|
On January 08 2014 00:37 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:16 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:04 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 23:52 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 20:03 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:On January 07 2014 08:43 Soldier92 wrote:
I like the attitude blizzard has coming with these balance changes but the solutions they present to mech are not the right way to go.
Buffing mech air does not make sense as skyterran is already considered one of if not the strongest lategame armies. Each terran starport unit excluding the BC has a number of roles for both harassment as well as benefit to the main army.
Siege tanks already do decent damage to armored. This change will not affect immortals, the strongest siege tank counter. This change will not affect archons, another hardcounter to tanks. This will only help in tvp for blink stalker allins, lategame protoss vs mech terran rarely relies on stalkers or collosus for a lategame composition.
EMP is a ghost ability. The ghost is a bio unit built from the barracks. If the solution to mech becomes a ghost buff I will be very disappointed in blizzards lack of conviction to make mech work.
It's nice to finally have a word on tvp though, the matchup hasn't been talked about publicly in a long time as far as I know other than the fact that it remained around 50%. The MSC change was much needed good to see happen. why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Of course it is. If mech needs so badly Ghost or Raven support, then something is wrong. The fact you cannot spend your gas however you want is not a problem per se, but the style should not have to rely on massing spellcaster energy to vaguely work. Why is there something wrong if you have to build certain units? You have to build certain units in all RTS games in all situations, so why is it wrong if those certain units are Ravens and Ghosts? On January 07 2014 20:29 matthy wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:On January 07 2014 08:43 Soldier92 wrote:
I like the attitude blizzard has coming with these balance changes but the solutions they present to mech are not the right way to go.
Buffing mech air does not make sense as skyterran is already considered one of if not the strongest lategame armies. Each terran starport unit excluding the BC has a number of roles for both harassment as well as benefit to the main army.
Siege tanks already do decent damage to armored. This change will not affect immortals, the strongest siege tank counter. This change will not affect archons, another hardcounter to tanks. This will only help in tvp for blink stalker allins, lategame protoss vs mech terran rarely relies on stalkers or collosus for a lategame composition.
EMP is a ghost ability. The ghost is a bio unit built from the barracks. If the solution to mech becomes a ghost buff I will be very disappointed in blizzards lack of conviction to make mech work.
It's nice to finally have a word on tvp though, the matchup hasn't been talked about publicly in a long time as far as I know other than the fact that it remained around 50%. The MSC change was much needed good to see happen. why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Yeah but for a terran there is just not enough gas... That's the whole point of buffing them... that you need less resources to achieve the same. Because then you end up having those "Ghosts/Hellbats/Tanks/Thors/Vikings/Ravens" armies which make no sense (since the support spellcasters have actually the most important role, a bit like the WoL infest; this also means you cannot be active before the said army is complete) instead of having a simple core like Hellbats/Tanks/Vikings in TvT that you can then support with only a few of those units (like one Raven to have 2 pdds, not 15 full energy because otherwise you cannot advance/fight, etc.). Those are two seperate issues. The one is that some energy units tend to overperform in the late-/endgame. For the other one, we do see pushes with ghosts, Storm timings, Viper timings, Sentry timings, etc... where you utilize few of those units. Thus I don't see why the reliance on energy units in certain scenarios would always lead to people massing them and playing passively. That's the other issue and much more tied to the specifc design/role of those units. In particular with the ghost I can't really see how you would really have to mass them so much with Mech. Once the Immortal/Archon shields are down, you are pretty happy and you don't really want more ghosts than the count to ensure that. I didn't say the spellcasters would systematically be massed. You go only for a few Ghosts along mech, yet those 6-8 ones are still critical because without the EMPs, your army gets slaughtered. But building that Ghost/mech army takes a long time, you cannot have much midgame activity, so Protoss can transition to air, and then you have to add Vikings/Ravens, and finally we have this weird mix of an army in which the Tank has so little role left it cannot seriously be called "mech". The best thing is simply to make it so mech in TvP can operate without the Ghost until some point, just like mech in TvZ can work without Ravens until some point, instead of forcing the Ghost into mech and promote turtly play. I would test this: - Rework Hardened Shields so attacks dealing more than 20 damage are halved instead of reduced to 10; - Tanks in Siege Mode have a +15 bonus damage against Massive units; - Blinding Cloud reduces the range of units under its effect by 6.
