On June 30 2012 09:36 Cuce wrote: forcefield lets toss micro. I dont mean you hit f and click a bunch of times. it lets toss to micro agains double speed roaches lings mm balls. and it gives a reason for roach/ling/mm to micro againts toss.
I completely disagree with your statement here. I don't know how it could be more contrary to reality.
Forcefield doesn't 'let' toss micro. Forcefield makes it so Toss doesn't really have to micro. Also it DOES mean you hit f and click a bunch of times, because the spell is such a commodity. Maybe if it were larger and cost more it wouldn't be so game-breaking. Toss can micro against those things on their own, and removing or altering forcefield would greatly promote that.
On June 29 2012 20:34 tdt wrote: Good thread with lots of good thoughts. I agree with the ppl who say it's about innovating. They are a software company after all where innovation is like thier middle name. For example,whether you like or dislike microsoft ribbons stuff like that is just going to happen with any of software company. otherwise it's kinda of hard to justify thier positions and reviewers would be like "BW 2.0 trolllolz". I think they are actually trying to slip BW in now though. Look at swarm host. Mines. etc
Everyone love to hate on collosus but why not look at cool things like blink stalkers? Why not look how much more succesful SC2 is in the West than BW ever was? Think positive.
If something like a blink stalker can be cool, why can't a colossus be as micro intensive? The point is to make something that CAN be micro'd, but DOES NOT have to be. You can't even animation cancel colossi, they are too mobile to warrant them using a warp prism to move around, and they are the major contributing factors to a death ball. I am all in favor of introducing new units, but if they are mostly in the flavor of, in the words of David Kim, "A move friendly", then hell no.
You can animation cancel colossi. And Colossi+Warp Prism is more rather unexplored.
SC2 Collosus--long range unit that can kite whose splash damage is more or less effective depending on which part of the front line it is shooting from.
BW Siege Tank--Long range unit that just sits there
Collosus--long or medium ranged unit that has multiple timings attack timings and tech switch possibilities that allows protoss as a race to out maneuver the opponent through proper tech progression and decision making
Reaver--low cost high dps splash unit that negates terran from playing 1/3 of their tech tree.
Collosus--unit with the most number of units that can kill it in the game, high cost, low hp, susceptible to both ground and air troops.
Defiler--counters the terran race, highest dps splash spell in the game, infinite mana.
How good a unit is seen depends on how people think about it.
If you don't know the reasons behind these units why they add so much skill to the game, you're deluded...
Siege tank needs perfect positioning, you can't move it back. You need game awareness.
Reaver is incredibly hard to control and can break an entire army just by controlling him well. Combine this with epic shuttle micro and you've got an intense fun aspect of the game anyone can enjoy.
It's incredibly fun to land good dark swarms. Terrans are forced to micro their unit out of the swarm, while using irradiate on the defilers and avoiding destruction by scourges. Zerg has to land those dark swarms or his army is going to get decimated; you need perfect timings and positioning on them or they are completely worthless.
I'm no mastermind of sc bw, since I've only started it a couple of months ago, but these units add so much depth and micro to the game.
A.) All units need perfect position. How often have we seen collosi dying to zerglings because they weren't positioned properly?
B.) Units needing more clicking does not counteract their bad design. The Reaver is overpowered--but since it's hard to click things in the game, it's "balanced." But realistically, it's an artificial balance. The unit itself is not balanced. If the reaver was put into SC2 people would want it ripped immediately. A colosus that has no easy counter that deals triple the damage? Awful design. Why is it okay? Because it's hard to click things in BW. Because you had to fight the UI in BW. If it was the Collosi instead of the reaver in BW no one would complain about imba collosi. Because the two games are fundamentally different from each other.
Imagine for a moment if there was a patch that said "Collosi costs half as much, does triple the damage, and doesn't need a range upgrade to be long range. Also, Vikings/Corruptors don't counter it but it moves slower"
It wasn't the unit design that made BW a good game (which I know it is), it was the synergies that made it a good game. Blind would be OP in SC2. Viking battles? Decided by medics. early tank pushes? Stopped by medics. chased away the medivac with troops in it? Blind it and suddenly they need to send it all the way back home to place/restore it because it'd be suicide to do drop play with a blind medivac.
Lockdown? It's like the opposite of snipe but only needs to hit once. If Lockdown was in SC2 mech place and protoss would be irrelevant.
Design wise, the BW units are not that great when put into a format with a smoother interface. They're not that great because design wise, the only things that made them balanced was a bad UI.
With a bad UI all the SC2 units would be just as "amazing" as BW units. Forcefields? Try casting that perfectly when you have to do it one sentry at a time. Snipe? Useless. Fungal? An aoe spell that deals less dps than a siege tank?
BW was good--don't think I don't see that. But stop pretending that it was unit design that made it "work."
Collosi don't need perfect position, they just need to be somewhat near a ball of stalkers/zealots/sentries. If they were so easy to snipe, then why would they give viper a pudge hook?
So basically, since SC2's interface supports spells that rely on being used in succession, then we should stick with those types of spells? There was this controversy with changing the middle mouse button so that it would act like a really fast left click, and many people considered that to be cheating. Granted, it wouldn't help with force fields, but I dislike the fact that you need to do multiple snipes or multiple infested terrans in the shortest time possible. It doesn't seem like a strategic decision at all, just a "battle" of whoever clicks faster.
Dark Swarm - A spell that makes zerg units invincible to all ranged unit attacks from terran, barring splash damage. Gained at hive tech. Good thing there's irradiate, and zerg has more than one expansion to pressure.
Force Field - A protoss spell that allows them 30 seconds of not being attacked when used on a ramp. Unlocked the moment the protoss cy core finishes.
On June 30 2012 09:36 Cuce wrote: forcefield lets toss micro. I dont mean you hit f and click a bunch of times. it lets toss to micro agains double speed roaches lings mm balls. and it gives a reason for roach/ling/mm to micro againts toss.
I completely disagree with your statement here. I don't know how it could be more contrary to reality.
Forcefield doesn't 'let' toss micro. Forcefield makes it so Toss doesn't really have to micro. Also it DOES mean you hit f and click a bunch of times, because the spell is such a commodity. Maybe if it were larger and cost more it wouldn't be so game-breaking. Toss can micro against those things on their own, and removing or altering forcefield would greatly promote that.
honestly forcefields will always get hate because they enable the toss to literally create positioning. it's just very strong in so many situations.
