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1) Ive always thought this encourages games where having good army composition was important and not mass X unit to win like in many other RTS games.
2) I think its good that no race can control a zone like the way the OP mentioned. It adds diversity to the races and forces you to scout, have good sim city and good army spread or positioning.
BTW if you are Zerg, mid-late game just plop down like 30 spines and that can hold an area long enough against a push to get your army in a good position to defend.
3) Do you really want 2x as powerful cannon rushes?? On a more serious note, i think weaker static defences discourages super stale matchups where the map is split in two and everyone is turtling behind massive lines of static defences (think WW1)
4) As always, microing armys is very important... speedlings on creep surronds and kills hellions, hellions should run from roaches....
your suggestion of having a "good against everything unit" is already hated by some people in the community due to complaints of mass X and 1a-win.
conclusion: Simply put, I think having a good unit composition is the key in sc2. and having that comes from scouting, poking the front, and gamesense which comes from experience.
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Nice OP, i only disagree with the static d part. I think medivacs themselves are insanely strong not so much that spines are weak, spines should root faster however. Medivacs should should require even a cheap upg like conc shell before they can heal&drop. The heal rate is fucking insane for an air unit.
Terrible terrible damage. :'( Litterally 200/200 armies just melt in 2 seconds sometimes. Its just anti climatic. Or watching a drop destroy 2 buildings in 5 seconds.
PS: Giving reapers zerg regen in HotS makes me sad. Wish the units were more logical in general.
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On January 19 2012 01:09 CounterOrder wrote:
PS: Giving reapers zerg regen in HotS makes me sad. Wish the units were more logical in general.
It's not Zerg regen. It's an ability you have to activate that temporarily disables the reaper whilst it heals.
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Man I really hate these thinly veiled whine threads. Elephant in the Room, Philosophy of Design etc. If the game was/is being poorly designed then why is every GSL better than the last? The game is still evolving, and it's getting better every day.
The OP basically just lists stuff *he personally* dislikes about the game (probably stuff he blames for not winning all the time).
1: Firepower: Does SC2 have too much?
Well this comes down to personal opinion. Maybe in monobattles it matters that some units are good against other units, but in a real game this means you need either a mix of units or (for example vs "lings in enough numbers beat everything") enough units such as zealots and sentries to deal with your opponents choice of tech.
I fail to see how it's bad that zealots rip through everything that's standing still or trapped but get kited pretty well if not. That's a cool dynamic. Or how is it bad that immortals rip through armoured units? Heaven forbid you should have to target fire, or worse yet, build some marines or ghosts!
The crushing AoE thing has been discussed before here, but to reiterate - You can always spread your units, or just build units that don't take aoe damage, like air units or larger ground units.
2: Zoning
So, uh, You need some meat shields for your tanks for them to be effective. OK. I'm sorry that tanks don't kill every ground unit in one shot and also shoot upwards. I'm afraid you need to learn to play the game instead...
Also, tanks (ok you need some meatshield for them), PDD, forcefields, nukes, sensor towers, collosus range (kinda), planetary fortresses, creep, burrowed troops, static defenses and the swarm host and zappy field generator thingy in HotS are all to a certain extent zoning mechanics.
Ling runbys in zvz, leave a baneling or 2 at the top of the ramp
Drops as protoss, stay at 190, leave a HT and some cannons at bases (see genius vs SC recently)
The game being a bit too baseracey: Well i kinda have to agree here but i feel atm it's partly metagame/balance because one player feels they just have no way to engage the other army. Probably players will start anticipating this kind of thing more and plan on defending at home somehow when they move out to attack
However i don't agree that you should be able to leave like 3-4 units at home and have your bases be completely safe. What would be the point of ever attacking?
You don't like the situation atm in PvT where 2 armies dance around each other in the middle of the map, trying to get an advantageous position? Well tbh I think it's kinda cool. If you let the other guy get into a spot where he threatens your expansion it's your own damn fault.
3: Static Defenses being too weak.
