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On January 18 2012 20:23 TotheSky wrote:
I main protoss, reaching top 8 masters for the past 2 seasons if that serves as anything, and I have also offraced as zerg and terran at a high diamond low masters level. I am aware of the protoss a click rages in TVP, and dealing with mass mutas in TVZ. But playing as all 3 races and playing against these "OP" "EZ" strategies, alot of it comes down to the player itself.
1) Too much firepower
I'm not sure what your skill level is at, but I feel that the faster pace and higher damage output is less forgiving to the players that make mistakes. To me it just requires you to be on top of your units, and always prepare yourself to be in a good position, ie not standing there with your bio ball vs P and simple die to a click and call it 1 sided. Since the game is still fairly fresh, with 2 expansions coming out I don't think its fair to compare it to BW that has been out for many years with an extremely developed scene and limited UI and AI which make it much more mechanics heavy.
2) Zone, no true "seige"
To argue your point with using a few stalkers to fend off drops and warping in to defend, in late game situations many protoss players deal with this by cannoning their main where it is the most vulnerable to counted drops, with a HT or two ready for feedback and storm. This also works in PVZ, a perfect example would be the recent Genius vs DRG game where he did not even get storm, but played a very defensive cannon and stalker heavy strategy to deal with muta harass. I agree with the remaining points you made about this zone expansions, but its not that big of a problem to me.
3) Static Defence
I feel that static defence is quite strong as it is, previously stated about and the ways many protoss deal with the muta switches or ling muta strategies IS to use cannons to prevent small numbers of mutas to do damage, and work up to getting stalkers with blink and HT for storms. The one point I do agree with you is that in TVZ mass mutas can absolutely wreck turrets and one of the more frustrating points in my upper diamond TvZ. Cannons shouldn't be able to take out upgraded units, they are there to defend early on, and to buy time for your reinforcements to come. The Genius vs SC game on daybreak I also feel that the protoss used the cannons extremely well and it got to the point where I believe he couldn't lose and it ended up being a boring macro game to me, so I would argue no that stronger static defence is pretty damn good as is.
4) Hard Counter Units
I think this is exactly why you need to actively scout, and prepare for follow ups your opponent can do so you can adapt and react to it. Sure you can isolate 2 units and say immortals take out 3 tanks easily, but thats where you have marines to deal with immortals, and protoss gets zealots sentries to counter the marines. At the end of the game, it comes down to your unit positioning, combination and control. At lower levels, I can definitely agree that lesser players would be frustrated that their lings die helions, especially in 4v4 format with the famous ZZPT combination with mass speedlings with helions and 4 gate, but many players in the 1v1 format has adapted to helion harasses, and it would be safe to say that things will be more figured out to deal with these hard these "imbalanced" situations.
If you watch any game in its first year of release, I'm sure you'll find many flaws and design issues, and it may not ever be fixed the way you want it to, and in this case compared to BW. I think you should take the game for what it is, and not compare it to its predessor because lets face it, its 2 different games and requires a different mindset approach to it.
Oh god i love you. Its very refreshing to see that someone isn't going to bitch and complain about the game, but rather adapt to it and not compare it to bw. Because at the end of the day, the game is much heavier counter attack based play than bw (in my experience).
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I really liked the OP. I do not agree with all of his points but do agree that there seems to be something wrong with the current state of SC2.
Personally, in a make believe world, I think that the game should be slowed down a bit. Units should do less damage and minerals should be mined a little slower. That will give players the opportunity to control the game in a way that is more fun for the player and the viewer. Just my opinion.
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I hear what the OP is saying but really I cannot agree with the serious design changes he's proposing.
Essentially most of this would mean less harras and whoever has the most units wins and you would usually have a straight up battle in the middle with one side slowly emerging as the victor. Seems to me that you're removing alot of the strategy so that the game more often flows in the same way, less variation. More so the direction you propose is clearly your own preference and nothing you've stated can be agreed on by all as being a true flaw in the game.
You wish SC2 had less firepower and that static defenses were stronger but that's just your STYLE and are not flaws in the game. You prefer not to be harrased at the mineral line or not lose 20 workers because you were not paying attention. In that case I reccomend you play the Supreme Commander series. That's more the game you just described. Very good game too!
But like the OP, this is just my opinion.
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Blizzard is aware of all these issues. That's why proposed HotS units require more micro and (some) can "zone".
A full expansion is needed to fix these fundamental game design issues and Blizz has 2 shots this time to get it right.
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For the most part I agree with OP, having played BW I felt like SC2 has to much firepower and hard counters. Felt like that since day 1, in BW you really had to work in order to kill a main, now you can snipe it easily with 4 marauders.