Of course other stuff (like your suggestions) may make more sense. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment that there is only one way to balance Mech.
Like, how you describe TvP Mech if you need ghosts, vikings, ravens is bound to a metagame in which Protoss is still overpowered against Mech. If Protoss vs Mech is balanced, Protoss has to go much further to the edges of greed than they do now, opening room for midgame Mech timings.
|
On January 08 2014 00:53 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:51 Plansix wrote:On January 08 2014 00:46 ZenithM wrote:On January 08 2014 00:40 Plansix wrote:
Medivacs can pick up tanks while seiged, but only one at a time, Thor style. There is a tank buff we can all get behind because it's dope. That shit would be ridiculously game changing :D For the better. You know we all want to see it. Think of the micro and the amazing doom drops. Think of the laughs then someone loses like 5 medivacs and tanks to stalkers. That's almost even better than Tanks with blink. Even the WoL campaign didn't have that. I'm all for it.
Hey, if you are willing to make a medivac per tank, go for it. You are going to be bummed out when the Protoss builds units from the stargate and reminds you tanks can't shoot planes.
|
On January 08 2014 00:55 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:37 TheDwf wrote:On January 08 2014 00:16 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:04 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 23:52 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 20:03 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:On January 07 2014 08:43 Soldier92 wrote:
I like the attitude blizzard has coming with these balance changes but the solutions they present to mech are not the right way to go.
Buffing mech air does not make sense as skyterran is already considered one of if not the strongest lategame armies. Each terran starport unit excluding the BC has a number of roles for both harassment as well as benefit to the main army.
Siege tanks already do decent damage to armored. This change will not affect immortals, the strongest siege tank counter. This change will not affect archons, another hardcounter to tanks. This will only help in tvp for blink stalker allins, lategame protoss vs mech terran rarely relies on stalkers or collosus for a lategame composition.
EMP is a ghost ability. The ghost is a bio unit built from the barracks. If the solution to mech becomes a ghost buff I will be very disappointed in blizzards lack of conviction to make mech work.
It's nice to finally have a word on tvp though, the matchup hasn't been talked about publicly in a long time as far as I know other than the fact that it remained around 50%. The MSC change was much needed good to see happen. why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Of course it is. If mech needs so badly Ghost or Raven support, then something is wrong. The fact you cannot spend your gas however you want is not a problem per se, but the style should not have to rely on massing spellcaster energy to vaguely work. Why is there something wrong if you have to build certain units? You have to build certain units in all RTS games in all situations, so why is it wrong if those certain units are Ravens and Ghosts? On January 07 2014 20:29 matthy wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:On January 07 2014 08:43 Soldier92 wrote:
I like the attitude blizzard has coming with these balance changes but the solutions they present to mech are not the right way to go.
Buffing mech air does not make sense as skyterran is already considered one of if not the strongest lategame armies. Each terran starport unit excluding the BC has a number of roles for both harassment as well as benefit to the main army.
Siege tanks already do decent damage to armored. This change will not affect immortals, the strongest siege tank counter. This change will not affect archons, another hardcounter to tanks. This will only help in tvp for blink stalker allins, lategame protoss vs mech terran rarely relies on stalkers or collosus for a lategame composition.
EMP is a ghost ability. The ghost is a bio unit built from the barracks. If the solution to mech becomes a ghost buff I will be very disappointed in blizzards lack of conviction to make mech work.
