Depth of Micro - Page 40

On November 05 2013 12:07 Zenbrez wrote:
Reaver attacks and dragoons were not really consistent at all

On November 05 2013 07:35 YyapSsap wrote:


If I delve in further, there is a big fundamental difference in spell casters from SC:BW and SC2.

In SC2, the emphasis is placed on stopping a spell from being cast because once cast would normally result in a huge advantage that could result in the opposing army being disintegrated in seconds. Now why is the case? because the abilities in question often have no interaction with the opposing player, as in once cast theres nothing you can do about except bracing for impact.

Examples = 1) WoL Fungals where if you dont kill the infestor, your entire army might be stunned/damaged and literallly just die without being able to do anything.

2) Storms vs Snipe/EMP (Ghosts vs HTs) where if the ghosts kill off the HTs or neutralises them the advantage shifts to the Terran massively where as the opposite occurs if the ghosts fail this mission. The consequences of not neutralising the opponent casters often result in lopsided victories.

3) FFs where if you can't bait the spells or kill the sentries, your enitre main might get destoryed as the ramp is blocked forever or generally it just kills off any interactions with the opposing units as they are stuck helplessly while being killed.

This is why still do this day people get frustrated. Over the years, players have found ways to neutralise this threat with more precision and variety but at the end of the day, if it didn't get neutralised the end result will always be the same.

In SC:BW, the emphasis was placed on troops instead of the abilities. Why? no smart cast i.e. using casters was always going to be difficult during battle. Casters were hard to access (very high in the tech tree), fagile to the nth degree (I think ghosts had 45hp, and HTs were 40/40 - correct me if I am wrong) and the signature abilities had to be researched. So only in the late mid/late game do we see casters start appearing on the field.

Then there was the abilities themselves. Lets look at the signature spells and its fundamental difference to the SC2 ones.
Plague = does not kill units but put them down to 1hp. Just because you got plagued does not mean you lose or suddenly the zerg gets an upper hand. It gives you the opposing player to save your forces because it takes time for the plague to put you down to 1hp.

Ensare = Slows any units to a crawl within an AOE. Thats it. Need a queen which doesn't do much outside of perhaps broodlings and slowly a pack of units while being a costly unit.

Storm = kills units very fast within the aoe but gives time to get out of the spell. You can move out of the storms.

EMP = drains energy but you need science vessels which can't directly kill anything other than via irradiate (vs biological units but this is over a long period time kill spell which sometimes works against you e.g. ultralisk eraser).

Maelstorm = stuns only biological units but deals no damage. To use maelstorms and also feedbacks, you need a series of tech structures, two DTs, research the ability and then wait enough energy. DTs themselves don't deal any damage.

Lockdown = stuns a mechanical unit for a long time. Ghosts are fagile, requires lots of tech buildings and addon (there are no tech labs or reactors so this addon is specifically for the ghost) and then requires upgrades to even make it useful (researching the ability, cloak, ghost range etc).

Stasis Field = Freezes the units but units frozen cannot be damaged. Its an expensive spell that doesn't sometimes result in what you want and work against you.

All these abilities gives the opposing player to interact after the spell has been cast outside of a few abilities such as stasis field or lockdown. However those few abilities that do exhibit the SC2 problem are downright hard to gain access in terms of time/resources and limited in what they do primarily because they don't deal the damage so there is no point rushing to these spells.

So a combination of somewhat imba spells balanced out by smart casting, resource/time heavy requirements to gain access to these spells, allowing the opposing player to interact with the spell after its been cast, spells that normally don't directly deal damage and if they did, they did over a long period of time.. Thats why in this particular game, casters or abilities were rarely frowned upon but memorable and at often times magnificent to spectate knowing how hard they were to use and rare they were. They aided the armies in battle not deciding fate of the battle.

On a side note, I do somewhat miss lategame PvZ in BW. So much magicks and the theme of hightech aliens holding the zerg infestation at bay with everything they got.

On November 05 2013 21:20 Bazik wrote:


Just Wanted to say awesome post.

It really encapsulates most of what I feel are the main problems of most casters in this game... Not only are they way too effective as they come way to early, many times defining the whole game...

The only thing I would like to call out are some of the misuses blizzard made.


Joining the medic with the dropship... where before u could/had to choose a course of action either 6 marines 2 medics which gave u more sustainable fighting or 8 marines which gave u no sustainability but gave u max dmg etc... my point is instead of introducing strategy and choice it just removes that aspect from the game making a drop always max effectiveness in every situation it always has all the healing and it always as all the dmg.

This problem is reflected across the board, the warp in mechanic has the same flaw there's no reason to not use it always, The units get into the field wherever and immediately, the problem is 3 fold.

1st problem is obvious, it completely negates defenders advantage, the units don't have to run across the field to get to ur opponents base.

2nd problem The strategic placement of ur structures becomes irrelevant, if the units come out where u want dependant on the building position that makes ur defense that much stronger, protoss becomes almost drop proof cause of this.

3rd problem, this is the problem I see ppl talk the least, protoss is allways 1 unit cycle ahead of everyone else... Since the units come 5 sec after buying them from the warpgate and then it goes into cooldown as long as u have enough warpgates u can actually allways remax first and faster, not only that if u start a attack with the same amount of units as ur opponent and both players have a production cycle available the protoss has the units during the whole production cycle meaningis army is effectivly bigger even tho their on the exact same production cycle.

Side note on how bad a spell Forcefields are.(negates positioning/ negates army size, actually making it a negative aspect most of the time / forces the maps to have a certain structure because otherwise forcefields would make u invincible, just to name a few problems with it) when a single spell changes the way maps are made u have to know something is wrong...

Blizzard forgot 2 tenants of good design, interaction and availability, spells should enable interaction from at least one player the medivac example is a perfect example because it negates interaction not only from the opponent but also from the player himself. Availability in the case of forcefield, forcefield would be a good spell if it was a late tier 2 / early tier 3 spell like storm by then players have access to units/spells that counter it giving it in abundance and early like it's done now creates all the problems that we know and hate.

My 2 cents and sry for the long write...

On November 05 2013 06:23 awesomoecalypse wrote:
Its November 2013 and people are still bitching about forcefields, despite sentry-heavy play being a smaller part of the metagame than at pretty much any point since the WoL beta. Amazing.

On November 05 2013 21:10 Elldar wrote:


That was due to pathfinding and/or ai so your argument is not about micro.

On November 07 2013 02:03 Zenbrez wrote:

Lalush said units should be consistent, they were absolutely not consistent.

On November 07 2013 02:03 Zenbrez wrote:

Lalush said units should be consistent, they were absolutely not consistent.

On November 07 2013 02:15 XXXSmOke wrote:


He said conistent unless they have a very special weapon aka the Reaver. Can you imagine reavers with perfect AI?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

On November 07 2013 03:29 sabas123 wrote:

with those units you know if i can execute A, B will happen, that kind of analogy is almost imposable in sc2.

On November 07 2013 03:40 Xiphos wrote:


You need to design that game such that if you do A, B/C/D will happen and then each of those scenerio, there will be separated consequences to those that the opponents have to respond. Now that's decision making. You need to create game to contains those, otherwise, its plain banal.

On November 07 2013 03:56 Ctone23 wrote:
I think the fact that SC2 was built without LAN capability could explain the shot point delay. I'm not sure if they would be willing to change that whatsoever, the more I think about it.

The separation radius, on the other hand, could and should be implemented.

On November 07 2013 06:34 Laertes wrote:


GO is not in fact a good example because shit has consequences, its just not apparant until later.