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On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome.
TvT is a good matchup? you must not play terran, friend.
I can't tell you how many times it's come to the same Viking/tank wars that are drawn out to 35-40 minutes.
I'm okay with a semi long game every once in a while but as it stands you either win by cheese or by playing tank wars all about positioning and how many tanks you can pump out.
Every time I play a TvT I want to ragequit, not because I'm not good at using tank/viking play but because it's extremely stale and boring.
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Based on this, I think you should play WC3: RoC. Not the expansion, the original. Everything was mediocre and did mediocre damage to everything.
As is, I think the problem is the opposite of what you do. Units are too general. The large, AoE stuff isn't "explosive" enough. Colossi are stupid. Tanks kinda suck vs. P. Hellions don't micro right. Marines shouldn't be able to walk over everything.
BW was built on hard counters and units sucking vs. some stuff but being great vs. other stuff. You want it to go one way, I want it to go the other.
One thing I agree about is zoning (at least for T. Zergs are extremely mobile; they don't need to "zone" in the same way T and P do, and P have FF), which is why I'm looking forward to HotS.
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On February 02 2012 01:25 GeorgeForeman wrote:
Based on this, I think you should play WC3: RoC. Not the expansion, the original. Everything was mediocre and did mediocre damage to everything.
As is, I think the problem is the opposite of what you do. Units are too general. The large, AoE stuff isn't "explosive" enough. Colossi are stupid. Tanks kinda suck vs. P. Hellions don't micro right. Marines shouldn't be able to walk over everything.
BW was built on hard counters and units sucking vs. some stuff but being great vs. other stuff. You want it to go one way, I want it to go the other.
One thing I agree about is zoning (at least for T. Zergs are extremely mobile; they don't need to "zone" in the same way T and P do, and P have FF), which is why I'm looking forward to HotS.
PFs, tanks, turrets and bunkers want to have a word with you.
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The thing that annoyed me when SC2 came out was Void Rays vs. Protoss. The two obvious 'counters' was Stalkers or your own Void Rays.... but those are both armored which Void Rays did bonus damage against. Sentries and Phoenix did miniscule damage. If the someone had enough VRs that you wanted to specifically counter them, you're almost certainly already behind in building your own fleet of Void Rays. Stalkers weren't terrible... unless the Void Rays got to full charge.
Just seemed silly that the 'counter' to something that does bonus damage against an armor type is to build units that have the same armor type and will thus take more damage from what you're trying to stop. It happens with other units, but that was the one that always stuck in my mind.
Blizzard's pretty intelligent. Should be interesting to see how HotS turns out once the community has its hands on it.
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On February 02 2012 01:25 GeorgeForeman wrote:
Based on this, I think you should play WC3: RoC. Not the expansion, the original. Everything was mediocre and did mediocre damage to everything.
As is, I think the problem is the opposite of what you do. Units are too general. The large, AoE stuff isn't "explosive" enough. Colossi are stupid. Tanks kinda suck vs. P. Hellions don't micro right. Marines shouldn't be able to walk over everything.
BW was built on hard counters and units sucking vs. some stuff but being great vs. other stuff. You want it to go one way, I want it to go the other.
One thing I agree about is zoning (at least for T. Zergs are extremely mobile; they don't need to "zone" in the same way T and P do, and P have FF), which is why I'm looking forward to HotS.
I agree with this.
If the OP had its way, any matchup would be like the awful and degenerated state that PvZ is in with 2 base +3 blink stalkers vs. 3 base roaches until one side overwhelms the other.
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On February 01 2012 23:14 drgoats wrote:
I really liked the OP. I do not agree with all of his points but do agree that there seems to be something wrong with the current state of SC2.
Personally, in a make believe world, I think that the game should be slowed down a bit. Units should do less damage and minerals should be mined a little slower. That will give players the opportunity to control the game in a way that is more fun for the player and the viewer. Just my opinion.
This. So much of this.
A 15min game where the only noteworthy points of contention are a 2 barracks pressure followed by 1 deciding 2base push is a waste of time as a viewer.
Back and forth games where more small things contribute a victor makes for exciting games.
A stalemate where suddenly one party gets a massive lead which is nearly impossible to come back from is boring.
In a way, this is also part of the reason why you see so much fluctuation in top-end players in SC2. I'm not saying skill doesn't count, but the current SC2 allows lesser-skilled players to more easily 'steal' games off of better players. I believe this is one of the main reasons idra doesn't like sc2 when compared to BW.
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On January 18 2012 19:06 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +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.  The OP isn't about not liking the design of SC2 compared to BW, it's about flaws in the design which BW didn't have. Going back to BW won't remove those issues from SC2.
what about the countless flaws broodwar did have at a pro level ?
most of the time you are seeing great ( long ) games at the pro level unless there is a great separation in skill between the players...