It's nice to finally have a word on tvp though, the matchup hasn't been talked about publicly in a long time as far as I know other than the fact that it remained around 50%. The MSC change was much needed good to see happen. why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Yeah but for a terran there is just not enough gas... That's the whole point of buffing them... that you need less resources to achieve the same. Because then you end up having those "Ghosts/Hellbats/Tanks/Thors/Vikings/Ravens" armies which make no sense (since the support spellcasters have actually the most important role, a bit like the WoL infest; this also means you cannot be active before the said army is complete) instead of having a simple core like Hellbats/Tanks/Vikings in TvT that you can then support with only a few of those units (like one Raven to have 2 pdds, not 15 full energy because otherwise you cannot advance/fight, etc.). Those are two seperate issues. The one is that some energy units tend to overperform in the late-/endgame. For the other one, we do see pushes with ghosts, Storm timings, Viper timings, Sentry timings, etc... where you utilize few of those units. Thus I don't see why the reliance on energy units in certain scenarios would always lead to people massing them and playing passively. That's the other issue and much more tied to the specifc design/role of those units. In particular with the ghost I can't really see how you would really have to mass them so much with Mech. Once the Immortal/Archon shields are down, you are pretty happy and you don't really want more ghosts than the count to ensure that. I didn't say the spellcasters would systematically be massed. You go only for a few Ghosts along mech, yet those 6-8 ones are still critical because without the EMPs, your army gets slaughtered. But building that Ghost/mech army takes a long time, you cannot have much midgame activity, so Protoss can transition to air, and then you have to add Vikings/Ravens, and finally we have this weird mix of an army in which the Tank has so little role left it cannot seriously be called "mech". The best thing is simply to make it so mech in TvP can operate without the Ghost until some point, just like mech in TvZ can work without Ravens until some point, instead of forcing the Ghost into mech and promote turtly play. I would test this: - Rework Hardened Shields so attacks dealing more than 20 damage are halved instead of reduced to 10; - Tanks in Siege Mode have a +15 bonus damage against Massive units; - Blinding Cloud reduces the range of units under its effect by 6. Of course other stuff (like your suggestions) may make more sense. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment that there is only one way to balance Mech. Like, how you describe TvP Mech if you need ghosts, vikings, ravens is bound to a metagame in which Protoss is still overpowered against Mech. If Protoss vs Mech is balanced, Protoss has to go much further to the edges of greed than they do now, opening room for midgame Mech timings.
Sure, but isn't it what those changes would do? How else would you give more strength to mech vs Protoss? Even if you want to go the "mech + spellcasters" road, Ghosts are used along with bio, Ravens are used against Zerg; Tanks themselves could quickly become too dominant if overbuffed; so basically changes need to be made carefully so there isn't an overwhelming collateral impact. Did you think about anything in particular?
|
I think the easiest way to buff tanks atm would not be to increase his damage or splash or anything like that.
The better way would be to change the cost like 150/100 or 125/100, supply to 2 and construction time to 40s.
With a change like that, it won't kill TvT into Mech VS Mech, not at the first stage of the game at least. Furthermore biomech/mech compositions would be more affordable in TvZ, while maintaining mines and/or marines support for Air purpose.
In TvP it would not promote biomech but allow for a faster tank defense into pure mech. Or maybe marine/mine/tank
Maybe this change won't be enough, but at least it'll allow for MORE tank play, whether it becomes too strong or if it is still too weak other patchs will allow people to show it. But since people will just bitch around for the name of 'tank is still overpowered, look at xel naga tower era'. You cant increase tanks damage because of that.
I want marinetank back in TvZ as well as marinetank in TvT. It always have been the best match to watch and play since SC2 came out.
|
On January 08 2014 01:01 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:55 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:37 TheDwf wrote:On January 08 2014 00:16 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:04 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 23:52 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 20:03 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:
[quote]
why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Of course it is. If mech needs so badly Ghost or Raven support, then something is wrong. The fact you cannot spend your gas however you want is not a problem per se, but the style should not have to rely on massing spellcaster energy to vaguely work. Why is there something wrong if you have to build certain units? You have to build certain units in all RTS games in all situations, so why is it wrong if those certain units are Ravens and Ghosts? On January 07 2014 20:29 matthy wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:On January 07 2014 15:34 cptjibberjabber wrote:
[quote]
