll barely need to kill a spine 6 marines with stim 3 zealots 5 roaches The matter of the fact is, focus firing spines with any number of units and they're useless. I do it all the time in my ZvZs. Maybe you have never played zerg my friend.
So... they're bad because they require double their resource cost to kill, take no supply, and can reposition? Spine crawlers are amazing.
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On January 18 2012 19:27 tokicheese wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 19:11 Tobberoth wrote:On January 18 2012 19:06 GeOnoSis wrote:
very interesting, but I don't agree with your static defense... cannons would be just to strong! Just imagine A cannon going up behind the zerg expansion or behind a wall, making it impossible to attack. Also all this changes would make Mutas pretty useless. If Turrets would do even more damage, Mutas would be stupid to play. You already need like 18+ Mutas to kill 1 Turret, when the terran repairs it and often time you still lose one. And if there is any Zerg unit, which can't get really hardcountered, it's the Mutalisk. With proper micro you can dodge storms, magic box against thors and so on...
But that leads to a problem, you already mentioned: Too much firepower, or at least to hard counters.
Like you said it's just a joke to fight with Stalkers or Roaches against Marauders or sth like that. But also, did you ever fight with an army of just stalkers and sentries against a Roach Ling army and completely got crushed? Probably yes, but did you fight against one with the same size and completely crushes him just because of forcefields? Probably YES! I think something like forcefields is sooo hard to balance. In the early game, they can just prevent any aggression in many situations and in other, nearly completely useless. I know I might wrote some weird things :D but well in the end I just think that there are too many hardcounters and the DPS against certain Unit types is obviously a huge factor. Thors vs Muta overall is just dumb as crap. One minor mistake, such as flying 1 milimeter too close to a thor you haven't seen, and he gets one shot off. Boom, 20 mutas brought to orange HP. The idea that you have to micro mutas against Thors is a good thing, it's a counter which can be overcome by skill. Problem again being firepower and speed, there's NO margin for error. A ½ second is enough to go from a good position to a bad position just because of the insane firepower of a single thor. Like OP said, this fight would also benefit from a 50% balance. Lower the damage by 50%, but increase the splash range, or something like that. Encourange micro, while not making minor mistakes cost too much. Thors being killed by 2/3 mutas when magic boxed isnt silly?
Hm... People tend to easily forget that mutas cost 100 100... 3 mutas is 300 300, more than a thor, and how stupid would it be to have a thor alone? thats not the point... Mutas are a game investment, in the sense that if you really go muta, well thats it, you go muta, unless your opponent did a major mistake, you're going to have to invest 70/90% of your gas on muta tech, I see so many people QQ about mutas like they were some kind of free unit like zerglings -_-
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I definitely agree with the fact that units do to much damage and that there's to much countering going on especially in low tier units. The only thing is that the pros are getting much better with the control of there units and I say just give it some more time and we will see a different game being played. I feel that there's been so much emphasis on the strategies to be used and getting all your timings right that micro hasn't been touched on 100%. Such as remember MMA stunning everyone with his multi drops and we couldn't believe how he did it. With more dedicated micro to battles units are going to survive longer and its going to be more dynamic of a game. The aggressive type players are starting to come out ahead in each match up and will likely continue.
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On January 19 2012 07:54 oxxo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 07:12 Arterial wrote:On January 19 2012 06:51 BrassMonkey wrote:
If you think spines are bad then you have never played zerg my friend
Spines are literally amazing
see: any good zerg out there OP isn't wrong when he says that a spine crawler can't kill marine with medivac support. Spine crawlers are pretty bad. Rough approximations of how many units you'll barely need to kill a spine 6 marines with stim 3 zealots 5 roaches The matter of the fact is, focus firing spines with any number of units and they're useless. I do it all the time in my ZvZs. Maybe you have never played zerg my friend. So... they're bad because they require double their resource cost to kill, take no supply, and can reposition? Spine crawlers are amazing.