What made BW work wasn't just the unit spells themselves, but the community for regulating their usage and banning / promoting certain behaviours which made the game interesting to watch. Alot of unintentional buggy features like workers/units glitching through solid objects / minerals and stacking was left in the game, just as many buggy features were banned from professional play like teleport / flying glitches and command center crushing interceptors. The players and organizers made maps specifically to cater to the game's unit abilities and these features, such as back door minerals / buildings, adjusting ramp sizes and openings, changing the pathing / cliffs / total area of the maps etc. There's been eras of terrible unbalance (Protoss Plains and Zerg Assault comes to mind =_=) and hilarious map design decisions like no gas naturals, but the community went with it and adjusted the meta game / map pool / rule set around unit abilities and features, not the other way around.
Old blizzard didn't removed patrol micro / portions of animation cancel, new blizzard did. Old blizzard didn't removed unit glitching through builds/minerals, new blizzard did (and added more pathing blocking abilities). Alot of these are to make the game more understandable and less obscure to new viewers, but the older method of adapting the meta game to the hard to land / difficult to manage features of the game added an extra sense of bewilderment and admiration for pulling off difficult stunts that SC2 doesn't. It's not nearly as impressive to watch units stream out of a zerg base in SC2 than it is in BW because in BW you knew that the player had to manage larvae and spawn at each base manually. It's alot less impressive to watch fungals land while an engagement occurs than plagues or dark swarms landing because you knew that the defiler had to cast consume and there was a 12 unit control limit and no smart casting.
On June 29 2012 20:34 tdt wrote: Good thread with lots of good thoughts. I agree with the ppl who say it's about innovating. They are a software company after all where innovation is like thier middle name. For example,whether you like or dislike microsoft ribbons stuff like that is just going to happen with any of software company. otherwise it's kinda of hard to justify thier positions and reviewers would be like "BW 2.0 trolllolz". I think they are actually trying to slip BW in now though. Look at swarm host. Mines. etc
Everyone love to hate on collosus but why not look at cool things like blink stalkers? Why not look how much more succesful SC2 is in the West than BW ever was? Think positive.
If something like a blink stalker can be cool, why can't a colossus be as micro intensive? The point is to make something that CAN be micro'd, but DOES NOT have to be. You can't even animation cancel colossi, they are too mobile to warrant them using a warp prism to move around, and they are the major contributing factors to a death ball. I am all in favor of introducing new units, but if they are mostly in the flavor of, in the words of David Kim, "A move friendly", then hell no.
You can animation cancel colossi. And Colossi+Warp Prism is more rather unexplored.
SC2 Collosus--long range unit that can kite whose splash damage is more or less effective depending on which part of the front line it is shooting from.
BW Siege Tank--Long range unit that just sits there
Collosus--long or medium ranged unit that has multiple timings attack timings and tech switch possibilities that allows protoss as a race to out maneuver the opponent through proper tech progression and decision making
Reaver--low cost high dps splash unit that negates terran from playing 1/3 of their tech tree.
Collosus--unit with the most number of units that can kill it in the game, high cost, low hp, susceptible to both ground and air troops.
Defiler--counters the terran race, highest dps splash spell in the game, infinite mana.
How good a unit is seen depends on how people think about it.
If you don't know the reasons behind these units why they add so much skill to the game, you're deluded...
Siege tank needs perfect positioning, you can't move it back. You need game awareness.
Reaver is incredibly hard to control and can break an entire army just by controlling him well. Combine this with epic shuttle micro and you've got an intense fun aspect of the game anyone can enjoy.
It's incredibly fun to land good dark swarms. Terrans are forced to micro their unit out of the swarm, while using irradiate on the defilers and avoiding destruction by scourges. Zerg has to land those dark swarms or his army is going to get decimated; you need perfect timings and positioning on them or they are completely worthless.
I'm no mastermind of sc bw, since I've only started it a couple of months ago, but these units add so much depth and micro to the game.
A.) All units need perfect position. How often have we seen collosi dying to zerglings because they weren't positioned properly?
B.) Units needing more clicking does not counteract their bad design. The Reaver is overpowered--but since it's hard to click things in the game, it's "balanced." But realistically, it's an artificial balance. The unit itself is not balanced. If the reaver was put into SC2 people would want it ripped immediately. A colosus that has no easy counter that deals triple the damage? Awful design. Why is it okay? Because it's hard to click things in BW. Because you had to fight the UI in BW. If it was the Collosi instead of the reaver in BW no one would complain about imba collosi. Because the two games are fundamentally different from each other.
Imagine for a moment if there was a patch that said "Collosi costs half as much, does triple the damage, and doesn't need a range upgrade to be long range. Also, Vikings/Corruptors don't counter it but it moves slower"
It wasn't the unit design that made BW a good game (which I know it is), it was the synergies that made it a good game. Blind would be OP in SC2. Viking battles? Decided by medics. early tank pushes? Stopped by medics. chased away the medivac with troops in it? Blind it and suddenly they need to send it all the way back home to place/restore it because it'd be suicide to do drop play with a blind medivac.
Lockdown? It's like the opposite of snipe but only needs to hit once. If Lockdown was in SC2 mech place and protoss would be irrelevant.
Design wise, the BW units are not that great when put into a format with a smoother interface. They're not that great because design wise, the only things that made them balanced was a bad UI.
With a bad UI all the SC2 units would be just as "amazing" as BW units. Forcefields? Try casting that perfectly when you have to do it one sentry at a time. Snipe? Useless. Fungal? An aoe spell that deals less dps than a siege tank?
BW was good--don't think I don't see that. But stop pretending that it was unit design that made it "work."
Collosi don't need perfect position, they just need to be somewhat near a ball of stalkers/zealots/sentries. If they were so easy to snipe, then why would they give viper a pudge hook?
So basically, since SC2's interface supports spells that rely on being used in succession, then we should stick with those types of spells? There was this controversy with changing the middle mouse button so that it would act like a really fast left click, and many people considered that to be cheating. Granted, it wouldn't help with force fields, but I dislike the fact that you need to do multiple snipes or multiple infested terrans in the shortest time possible. It doesn't seem like a strategic decision at all, just a "battle" of whoever clicks faster.
Dark Swarm - A spell that makes zerg units invincible to all ranged unit attacks from terran, barring splash damage. Gained at hive tech. Good thing there's irradiate, and zerg has more than one expansion to pressure.
Force Field - A protoss spell that allows them 30 seconds of not being attacked when used on a ramp. Unlocked the moment the protoss cy core finishes.
All just a matter of perspective....
Toss staying on 1base? Not teching because he's spending gas on sentries? OMG, collect ladder points and nerd tears then
How does it actually play out?
Toss FE
Vs Terran Toss uses Forcefields to create temporary choke points because it takes 2-4 forcefields to block things off and if toss makes too many sentries their main andvantage (tech) gets lost.
Vs Zerg Toss uses properly timed forcefields to protect parts of a wall already present no different than a siege tank protects a supply depot wall in BW. Unless you think BW is shit, this is actually a good thing.
