On January 19 2012 08:49 emc wrote: 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.
Why are there 2/3 threads like this every week? Because maybe some people think it's an area that can be improved. The game balance is actually pretty good, but for many people has a lot of boring mechanics, and playstyles, especially the PvT matchup.
Why are Blizzard so loathe to overhaul issues of design, when they did a massive, massive overhaul of Warcraft 3 when The Frozen Throne came out? These were changes that received much acclaim and took that game to another level. Why just outright rule it out in every interview?
Blizzard is within its right to appeal to casuals who know fuck all about the game, but are the things they do to appeal to them are even appeasing them? Every thread on the Bnet forums is 'collosus imbalanced' or '3 rax imbalanced'. The 'rush friendly' and '15-20 minute games' that have been routinely justified as being in there solely to appeal to all levels of player, are the EXACT things that casual players QQ about on the Battlenet forums. Just take a look.
The developers should listen to TL more because, in general there is actual thought behind our community's suggestions. There is disagreement, there are idiots, but there is a standard of posting that is generally enforced.
The casuals will stop playing the game if it becomes boring to them, just as serious players might, so to try and actually introduce the variety that will retain customers. This can only be done by overhauling at least some of the design.
An example is the carrier, which is pretty much broken. Everyone who has played Protoss has thought 'wow these are a cool unit' and experimented before discovering it is entirely useless, part of this is due to the stupid balling of high DPS units just shredding the interceptors of the carrier, and the carrier being unmicroable. The reason the carrier doesn't work isn't just a balance one, but also partly down to the Ui and how units interact in general.
A change that would make something like the carrier viable and not gimmicky would appease both casual and serious players. The casuals will get to play around with a badass capital ship, the serious players will get some added variety in builds and strategies they can utilise.
Once again this is a thread being made complaining about the parts of the game that make it hard. Seriously, if you get caught completely out of position you think you don't deserve to get punished? Then don't get caught out of position? Obviously?
Who cares about immortals on unsieged tanks? Seriously? How is that even a legitimate complaint?
As far as needing splash/FF to deal with marines, I don't quite know what to say. Yes you do. You also need FF or splash to deal with Roaches. And this is quite frequently true with blink stalkers as well. This makes "mass unit" styles of play actually viable. Is that a bad thing?
Needing support with your tanks is true in almost every single rts game with artillery. I have no idea how that is a complaint. Seriously what?
Static defenses are not awful at all. Compared to BW they are actually ridiculously good. Seriously, just look at the stats. I have absolutely no idea how you say that. Haven't you ever been cannon rushed???
It really sounds like you want all the races to be like Protoss. You want every race to have the same kind of units with the same kind of playstyle. You want every race to have beefy units that won't die really fast. I'm sorry, but that's just not this game, and it's not brood war either. Starcraft is awesome because there is only one Stalker and only one Protoss. There is only one zergling, roach, hellion, marauder, immortal etc. All of the units are unique both in their role and their stats. That's what makes the game much better than every other.
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.
Well, TvZ scouting has been a problem for quite some time tho, so that's a exception.
On January 19 2012 09:04 DoubleReed wrote: Once again this is a thread being made complaining about the parts of the game that make it hard. Seriously, if you get caught completely out of position you think you don't deserve to get punished? Then don't get caught out of position? Obviously?
Who cares about immortals on unsieged tanks? Seriously? How is that even a legitimate complaint?
As far as needing splash/FF to deal with marines, I don't quite know what to say. Yes you do. You also need FF or splash to deal with Roaches. And this is quite frequently true with blink stalkers as well. This makes "mass unit" styles of play actually viable. Is that a bad thing?
Needing support with your tanks is true in almost every single rts game with artillery. I have no idea how that is a complaint. Seriously what?
Static defenses are not awful at all. Compared to BW they are actually ridiculously good. Seriously, just look at the stats. I have absolutely no idea how you say that. Haven't you ever been cannon rushed???
It really sounds like you want all the races to be like Protoss. You want every race to have the same kind of units with the same kind of playstyle. You want every race to have beefy units that won't die really fast. I'm sorry, but that's just not this game, and it's not brood war either. Starcraft is awesome because there is only one Stalker and only one Protoss. There is only one zergling, roach, hellion, marauder, immortal etc. All of the units are unique both in their role and their stats. That's what makes the game much better than every other.