Think about it this way, they can defend against 6 marines with stim, but you often don't have just 6 marines, and certainly not if you have stim. These are rough values, and generally speaking, you use many more units per assault. Even in smaller attacks, I would still send more than 3 zealots per Zerg base to deal with the hatch or spines. They might be "good," earlier-game but they seem to fall apart later on.
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I just want to chime in on a couple of points:
*I'm actually ok with the levels of defenders advantages we have now. If it got much steeper, we would see alot of zero harass, long stalemate type games. Maybe spines could take a little buff (I'm Terran), but otherwise I think the game rewards an appropriate amount of aggression.
*My biggest grievance, like others, is the "x counters y" game development ethos. In the end, that will kill this games longevity... because it completely disincentivizes (not sure if thats a word lol) creativity and different styles. What BW had right was a less rigid countering system, but compositions that were much more microable. This leads to more unique and interesting matches.
Seriously... Can you watch another 10 years of TvP? Stalkers.. I need marauders. Collossi.. get vikings. Marine... get HT. Awful.
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On January 18 2012 20:19 gh0un wrote:
At this point in time i dont believe that blizzard is capable of fixing their utterly flawed game design, since it would require a complete overhaul of the game, which would mean they would have to admit that they made a mistake, and obviously its blizzard they will never admit that they made a mistake.
- unmicroable units (most of them are extremely limited)
- spells that take away the ability to micro units (forcefield, neural parasite and fungal) instead of spells that encourage micro (dark swarm and radiate)
- lack of units that can hold a position on the map (especially for zerg and protoss) -> no real map control aspect to the game
- stuff clumps together in a tight ball leading to 1 big clash scenarios that are utterly boring
Especially point 2 and 3, the fact that blizzard managed to completely miss the dart board on these two issues is /facepalm inducing.
How can you go from darkswarm, radiate, defensive matrix, lurker, reaver, spidermines, carriers and plenty more stuff, to something that completely takes away whole aspects of the game, WHILE not replacing them with other aspects.
Starcraft 2, from a gamedesign point of view is so terrible, its actually a miracle it managed to take off so well in esports.
Guess the hype from waiting for a sequel to one of the best games in the industry was enough to get the rock rolling down the cliff. Unfortunately the rock is a fucking ugly bitch no one wants to touch, but its rolling already and the cliff is deep.
Behold of the unstoppable ugly bitch rock that is starcraft 2 rolling down the cliff called money bay.
- unmicroable units (most of them are extremely limited)
I call bullshit, let me cite some units that become better with micro: stalkers, marine, marauder, zergling, roach, hydra, corrupter, phoenix, void ray, banshee, viking, WORKERS, helions, immortals, templar, ghost, infestor.
- spells that take away the ability to micro units (forcefield, neural parasite and fungal) instead of spells that encourage micro (dark swarm and radiate)
Let me introduce you to my little friend, called the dark archon, who has the spells: Maelstrom, freezes organic units in place for 7 seconds, Oh right he had another spell! called mindcontrol.
- lack of units that can hold a position on the map (especially for zerg and protoss) -> no real map control aspect to the game
I beg to differ, zerg has creep and burrowed banes, toss has storm and forcefield the best map holder in the game
- stuff clumps together in a tight ball leading to 1 big clash scenarios that are utterly boring
Pathing.
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Disagree with OP, not because I actually have a stance on the issue, but because his points are not all that great.
Zergling surround is unforgiving and negates micro? Part of micro is positioning so you dont get surrounded... Starcraft 2 takes a huge amount of micro. The only race that doesn't receive as much benefit from micro is zerg. However zerg still gets huge advantages from positioning, which i believe is a form of micro as well. FE. a three pronged surround vs straight line/ ball.
As for zoning... baneling bombs are the closest thing zerg has at the moment, which I agree is not adequate. Toss doesn't have much either. Terran however has seige tank and planetary fortress, which works tremendously well in tvt and tvz zoning, not so well vs toss.