How Does Dark Swarm play out? Dark swarm is cast, all terran units in the area are countered. Now is it hard to Dark Swarm? Yes. But that's a UI issue, not a design one. Design wise its a spell that counters a race, much like the Dragoon counters an entire tech tree. Imagine if Barracks play in SC2 gets countered simply because a Cyber Core was built? Yup.... That's BW design right there.
Every Sentry added to a toss army early game is less tech and less DPS for the toss to fight with. The Protoss army actually becomes less powerful and more dependent on perfect play to be effective. Which, you know, a good thing.
What's my point? My point is that the games are VERY different. The reason Defilers and Lurkers and Spider Mines and Dragoons were awesome in BW was because of BW's interface, not it's unit design. Adding BW units to SC2 will not make SC2 "more like BW" it will simply add more high dps aoe units. Defiler does 350 damage if I recall correctly, Infestor does 36... Yet Infestors are considered "overpowered"
Now when Infestors dealt 36 damage over 8 seconds instead of over 4 seconds, no one complained about its strength and people actually hated how weak it was. So it's not the fact that it holds unit in place, it's the fact that it deals too much damage in such a short time span. All 36 damage of it. If the infestor showed up and could deal 350 damage + had infinite mana? It would break the game.
It's not a unit design issue as much as people want to pretend it is.
I wonder what would happen if Blizzard decided to put the Lurker in HotS, however they changed the model of it to not resemble the Lurker, and changed it's name to something else. Would people be happy they have the "Lurker", or would they want the name and model changed out of pure nostalgia. (Assuming the model wasn't effected but splash any differently from BW)
On June 30 2012 12:47 Xiphos wrote: ^no its player's skill issue.
In BW, you kind of have to be alert at all time.
In SC2, Stormed my whole army? Not as big impact.
I'm confused. Your content agrees with me, but your tone disagrees with me.
The unit design is not the issue, it's (as you say) "player skill" that is the issue. Adding a lurker into SC2 will not change the way the units are controlled. Adding Arbiters will not provide you the same dragoon/bunker dynamic that made early game PvT interesting to watch. Heck, adding Dragoons would not give you the Dragoon/Bunker dynamic. (Autorepair means you literally just set and forget unlike in BW where you had to send just enough scvs to repair the bunker just slowly enough that they don't fully heal the bunker and stop the repairing)
Trying to add BW units does not change anything because the design of the BW units was not what made the gameplay dynamics.
On June 29 2012 20:34 tdt wrote: Good thread with lots of good thoughts. I agree with the ppl who say it's about innovating. They are a software company after all where innovation is like thier middle name. For example,whether you like or dislike microsoft ribbons stuff like that is just going to happen with any of software company. otherwise it's kinda of hard to justify thier positions and reviewers would be like "BW 2.0 trolllolz". I think they are actually trying to slip BW in now though. Look at swarm host. Mines. etc
Everyone love to hate on collosus but why not look at cool things like blink stalkers? Why not look how much more succesful SC2 is in the West than BW ever was? Think positive.
If something like a blink stalker can be cool, why can't a colossus be as micro intensive? The point is to make something that CAN be micro'd, but DOES NOT have to be. You can't even animation cancel colossi, they are too mobile to warrant them using a warp prism to move around, and they are the major contributing factors to a death ball. I am all in favor of introducing new units, but if they are mostly in the flavor of, in the words of David Kim, "A move friendly", then hell no.
You can animation cancel colossi. And Colossi+Warp Prism is more rather unexplored.
SC2 Collosus--long range unit that can kite whose splash damage is more or less effective depending on which part of the front line it is shooting from.
BW Siege Tank--Long range unit that just sits there
Collosus--long or medium ranged unit that has multiple timings attack timings and tech switch possibilities that allows protoss as a race to out maneuver the opponent through proper tech progression and decision making
Reaver--low cost high dps splash unit that negates terran from playing 1/3 of their tech tree.
Collosus--unit with the most number of units that can kill it in the game, high cost, low hp, susceptible to both ground and air troops.
Defiler--counters the terran race, highest dps splash spell in the game, infinite mana.
How good a unit is seen depends on how people think about it.
If you don't know the reasons behind these units why they add so much skill to the game, you're deluded...
Siege tank needs perfect positioning, you can't move it back. You need game awareness.
Reaver is incredibly hard to control and can break an entire army just by controlling him well. Combine this with epic shuttle micro and you've got an intense fun aspect of the game anyone can enjoy.
It's incredibly fun to land good dark swarms. Terrans are forced to micro their unit out of the swarm, while using irradiate on the defilers and avoiding destruction by scourges. Zerg has to land those dark swarms or his army is going to get decimated; you need perfect timings and positioning on them or they are completely worthless.
I'm no mastermind of sc bw, since I've only started it a couple of months ago, but these units add so much depth and micro to the game.
A.) All units need perfect position. How often have we seen collosi dying to zerglings because they weren't positioned properly?
B.) Units needing more clicking does not counteract their bad design. The Reaver is overpowered--but since it's hard to click things in the game, it's "balanced." But realistically, it's an artificial balance. The unit itself is not balanced. If the reaver was put into SC2 people would want it ripped immediately. A colosus that has no easy counter that deals triple the damage? Awful design. Why is it okay? Because it's hard to click things in BW. Because you had to fight the UI in BW. If it was the Collosi instead of the reaver in BW no one would complain about imba collosi. Because the two games are fundamentally different from each other.
Imagine for a moment if there was a patch that said "Collosi costs half as much, does triple the damage, and doesn't need a range upgrade to be long range. Also, Vikings/Corruptors don't counter it but it moves slower"
It wasn't the unit design that made BW a good game (which I know it is), it was the synergies that made it a good game. Blind would be OP in SC2. Viking battles? Decided by medics. early tank pushes? Stopped by medics. chased away the medivac with troops in it? Blind it and suddenly they need to send it all the way back home to place/restore it because it'd be suicide to do drop play with a blind medivac.
Lockdown? It's like the opposite of snipe but only needs to hit once. If Lockdown was in SC2 mech place and protoss would be irrelevant.
Design wise, the BW units are not that great when put into a format with a smoother interface. They're not that great because design wise, the only things that made them balanced was a bad UI.
With a bad UI all the SC2 units would be just as "amazing" as BW units. Forcefields? Try casting that perfectly when you have to do it one sentry at a time. Snipe? Useless. Fungal? An aoe spell that deals less dps than a siege tank?
BW was good--don't think I don't see that. But stop pretending that it was unit design that made it "work."
Collosi don't need perfect position, they just need to be somewhat near a ball of stalkers/zealots/sentries. If they were so easy to snipe, then why would they give viper a pudge hook?