People are complaining based on it as a purely spectator activity, and the battles ending too quickly, which is a legit complaint.
Also nobody is claiming it makes the game too hard, if anything people are claiming that the game is too forgiving and there is less to separate good players from bad players.
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.
When he says micro he doesn't mean pulling back the injured unit. Yes that is micro and makes units more effective, but it isn't interesting. In Brood War units had different micro, you didn't micro dragoons the same way you microed vultures.
The Dark Archon is a dumb example because it was a higher tiered unit that was super expensive and typically very rarely seen. It costs too much to be worth what it did. In SC2 sentries are available almost from the get go. Infestors come with lair. They're both cheaper then they should be and very easy to get alot of.
And burrowed banelings aren't good at holding ground. Toss armies have observers. They just insta-die. You might get a lucky baneling hit on a group of marines but from then on as long as the terran is careful he shouldn't hit anymore. Doesn't take long to make a raven when you already have a starport for medivacs.
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.
When he says micro he doesn't mean pulling back the injured unit. Yes that is micro and makes units more effective, but it isn't interesting. In Brood War units had different micro, you didn't micro dragoons the same way you microed vultures.
The Dark Archon is a dumb example because it was a higher tiered unit that was super expensive and typically very rarely seen. It costs too much to be worth what it did. In SC2 sentries are available almost from the get go. Infestors come with lair. They're both cheaper then they should be and very easy to get alot of.
And burrowed banelings aren't good at holding ground. Toss armies have observers. They just insta-die. You might get a lucky baneling hit on a group of marines but from then on as long as the terran is careful he shouldn't hit anymore. Doesn't take long to make a raven when you already have a starport for medivacs.
And I think he is complaining about the pathing.
How do you propose making units more microable? I think more divergence in unit movespeeds would be a good start to this process
Also interesting to me is that micro doesn't seem to scale in importance with correlation to the increasing size of armies. I mean some early game engagements showcase truly sick micro in all of its forms, but this doesn't continue to the lategame
On January 19 2012 09:04 DoubleReed wrote: Once again this is a thread being made complaining about the parts of the game that make it hard. Seriously, if you get caught completely out of position you think you don't deserve to get punished? Then don't get caught out of position? Obviously?
Who cares about immortals on unsieged tanks? Seriously? How is that even a legitimate complaint?
As far as needing splash/FF to deal with marines, I don't quite know what to say. Yes you do. You also need FF or splash to deal with Roaches. And this is quite frequently true with blink stalkers as well. This makes "mass unit" styles of play actually viable. Is that a bad thing?
Needing support with your tanks is true in almost every single rts game with artillery. I have no idea how that is a complaint. Seriously what?
Static defenses are not awful at all. Compared to BW they are actually ridiculously good. Seriously, just look at the stats. I have absolutely no idea how you say that. Haven't you ever been cannon rushed???
It really sounds like you want all the races to be like Protoss. You want every race to have the same kind of units with the same kind of playstyle. You want every race to have beefy units that won't die really fast. I'm sorry, but that's just not this game, and it's not brood war either. Starcraft is awesome because there is only one Stalker and only one Protoss. There is only one zergling, roach, hellion, marauder, immortal etc. All of the units are unique both in their role and their stats. That's what makes the game much better than every other.
People are complaining based on it as a purely spectator activity, and the battles ending too quickly, which is a legit complaint.
Also nobody is claiming it makes the game too hard, if anything people are claiming that the game is too forgiving and there is less to separate good players from bad players.
Pfff, right. "Look at all the stuff I have to do to beat this or that" is basically the general tone of things. "I get caught out of position once and then I lose!"
No. Good players know how to avoid these situations. Good engagements are incredibly necessary in this game. High damage means that micro needs to be way way way faster in order for it to work. All of these things raise the skill cap. And we see it all the time.
Did you see that crazy Thorzain split against Puma? Where it looks like his army is going to die but then he does a ridiculous split and avoids almost all the siege tank fire? That shit is awesome, and it also is incredibly fast.
This game is forgiving? Please tell me one place where the OP suggests that the game is too forgiving. No, this is a whine thread, telling people what the playstyle of starcraft is supposed to be. I'm sorry but I'm a zerg player. I don't have stalkers and I don't want stalkers.