Static defenses aren't good? Static defenses are amazing! They are way better than they were in broodwar. Look at the missile turret. Bunker. Cannons. Are we playing the same game? On the other hand, are stronger static defenses the way to go? They force convergent strategies that are reliant on defense. Simply put, if the advantage of the defender becomes too strong, brilliant and entertaining forms of early aggression as well as mid game aggression will disappear. Do you really want every game to be a 20 minute macro/turtle fest?
More importantly, SC2 is not Broordwar. Nor is it WC3 where everything takes a year to die. Although I agree that the game is too simple in counters due to the fact that some units are way too powerful against others ie. broodlord, colossus, stim marines. This however does not mean that every unit should be as versatile or vanilla as the stalker. Why should hellions be better vs armored? they were not designed for that. A one unit composition should never beat a dual unit composition given equal strategy.
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Well... When starcraft 2 came out I was hoping for a bw kind of game with just other units & better graphics but I can genuinely say that sc2 isn't half as enjoyable as bw.. People saying bw requires too much to go back to.. If you put in the effort then I don't see why people would not be able to pick it up over time.
But, before someone thinks I'm trying to say we should all go back to bw, I just hope that Blizzard shows the community that they know what's best for the game & actually fix sc2.
I always see people hoping that the bw community & players will switch.. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the bw community has played sc2 before & there's a reason why they don't switch. For the pro's... Ofcourse, they have their contracts ect... But honestly sc2 is way too noob friendly in the eyes of people who have been playing bw since the beginning & at a decent level + things like Colossus speed, or just the unit itself is something silly, thors are silly, mules are silly, warping units is silly imo, larva injects, auto mining, 250 units per hotkey if i'm not mistaken, multiple buildings per hotkey (tho this isn't as silly as 250 units per hotkey), creep spread for zergs to get their units running faster,...
I remember seeing someone say that mules should be taken out, chrono boost as well & larva injects too.. & someone came on & jumped on him & said that that's a big part of the game & the game would be broken if they'd take this out... Then how did we have the best times of our lives on bw.. I wonder. Sure, game speed/unit speed & other aspects in sc2 are quite different but.. For me personally & I think this is for a lot of other bw players as well, sc2 has been a disappointment so far.
I hardly play it because I personally believe that it would be in the best interest of the game to dumb it down to the bone like.. Just dumb the game down drasticly & you'll have a way more enjoyable game. Now the game does things for you that you should be doing yourself...
+ In sc2 I got the feeling that a bad player can beat a good player if they do something silly & whatnot & honestly.. The better player should win & with sc2 it's more like a coin flip & I think it's disgusting.
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This is one of the first posts I've seen that can be classified as 'design' that isn't just thinly veiled QQing, which is nice. The points you make are very well thought-out. Hopefully Blizzard will realize how wrong the ball vs. ball theme is and switch to a more interesting type of game in HotS.
**remembers David Kim saying HotS Thor is an a-move-friendly unit** Never mind.
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Northern Ireland24545 Posts
On January 19 2012 07:47 jinorazi wrote:Show nested quote +On January 19 2012 07:24 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 19 2012 07:19 PH wrote:On January 18 2012 19:55 iKill wrote:On January 18 2012 19:06 bokeevboke wrote:On January 18 2012 18:58 slytown wrote:If you don't like the game, go back to playing BW. Noone's stopping you. You're listing off complete design changes instead of specific issues. I love BW and won't hate you for switching back.  I never understood these kind of comments - 'go play BW'. What's wrong with wanting to make the game better? if there is smth good in bw why shouldn't we adopt it. if you have nothing to contribute to discussion just move on pls. Because SC2 and BW are not the same game? If half of the QQers about SC2 had things their way, we'd be playing BW right now with SC2 graphics.  If we were playing BW with SC2 graphics, we'd have a perfect game. You realize that already exists, right? It's called SC2BW. its a far cry to bw. i've played it awhile ago, maybe it improved a lot by now but it was very buggy and the unit proportions were off, couldn't even block chokes. plus, you can't really play with how custom games work. i just think those who played bw for years have little more say on what is good/bad with sc2 (i'm not talking about "oh i used to play when i was a kid"), and people are just brushing it off like they're whining, when they're only trying to make the game better through discussion/awareness. i mean, i think everyone agrees the old b.net system was better for custom games, we're complaining, we want the older system back or make the current one better.(its my personal opinion that blizzard did this on purpose to decrease popularity of custom games to keep AutoMM active). this complaint is no different with sc2 gameplay. there's something wrong, something needs to be said, and its being said. no need to brush off, treating it like cries. the complaints are valid. the shredder being added fucking boggles my mind on what they're doing to the game (hard unit counter, not micro-countered, like spider mines). this unit is up there with mothership in my eyes, units that dont belong. this is the type of thing that prevents me to believe "blizzard is doing their best to live up to its predecessor".