So basically, since SC2's interface supports spells that rely on being used in succession, then we should stick with those types of spells? There was this controversy with changing the middle mouse button so that it would act like a really fast left click, and many people considered that to be cheating. Granted, it wouldn't help with force fields, but I dislike the fact that you need to do multiple snipes or multiple infested terrans in the shortest time possible. It doesn't seem like a strategic decision at all, just a "battle" of whoever clicks faster.
Dark Swarm - A spell that makes zerg units invincible to all ranged unit attacks from terran, barring splash damage. Gained at hive tech. Good thing there's irradiate, and zerg has more than one expansion to pressure.
Force Field - A protoss spell that allows them 30 seconds of not being attacked when used on a ramp. Unlocked the moment the protoss cy core finishes.
All just a matter of perspective....
Toss staying on 1base? Not teching because he's spending gas on sentries? OMG, collect ladder points and nerd tears then
How does it actually play out?
Toss FE
Vs Terran Toss uses Forcefields to create temporary choke points because it takes 2-4 forcefields to block things off and if toss makes too many sentries their main andvantage (tech) gets lost.
Vs Zerg Toss uses properly timed forcefields to protect parts of a wall already present no different than a siege tank protects a supply depot wall in BW. Unless you think BW is shit, this is actually a good thing.
How Does Dark Swarm play out? Dark swarm is cast, all terran units in the area are countered. Now is it hard to Dark Swarm? Yes. But that's a UI issue, not a design one. Design wise its a spell that counters a race, much like the Dragoon counters an entire tech tree. Imagine if Barracks play in SC2 gets countered simply because a Cyber Core was built? Yup.... That's BW design right there.
Every Sentry added to a toss army early game is less tech and less DPS for the toss to fight with. The Protoss army actually becomes less powerful and more dependent on perfect play to be effective. Which, you know, a good thing.
What's my point? My point is that the games are VERY different. The reason Defilers and Lurkers and Spider Mines and Dragoons were awesome in BW was because of BW's interface, not it's unit design. Adding BW units to SC2 will not make SC2 "more like BW" it will simply add more high dps aoe units. Defiler does 350 damage if I recall correctly, Infestor does 36... Yet Infestors are considered "overpowered"
Now when Infestors dealt 36 damage over 8 seconds instead of over 4 seconds, no one complained about its strength and people actually hated how weak it was. So it's not the fact that it holds unit in place, it's the fact that it deals too much damage in such a short time span. All 36 damage of it. If the infestor showed up and could deal 350 damage + had infinite mana? It would break the game.
It's not a unit design issue as much as people want to pretend it is.
Dark Swarm doesn't kill units, so I don't know how they are "countered" in any way. If you are dumb enough to attack only one location in BW, and not do drops, and not irradiate defilers, or switch to a late game mech composition (Notice how many options there are), then yeah, your army is pretty much useless.
The point I'm trying to make is that for the most part, you could micro away or against things you faced in BW, and even things that you couldn't, they were in late game.
I made a post before about comparing the siege tank defense to forcefields, but basically, even with something like a siege expand, toss can still choose to do a bulldog (It actually works out perfectly, because you get the robo anyways for obs or even reavers if you so chose). With a forcefield, the tech is so early, the only strat that I've seen is a thor rush and that is as gimmicky as hell..
On June 30 2012 12:47 Xiphos wrote: ^no its player's skill issue.
In BW, you kind of have to be alert at all time.
In SC2, Stormed my whole army? Not as big impact.
what? if you eat storms in sc2 its actually worse than bw because of unit clumping.
False it actually hurts more in bw for example templars storming your scv while you are away macroing your factory and returning to your natural to find it empty . Curse the gods !
I get that blizzard wants to put their own new "spin" on old units if they introduce them in order to show off their "creativity" or something. It's good to see that blizzard are finally bringing back mines, for it's just impossible to mech without them. However, I think making them from the factory is just really silly and to hard to balance. So why not just replace the Raven's auto-turret with the widow mines, instead of making them a separate unit from the factory? The raven needs to buff anyways, and this way you aren't adding to many units to the factory.
On June 29 2012 20:34 tdt wrote: Good thread with lots of good thoughts. I agree with the ppl who say it's about innovating. They are a software company after all where innovation is like thier middle name. For example,whether you like or dislike microsoft ribbons stuff like that is just going to happen with any of software company. otherwise it's kinda of hard to justify thier positions and reviewers would be like "BW 2.0 trolllolz". I think they are actually trying to slip BW in now though. Look at swarm host. Mines. etc
Everyone love to hate on collosus but why not look at cool things like blink stalkers? Why not look how much more succesful SC2 is in the West than BW ever was? Think positive.
If something like a blink stalker can be cool, why can't a colossus be as micro intensive? The point is to make something that CAN be micro'd, but DOES NOT have to be. You can't even animation cancel colossi, they are too mobile to warrant them using a warp prism to move around, and they are the major contributing factors to a death ball. I am all in favor of introducing new units, but if they are mostly in the flavor of, in the words of David Kim, "A move friendly", then hell no.
You can animation cancel colossi. And Colossi+Warp Prism is more rather unexplored.
SC2 Collosus--long range unit that can kite whose splash damage is more or less effective depending on which part of the front line it is shooting from.
BW Siege Tank--Long range unit that just sits there
Collosus--long or medium ranged unit that has multiple timings attack timings and tech switch possibilities that allows protoss as a race to out maneuver the opponent through proper tech progression and decision making
Reaver--low cost high dps splash unit that negates terran from playing 1/3 of their tech tree.
Collosus--unit with the most number of units that can kill it in the game, high cost, low hp, susceptible to both ground and air troops.
Defiler--counters the terran race, highest dps splash spell in the game, infinite mana.
How good a unit is seen depends on how people think about it.
If you don't know the reasons behind these units why they add so much skill to the game, you're deluded...
Siege tank needs perfect positioning, you can't move it back. You need game awareness.
Reaver is incredibly hard to control and can break an entire army just by controlling him well. Combine this with epic shuttle micro and you've got an intense fun aspect of the game anyone can enjoy.
It's incredibly fun to land good dark swarms. Terrans are forced to micro their unit out of the swarm, while using irradiate on the defilers and avoiding destruction by scourges. Zerg has to land those dark swarms or his army is going to get decimated; you need perfect timings and positioning on them or they are completely worthless.
I'm no mastermind of sc bw, since I've only started it a couple of months ago, but these units add so much depth and micro to the game.
A.) All units need perfect position. How often have we seen collosi dying to zerglings because they weren't positioned properly?