On January 19 2012 06:18 Blasteroids wrote: This post is somewhat silly because the op is complaining the some things in starcraft 2 are not as they were in Brood War in terms of the flow of the game. Of course Starcraft 2 will be different and what's bad in your eyes might be good in someone else's eyes. Furthermore Stalkers are great! In PvZ mass stalkers can go around picking of bases, killing units that are separated. Things like funglegrowth and maruaders are necessary or else stalkers would just be to strong. If you don't like how starcraft 2 plays out go back to Brood War and don't say that there's a design flaw because that's your opinion not someone else's on how starcraft 2 plays out. Finally all units are good against somethings and garbage against others. If units were good against everything and really good against others it was that way in Brood War and its that way in Starcraft 2. As far as zoning units Blizzard addressed this problem with in Hots with units like the Tempest and the Swarm Host
Ah yes, you young'uns have clearly never played or watched much pro BW. Check out a few games, get past the low-res graphics, and you will find the game to be much more exciting and much more nuanced than SC2. All we're saying is that SC2 hasn't lived up to the reputation of its predecessor, and there are many design mechanics that could be utilized to "fix" SC2.
Starcraft 2 is more popular and its surpassed BW in that respect. A lot of what made BW difficult were bugs and the way the old game was designed. A lot of those bugs and parts of its game design were removed in sc2 which made sc2 easier also the game wouldn't be as easy. Also I think sc2 has surpassed BW in every respect except in some parts of game play (ex. popularity, accessibility to new players, etc.)
99% of the problems with sc2 could be fixed with a slightly slower (read: fast) game-play. All of the other "issues" in these threads are just exacerbated results of the game moving too fast. Here are a few semi-strawman-esque videos that I stumbled on earlier that give an idea of how difficult it is to have perfect micro.
Obviously no one is going to have the ~15000 apm required to perfectly split marines against banelings but it gives an idea of just how ridiculously difficult VERY GOOD micro is. That just leads to a-click death balls because few human beings are even capable of doing much more.
EDIT: you'll have to go to youtube and read the descriptions to see that apm numbers that the author posted.
Makes scouting extremelly extremelly important however and that is a thing that is good. But for example in PvT the terran can deny early scouting so extremelly easy making it very frustrating as alot of builds looks identical. I do however agree on the dmg bit, blizzard was out to add dynamic and diversity with this but it kinda backfired.
On January 19 2012 09:04 DoubleReed wrote: Once again this is a thread being made complaining about the parts of the game that make it hard. Seriously, if you get caught completely out of position you think you don't deserve to get punished? Then don't get caught out of position? Obviously?
Who cares about immortals on unsieged tanks? Seriously? How is that even a legitimate complaint?
As far as needing splash/FF to deal with marines, I don't quite know what to say. Yes you do. You also need FF or splash to deal with Roaches. And this is quite frequently true with blink stalkers as well. This makes "mass unit" styles of play actually viable. Is that a bad thing?
Needing support with your tanks is true in almost every single rts game with artillery. I have no idea how that is a complaint. Seriously what?
Static defenses are not awful at all. Compared to BW they are actually ridiculously good. Seriously, just look at the stats. I have absolutely no idea how you say that. Haven't you ever been cannon rushed???
It really sounds like you want all the races to be like Protoss. You want every race to have the same kind of units with the same kind of playstyle. You want every race to have beefy units that won't die really fast. I'm sorry, but that's just not this game, and it's not brood war either. Starcraft is awesome because there is only one Stalker and only one Protoss. There is only one zergling, roach, hellion, marauder, immortal etc. All of the units are unique both in their role and their stats. That's what makes the game much better than every other.
People are complaining based on it as a purely spectator activity, and the battles ending too quickly, which is a legit complaint.
Also nobody is claiming it makes the game too hard, if anything people are claiming that the game is too forgiving and there is less to separate good players from bad players.
Pfff, right. "Look at all the stuff I have to do to beat this or that" is basically the general tone of things. "I get caught out of position once and then I lose!"
No. Good players know how to avoid these situations. Good engagements are incredibly necessary in this game. High damage means that micro needs to be way way way faster in order for it to work. All of these things raise the skill cap. And we see it all the time.