Great post man. I personally love Starcraft 2, it brought me back into the RTS genre after years of playing mostly FPS games, but to deny that it can be improved is nonsensical. If you think it can be improved, then generally you will use as a point of reference Brood War, regarded as THE best competitive RTS of all time. It is not fanboyism, just logical.
HoTS announcement really got me down, I mean I was in denial for a week thinking the Protoss changes were interesting, but deep down I knew they were (at least as stated at the time) pretty terrible.
Tempest - A-move unit that doesn't even counter mutalisks given the timing that it would come out. Looks like operating like an airborne Collosus, I live in fear that lategame will consist of Collosus/Tempest deathballs.
Replicant - Gimmicky unit added to a race that many who don't play it regard as gimmicky to begin with.
Oracle - Actually a cool concept of a unit, quite like the possibilities with this, but in the absence of other decent units, pretty underwhelming.
Recall - Will either be too strong an ability and broken, or toned down to the extent that it's not good anymore.
If Blizzard can't get the units right, what hope do they have to balance the other issues the serious community has with the game?
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spinecrawler are amazing, for 100 minerals it makes attacking into them so much harder
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On January 19 2012 08:13 scMellOw wrote:
Well... When starcraft 2 came out I was hoping for a bw kind of game with just other units & better graphics but I can genuinely say that sc2 isn't half as enjoyable as bw.. People saying bw requires too much to go back to.. If you put in the effort then I don't see why people would not be able to pick it up over time.
But, before someone thinks I'm trying to say we should all go back to bw, I just hope that Blizzard shows the community that they know what's best for the game & actually fix sc2.
I always see people hoping that the bw community & players will switch.. I think it's safe to say that the majority of the bw community has played sc2 before & there's a reason why they don't switch. For the pro's... Ofcourse, they have their contracts ect... But honestly sc2 is way too noob friendly in the eyes of people who have been playing bw since the beginning & at a decent level + things like Colossus speed, or just the unit itself is something silly, thors are silly, mules are silly, warping units is silly imo, larva injects, auto mining, 250 units per hotkey if i'm not mistaken, multiple buildings per hotkey (tho this isn't as silly as 250 units per hotkey),...
I remember seeing someone say that mules should be taken out, chrono boost as well & larva injects too.. & someone came on & jumped on him & said that that's a big part of the game & the game would be broken if they'd take this out... Then how did we have the best times of our lives on bw.. I wonder. Sure, game speed/unit speed & other aspects in sc2 are quite different but.. For me personally & I think this is for a lot of other bw players as well, sc2 has been a disappointment so far.
I hardly play it because I personally believe that it would be in the best interest of the game to numb it down to the bone like.. Just numb the game down drasticly & you'll have a way more enjoyable game. Now the game does things for you that you should be doing yourself...
+ In sc2 I got the feeling that a bad player can beat a good player if they do something silly & whatnot & honestly.. The better player should win & with sc2 it's more like a coin flip & I think it's disgusting.
I agree with this, but I find that it`s still not the worst game I've ever played. My only hope is that they change the game in the following expansions to make it less dumbed down.
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the problem is less the units and design (balance and pathing, etc..) and more on most players being impatient
"fix this, fix that and i want it now"
let things play out and see what happens
most people say they want BW but they don't want SC2 to develop like BW did
just be patient and play the game....figure stuff out with what the current patch gives you.
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People argued about basically the same stuff during Beta when not talking about the, back then, more obvious imbalances...