This is just wrong. I just get the idea that you've lost to all-ins too much or something. Make cannons and bunkers stronger? Uh ok just build a cannon or bunker in zerg's natural every single game as the first thing you do and get ahead economically.
Better spines make a 6gate useless? The six gate is a great all-in to punish a zerg teching too hard. If you lose to a six gate you should reconsider going muta so early.
Ling runbys causing you trouble? Try scouting. You mention zvz, so overlord placement, creep spread as well as queens and some banes at home can deal with most of these except a commited baserace style, but zerg units are pretty fast so you can usually get home in time to defend anyway.
Also, static defenses are pretty cheap - you can build an awful lot of them in the lategame if you want to. In fact you can hold pretty much any all-in (well not voidray) with just spines, as long as you have enough of them in the right place. They are extremely cost-efficient.
4: Units good against some but weak against others.
OK , you think making all units more mediocre against everything would lead to interesting compositions? Either that or really boring ones....
Make lings better against hellions? I can do that already. It's called engaging in a good position.
Losing to roaches when you've only made hellions the entire game? It's your own damn fault.
I'm sorry if this came off a rude or BM but posts like these just reek of, "Ugh, i'm losing a lot........this game must be porrly designed".
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This is why TvP makes me angry the most, one slip up and my Bio ball evaporates in seconds to crazy AoE damage. Then its gg, never can come back against a decent player after losing a big engagement.
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this thread had one good point in my opinion and that is the thing about zone control but can people please remember that it took many years for BW to get balanced,if i remember correctly it took more than 5 years before whats standart now days actually became it in tvz and i also wanna take a reminder that zone control is what blizzard is trying to fix in HOTS but as with WOL it will take maybe a year before the game actually becomes reasonable balanced and then to the 3 thing i want to say is that i really dont feel like it all comes down to a deathball situation anymore its really only in pvz i can see that happening,i am not gonna say that the game will not end in a big final battle but there is so more that leeds up to that point,i could already feel that when i was middle plat that it i really wouldn't be able to make a win if i just sat back in tvp or in tvz especially in tvz that i still have hard troubles with but i am not complaining about zerg being op i know that i have alot to improve and i will hopefully do that,for any1 that wonders i am now low diamond 
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On January 18 2012 23:31 EternaLLegacy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 23:30 Tobberoth wrote:On January 18 2012 23:28 EternaLLegacy wrote:On January 18 2012 23:12 Mehukannu wrote:On January 18 2012 23:06 EternaLLegacy wrote:
Didn't I just make a big article on this? Yes, and now we also have this one too where people can vent off some steam what they don't like about sc2 design. Like on the one you did. ^.^ Or they could all post in the thread I made. My god the mods/admins have gotten lazy. To be perfectly honest though, it's not as if your thread was even close to the first one on the matter. Yah, but it's STILL FEATURED. I mean, cmon...
You know that people care about OP's far more than replies. This guy wouldn't really have been heard in your thread.
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On January 19 2012 01:26 randoomguy wrote:this thread had one good point in my opinion and that is the thing about zone control but can people please remember that it took many years for BW to get balanced,if i remember correctly it took more than 5 years before whats standart now days actually became it in tvz and i also wanna take a reminder that zone control is what blizzard is trying to fix in HOTS but as with WOL it will take maybe a year before the game actually becomes reasonable balanced and then to the 3 thing i want to say is that i really dont feel like it all comes down to a deathball situation anymore its really only in pvz i can see that happening,i am not gonna say that the game will not end in a big final battle but there is so more that leeds up to that point,i could already feel that when i was middle plat that it i really wouldn't be able to make a win if i just sat back in tvp or in tvz especially in tvz that i still have hard troubles with but i am not complaining about zerg being op i know that i have alot to improve and i will hopefully do that,for any1 that wonders i am now low diamond
I really would like a little less boom your dead damage. I mean, I'm sure a lot of that is just adjusting ratios. And great point about the hard/soft counter thing, Those are two points I agree with absolutely.
BUT, TBH; the faster sc2 makes a better spectator sport than BW.