Did you see that crazy Thorzain split against Puma? Where it looks like his army is going to die but then he does a ridiculous split and avoids almost all the siege tank fire? That shit is awesome, and it also is incredibly fast.
This game is forgiving? Please tell me one place where the OP suggests that the game is too forgiving. No, this is a whine thread, telling people what the playstyle of starcraft is supposed to be. I'm sorry but I'm a zerg player. I don't have stalkers and I don't want stalkers.
Forgiving in that there is less to differentiate truly good players from less good players. In time that may well happen but it's been a consistent theme since Beta (and not just from Idra). In a game where macro is easier, and strategies are pretty standardised compared to a year ago, it often comes down to one short battle, after a 30 minute game. If that is how the game should be, then that's fine by all means, but if it is to devolve to a 1 big engagement game, then that engagement should have to be controlled better to get optimal results.
Familiar with your example, it was cool, and over in a near split second (pun intended.)
Compare with.
Notice that there was a battle, it actually lasted for a sustained period of time, with continuous excellent micro. I'm not even from a BW background so don't characterise me as some fanboy. People happy to accept things that could be improved and continuing to buy them is part of the reason so many shitty games exist nowadays that could have been genuinely awe-inspiringly great.
It makes me wish that Blizzard had the balls to make a massive gameplay change in HOTS after always pointing out that expansions are where big changes can be made because balance is totally reset anyway. Unfortunately, I just don't think they are brave enough and relatively happy with where SC2 is at the moment to try something that dramatic.
Even if they had a public test server with a massive change implemented so they could get feedback from the community it would be awesome.
@Alcast Actually slowing down the gamespeed wouldn't really help. The game would be slower and so you'd have more time, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to very precise micro if the game engine doesn't allow it. SupCom2 the units move at a snails pace and yet there really isn't much more to do because of it. You can control more groups of armies, but you can't control an individual group any better. They just sort of do their own thing.
I don't really know the technical side of it, but it partly has to do with being able to manually cancel movement animation when switching from moving to attacking so you can do quick attack, retreat, attack, retreat, etc. (Whether using hold position or the patrol button to do the chinese triangle.) But if the game engine itself doesn't allow these precise click movements, even slowing it down won't help. In fact some things can get harder- BW muta micro is actually harder on slower speeds. In BW you had 5 or 6 speeds slower than what pro's played at, but I doubt you'd get better micro by playing it on slowest. (Even Normal is painful to play on.)
Scaling back some of the base damage on a lot of the auto attack units might help with battles ending too quickly. It was probably an over-reaction from complaints over WC3's last forever units. A happy medium would be nice.
Consider this level of control that was possible at one point: Mutalisk vs Scourge: Chinese Triangle This was an insanely hard maneuver to pull off- I've figured out muta micro, but I still can't really do this one yet. And yet really awesome to behold. Is there any equivalent? Or similarly difficult, but impressive micro that can be pulled off? Edit: because visuals are better
Its because of the perspective of the game. They should narrow the camera of the game so less units can fit onscreen and so siege units actually fire across the screen not just fire half of it.
On January 19 2012 09:26 Peleus wrote: It makes me wish that Blizzard had the balls to make a massive gameplay change in HOTS after always pointing out that expansions are where big changes can be made because balance is totally reset anyway. Unfortunately, I just don't think they are brave enough and relatively happy with where SC2 is at the moment to try something that dramatic.
Even if they had a public test server with a massive change implemented so they could get feedback from the community it would be awesome.
I think they will probably make some changes, but basically they want to keep it Wings of Liberty +1, so just as many people (if not more) purchase it. The design team isn't huge, and they have to work to a budget in terms of time and money, so I just don't think they have the resources to change the game in a big way and test it.
It makes better sense to go with what you know a lot of people like, than try to change it for an improved system at the risk of it going awry and the game having a poor reception. Adequate is almost always better than 'good with the chance of bad' in these situations unfortunately.
These sound like your complaints, not actually the OP's. The fact is that the OP is not saying it should be like BW. He's saying it should be more like Warcraft 3 imo. The OP didn't really say that macro is too easy or anything like that.