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On January 18 2012 21:58 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 21:52 dream-_- wrote:
I haven't played that much SC2, but for some reason this thread interested me. I think that what people are seeing is not so much a problem, as it is a difference. Yes it is true we did not have the "hard counters" in BW that we do in SC2, but I think that makes the game better as opposed to worse. It creates a situation where players are no longer able to play blind and still maintain a strong position in the game. If I am blindly massing roaches while my opponent has an observer over my army and makes 15 immortals to counter that while I build corrupters to counter his colo that I think are coming, I die. Period. As harsh as that can seem in specific instances and certain games (ESPECIALLY, I might add, to the lower or mid tier level player), I think it is vital to the game play as a whole. You're probably one of like 5 people in the whole world who claim to prefer stone-paper-scissor mechanics in an RTS. How is it fun for the game to be about sitting back, scouting opponent, waiting for them to pick a tech path, then win because you picked the counter? Or pick a composition and lose simply because he picked another, whether by luck or scouting? There are counters in BW too, it's just on a more reasonable level where having a worse composition doesn't mean you lose immediately. Note of importance: Stone-paper-scissor is not a strategy game.
But you are missing the key point on which the game is BASED, information is king, if you go mass roaches and i scout that i go immortals, you NEED to scout my immortals else u die, this is a game of information.
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On January 19 2012 08:23 The Stapler wrote:
the problem is less the units and design (balance and pathing, etc..) and more on most players being impatient
"fix this, fix that and i want it now"
let things play out and see what happens
most people say they want BW but they don't want SC2 to develop like BW did
just be patient and play the game....figure stuff out with what the current patch gives you.
My feeling is that a lot of players feel that since Blizzard's been making RTS games for such a long time, that they'd be used to fixing problems or changing gameplay.
At least that's what I thought for a while.
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Northern Ireland24545 Posts
On January 19 2012 08:27 nicotn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 21:58 Tobberoth wrote:On January 18 2012 21:52 dream-_- wrote:
I haven't played that much SC2, but for some reason this thread interested me. I think that what people are seeing is not so much a problem, as it is a difference. Yes it is true we did not have the "hard counters" in BW that we do in SC2, but I think that makes the game better as opposed to worse. It creates a situation where players are no longer able to play blind and still maintain a strong position in the game. If I am blindly massing roaches while my opponent has an observer over my army and makes 15 immortals to counter that while I build corrupters to counter his colo that I think are coming, I die. Period. As harsh as that can seem in specific instances and certain games (ESPECIALLY, I might add, to the lower or mid tier level player), I think it is vital to the game play as a whole. You're probably one of like 5 people in the whole world who claim to prefer stone-paper-scissor mechanics in an RTS. How is it fun for the game to be about sitting back, scouting opponent, waiting for them to pick a tech path, then win because you picked the counter? Or pick a composition and lose simply because he picked another, whether by luck or scouting? There are counters in BW too, it's just on a more reasonable level where having a worse composition doesn't mean you lose immediately. Note of importance: Stone-paper-scissor is not a strategy game. But you are missing the key point on which the game is BASED, information is king, if you go mass roaches and i scout that i go immortals, you NEED to scout my immortals else u die, this is a game of information.
Most people want a game with a lot of balanced, viable compositions that you can tailor in one direction or another depending on what you scout, not 'mass x unit v mass y unit, player one scouts mass x so switches to mass z' which is pretty terrible.
Good strategy games have units that have synergy together in compositions and get better when well positioned and controlled. SC2 does have that to be fair but there are a few unit interactions that are of the 'x counters y' type.