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I agree with this for the most part. I however think there needs to be other changes that increase defensive advantage for players instead of simply buffing the stats on the static defences.
Things similar in design to the 'turn any buiding into a cannon' that they were toying with in HotS.
Stronger defensive/zoning units also appear to be their goal with HotS, at least for T and Z, so I've got a degree of trust that they know where the biggest flaw in their game is, and are working on it.
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On February 02 2012 04:06 royal.cze wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 19:06 Tobberoth 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. The OP isn't about not liking the design of SC2 compared to BW, it's about flaws in the design which BW didn't have. Going back to BW won't remove those issues from SC2. what about the countless flaws broodwar did have at a pro level ? most of the time you are seeing great ( long ) games at the pro level unless there is a great separation in skill between the players...
Most of the time we are seeing long games at the pro level which have been pretty close to decided in the first five minutes.
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On February 02 2012 01:23 NoctemSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome. TvT is a good matchup? you must not play terran, friend. I can't tell you how many times it's come to the same Viking/tank wars that are drawn out to 35-40 minutes. I'm okay with a semi long game every once in a while but as it stands you either win by cheese or by playing tank wars all about positioning and how many tanks you can pump out. Every time I play a TvT I want to ragequit, not because I'm not good at using tank/viking play but because it's extremely stale and boring.
If you find that boring just go bio, there's multiple ways to play it and are all effective
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On February 02 2012 01:23 NoctemSC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome. TvT is a good matchup? you must not play terran, friend. I can't tell you how many times it's come to the same Viking/tank wars that are drawn out to 35-40 minutes. I'm okay with a semi long game every once in a while but as it stands you either win by cheese or by playing tank wars all about positioning and how many tanks you can pump out. Every time I play a TvT I want to ragequit, not because I'm not good at using tank/viking play but because it's extremely stale and boring.
Actually tank/viking rarely happens at higher levels of play. If you want proof, just watch a bit of GomTvT. It depends on the map but it can be pretty easy to maneuver around and vikings are terrible fighting units, so you wanna avoid making them unless you have no alternative. An aggressive style of marine/tank or just pure bio is much more effective as long as you retain map control and punish your opponent whenever he tries to move around unsieged, which shouldn't be too hard considering your superior mobility.
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On February 02 2012 07:48 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2012 01:23 NoctemSC wrote:On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome. TvT is a good matchup? you must not play terran, friend. I can't tell you how many times it's come to the same Viking/tank wars that are drawn out to 35-40 minutes. I'm okay with a semi long game every once in a while but as it stands you either win by cheese or by playing tank wars all about positioning and how many tanks you can pump out. Every time I play a TvT I want to ragequit, not because I'm not good at using tank/viking play but because it's extremely stale and boring. Actually tank/viking rarely happens at higher levels of play. If you want proof, just watch a bit of GomTvT. It depends on the map but it can be pretty easy to maneuver around and vikings are terrible fighting units, so you wanna avoid making them unless you have no alternative. An aggressive style of marine/tank or just pure bio is much more effective as long as you retain map control and punish your opponent whenever he tries to move around unsieged, which shouldn't be too hard considering your superior mobility.
Tank/Marine (=bio vs bio opening) does exactly the same. tankline stalemates.
gladly mech and bio both are strong enough, that we do see the one actionoriented (bio vs mech) "MU" pretty often out of the 3possibilities (mech v mech, bio v mech, tank/marine v tank/marine)
so yeah, TvT is great to watch, but so tankdominated, that what he said always is true: it's annoyingly long MU to play on equal level, due to statics. Yet I wouldnt want it any other way as a viewer :-)
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I've been saying what OP says since I first saw fungal+banes. Way too much AoE damage, way too many "hard counter" units.
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On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome.
This dead horse has been mercilessly beaten since beta. Hell, the horse has been dead since beta.
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On February 02 2012 08:13 FuRRyChoBo wrote:
I've been saying what OP says since I first saw fungal+banes. Way too much AoE damage, way too many "hard counter" units.
and yet out of all the "counters" you pick the two that are probably the ones with the most universal uses and led to some of the most interesting dynamics in SC2. (banelingsplits vs marine splits, tanktargetfire and ling/bling wars; banelingdrops and fungal as anti clump, detection, anti air. landmines and infestors for zone control etc...)
banelings a barely efficient against marines in marine/tank compositions and against lings and other blings. still we do see them against a lot of things due to universalness. on the other hand fungals can be pretty great against nearly everything, so they are far away from being specific counters.
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EPT