B.) Units needing more clicking does not counteract their bad design. The Reaver is overpowered--but since it's hard to click things in the game, it's "balanced." But realistically, it's an artificial balance. The unit itself is not balanced. If the reaver was put into SC2 people would want it ripped immediately. A colosus that has no easy counter that deals triple the damage? Awful design. Why is it okay? Because it's hard to click things in BW. Because you had to fight the UI in BW. If it was the Collosi instead of the reaver in BW no one would complain about imba collosi. Because the two games are fundamentally different from each other.
Imagine for a moment if there was a patch that said "Collosi costs half as much, does triple the damage, and doesn't need a range upgrade to be long range. Also, Vikings/Corruptors don't counter it but it moves slower"
It wasn't the unit design that made BW a good game (which I know it is), it was the synergies that made it a good game. Blind would be OP in SC2. Viking battles? Decided by medics. early tank pushes? Stopped by medics. chased away the medivac with troops in it? Blind it and suddenly they need to send it all the way back home to place/restore it because it'd be suicide to do drop play with a blind medivac.
Lockdown? It's like the opposite of snipe but only needs to hit once. If Lockdown was in SC2 mech place and protoss would be irrelevant.
Design wise, the BW units are not that great when put into a format with a smoother interface. They're not that great because design wise, the only things that made them balanced was a bad UI.
With a bad UI all the SC2 units would be just as "amazing" as BW units. Forcefields? Try casting that perfectly when you have to do it one sentry at a time. Snipe? Useless. Fungal? An aoe spell that deals less dps than a siege tank?
BW was good--don't think I don't see that. But stop pretending that it was unit design that made it "work."
Collosi don't need perfect position, they just need to be somewhat near a ball of stalkers/zealots/sentries. If they were so easy to snipe, then why would they give viper a pudge hook?
So basically, since SC2's interface supports spells that rely on being used in succession, then we should stick with those types of spells? There was this controversy with changing the middle mouse button so that it would act like a really fast left click, and many people considered that to be cheating. Granted, it wouldn't help with force fields, but I dislike the fact that you need to do multiple snipes or multiple infested terrans in the shortest time possible. It doesn't seem like a strategic decision at all, just a "battle" of whoever clicks faster.
Dark Swarm - A spell that makes zerg units invincible to all ranged unit attacks from terran, barring splash damage. Gained at hive tech. Good thing there's irradiate, and zerg has more than one expansion to pressure.
Force Field - A protoss spell that allows them 30 seconds of not being attacked when used on a ramp. Unlocked the moment the protoss cy core finishes.
All just a matter of perspective....
Toss staying on 1base? Not teching because he's spending gas on sentries? OMG, collect ladder points and nerd tears then
How does it actually play out?
Toss FE
Vs Terran Toss uses Forcefields to create temporary choke points because it takes 2-4 forcefields to block things off and if toss makes too many sentries their main andvantage (tech) gets lost.
Vs Zerg Toss uses properly timed forcefields to protect parts of a wall already present no different than a siege tank protects a supply depot wall in BW. Unless you think BW is shit, this is actually a good thing.
How Does Dark Swarm play out? Dark swarm is cast, all terran units in the area are countered. Now is it hard to Dark Swarm? Yes. But that's a UI issue, not a design one. Design wise its a spell that counters a race, much like the Dragoon counters an entire tech tree. Imagine if Barracks play in SC2 gets countered simply because a Cyber Core was built? Yup.... That's BW design right there.
Every Sentry added to a toss army early game is less tech and less DPS for the toss to fight with. The Protoss army actually becomes less powerful and more dependent on perfect play to be effective. Which, you know, a good thing.
What's my point? My point is that the games are VERY different. The reason Defilers and Lurkers and Spider Mines and Dragoons were awesome in BW was because of BW's interface, not it's unit design. Adding BW units to SC2 will not make SC2 "more like BW" it will simply add more high dps aoe units. Defiler does 350 damage if I recall correctly, Infestor does 36... Yet Infestors are considered "overpowered"
Now when Infestors dealt 36 damage over 8 seconds instead of over 4 seconds, no one complained about its strength and people actually hated how weak it was. So it's not the fact that it holds unit in place, it's the fact that it deals too much damage in such a short time span. All 36 damage of it. If the infestor showed up and could deal 350 damage + had infinite mana? It would break the game.
It's not a unit design issue as much as people want to pretend it is.
Dark Swarm doesn't kill units, so I don't know how they are "countered" in any way. If you are dumb enough to attack only one location in BW, and not do drops, and not irradiate defilers, or switch to a late game mech composition (Notice how many options there are), then yeah, your army is pretty much useless.
The point I'm trying to make is that for the most part, you could micro away or against things you faced in BW, and even things that you couldn't, they were in late game.
I made a post before about comparing the siege tank defense to forcefields, but basically, even with something like a siege expand, toss can still choose to do a bulldog (It actually works out perfectly, because you get the robo anyways for obs or even reavers if you so chose). With a forcefield, the tech is so early, the only strat that I've seen is a thor rush and that is as gimmicky as hell..
Both Zerg and Terran have timing attacks after Fast expands that destroys the toss natural. Just watch marineking or stephano play. Forcefields are not the end all be all in the early game, and having so many sentries in the late is a liability.
Running your army into a tank line and running your army into an infestor line or sentry line etc.... all will get your army needlessly killed. But you can still "bulldog" it as you say; it happens all the time in tournament play. Its the reason Toss tries to FE off of sentries and they aren't guaranteed to hold the expansion/not lose probes. it's the reason you still see infestors sniped by Marauder packs. It's the reason you see blink stalkers beating marauders.
A terran has two "main" choices to deal with forcefields. If Terran FE, then medivac timings are good. If Terran 1 bases into a FE, Banshees and Medivacs deal with Forcefield play very easily.
@Sawamura
The reality is that in both games getting hit by storm hurts--a lot. One hurting more than the other is irrelevant because they both lead to protoss victories if storms land on large clumps of units for either game.
On June 30 2012 12:47 Xiphos wrote: ^no its player's skill issue.
In BW, you kind of have to be alert at all time.
In SC2, Stormed my whole army? Not as big impact.
Storms end games, lol. A lot of pros won't even turn their attention from their army when its out on the map late game PvT because of how quickly one cloaked EMP/Snipe/Feedback spam/Storm can snap the game into a complete loss.
On June 30 2012 09:36 Cuce wrote: forcefield lets toss micro. I dont mean you hit f and click a bunch of times. it lets toss to micro agains double speed roaches lings mm balls. and it gives a reason for roach/ling/mm to micro againts toss.
I completely disagree with your statement here. I don't know how it could be more contrary to reality.
