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On November 21 2012 05:10 Rabiator wrote:
Most of it seems pretty good, but ...
I kinda disagree on the Banelings. They dont punish people who dont pay attention, because they will CRUSH people who dont pay attention OR who are too slow. In addition they will punish people who pay attention. There simply is no severe disadvantage to using a mass of Banelings, because they are easy to use and force an opponent to react/flee.
Except for the fact that they are ridiculously costineffective against people who micro against them, and have zero lasting power, so even if you trade cost-efficiently with them, there's no followup since they all died.
Not saying they are amazingly fun high skillcap units, but I'd say they are definitely interesting in how they force the opponent to be active and alert. There's also no doubt that there's a big difference in a good player using banelings and a crappy player using them (as demonstrated by the masters game where you need to kill a certain amount of zealots with a certain amount of banelings).
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been said so many times and all those with a brain will agree to the said points.
but despite any loud voice, blizzard made up their mind. idiotic early/mid game spells are there to stay.
blizzard: flashiness > subtle detail
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I approve of this thread. I think we should just do what Dota community is dooing. "Booo" on naga ult and other "boring" actions. I think WCS was great opportunity to actually show that the audience just dont like 15minutes bo5; 3 immortal allins because its "nearly" impossible to defend or on the other hand 60minutes BL inf turtle with no attacks until the P goes "fuck this" and tries to break milion of spines/spores and infestors.
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3 fundamental problems impede SC2 from becoming the very interesting RTS game:
1: The deathball or the movement mechanism ruins the game. Even though Dustin Browder states that there are no differences when they tested the new pathing value, he gets it wrong. The new pathing makes a huge difference even when players click around constantly in real games. The players in SC2 are fighting the movement mechanism just like BW players were fighting the interface. Even the best SC2 players cannot move their units and put them in the formation in the way they want. Deathball has been and will always been the original sin of SC2.
2: SC2 is just too fast and it reaches the limitation of human reaction. You would think that the fast speed increases the skill ceiling where better players have better reactions. But no it's simply too fast. When the Kespa pros are asked "what are the biggest change from BW to SC2", almost all their answers are "it's faster" or "it's so fast".
3: In SC2, there are too many useful spells that controls the movement or position of opponent's units. Let's face it, any powerful spell that controls the movement or position of opponent's units is bad in design. They are the core in MOBA but they ruin RTS. Yes, WC3 has many these spells and BW has too. But WC3 is a MOBA-RTS mixture and this type of spells in BW is not very powerful. In terms of this type of spells, SC2 has borrowed too heavily from the MOBA genre. This sounds like quite innovative, but let's face it, it doesn't work well in RTS.
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On November 21 2012 05:26 dOraWa wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 04:13 Kyadytim wrote:
I'm really glad to see Concussive Shells included in a list of anti-micro abilities. Usually it's just Forcefield and Fungal, Fungal and Forcefield. While I agree that both of those abilities destroy the ability of the opponent to make an active response, at least they require some skill from the player using them. Landing perfect forcefields consistently is something that only the best of the pros can do, and even they screw up some times. Chain fungal is easy to do, but fungal only lasts 4 game seconds, so doing it while macroing and other unit control isn't something anyone can do.
Concussive Shells, on the other hand, is a passive skill. You don't even need to do anything, and your opponent loses most of their ability to micro. It happens naturally, while you take care of other battle micro, like kiting. This, to me, makes it the worst offender of these skills. You heard it here first folks, concussive is more micro impeding than fungal and forcefield! lol
If you'd bothered to spend a moment to understand what I read instead of simply finding something vaguely offensive to your racial sensitivities and jumping all over me about it, you'll notice that I never said anything about which one of these abilities is more micro impeding. I simply said that from a design perspective, I find concussive shells to be the worst offender because it impedes the opponent's micro ability without any action required.