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On January 19 2012 00:14 gh0un wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2012 22:34 Roblin wrote:On January 18 2012 21:14 Mentalizor wrote:On January 18 2012 20:57 Roblin wrote:On January 18 2012 19:27 tokicheese wrote: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? coming right from the unit tester. no muta ever took a single point of splashdamage in these tests. for reference, thor max hp is 400, muta max hp is 120 edit:fixed thor max hp 1 thor vs 2 mutas : thor wins and has 296 hp left 1 thor vs 3 mutas : thor wins and has 176 hp left 1 thor vs 4 mutas : thor wins and has 8 hp left (this scenario can probably go either way, as its a matter of which side gets their last volley of first) 1 thor vs 5 mutas : mutas win and 2 have full health, 1 have 72 hp left I tried 6 mutas v 2 thors. Prespread mutas. Slightly spread thors (no glaive dmg). Only 2 mutas died. *BALANCE* this time I tried 2 clumped thors that took glaive bounce damage vs 6 mutas that took no splash damage, both sides focusfired, the thors won with 1 thor left which had 60 hp. I believe in your test the focusfiring was biased for zerg, am i correct? . I believe in your test the focusfiring was biased for terran, am i correct? Since when i am focusfiring with 2 thors against 6 mutas, i can kill all mutas without losing a single thor. Im pretty sure you just let them focusfire the mutas without including the factor that thors only need 3 shots to kill a muta, thus completely botching one shot out of 4, decreasing their dps by 33%. However you should stop to test muta vs thor anyways since in a normal game that wont occur. The point of thor in tvz is to disallow mutas to be microed efficiently (since they cant be stacked) and magic boxed mutas actually melt to marines in AN INSTANT. Just watch idra vs taeja game 2 where the casters say "wow those thors did sooo much damage to the mutas". In actuality what happens is that the thors dont even manage to fire off a single shot because the mutas that are flying in with magic box melt to the marines since they are flying in spreaded. They die so fast that the thors cant target fast enough because they are always trying to search for a new target, which ofcourse also melts in an instant. Its like a tap (mutas) that very slowly trickles water onto a hot stone with a heat source below (marines). Like that the stone is never able to be cooled down at all before it heats up again from the heat source below. If all of the water was put on the stone at once, it would cool down easily. Thats exactly how spreaded mutas vs stacked mutas work vs marines. Thors make it so mutas cant be stacked, thus they are completely ineffective against marines. Ofcourse zerg can combat this by bringing zerglings, since the marines wont be able to melt the mutas as easily because the AI will target zerglings first, but the thors still disallow the zerg player to stack his mutas, therefore their mission is accomplished. Thats also why you see terrans only get 1 or maybe 2 thors, because thats enough to disallow a zerg player to stack his mutas. Thors definitely have their role in tvz, its just that their role isnt to kill mutas but rather restrict their movement, thus making the mutas that much more inefficient. Btw i just tested 20 mutas vs 5 thors. The thors were spreaded but i didnt micro them (since microing them will just lead to overkill damage). The mutas i did micro to target 1 thor at a time while still keeping the magic box intact. Guess what, the thors managed to kill 11 mutas. 20 mutas are a 2000 gas investment, while thors are a 1000 gas investment, and even though the thors were basically outnumbered (regarding gas investment) they still managed to deal 1100 worth of gas damage to the mutalisks. Thors arent bad against mutas, even if you just build thors to deal with mutas.
I believe you have misunderstood, I am arguing that thors are good vs mutas, you seem to think I am arguing the opposite.
besides, read further in the post you quoted and I got a lot better results in later attempts at the same scenario.
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Everything is a glass cannon in SC2.
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4713 Posts
@ Zrana
I get the feeling you are too biassed against these so called "balance whines" to even try and consider they may have some legitimite concerns/ good points.
1st Firepower is too big, when an entire army in TvP from either side can be destroyed in about 15 seconds you know something is wrong. When one small mistake (getting HT/Ghosts sniped/EMPed; getting colossus sniped/losing vikings) can cost you not only the engagement but possibly the entire game, then something is wrong.