Forcefield doesn't 'let' toss micro. Forcefield makes it so Toss doesn't really have to micro. Also it DOES mean you hit f and click a bunch of times, because the spell is such a commodity. Maybe if it were larger and cost more it wouldn't be so game-breaking. Toss can micro against those things on their own, and removing or altering forcefield would greatly promote that.
yes, forcefield is a little bit of a silly spell, but try making gateway units usable versus anything without them.
As soon as a Terran has stim there is no way to beat it without great forcefields or much higher tech (collo/storm)
stalker/zealot vs roach/ling is SO cost inefficient for the protoss unless they already have a large unit advantage (where you would expect the army to win anyway)
hence, forcefields are needed for protoss to be able to survive against a large number of timings, timings that even with forcefield can still do massive damage to an early-mid game protoss.
On June 17 2012 01:09 Kazius wrote: There is a major difference. BW units had less of a micro-limiting aspect to them. The only true micro-limiting features were Stasis and the Queen's ensnare (one of the rarest abilities used by one of the rarest units used). This is a major difference to SC2, where forcefields, broodlings, fungal, vortex and now the swarm hosts and mineral-freeze thing. This has a lot to do with the new pathfinding elements and clumping nature of the game. Where in BW goons wouldn't clump no matter how hard you tried, now units just naturally blob. Lurkers absolutely demolish clumped up units, so instead, we get less damage but a micro limit. These are also necessary to prolong battles, as they tend to be over very quickly (Protoss, I'm looking at you).
There seems to be a difference in the game mechanics on a fundamental level requiring a different design attitude (or vice versa). The new units seem to be more in line with BW ideas to allow extra fluidity to the game.
Also Maelstrom. And Lockdown. (And critters )
irradiate, dark swarm, optic flare...
BW had a lot of spells that prevented the ability to micro. People were just okay with them because they were fucking hard to use.
Dark Swarm made ALL your marines irrelevant? At least it was hard to get it off between tanks/sci vessels killing defilers.
Irradiate was an aoe and caused your bio unit to start twitching like a madman? (I'm looking at you ultralisk!) It's okay, it's hard to deselect a sci vessel from your army and target fire the right targets while still moving your army forward.
Lockdown? Maelstorm? Unlike forcefields those spells LITERALLY STOPS A UNIT/S FROM DOING ANYTHING. Forcefields? Your units can still fight back. Fungal? Your units can still shoot back.
The problem isn't that spells in SC2 prevents micro any more than spells in BW prevents micro--the problem stems that most players "feel" that SC2 spells are so much easier to use that it doesn't feel impressive that the forcefields landed perfectly, it doesn't feel impressive that the fungals landed perfectly. (Which a fungal has to, land perfectly that is. Dark Swarm can "miss" and you can still use the cloud to position units better. Fungal *has* to land or it doesn't do anything.)
Let me put it this way.
When Boxer lockdowned a fleet of battlecruisers and finished them off with Wraiths, no one complained that lockdown was imba because everyone had tried using lockdown and it was hard enough to get 1-2 to land let alone 10+
Perfectly cast lockdowns swings battles 10x more than perfectly cast snipes. But since snipes are easier to cast--no one gives players credit for doing it.
No, I think spells in SC2 kill micro a lot more than you think. The thing about stasis/dark swarm was that they were all LATE GAME. By the time defilers/arbiters were out, you would have science vessels. And zerg would at least have scourge out when science vessels were out. Medic blind might not have been late game, but blind is pretty rare and you wouldn't use it in a normal game.
That last sentence I think is something that should be examined much more closely. Why wasn't Blind used in SC1? Several reasons actually.
First, it required research, thus increasing the base cost of getting the ability out there.
Second, it required a Medic. OK, but you can't just build a unit for one ability, unless that ability is going to be exceptionally powerful. So you would need to get some other use out of your Medics. And that would be healing Marines. Great... if you actually build (and upgrade) a Marine army. Which you don't in TvP and TvT. Even TvZ Marines can be optional if you want to go for pure Mech play. So in 2/3rds of your matchups, getting Blind out onto the field requires building a unit just for Blind and nothing else.
Medics do have other spells available of course, but those also require research.
Third... Blind sucks. Mass Blind might be worthwhile (but see point 2 for why you're not going to have mass Medics), but in small numbers, Blind is not something you're going to just throw out there. There are maybe 2-3 good targets for Blind: Observers, Overlords, Vessels, and maybe one or two other things. You'd never waste a Blind on a Marine or a Zealot.
Fourth, Blind doesn't combo with anything in the Terran army. The best use of targeted Blindness is for taking out detecters without killing them. That requires having a stealth unit that can actually take advantage of it. For Terrans, that's the Wraith and the Ghost. Neither of which are exactly among the most useful units in the SC1 Terran arsenel, are they? Which means that even if you were to use Blind, it would only be for some kind of gimmick strategy.
What is Blind most known for in Pro play? That one time someone (I think it was Boxer, but I'm not sure) blinded a bunch of Observers and called down a nuke. Not exactly standard play; it's a once-in-a-million kind of thing.
Contrast this to Forcefields.
FF requires no upgrade at all. It is the basic spell of Sentries. It has no additional cost or time; you get a Cybernetics Core, and bam: you have FF available.
Sentries can shoot. Admittedly this is not exactly the most useful talent they have. But it does give them some auxillary function. Plus they have Guardian Shields (also not requiring research), so they have other functions when not FFing.
FF is a powerful spell, especially early game. The units that negate them are higher-tier, so for a non-trivial portion of the game, you can basically create terrain wherever you want.
FF combos strongly with pretty much all of the Protoss army. It can split the enemy, thus making your Zealots take less damage (because FFs take up space) and allowing your Stalkers to attack fewer units. It makes Colossus-based armies quite strong as well. In short, it can help you better maximize the potential of your units.
Indeed, you might notice that this sort of thing is a common element in SC2: the early-game spellcaster. Ghosts, Sentries, and Queens. They all get useful spells for free at the time of production. Though the Queen isn't really an early-game Zerg spellcaster, since they're usually sitting in base spawning larva. But they can be useful defensively with their healing ability.
The main problem is providing this spell so early, without the ready availability of the tools used to counter it. Of course, the second problem is that the Protoss are now balanced around the ability, so Blizzard can't simply move it to later in the game and still have everything work. They'd have to buff Gateway units to compensate (since FFs are the only thing saving Protoss against certain rushes), which would cause other problems (coupling with WarpGate and such).
On June 30 2012 08:26 Nazza wrote: And I don't know, even with stasis/emp in the game, progamers didn't spend 15 seconds trying to dance units trying to EMP the arbiter/stasis the army. Even if the vessels/units get stasised, you had the other half of the army to micro, and the units in stasis aren't automatically dead.
If the rest of your army is dislodged from that position, then they're as good as dead. The main difference is that, to kill those units, your opponent has to give something up: time. They have to sit there around the stasis'd units and wait for it to run out. Which means they're not following you back to base.