For the record, I find fungal to be the most micro impeding ability, with forcefield a close second. Concussive shells is only truly micro impeding in the early game. After that, it just passively prevents Protoss from retreating effectively. It's the utter lack of action on the part of the Terran player required to get full effect from it in the mid-game that I despise.
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On November 21 2012 07:07 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 05:10 Rabiator wrote:
Most of it seems pretty good, but ...
I kinda disagree on the Banelings. They dont punish people who dont pay attention, because they will CRUSH people who dont pay attention OR who are too slow. In addition they will punish people who pay attention. There simply is no severe disadvantage to using a mass of Banelings, because they are easy to use and force an opponent to react/flee. Except for the fact that they are ridiculously costineffective against people who micro against them, and have zero lasting power, so even if you trade cost-efficiently with them, there's no followup since they all died. Not saying they are amazingly fun high skillcap units, but I'd say they are definitely interesting in how they force the opponent to be active and alert. There's also no doubt that there's a big difference in a good player using banelings and a crappy player using them (as demonstrated by the masters game where you need to kill a certain amount of zealots with a certain amount of banelings).
1. You can still kill a Planetary Fortress with a simple rightclick without ANYTHING that can be done against it ... except keeping any units you might have present in the way (thus negating any micro opportunities). The same for Baneling busts. In those cases you CANT micro against them.
2. Even if they have "zero staying power!" the Zerg can remax in one cycle, whereas the opponent has to use several (worst case here is a terran opponent).
3. Why doesnt Baneling AoE do friendly fire? At least on other non-Banelings? Siege Tank, Storm, EMP, Seeker Missile all do.
4. Why is it a good idea to FORCE micro on the defender? If you dont do it perfectly you lose big time. Thats a bit too much "big time" IMO.
The point is that these Banelings practically force the opponent to have all of his units in one place and that is terrible. You cant split your attention between several hot spots due to the huge danger posed by them and that is terrible. For casuals it is a terrible unit to face, because they cant do the necessary micro to counter it.
Baneling mines are fine; a bunch of Banelings rolling into a forced tight clump of units is terrible. Blizzard should change the damage to "non-stacking damage over time" instead of instant, which would fix it instantly.
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My favorite part was when zealots weren't mentioned as a boring unit. Also, almost every unit seems to have a very high skill cap. The game can't be that bad after all.
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as a terran i would like to do my duty and note that amongst the list of 'negative' units the terran had the least by far. therefore better nerf terran 
all kidding aside though, i really liked the OP. I would add though that certain units are more encouraging/discouraging at various levels of play. Banelings, for example, are extremely powerful at a lower level of play where people rarely split or focus fire or scout to see them coming. Tanks as well are extremely punishing to new players who let their whole army get lured into a tank line while they aren't watching. Along this line, I see many bronze players very frustrated when they simply lose outright to a single banshee or dt. Let me be clear, I'm not proposing we balance competitive play around bronze level players, but when discussing positive and negative game design elements, I personally find these things interesting to consider.
High templars were definitely well balanced in bw, but i feel they are a little less interesting in sc2. 2 or 3 storms on a group of zerglings or marines and the floor gets wiped pretty quickly. Obviously, top level zergs/terrans presplit and run when they're stormed, but even when they do they are still heavily punished (for example, they lose a lot of units when they're hit, and the reaction time of an average high masters terran means they're really being punished here for not emping ahead of time).
Forcefields are a bit of a conundrum. While i agree that it's not very fun to see a group of marines simply stand there and die when they're cut off from the group (and a handful of them, it seems, inevitably are), I remember quite a few really awesome games where a terran would immediately pick up when a large group was cut off, and the medivac micro in general was very fun to watch.
Interesting thread, I'll definitely be following where this goes.
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On November 21 2012 13:57 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 07:07 Tobberoth wrote:On November 21 2012 05:10 Rabiator wrote:
Most of it seems pretty good, but ...