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On January 19 2012 08:27 nicotn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 21:58 Tobberoth wrote:On January 18 2012 21:52 dream-_- wrote:
I haven't played that much SC2, but for some reason this thread interested me. I think that what people are seeing is not so much a problem, as it is a difference. Yes it is true we did not have the "hard counters" in BW that we do in SC2, but I think that makes the game better as opposed to worse. It creates a situation where players are no longer able to play blind and still maintain a strong position in the game. If I am blindly massing roaches while my opponent has an observer over my army and makes 15 immortals to counter that while I build corrupters to counter his colo that I think are coming, I die. Period. As harsh as that can seem in specific instances and certain games (ESPECIALLY, I might add, to the lower or mid tier level player), I think it is vital to the game play as a whole. You're probably one of like 5 people in the whole world who claim to prefer stone-paper-scissor mechanics in an RTS. How is it fun for the game to be about sitting back, scouting opponent, waiting for them to pick a tech path, then win because you picked the counter? Or pick a composition and lose simply because he picked another, whether by luck or scouting? There are counters in BW too, it's just on a more reasonable level where having a worse composition doesn't mean you lose immediately. Note of importance: Stone-paper-scissor is not a strategy game. But you are missing the key point on which the game is BASED, information is king, if you go mass roaches and i scout that i go immortals, you NEED to scout my immortals else u die, this is a game of information.
But SC2 information is almost always incomplete.
Look at TvZ. Terran opens Reactor Hellion, and puts marines on the outskirts of his base. He can follow up with 3CC, 2 port cloakshee, marine/hellion elevator, marine /wstim hellion timing, maurauder hellion all in, hellion expand.... how should you scout that? Even pros say a lot you're just guessing and preparing for as much as you can without hurting your economy too much.
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blizzard is gonna make this game how they like it. Unless MLG/GSL and everyone just magically jumps on board to a custom version of SC2 where all the "bad" things are fixed then great! BUT THAT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. As I've said, it's blizzards game. WoL is done, there won't be any major changes to the SC2 engine, that's staying around for EVER, blizzard even confirmed that the game engine they are using is going to remain the same (with obvious updates to improve the engine) throughout all expansions. When HotS rolls around, blizzard is only worried about the balance they aren't worried about the effectiveness of splash damage or unit counters as far as how great of a spectator sport it is. No, if they are going to be changing any AOE or unit counters it's going to be for balance reasons not because it makes the game more stale.
On January 18 2012 19:58 k3m4 wrote:
fuckin ridiculous how everybody whines about balance n stuff. just fuck off and play, you'll get better and win. Daily 400 showed me onc again what's important and what's not. Balance is only important if you're work for blizzard and design the balance and then you shouldn't whine about it but improve it obviously
User was warned for this post
This guy I feel was unjustly warned because he's right. We aren't the SC2 design team so it's really stupid for us to argue when design philosophies won't ever change. I'm all for discussing balance in SC2 because that's important but the design of SC2? Despite what people may think, blizzard doesn't listen to the community for design opinions they handle all of that internally and once it's set in stone it remains in the game forever and everything is balanced around it and that's where they get community feedback from.
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Canada11328 Posts
On January 19 2012 08:09 nicotn wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 20:19 gh0un wrote:
At this point in time i dont believe that blizzard is capable of fixing their utterly flawed game design, since it would require a complete overhaul of the game, which would mean they would have to admit that they made a mistake, and obviously its blizzard they will never admit that they made a mistake.
- unmicroable units (most of them are extremely limited)
- spells that take away the ability to micro units (forcefield, neural parasite and fungal) instead of spells that encourage micro (dark swarm and radiate)
- lack of units that can hold a position on the map (especially for zerg and protoss) -> no real map control aspect to the game
- stuff clumps together in a tight ball leading to 1 big clash scenarios that are utterly boring
Especially point 2 and 3, the fact that blizzard managed to completely miss the dart board on these two issues is /facepalm inducing.
How can you go from darkswarm, radiate, defensive matrix, lurker, reaver, spidermines, carriers and plenty more stuff, to something that completely takes away whole aspects of the game, WHILE not replacing them with other aspects.
Starcraft 2, from a gamedesign point of view is so terrible, its actually a miracle it managed to take off so well in esports.
Guess the hype from waiting for a sequel to one of the best games in the industry was enough to get the rock rolling down the cliff. Unfortunately the rock is a fucking ugly bitch no one wants to touch, but its rolling already and the cliff is deep.