In a way Blizz is tacitly admiting this by going forth and saying that they want less units in the deathball, thats how they talked about some of the HoTS units.
As for the faster player winning. I thought SC2 was a game about of strategy, not fast reactions, sure a fast player should be rewarded for being able to use his speed to micro/macro, but it shouldn't be the defining factor because battles last only seconds.
2nd Zooning is a real issue. There are currently few ways to for players to really put their stamp on a territory and declare it theirs. Terrans have it best, and its one of the reasons why it feels the most complete. It is important to have some ways to secure your territory so you can pull off a decisive thrust attack, or have enough time to reinforce your position.
Zoning units are also important for putting pressure on the enemy and contesting territory, this is where the game starts to resemble chess, as players try to out manuever themselves or devise ways to break the line in slow and methodical ways.
Again Blizz is addressing this issue in HoTS via Shredders, Swarm Hosts, and who knows what else they will think of.
3rd This is where you really start to seem thick. Static defenses are good in the early to mid game but start to become horrible towards the late game. And in a way it kind of builds on the problem of zoning.
Static defenses aren't even hard to buff. Just have them be upgradable. That way you can keep them resonable for the early game so that no one wants to cannon rush or bunker rush every single game. But it also keeps them as a valuable part of the of the game well into the later stages.
Overall I get the feeling that you're just basing the OP (and possibly a lot of other well thought out threads), because you're either sick and tired of them, or you legitimetly can't get your head around the problems/don't want to admit them.
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Dear lord more design QQ.
If this is just as you said frustrated complaining then take it to blogs.
If you are seriously concerned then take it to the Blizzards forums for the off chance they will read it.
If you hate the design of Sc2 so much I've got this great game to recommend to you.
So tired of all these design qq threads recently, Team Liquid isn't Blizzard, we don't balance the game or design HotS why continually complain here?
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Sorry but we are the starcraft community right... isnt there some way we can all talk to blizzard rather than talking amongst ourselves about these problems... We all know that sc2 his heading towards a dull end but I think if we all work together we CAN have the game changed at to a degree where it potentially exceeds sc1... all the problems that we discuss should be discussed with blizzard somehow... we are the players so they should really give us what we want or its their problem? If you guys really want change then why cant we make a big change happen in HoTs.. its worth a shot aint it.
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On January 18 2012 19:55 iKill wrote:Show nested quote +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. 
Exactly. +1
The point is if you like BW but don't like SC2 and the nature of the attacks, then PLAY BW. There's a difference between dropping the range of fungals and making every unit weaker.
It boggles my mind this thread is still alive because it's basically a BW vs. SC2 thread, bashing SC2 for what it is.
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@destroyer
Well the fact is these threads are all opinions.
You don't like the fact that armies destroy each other in about 15 seconds. I personally don't have a problem with how long battles last. Sure it makes engaging right and in-battle micro harder but that's all part of playing the game.
Small mistakes cost you an engagement such as getting emp'd or feedbacked. Well that's certainly true. But if this isn't the case, what then should decide the engagement if not the ability to feedback his ghosts before he EMP's or vice versa? Strategy? What if two players have strategised their way into having a big army each? Micro? Well players already micro - they just have less time to do it in than perhaps you would wish.
Fast Reactions are by no means the deciding factor. Watch some of the latest high-level starcraft such as the blizzard cup or this season's code S. Most games are determined by a strong build order, good harrass or good positioning.
As for zoning and static defense - well yes hots is buffing it a little, but there has to be balance where runbys, harrass and counterattacks are viable strategies. Most people i think wouldnt want games to be split map every time because no-one can ever attack. The OP complained about how in pvt it was just 2 armies who could never attack each into each other. Would you want that for the whole damn map?
You want a game where
players try to out manuever themselves or devise ways to break the line in slow and methodical ways.
Isn't this high level SC2 already? TvT for sure. ZvAnything when infestors and broodlords are in the mix, (PvP I actually have no idea what lategame PvP looks like but the matchup is so unfigured out it doesn't matter anyway). PvT when you have 2 good players yeah it kinda does look like this. Also in HotS i have a strong feeling T will go mech in the matchup which will make it even more positional.