why would you be dissappointed? I think when you say "mech" you shouldn't rule out half of your tech tree. Mostly you do, because of upgrades. But you don't want ghosts for their DPS anyway, so I don't see why it is bad to use ghosts in a mech composition? Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Yeah but for a terran there is just not enough gas... That's the whole point of buffing them... that you need less resources to achieve the same. Because then you end up having those "Ghosts/Hellbats/Tanks/Thors/Vikings/Ravens" armies which make no sense (since the support spellcasters have actually the most important role, a bit like the WoL infest; this also means you cannot be active before the said army is complete) instead of having a simple core like Hellbats/Tanks/Vikings in TvT that you can then support with only a few of those units (like one Raven to have 2 pdds, not 15 full energy because otherwise you cannot advance/fight, etc.). Those are two seperate issues. The one is that some energy units tend to overperform in the late-/endgame. For the other one, we do see pushes with ghosts, Storm timings, Viper timings, Sentry timings, etc... where you utilize few of those units. Thus I don't see why the reliance on energy units in certain scenarios would always lead to people massing them and playing passively. That's the other issue and much more tied to the specifc design/role of those units. In particular with the ghost I can't really see how you would really have to mass them so much with Mech. Once the Immortal/Archon shields are down, you are pretty happy and you don't really want more ghosts than the count to ensure that. I didn't say the spellcasters would systematically be massed. You go only for a few Ghosts along mech, yet those 6-8 ones are still critical because without the EMPs, your army gets slaughtered. But building that Ghost/mech army takes a long time, you cannot have much midgame activity, so Protoss can transition to air, and then you have to add Vikings/Ravens, and finally we have this weird mix of an army in which the Tank has so little role left it cannot seriously be called "mech". The best thing is simply to make it so mech in TvP can operate without the Ghost until some point, just like mech in TvZ can work without Ravens until some point, instead of forcing the Ghost into mech and promote turtly play. I would test this: - Rework Hardened Shields so attacks dealing more than 20 damage are halved instead of reduced to 10; - Tanks in Siege Mode have a +15 bonus damage against Massive units; - Blinding Cloud reduces the range of units under its effect by 6. Of course other stuff (like your suggestions) may make more sense. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment that there is only one way to balance Mech. Like, how you describe TvP Mech if you need ghosts, vikings, ravens is bound to a metagame in which Protoss is still overpowered against Mech. If Protoss vs Mech is balanced, Protoss has to go much further to the edges of greed than they do now, opening room for midgame Mech timings. Sure, but isn't it what those changes would do? How else would you give more strength to mech vs Protoss? Even if you want to go the "mech + spellcasters" road, Ghosts are used along with bio, Ravens are used against Zerg; Tanks themselves could quickly become too dominant if overbuffed; so basically changes need to be made carefully so there isn't an overwhelming collateral impact. Did you think about anything in particular?
Well, I think what you suggest makes sense.
I think some further direct buffs to tanks would also make sense, though they would have to be done in a way that tanks become better at least against some Protoss ground units that they aren't as good against currently (zealots, archons, immortals). E.g. extra dmg vs shields, the "main target buff" I have been talking about for a long time, maybe another attack periode buff
For ghosts, I think it's hard to find a simple solution to make them more accesible in particular for Mech. Armory as alternative requirement to the academy would be cool imo, but then you may get balance problems with reactored ghosts. Would be cool if ghosts could drive in Tanks and EMP from inside of them, but now I'm getting really unrealistic. 
|
On January 08 2014 01:15 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 01:01 TheDwf wrote:On January 08 2014 00:55 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:37 TheDwf wrote:On January 08 2014 00:16 Big J wrote:On January 08 2014 00:04 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 23:52 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 20:03 TheDwf wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:
[quote]
Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Of course it is. If mech needs so badly Ghost or Raven support, then something is wrong. The fact you cannot spend your gas however you want is not a problem per se, but the style should not have to rely on massing spellcaster energy to vaguely work. Why is there something wrong if you have to build certain units? You have to build certain units in all RTS games in all situations, so why is it wrong if those certain units are Ravens and Ghosts? On January 07 2014 20:29 matthy wrote:On January 07 2014 17:42 Big J wrote:On January 07 2014 17:06 maartendq wrote:
[quote]