Behold of the unstoppable ugly bitch rock that is starcraft 2 rolling down the cliff called money bay. - unmicroable units (most of them are extremely limited) I call bullshit, let me cite some units that become better with micro: stalkers, marine, marauder, zergling, roach, hydra, corrupter, phoenix, void ray, banshee, viking, WORKERS, helions, immortals, templar, ghost, infestor.
While some of them require a form of micro, a lot of it is a pale shadow compared to what you could do in BW. I don't particularly care how many BW units carry on from SC2 to BW. What I do care is that all the units new and old retain its micro control potential. If you compare phoenix micro to wraith micro or BW muta micro to SC2 muta micro it's not even close. Sure you can say it's a different game, but it's also a lesser game as long as that precise control is relegated to a couple units like m&m.
Do we want our game to be even more awe inspiring or do we want to keep shoving these amazing ideas into the corner because that was then, and this was now. Almost every modern RTS game I can think of has seen a decline in the ability to control their armies in favour of automation (SupCom2 is my favourite example). SC2 retains some of the ideas of the past, but could adopt a few more.
On January 19 2012 08:09 nicotn wrote:
- spells that take away the ability to micro units (forcefield, neural parasite and fungal) instead of spells that encourage micro (dark swarm and radiate)
Let me introduce you to my little friend, called the dark archon, who has the spells: Maelstrom, freezes organic units in place for 7 seconds, Oh right he had another spell! called mindcontrol.
Context is pretty key. As in how hard is it to tech to, use, and its cost. First you have to get to templar tech, then Dark Archon costs 200/250
Mind control costs 200/200, 2 minutes of research and using it took 150 of 200-250 energy and burned all the shields, leaving it with 25 health and so was rarely if ever used.
Maelstrom costs another 100/100 and is only occasionally used as it is a big investment that needs to pay for itself when you could have made high tempars or archons. It costs 100 of your 200-250 energy. If it was anywhere as common and easy to use as FF and FG it would be equally as irritating. It is a pretty big apm sink, so if you could get a good maelstrom off (catch the muta or pin down ultralisks) and then follow it up with a storm or two, that's actually really impressive compared to smart casting spam 't.'
On January 19 2012 08:09 nicotn wrote:
- lack of units that can hold a position on the map (especially for zerg and protoss) -> no real map control aspect to the game
I beg to differ, zerg has creep and burrowed banes, toss has storm and forcefield the best map holder in the game
- stuff clumps together in a tight ball leading to 1 big clash scenarios that are utterly boring
Pathing.
Creep and banelings are cool, but they don't function the same way. Banelings do not hold ground, but they can force a player to back-up temporarily. But once they're used, they're dead. They can't indefinitely choke up a small corridor. Consider. You have a ton of burrowed banelings, Terran sets up, scans, sieges and kills them all. Or if there's only a few, they scan, stim forward and kill them. That doesn't sound like holding position to me. That relies on the element of surprise and good predictive power. Compared to when tanks set up, that immediately creates a zone where if you move in, you're going to get hit hard. (Now this is a weak comparison because SC2 tanks get sniped way too easily, so they don't actually hold ground near as well as they used to.)
Zerg's style of play of constantly retreating, retreating during a push while they remax is a good indicator that they don't have anything to hold a position. Except when they spam spine crawlers- that's really the only thing Zerg has to slow down a push in time for the rest of the army to arrive- short of endlessly retreating until they are ready to counter-attack.
Storms definitely do not control space because individually they just get murdered or at least they need something in front of them like a ton of cannons- and they run out of storms pretty quick. FF actually can close off gaps and in particular block off small chokes, so I guess that one might be map controller.
To control space it needs to be something that can shut down lanes of movement very cost-effectively So tanks with mines in front and maybe vultures inbetween, Lurkers on ramps. It's more like how on the top of ramps, Terran can wall-off and keep a few units behind for defence and hold off attacks until more units can arrive. It's the same idea, just applied on the field or at expansions.
@emc- re first paragraph. Probably true, but that just makes it depressing.
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EPT