It's more a question of tradeoffs than whether something is certainly going to die. That being said, it would be nice to see similar tradeoffs in SC2 abilities. Vortex is the closest we get to that, and even then, it's on a unit that's dog-slow and you can only build one of.
On June 29 2012 20:34 tdt wrote: Good thread with lots of good thoughts. I agree with the ppl who say it's about innovating. They are a software company after all where innovation is like thier middle name. For example,whether you like or dislike microsoft ribbons stuff like that is just going to happen with any of software company. otherwise it's kinda of hard to justify thier positions and reviewers would be like "BW 2.0 trolllolz". I think they are actually trying to slip BW in now though. Look at swarm host. Mines. etc
Everyone love to hate on collosus but why not look at cool things like blink stalkers? Why not look how much more succesful SC2 is in the West than BW ever was? Think positive.
If something like a blink stalker can be cool, why can't a colossus be as micro intensive? The point is to make something that CAN be micro'd, but DOES NOT have to be. You can't even animation cancel colossi, they are too mobile to warrant them using a warp prism to move around, and they are the major contributing factors to a death ball. I am all in favor of introducing new units, but if they are mostly in the flavor of, in the words of David Kim, "A move friendly", then hell no.
You can animation cancel colossi. And Colossi+Warp Prism is more rather unexplored.
SC2 Collosus--long range unit that can kite whose splash damage is more or less effective depending on which part of the front line it is shooting from.
BW Siege Tank--Long range unit that just sits there
Collosus--long or medium ranged unit that has multiple timings attack timings and tech switch possibilities that allows protoss as a race to out maneuver the opponent through proper tech progression and decision making
Reaver--low cost high dps splash unit that negates terran from playing 1/3 of their tech tree.
Collosus--unit with the most number of units that can kill it in the game, high cost, low hp, susceptible to both ground and air troops.
Defiler--counters the terran race, highest dps splash spell in the game, infinite mana.
How good a unit is seen depends on how people think about it.
If you don't know the reasons behind these units why they add so much skill to the game, you're deluded...
[...]
Reaver is incredibly hard to control and can break an entire army just by controlling him well. Combine this with epic shuttle micro and you've got an intense fun aspect of the game anyone can enjoy.
While simultaneously telling Terran players that they can never build Barracks units at all. People talk about how Immortals hard-counter SC2 Terran Mech play, but even they aren't as hard as Reavers hard-counter Marines.
Yes, it requires a bit of work to do it. But it isn't that hard to use Reavers well enough to slaughter Marines by the dozen. Reavers require skill, but they also have downsides. Let's not forget that in our zeal to have skilled units in the game.
On June 30 2012 11:34 Caihead wrote: Old blizzard didn't removed patrol micro / portions of animation cancel, new blizzard did. Old blizzard didn't removed unit glitching through builds/minerals, new blizzard did (and added more pathing blocking abilities).
This is revisionist history.
"Old Blizzard" didn't have a choice. Whether they wanted to or not, they couldn't remove those things, because they're too deeply coded into the engine. Fixing them would require rebuilding the pathfinding and AI systems almost from scratch. And you do not do that to a production game; that's not something you slip into a patch. Any attempt to fix it runs a very high risk of introducing dozens of new bugs.
The golden rule of patches is the Hypocratic Oath: Do No Harm. Don't do things that have a high probability of breaking the game.
"Glitching" through stuff is a by-product of workers "glitching" through units in order to mine. Making any changes to this system has the very real possibility of causing workers to get lodged in terrain or something by accident. And that's not something you should ever do to players of your game.
Yes, odds are good that Blizzard simply didn't care by that point (which is different from saying that they didn't want to. There's a difference between a thoughtful decision to let a game element stand and simple apathy). But if they wanted to change them, they couldn't. So the fact that they didn't is not evidence that they did not want to.
To put it another way, if "Old Blizzard" had made SC2 instead of WC3, odds are good that they would have taken those things out. Which they did for WC3, since it was built on a new engine that didn't have these elements.
On June 30 2012 11:34 Caihead wrote: Alot of these are to make the game more understandable and less obscure to new viewers, but the older method of adapting the meta game to the hard to land / difficult to manage features of the game added an extra sense of bewilderment and admiration for pulling off difficult stunts that SC2 doesn't. It's not nearly as impressive to watch units stream out of a zerg base in SC2 than it is in BW because in BW you knew that the player had to manage larvae and spawn at each base manually. It's alot less impressive to watch fungals land while an engagement occurs than plagues or dark swarms landing because you knew that the defiler had to cast consume and there was a 12 unit control limit and no smart casting.
If you say so. Personally, my enjoyment of a game is not based on how hard an element is for the players. It's based on the frequency an element is used.
FF's cutting off armies? It happens a lot. Storms dropped on armies? Seen that. Immortal/Prism micro? Now that's something new, something cool, something you don't see in most games. So if someone pulls it off, it's great. Similarly, clever use of Blink micro is still fairly rare.
It's all about seeing clear differences in play between lower-skilled and higher-skilled play. High skilled SC2 players build units faster than low skilled SC2 players, just like their SC1 counterparts. You see more units streaming out of a skilled SC2 player's base than an unskilled one. And so forth. As long as that stratification is there, the game is working fine.
On June 30 2012 16:40 Nazza wrote: Dark Swarm doesn't kill units, so I don't know how they are "countered" in any way. If you are dumb enough to attack only one location in BW, and not do drops, and not irradiate defilers, or switch to a late game mech composition (Notice how many options there are), then yeah, your army is pretty much useless.
With the exception of switching to Mech (and given TvZ trends, perhaps even that too), all of these are things SC2 Terrans can do too. Attacking multiple locations, drop harass, EMP replacing irradiate (and Infestors replacing Defilers), all of these have an SC2 analog.
On June 30 2012 17:07 Amlitzer wrote: I get that blizzard wants to put their own new "spin" on old units if they introduce them in order to show off their "creativity" or something. It's good to see that blizzard are finally bringing back mines, for it's just impossible to mech without them. However, I think making them from the factory is just really silly and to hard to balance. So why not just replace the Raven's auto-turret with the widow mines, instead of making them a separate unit from the factory? The raven needs to buff anyways, and this way you aren't adding to many units to the factory.
Well, consider that this means that a Terran player would have unlimited mines, depending on how much energy they have on their Ravens. Plus, it pushes mines back pretty far in the tech tree, forcing players to invest lots in StarPort tech in order to Mech. That's not exactly what Mech is all about.