Because mech players would rather spend gas producing mech units than ghosts, I guess.. yeah sorry, that's not an argument. Zergs would also rather spend their gas on mutalisks than on banelings... Yeah but for a terran there is just not enough gas... That's the whole point of buffing them... that you need less resources to achieve the same. Because then you end up having those "Ghosts/Hellbats/Tanks/Thors/Vikings/Ravens" armies which make no sense (since the support spellcasters have actually the most important role, a bit like the WoL infest; this also means you cannot be active before the said army is complete) instead of having a simple core like Hellbats/Tanks/Vikings in TvT that you can then support with only a few of those units (like one Raven to have 2 pdds, not 15 full energy because otherwise you cannot advance/fight, etc.). Those are two seperate issues. The one is that some energy units tend to overperform in the late-/endgame. For the other one, we do see pushes with ghosts, Storm timings, Viper timings, Sentry timings, etc... where you utilize few of those units. Thus I don't see why the reliance on energy units in certain scenarios would always lead to people massing them and playing passively. That's the other issue and much more tied to the specifc design/role of those units. In particular with the ghost I can't really see how you would really have to mass them so much with Mech. Once the Immortal/Archon shields are down, you are pretty happy and you don't really want more ghosts than the count to ensure that. I didn't say the spellcasters would systematically be massed. You go only for a few Ghosts along mech, yet those 6-8 ones are still critical because without the EMPs, your army gets slaughtered. But building that Ghost/mech army takes a long time, you cannot have much midgame activity, so Protoss can transition to air, and then you have to add Vikings/Ravens, and finally we have this weird mix of an army in which the Tank has so little role left it cannot seriously be called "mech". The best thing is simply to make it so mech in TvP can operate without the Ghost until some point, just like mech in TvZ can work without Ravens until some point, instead of forcing the Ghost into mech and promote turtly play. I would test this: - Rework Hardened Shields so attacks dealing more than 20 damage are halved instead of reduced to 10; - Tanks in Siege Mode have a +15 bonus damage against Massive units; - Blinding Cloud reduces the range of units under its effect by 6. Of course other stuff (like your suggestions) may make more sense. But I strongly disagree with the sentiment that there is only one way to balance Mech. Like, how you describe TvP Mech if you need ghosts, vikings, ravens is bound to a metagame in which Protoss is still overpowered against Mech. If Protoss vs Mech is balanced, Protoss has to go much further to the edges of greed than they do now, opening room for midgame Mech timings. Sure, but isn't it what those changes would do? How else would you give more strength to mech vs Protoss? Even if you want to go the "mech + spellcasters" road, Ghosts are used along with bio, Ravens are used against Zerg; Tanks themselves could quickly become too dominant if overbuffed; so basically changes need to be made carefully so there isn't an overwhelming collateral impact. Did you think about anything in particular? Well, I think what you suggest makes sense. I think some further direct buffs to tanks would also make sense, though they would have to be done in a way that tanks become better at least against some Protoss ground units that they aren't as good against currently (zealots, archons, immortals). E.g. extra dmg vs shields, the "main target buff" I have been talking about for a long time, maybe another attack periode buff For ghosts, I think it's hard to find a simple solution to make them more accesible in particular for Mech. Armory as alternative requirement to the academy would be cool imo, but then you may get balance problems with reactored ghosts. Would be cool if ghosts could drive in Tanks and EMP from inside of them, but now I'm getting really unrealistic.
That's not a mech-specific buff, usually Armory is dropped before Ghost Academy :-)
|
On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff.
Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV.
But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.)
|
On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.)
So you are saying they are lying the community in an effort to keep potential new customers for a new expan$ion. My opinion on the current Dev team and Blizz in general has been very low in the last few years, but what you describe is just Kotick level Evil.
|
On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.)
Given that they did everything in their power to make bio better than mech from bw to star 2 due to them feeling that bio produces more exciting games it is pretty obvious that they'd rather not buff mech. I mean when mech was finally getting powered up in star 2 for the first time they insta nerfed blueflame. Though luckily they seemed to have realized that every terran matchup is boring to watch if all you see is constant bio, either that or they realized that a lot of people in korea (especially former bw pros) miss mech very badly. Or they are actually smart enough to realize that Terran will end up being the worst race if they only have one style to go for in tvz and tvp, though I highly doubt that.
Besides that I don't get all the bitching about blizzard. Yeah they are far from doing what they should do in a perfect world, but almost all developers are. Personally I'm fine given that they actually acknowledge esports and try to do their best to support it, on top of that they even care about the highest level of play and try to base their balance choices around it. That is more than any developer from any game I have played previously ever did (keep in mind that despite valve doing a good job with dota 2 they have been doing a horrible job with cs 1.6/source for years now).
|
On January 08 2014 02:21 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) So you are saying they are lying the community in an effort to keep potential new customers for a new expan$ion. My opinion on the current Dev team and Blizz in general has been very low in the last few years, but what you describe is just Kotick level Evil.
So you expect them to carelessly put full-time people on the job to 'fix' the game that doesn't really need much fixing? You expect them to put money into the game without looking forward to try and secure future streams of revenue? You expect them to throw money away just because you want them to?
