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While we are pretty much repeating all these things over again (no offense), there's not much to do about them aside from playing some mods that do things differently and slap Blizzard with hard data or wait for them to do (or not) something about it.
As mentioned before, they really should utilize the test servers. I'm not sure if it's the resources, time or pride that is the major block to test if some of the redesigns are worth it. But having direct access to the data instead of having it thrown at you from small sources or fishing for it sounds better option to me.
HotS was a good step towards right direction, but waiting for LotV and hoping for best is bit depressing.
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I really don't see any argument in this OP other than some recycled un-substantiated assertions about gimmicks (without any attempt at defining what a gimmick is), weak gateway units, sentries, forcefields and now mothership core. There is a complaint about non committal aggression but there is little relation to all the other 'points'. Just a rehash of a lot of similar and largely misguided Protoss whine over the last couple of years. (In any case, I'm not sure what is meant by non committal aggression. A simple early-game Zealot/Stalker/Stalker poke? A Zealot/Stalker/MSC poke? If more, then other races are similarly behind if they invest more into a similar attack and it fails to pay off.)
If you don't like your race, and it does not fit your preferred play style, change your race and have more fun. GL.
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The complaint about non-committal aggression is not well founded I think. Zerg basically loses in WoL if it is aggressive before max or the other player moves out. The old meta was make drones until the last possible moment - or you lost already.
I think the main problem with protoss is the Sentry (FF) and now the MSC adds a similar dynamic. Remove FF and buff gateway units and bingo we have a fun game.
The problem with Zerg is fungal. Buff roach/hydra and remove infestor. Bingo good game.
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protoss is not a problem, at least not in zvp.
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But... Protoss has ALWAYS been the gimmick race.
Even since Broodwar, Protoss has been the Bullshit Storm/Stasis/Recall/Maelstrom race. The race everyone complained about because it "just had to micro a little and then won fucking everything".
That's how Protoss plays, A-move the Zealot/Archon, focus fire the ranged ground, and spell cast your fucking face off.
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i just want the warpgate research to be removed and gateways always been warp gates, or the research gate>warpgate needing only the cybernetics core, not the upgrade ofc they will need to balance some things, but i think the misspoint on protoss is that...
and the other point is warp prism needs to me build from another build like nexus, not from robotics, queueing 1 warp delay so much de protoss, imagine queueing 2 warps to drops and let the game more dynamics..
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msc for sure adds agression for protoss, and especially in the early game. Atleast in pvz. Dunno why you state otherwise. You can poke, and if he swarms you or you know he has lots of units just recall
You can even go heavy gateway pressure lots of time to force zerg to make units, then just recall so you dont lose any sentries and keep on doing this for 7min
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On April 13 2013 05:09 ShatterZer0 wrote: But... Protoss has ALWAYS been the gimmick race.
Even since Broodwar, Protoss has been the Bullshit Storm/Stasis/Recall/Maelstrom race. The race everyone complained about because it "just had to micro a little and then won fucking everything".
That's how Protoss plays, A-move the Zealot/Archon, focus fire the ranged ground, and spell cast your fucking face off.
I retract my statement, there was a fine balance of bullshit for protoss in BW, while the problem for sc2 is that everything what made that bullshit fine was taken 
Basically whole modern PvX was made of harass and harass was always a legit strategy, and casting shit out in BW, the way you describe was hard.
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Why must every post like this ask for reavers back. Reavers are not going to happen. Stop trying to make them happen.
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On April 13 2013 05:38 mrtomjones wrote: Why must every post like this ask for reavers back. Reavers are not going to happen. Stop trying to make them happen. Well they brought a semi lurker, firebat and a mine into Hots, dont be so sure.
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All Protoss problems stem from the warpgate.
Protoss can warp in at his opponent's base, thus Protoss is as strong offensively as it is defensively.
As a result, Terran and Zerg must ALWAYS have the stronger army at every point in the game. If they didn't, Protoss would simply win at the point when he was stronger with a warp in at his opponent's base.
Because of this, the fundamental rule of PvX is that P should never attack, because his opponent always the stronger army.
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Protoss is a horribly gimick race that people simply hasnt finished abusing yet :/, and is almost impossible to rework now that the game is already 3+ years.
Back in WoL, PvT became a scenario in which terran tries to kill the protoss by the 14th minute mark, either through constant harrass or timing attack. PvZ became a immortal soul push vs deal with infestor broodlord choice. PvP was still boring as hell to watch.
Now in HotS, protoss got a bunch of gimicky new units to play with, in TvP we are seeing protosses starting to put on the pressure, preventing the terran from harrassing/ delaying the timing window, forcing the game into the well known triple aoe late game, although now with the choice of adding heavy starships. PvZ got the weirdest end of the stick. We see protosses moving away from the immortal soul push due to the addition of stargate units, and the old deathball with the addition of a voidray became much more stronger, allowing protoss to deal with infestor broodlord effectively, while giving back the zerg hydra as a proper unit, and adding decent supporting units. Funnily enough, the soulpush recieved an indirect buff through the addition of the mothershipcore.