I kinda disagree on the Banelings. They dont punish people who dont pay attention, because they will CRUSH people who dont pay attention OR who are too slow. In addition they will punish people who pay attention. There simply is no severe disadvantage to using a mass of Banelings, because they are easy to use and force an opponent to react/flee. Except for the fact that they are ridiculously costineffective against people who micro against them, and have zero lasting power, so even if you trade cost-efficiently with them, there's no followup since they all died. Not saying they are amazingly fun high skillcap units, but I'd say they are definitely interesting in how they force the opponent to be active and alert. There's also no doubt that there's a big difference in a good player using banelings and a crappy player using them (as demonstrated by the masters game where you need to kill a certain amount of zealots with a certain amount of banelings). 1. You can still kill a Planetary Fortress with a simple rightclick without ANYTHING that can be done against it ... except keeping any units you might have present in the way (thus negating any micro opportunities). The same for Baneling busts. In those cases you CANT micro against them. 2. Even if they have "zero staying power!" the Zerg can remax in one cycle, whereas the opponent has to use several (worst case here is a terran opponent). 3. Why doesnt Baneling AoE do friendly fire? At least on other non-Banelings? Siege Tank, Storm, EMP, Seeker Missile all do. 4. Why is it a good idea to FORCE micro on the defender? If you dont do it perfectly you lose big time. Thats a bit too much "big time" IMO. The point is that these Banelings practically force the opponent to have all of his units in one place and that is terrible. You cant split your attention between several hot spots due to the huge danger posed by them and that is terrible. For casuals it is a terrible unit to face, because they cant do the necessary micro to counter it. Baneling mines are fine; a bunch of Banelings rolling into a forced tight clump of units is terrible. Blizzard should change the damage to "non-stacking damage over time" instead of instant, which would fix it instantly.
You are the only person I've seen complain about banelings in 2012, wanting banelings to do friendly fire or non-stacking over time damage is just mind-boggling. I'm not one to call ideas stupid but this idea would be one of the worst possible I've ever read on TL.
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Although each ability and unit does serve a purpose, I think some abilities need to be available earlier to be more relevant or would be more interesting on other units.
For example, I think Reapers might be used more if Nitro pack could be researched immediately, not when you might as well go blue flame reactor Hellions since you had to wait for the factory anyway. I think if Reapers shared the Combat Shield upgrade with Marines (instead of Combat drugs) then people might actually consider a Marine/Reaper composition.
IMO Ghosts would be better suited in a scout/sniper role (Cloak, Snipe, and Combat Awareness), and Ravens would be better suited as surveilance units that do just enough damage to take out creep tumors and observers. EMP seems better suited for BC and HSM seems better suited for Thors, and units that far up the tech tree deserve more utility and versatility.
Those are just some examples but hopefully they made sense.
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It's true that "style" is very important when watching your favourite players duke it out, and players using units in creative or unparalleled ways makes the game very interesting to watch.
For example you know that Jaedong is very strong in his ling and muta micro, and he is very likely to play that way against you. You can shape your strategy to decrease the potency of his attack, but there was no way to "beat" a flexible Jaedong style comprehensively over a series without being as good as him. In short, a style could not be hard countered.
However, even MKP is now using mech more and more in his TvZ, with his signature Boxer kind of style seen as less and less effective. To me this is a shame. MKP is such an entertaining player, the closest player to the old school Boxer we have ever seen in SC2, but lately the best abuser of marines we've ever seen is forced to abandon a marine-centric style because it just doesn't work once figured out.
That's a serious disappointment IMO. We can't have everyone playing a bland pudding of a game where there is only "cheese" and "standard macro".
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I don't think ling/bane is a particularly interesting unit comp, nor does it require much skill to pull off well. Lings are nigh unmicroable and baneling effectiveness is 95% dictated by your opponents control.
Its the mutas that make that playstyle interesting, and a player wins and loses by his muta control.
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EPT