This way, each mine has a specific cost value associated with it. That actually makes it easier to balance, not harder. Remember: SC1 Spider Mines had a cost associated as well (the cost of the Vulture). They can be produced quickly, double-pumped from a Reactor. This allows for certain early mine-based plays that wouldn't be possible with Raven-based production. Oh, and since each mine takes up food, there's a strict limit on how many can be around on the screen. Terrain can stretch a Terran's mine resources thin.
I agree that Ravens need a buff. But that's not the way to do it. It would be better to make Auto-turrets better and HSM cheaper and/or stronger.
On June 30 2012 09:36 Cuce wrote: forcefield lets toss micro. I dont mean you hit f and click a bunch of times. it lets toss to micro agains double speed roaches lings mm balls. and it gives a reason for roach/ling/mm to micro againts toss.
I completely disagree with your statement here. I don't know how it could be more contrary to reality.
Forcefield doesn't 'let' toss micro. Forcefield makes it so Toss doesn't really have to micro. Also it DOES mean you hit f and click a bunch of times, because the spell is such a commodity. Maybe if it were larger and cost more it wouldn't be so game-breaking. Toss can micro against those things on their own, and removing or altering forcefield would greatly promote that.
yes, forcefield is a little bit of a silly spell, but try making gateway units usable versus anything without them.
As soon as a Terran has stim there is no way to beat it without great forcefields or much higher tech (collo/storm)
stalker/zealot vs roach/ling is SO cost inefficient for the protoss unless they already have a large unit advantage (where you would expect the army to win anyway)
hence, forcefields are needed for protoss to be able to survive against a large number of timings, timings that even with forcefield can still do massive damage to an early-mid game protoss.
That's an interesting point.
SC1 got away with this based on a combination of factors:
1: SC1 Marines have a range upgrade, from 4 to 5. Dragoons out-range them without this upgrade. So the Terran has to research this in addition to Stim. They're both researched at the same building, thus slowing down the push.
2: Dragoons have their own range upgrade, thus maintaining their range advantage.
3: Shield Batteries can be quickly summoned to help in micro.
4: Marine production is limited by the number of Barrackses in play.
5: The instant a Reaver hits the field, Marines die.
A lot of these are small things that are nevertheless important. Items 1-4 are all about allowing the Protoss to survive until item 5 hits, at which point the Terran loses if he hasn't already switched over to Mech.
Really though, I think #1 and #4 are probably the biggest. In SC2, a Terran can build two Barracks: one with a Tech Lab and one with a Reactor. They can research Stim while double-pumping Marines. So they can build more Marines faster than SC1 (MULEs also help in this regard). Coupled with the fact that they only need one upgrade instead of two, this means that they get Stimmed, 5-range Marines that much sooner. And more of them.
It's probably that early-game production speed that makes it almost impossible for Protoss to hold without FFing the ramp. Indeed, FF may have been introduced into the game as a specific reaction to early-game Reactor builds. One wonders if Guardian Shield (which was added to the game a year and a half after FF) alone might not have been enough. Or, to put it another way, maybe GS could be buffed to be enough to help the Protoss hold if FF didn't exist.
But for whatever reason, it's clear that the SC2 Protoss are designed to need FF to survive.
On June 30 2012 09:36 Cuce wrote: forcefield lets toss micro. I dont mean you hit f and click a bunch of times. it lets toss to micro agains double speed roaches lings mm balls. and it gives a reason for roach/ling/mm to micro againts toss.
I completely disagree with your statement here. I don't know how it could be more contrary to reality.
Forcefield doesn't 'let' toss micro. Forcefield makes it so Toss doesn't really have to micro. Also it DOES mean you hit f and click a bunch of times, because the spell is such a commodity. Maybe if it were larger and cost more it wouldn't be so game-breaking. Toss can micro against those things on their own, and removing or altering forcefield would greatly promote that.
yes, forcefield is a little bit of a silly spell, but try making gateway units usable versus anything without them.
As soon as a Terran has stim there is no way to beat it without great forcefields or much higher tech (collo/storm)
stalker/zealot vs roach/ling is SO cost inefficient for the protoss unless they already have a large unit advantage (where you would expect the army to win anyway)
hence, forcefields are needed for protoss to be able to survive against a large number of timings, timings that even with forcefield can still do massive damage to an early-mid game protoss.
That's an interesting point.
SC1 got away with this based on a combination of factors:
1: SC1 Marines have a range upgrade, from 4 to 5. Dragoons out-range them without this upgrade. So the Terran has to research this in addition to Stim. They're both researched at the same building, thus slowing down the push.
2: Dragoons have their own range upgrade, thus maintaining their range advantage.
3: Shield Batteries can be quickly summoned to help in micro.
4: Marine production is limited by the number of Barrackses in play.
5: The instant a Reaver hits the field, Marines die.
A lot of these are small things that are nevertheless important. Items 1-4 are all about allowing the Protoss to survive until item 5 hits, at which point the Terran loses if he hasn't already switched over to Mech.
Really though, I think #1 and #4 are probably the biggest. In SC2, a Terran can build two Barracks: one with a Tech Lab and one with a Reactor. They can research Stim while double-pumping Marines. So they can build more Marines faster than SC1 (MULEs also help in this regard). Coupled with the fact that they only need one upgrade instead of two, this means that they get Stimmed, 5-range Marines that much sooner. And more of them.
It's probably that early-game production speed that makes it almost impossible for Protoss to hold without FFing the ramp. Indeed, FF may have been introduced into the game as a specific reaction to early-game Reactor builds. One wonders if Guardian Shield (which was added to the game a year and a half after FF) alone might not have been enough. Or, to put it another way, maybe GS could be buffed to be enough to help the Protoss hold if FF didn't exist.
But for whatever reason, it's clear that the SC2 Protoss are designed to need FF to survive.
I'm afraid i'm one of those people that hadn't actually heard of broodwar until SC2 came out, i stumbled into this thread essentially blind (bored this morning, and just had to share my thoughts on the sentry), but reading your points does exemplify why a lot of broodwar fans have problems with SC2. The dynamics of the game have changed, things that were
Maybe a buff to GS (not really sure what, but not a straight buff to amount of damage reduction) would eliminate the need for FF, or a buff to gateway units in general (although i don't think this is a good idea)
Oddly, one of the most complained about units (collosus) replaces the reaver, which it sounds like was even better vs marines than the collosus.
Ultimately it appears then game dynamics and mechanics have changed so much from BW that to re-introduce units would require large changes to those units, which would induce more whining about "how these units are just different units with the same name as our beloved BW units"
Flash and forgg disagrees with you biomech in TvP is still an unexplored territory in broodwar and to see it being pulled off makes it a wonderful experience to watch it work . Although when it horribly fails it will make the terran player seem a little dumb for not playing standard .
FORGG v Goojila(Forgg MnM eats dt and reaver for breakfast)
EPT
)