The only thing this addresses is the high-damage output complaint. Personally, I don't really think that's a terrible thing necessarily, as it enforces higher skill cap for micro. Really, I see the only issue being Ball vs Ball, but that mentality is seriously being shifted away from now because of the power of splash damage. We are finding solutions to the issue, and hopefully HotS will provide us with more.
On January 19 2012 09:26 Peleus wrote: It makes me wish that Blizzard had the balls to make a massive gameplay change in HOTS after always pointing out that expansions are where big changes can be made because balance is totally reset anyway. Unfortunately, I just don't think they are brave enough and relatively happy with where SC2 is at the moment to try something that dramatic.
Even if they had a public test server with a massive change implemented so they could get feedback from the community it would be awesome.
I think they will probably make some changes, but basically they want to keep it Wings of Liberty +1, so just as many people (if not more) purchase it. The design team isn't huge, and they have to work to a budget in terms of time and money, so I just don't think they have the resources to change the game in a big way and test it.
It makes better sense to go with what you know a lot of people like, than try to change it for an improved system at the risk of it going awry and the game having a poor reception. Adequate is almost always better than 'good with the chance of bad' in these situations unfortunately.
Conjecture time. How much influence do Activision have, if any? I mean, all I need to say is Modern Warfare and I think many in here will shudder.
I only say this because Blizzard overhauled The Frozen Throne (the expansion pack to Warcraft 3) much more radically than almost any changes proposed here would make the next incarnation of SC2. Especially with the cash cow of WoW behind them, they should have more scope to take risks, not less.
From minor issues, to big ones, we're paying customers who have a right to voice our opinions, and if Blizzard had any sense they would at least take some notice of them. I just do not buy the argument that the casuals will be put off by mooted changes to the game, casuals are the guys you should base the least of your development around as they are the least discerning consumers of games. I am a moderately serious player and have bought 3 copies of the game, it's the serious community that should be listened to.
God, I would even pay some kind of additional fee if they would get round to fixing Bnet2.0 and the namechanges were implemented co-op replays were introduced etc
On January 19 2012 09:30 Falling wrote: @Alcast Actually slowing down the gamespeed wouldn't really help. The game would be slower and so you'd have more time, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to very precise micro if the game engine doesn't allow it. SupCom2 the units move at a snails pace and yet there really isn't much more to do because of it. You can control more groups of armies, but you can't control an individual group any better. They just sort of do their own thing.
I don't really know the technical side of it, but it partly has to do with being able to manually cancel movement animation when switching from moving to attacking so you can do quick attack, retreat, attack, retreat, etc. But if the game engine itself doesn't allow these precise click movements, even slowing it down won't help. In fact some things can get harder- BW muta micro is actually harder on slower speeds. In BW you had 5 or 6 speeds slower than what pro's played at, but I doubt you'd get better micro by playing it on slowest. (Even Normal is painful to play on.)
Scaling back some of the base damage on a lot of the auto attack units might help with battles ending too quickly. It was probably an over-reaction from complaints over WC3's last forever units. A happy medium would be nice.
I didn't realize there were physical / engine restrictions that held it back. Without, honestly, much experience in either game (play casually), it seems to me that SC2 supports better player->unit caabilities than BW ever did. For example the stutter stepping of bio is generally pretty responsive. I'm not advocating that units react slows, only that they move/attack slower. These two may be inseparable, but I don't have the technical knowledge to know. I think the idea of giving people more than a snowball's chance in hell to actually do something with their units before they're all dead would be a step in the right direction. That's personally what makes this game fun to watch for me.
On January 19 2012 09:30 Falling wrote: @Alcast Actually slowing down the gamespeed wouldn't really help. The game would be slower and so you'd have more time, but it wouldn't necessarily lead to very precise micro if the game engine doesn't allow it. SupCom2 the units move at a snails pace and yet there really isn't much more to do because of it. You can control more groups of armies, but you can't control an individual group any better. They just sort of do their own thing.
I don't really know the technical side of it, but it partly has to do with being able to manually cancel movement animation when switching from moving to attacking so you can do quick attack, retreat, attack, retreat, etc. But if the game engine itself doesn't allow these precise click movements, even slowing it down won't help. In fact some things can get harder- BW muta micro is actually harder on slower speeds. In BW you had 5 or 6 speeds slower than what pro's played at, but I doubt you'd get better micro by playing it on slowest. (Even Normal is painful to play on.)