No comment on PvP.
People saying protoss is underpowered in this thread should really stop playing this game lol
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I'm sorry but after reading all of it here, I didn't find the the part to quote, but someone said that there is an economical problem that protoss has to the other races and I think this is the even greater issue protoss have with the larvae and mules terran and zerg gain an eco boost at the third base that kills me every time. OK i'm only a gold level protoss and my bad machanics are surely part of this problem but I think the 3 base chrono boost can't keep up with 3 orbital mules or 3 or at this time often 4 base drone production and if you didn't defend a drop or runby perfectly you have to surrender as protoss because you are never able to keep up to your opponent. In my opinion the overall design for protoss isn't bad the thing which interest me in this game even after years is the deversity of races and protoss is what they said it is. few in numbers but strong and high tech race and every unit fits in. Units like the sentry isn't strong but has high tech gimmicks to save itself. I think if scout correct you can pretty much counter every early build of the other races in time. As Protoss you have to win in mid or late game and i'm ok with that. It's my opinion.
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On April 13 2013 05:48 -_- wrote: All Protoss problems stem from the warpgate.
Protoss can warp in at his opponent's base, thus Protoss is as strong offensively as it is defensively.
As a result, Terran and Zerg must ALWAYS have the stronger army at every point in the game. If they didn't, Protoss would simply win at the point when he was stronger with a warp in at his opponent's base.
Because of this, the fundamental rule of PvX is that P should never attack, because his opponent always the stronger army. I mean, you are right until the pro toss techs to higher units from notwarpgate. And, the burst of units from warp gate means pro toss does have early game threats.
Warpgates are here to stay and not that big of a problem, IMO.
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I agree and wrote on this last week. http://www.reddit.com/r/allthingsprotoss/comments/1bpz1k/simple_questions_simple_answers_thread/c98y4nd
Here was my response to: "I heard you got tired of WoL because you didn't like the warpgate mechanic. If this is true, how would you change it, and as no change was made, what made you come back to Hots?"
"Simple questions yo. No problem though. I'll try and give this answer some thought. First I think that we need to examine if there are any hiccups with gameplay resulting from warp gates and whether they are problems or not. Protoss can warp in at any pylon immediately when warp completes and gateways are transformed -> Protoss units are stronger as a result relative to the game time because they don't need to cross the map to reach their opponent -> Early Protoss units need to be made relatively weaker to account for this advantage -> Protoss gateway units are significantly weaker later in the game relative to the other races basic units when maxed engagements occur due to the nerfing (bw->WoL stats). Is this a problem? Well let's look at what its consequences are. Protoss players accordingly had to defend themselves when they only had weak gateway units early on by using specific gas timings [limiting build stems! Problem?] for enough sentries [restricting early compositions to a defensive focus! Problem?] to force field their ramp for an amount of time depending on the matchup [limiting map design! Problem?]. Since Protoss players had to subsequently avoid engagements until their midgame tech units or upgrades could be completed (colossi pvt; blink/immortals pvz etc), their weaker gateway units needed to be grouped together to survive assaults like 5rax stim timings or roach hydra allins of 2011 [limiting early-game and early-midgame harassment opportunities! Problem?]. Then since their opponents can take 3rd (pvt) and 4th (pvz) bases earlier, relying on the Protoss' early-midgame defensive posture, Protoss then typically have to take a third to catch up in economy since reactive allins could be held by preemptive retaliations due to the other race's map control (very similar to Savior's solution to BW TvZ) [Linear game design! Problem?]. End of Midgame PvZ: Then since the Zerg can dominate with hive tech Broodlord-Infestor, easily holding "pre-hive timings" and trade energy for resources in the super lategame, the Protoss player has to commit to a razor-thin pre-hive timing that consists of an influx of weaker gateway units to support those same midgame tech advances in their march to the zerg base, often facing rows of spines due to the predictably linear Protoss play that the player was pigeon-holed into. End of Midgame PvT: Now that the Protoss player has rushed double forge upgrades while tenuously holding on with their low colossi count and low gateway unit count, he has to take advantage of his relatively thin 3:3 timing window before the Terran player cost-effectively trades out his bio (stronger in smaller numbers than the weaker Protoss gateway units) and replaces it with the two counters (I mean counters when I say counters, snipe & emp range > feedback, vikings long range and high DPS with +3 attack) to the AoE units the Protoss relies on in the endgame. So what do we get at the end of a PvT matchup? 99.99% (not MVP/Polt/MKP etc) of Terrans not being able to control their lategame armies effectively enough while still trading marginally evenly but then being steamrolled by zealot warpins [Instantaneous reinforcements crushing the weakened remaining army because of an asynchronous production mechanic! Problem?] Also, briefly addressing PvP and then i'll give a summary. In the vast majority of PvP's involving warpgate aggression, the game is decided by the DEFENDER's control (in terms of build order efficiency, crispness of execution, requisite sentries by certain times), not the aggressor's control [Imposing a one way skill cap for success on defending the most common strategy! Problem?]