With creep and pylons, toss and zerg do have ways to quickly reinforce a piece of territory. I've seen a lot of games where a player (usually a terran) attacks and drops all over the other guy (usuallty toss) and the both players have their mulitasking really taxed to try and hold it off or make it work. I personally wouldnt want a game where you can take an extra base and it can never be attacked unless you bring your whole army for it.
Static defenses - ok so you like them in early/mid game? But in late game they become less strong? Well yes but in lategame players will be going gas-heavy units on lots of bases and so minerals can be spent pretty freely on large numbers of spines/cannons. Again you want the balance where you can hold off harrass and slow down their army long enough for yours to get into position. I don't really know what you want here - do you want to be able to hold off a whole army with static defense? Seems a bit silly to me.
Also by the by, bunkers and turrets can be upgraded ;p
Uh anyway after all that rambling, my real point is that yes, SC2 is by no means perfect (though the metagame looks better all the time), but is it not fun for most people? Is it not fun to watch? If no, then yes we have a problem to address. If yes, then your opinions (and mine) on how the game should look are just subjective opinions and suggestions and not really that important.
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Reducing the overal damage that units do might be viable but making every unit okay against any unit is very stupid IMO it would just take out alot of stratagy from the game, people seem to forget that this is a strategy game. I think stratagy should be as important as skill but you pretty much wanna make the game more action based which i think is a huge mistake. Lastly a lot of what you are saying would even invalidate a lt of stratagys, whats wrong with 6-gate and mutas would be usless if you doubled the effectiveness of turrets, PF would be almost invincible seeing as how hard it is to destroy now.
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On January 19 2012 02:18 FutureBreedMachine wrote:
Sorry but we are the starcraft community right... isnt there some way we can all talk to blizzard rather than talking amongst ourselves about these problems... We all know that sc2 his heading towards a dull end but I think if we all work together we CAN have the game changed at to a degree where it potentially exceeds sc1... all the problems that we discuss should be discussed with blizzard somehow... we are the players so they should really give us what we want or its their problem? If you guys really want change then why cant we make a big change happen in HoTs.. its worth a shot aint it.
"We all know"
"we are the players"
"why cant we make"
Who's we? Do you know what percentages of the SC2 community want what? I'm pretty sure "we all know" isn't something you can throw around when it comes to something with hundreds of thousands of participants.
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Perhaps it's the case that some unit compositions don't take much micro to win, and I can definitely see problems with that. I also find issues with higher tiers of units that don't scale well against lower tiers of units from other races.
For example, Protoss needs to quickly get higher tier units to deal with low tier Terran, but Terran can stay on low tier units for most of the game (all-game if the Protoss doesn't mass colossi). Furthermore, there's nothing higher tier that Terran would even want to change to, because mech isn't viable in TvP. If higher tier Terran units became more viable than (or, at least, equally viable to) the lower tier Terran units in TvP, then I think that would make for a more equal game throughout. Simultaneousy weakening Terrans' lower tier units and strengthening the versatility of the higher tier units may make it the case that Terrans don't rape Protoss early on and we see more interesting battles in the late game.
I also definitely agree that the static defenses are too weak. Cannons do absolutely nothing against mutas and medivac drops. You need to really mass turrets hard against a muta flock. Spores and spines aren't amazing either. I'd say that the versatility of the bunker (reparable and can be sold) are the best defensive structures, but they're only functional if you have units in them.
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I like this post a lot OP. Some of what is written is a little situational, but I think that even helps you visually understand the message. I really hope the coming expansions cater to quality of the competitive experience, as opposed to a release day shock value experience... as the first would pay out much more in the end long-term for blizzard anyways.
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Just thought I'd drop in and say that I agree with pretty much everything the OP has said. There's a balance between having too much focus on direct counters and making stuff too massable. Hopefully, over the course of the expansions and the many patches, we'll see SC2 find the perfect middle ground.
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EPT