Scaling back some of the base damage on a lot of the auto attack units might help with battles ending too quickly. It was probably an over-reaction from complaints over WC3's last forever units. A happy medium would be nice.
I didn't realize there were physical / engine restrictions that held it back. Without, honestly, much experience in either game (play casually), it seems to me that SC2 supports better player->unit caabilities than BW ever did. For example the stutter stepping of bio is generally pretty responsive. I'm not advocating that units react slows, only that they move/attack slower. These two may be inseparable, but I don't have the technical knowledge to know. I think the idea of giving people more than a snowball's chance in hell to actually do something with their units before they're all dead would be a step in the right direction. That's personally what makes this game fun to watch for me.
Well I'm not very technical with this sort of thing, so I don't know whether it is game engine or latency. But it does seem that even when trying to recreate the micro potential moments in SC2BW, Maverick's had a hell of time trying to overcome the engine's default (for muta micro for instance.)
I know I posted this on another thread, but look at the difference between these very similar builds (in concept) SC2 vs BW
In both cases you can probably skip to the 5 minute mark to where the action begins. You have pretty similar harassment. An air harassment build designed to take out workers and overlords.
But look at the very crisp and precise control that BW game engine allowed. Vs the gliding movement of phoenix combined with backwards moving shot that in comparison looks pretty sloppy and really require a small amount of control in comparison.
Now the real kicker is almost every unit in BW had that level of control potential. Not every unit scaled so well to get such impressive results, but the game engine allowed for very precise movements.
M&M stutter step is a start, but there's so few units that you can actually get that much potential out of- and the type of micro we're talking about is vastly different than move your collosi back a tiny bit or move them forward a little bit.
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.
When he says micro he doesn't mean pulling back the injured unit. Yes that is micro and makes units more effective, but it isn't interesting. In Brood War units had different micro, you didn't micro dragoons the same way you microed vultures.
The Dark Archon is a dumb example because it was a higher tiered unit that was super expensive and typically very rarely seen. It costs too much to be worth what it did. In SC2 sentries are available almost from the get go. Infestors come with lair. They're both cheaper then they should be and very easy to get alot of.
And burrowed banelings aren't good at holding ground. Toss armies have observers. They just insta-die. You might get a lucky baneling hit on a group of marines but from then on as long as the terran is careful he shouldn't hit anymore. Doesn't take long to make a raven when you already have a starport for medivacs.
And I think he is complaining about the pathing.
How do you propose making units more microable? I think more divergence in unit movespeeds would be a good start to this process
Also interesting to me is that micro doesn't seem to scale in importance with correlation to the increasing size of armies. I mean some early game engagements showcase truly sick micro in all of its forms, but this doesn't continue to the lategame
Honestly 90% of the micro tricks in BW were just bugs that people were able to find and exploit, muta stacking, vulture patrol micro, etc, were all different, each required you to know exactly the timing you needed to click and press keys and each created different interactions between the units. Vultures were terrible against goons, but if you surround the goons and put down spider mines around them all the sudden the vultures could get some really efficient kills along with the risk of losing all your vultures to an errant mine. Each race had different non-spellcasters that had micro tricks that changed the game, and in general the spellcasters had more interesting and difficult spells. In BW seeing an army get blanketed in storms was amazing to see because for each of those storms you knew the player had to select each Templar individually and cast the storm. Seeing four storms cover an army instantaneously was fucking amazing because somehow they were able to be that fast. In SC2 just "t click" a couple times and you're done. I think Hunter Seeker Missile has enormous potential to be a really awesome spell that would be fun to watch and play, terran casts it and it requires a response from the other player or else it will be huge damage, but with proper control it might not do anything at all. I think it needs a range buff before it will ever get used in mass though.
Hate to turn it into a BW is harder type of post but its hard not to when it comes to spellcasters
In this day and age I don't think the system should be made so those bugs exist but it should be made so that the units are more varied and require different control. Or if they don't want to make the units have more unique interactions with control, make the early spells less punishing. As a zerg player I don't find it fun to watch a two base push form terran get cancelled out by two fungals that happen to catch 20 marines. And I certainly don't find it fun to see forcefields and a wall make zerg aggression pointless.
EPT