. So once the top players recognized this, they stopped consistently using gateway aggression. But then the openings didn't have to be "4gate proof" and so players still occasionally 4gated, which means since the choice of tech or aggression is chosen after a stalker denies scouting, PvP involves a certain amount of chance resulting from warp gate aggression [Chance reduces the edge a better player has and reduces long term winning percentages! Problem?]. Lategame PvP is a beautiful thing (Hero vs Alicia G3 MLG Summer Arena if you want the greatest televised match LB R3, G3), for the record. It's a shame we saw it so rarely before the twilight of WoL. So we've got more linear play, an element of chance in PvP, predictable game flow, "game timers" where the Protoss has to act before X occurs, limited map design, fewer effective/safe early game build stems, fewer early/midgame harassment opportunities, an asynchronous production mechanic causing imbalance in lategame PvT, and a one-way skill cap in certain engagements (warp gate aggro pvp etc). These are just a few. Some are more easily asserted than others. Some are less due to warpgate and more to other factors like force field etc, but at the root of each, the game design was initially influenced by warp gate. And THAT is why I have a beef with warp gate. How would I change it? I might kick it to twilight council and buff gateway units. This at least partially solves most but not all of the problems. Just a suggestion. Did I come back to HotS? No... i'm not playing competitively. I'm just playing for fun, at whatever ladder ranking it might be (diamond was a joke yo)"
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The issue i have with protoss (i play it) is that i think it's a worse designed race than the other two. Watching tvz almost makes me jealous, at how rewarding small skirmishes can be, at any point in the game. Warping in 10 zealots lategame is obviously great if undetected, but the risk/reward of loading a medivac with 8 marines can't be matched. When i want to attack, i bring my entire army since it's the synergy of everything that makes protoss strong. A squad of blink stalkers can be annoying i guess, but at the later stage, the risk always outweighs the reward unless severely ahead.
I just think the deathball curse is sad, and i wish the race had more posibilites. With that said, MSC adds alot to the early game, but i still feel like splitting my army up can easily tear me apart during the midgame.
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I agree with almost everything the OP says, but wasn't the point of the MSC to allow non-committal aggresion? I mean, all you have to do is keep it with your army and you can recall while barely losing anything.
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Linear game plan is not necessarily bad thing. In fact, you could make an argument it's part of the racial identity of Protoss, since Protoss were very linear in BW and intended to be so.
It's that the linear game plan is very boring to watch and play.
There's nothing wrong with a linear game plan if it active and not passive. In BW, protoss was very linear as well, but there was a huge enough skill ceiling along that path. Everyone knew bisu was going to execute his corsair/dt build, completely reliant on a gimmick btw. But it was exciting because everyone wanted to see how well he'd execute it. It was active and required different multitasking abilities.
The razer thin timings you have of WoL is just one big push. You execute it and you win or lose. The problem is not the linear game plan, the problem is that the linear game plan is remaining passive for a long time and then immediately into a win/loss scenario.
Ex: People don't necessarily hate being forced into collosus, they hate that the collosus is so boring.
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Absolutely agree with everything you said, OP. If I might expand on something you didn't spend much time on; as a masters protoss player who occasionally offraces and plays at a master level with zerg and terran as well, I think it's fairly obvious that this game was balanced around TvZ for a long time. And there's a good reason for that. When WoL was released, it was fairly easy for terran to smash zerg. Terran was also a bit too strong against protoss in the beginning, but I think that's because terran was easier to play and win with upon release more than because it was genuinely OP against protoss. Once we figured out defending drops and using T3 effectively, we kind of balanced ourselves, with a bit of help from Blizzard nerfing terran.
But they nerfed terran because of TvZ. It feels like 95% of the balance changes(nerfs) to terran were specifically made with TvZ in mind. When protoss was buffed, it seemed like more to fix inherent flaws in unit design than imbalance(immortal range, anyone?). Even the Ghost EMP nerf, while being a huge deal for TvP, still made a big difference in TvZ(vs infestors), and of course the snipe ability was all TvZ. Unfortunately, while TvZ has been nerfed, buffed, and balanced since release, it feels like Protoss has kind of been on the sidelines for everything. We're here, we play, but tell me a PvZ or a PvT is half as dynamic and exciting as TvZ is. You can't, not with a straight face.
It's led to an unfortunate situation where Protoss is pretty balanced, but boring. Stale. It's a race that was ignored while Blizzard was designing the other two races to play each other. It breaks my heart that I would rather watch 10 TvZs than one ZvP. Even PvT is kind of boring now that it's been generally figured out. Protoss is generally kind of forced onto one tech path, they have to play extremely defensively or all in, taking a third is a pain in the ass because it's difficult, or at least inefficient, to be aggressive and expand to three bases.
At the end of the day, Protoss feels fundamentally flawed. It feels like a race that doesn't really have a place in this game. It's like a big, strong guy who can hold his own against a smaller kickboxer and smaller Jiu Jitsu fighter, but only because of his size and strength. The more interesting fight is always going to be between the two trained fighters. Eh, maybe that's a shitty analogy, but hopefully it gets my point across
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the boring part were DEATH BALLS.
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