Here's the thing: businesses are there to make money. You can't expect them to do anything that doesn't make them money in some way. Blizzard isn't EA, SC2 is finished, feature complete, works on any machine you expect it to work and it's balanced within reason. The only thing they are 'obliged' to do is keep the battle.net servers up. Anything else is just service for a better image, and to keep you here for LoTV. You can't expect them to just throw away money because you're not content with the way they're treating you.
|
On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) I would say go back to before the oracle buff, and then don't change the game. It was in a good place at that point. As I've said a million times, that oracle buff was completely ill-conceived, done for the wrong reasons, and did not have the desired effect it was supposed to. In fact it had the opposite. The people who were already good with oracles were unchanged because they could keep their oracles alive anyway, but the people who were bad with oracles could now play sloppier and still keep them alive. It was completely stupid, and a ton of people had been pointing that out from the first time it was proposed.
It is a lot like the queen patch in WoL. The pro level zergs like Losira who already used queen-based openings continued to, but because of the extra range, much worse players could pull off the same thing now with similar results because of how far the queen could attack.
|
On January 08 2014 02:21 Lorch wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) Given that they did everything in their power to make bio better than mech from bw to star 2 due to them feeling that bio produces more exciting games it is pretty obvious that they'd rather not buff mech. I mean when mech was finally getting powered up in star 2 for the first time they insta nerfed blueflame. Though luckily they seemed to have realized that every terran matchup is boring to watch if all you see is constant bio, either that or they realized that a lot of people in korea (especially former bw pros) miss mech very badly. Or they are actually smart enough to realize that Terran will end up being the worst race if they only have one style to go for in tvz and tvp, though I highly doubt that. Besides that I don't get all the bitching about blizzard. Yeah they are far from doing what they should do in a perfect world, but almost all developers are. Personally I'm fine given that they actually acknowledge esports and try to do their best to support it, on top of that they even care about the highest level of play and try to base their balance choices around it. That is more than any developer from any game I have played previously ever did (keep in mind that despite valve doing a good job with dota 2 they have been doing a horrible job with cs 1.6/source for years now).
Well, yes. Don't forget the additions to HOTS made the issue also more difficult. That said, Mech may just not be possible in TvP (for HOTS) but it remains to be seen for TvZ. (Speaking of which, I'd like the WM nerf reverted too, or better tweaked. That was unwarranted and adversely affected TvP too.) Of course, as you say, they have previously publicly stated their preference for more exciting games (Esports! Yay!) and therefore for a Bio flavoured game. The effort to buff Mech appears to me to be half-hearted probably because of this reason, and also an awareness of the further complications that will result in HOTS if Mech were to become truly viable in all match-ups (especially through Blizzard intervention).
Like I said, I think they are better off waiting for LoTV if they want to take a fresh look.
And, yeah, I agree with you that I don't get the bitching, either. SC2 is a damn balanced game (which is one reason why it is also fun) and, yes, also reasonably well-designed. I only have to look at the BW win rates from 2007 - 2011: http://i.imgur.com/gmXwO.png to remind myself of the overall good job the developers have done in SC2. The community, at least that part of it which posts incessantly on the forums (basically, most of us), tend to only look at the next step or what we would like to see, generally without a thought to the possible consequences. The Blizzard developers, I should hope, tend to look beyond that to the overall good of the whole system (even if they may get it wrong sometimes).
It might help, though, if the balance team were a little deaf. 
|
On January 08 2014 02:37 cptjibberjabber wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 02:21 Sapphire.lux wrote:On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) So you are saying they are lying the community in an effort to keep potential new customers for a new expan$ion. My opinion on the current Dev team and Blizz in general has been very low in the last few years, but what you describe is just Kotick level Evil. So you expect them to carelessly put full-time people on the job to 'fix' the game that doesn't really need much fixing? You expect them to put money into the game without looking forward to try and secure future streams of revenue? You expect them to throw money away just because you want them to? Here's the thing: businesses are there to make money. You can't expect them to do anything that doesn't make them money in some way. Blizzard isn't EA, SC2 is finished, feature complete, works on any machine you expect it to work and it's balanced within reason. The only thing they are 'obliged' to do is keep the battle.net servers up. Anything else is just service for a better image, and to keep you here for LoTV. You can't expect them to just throw away money because you're not content with the way they're treating you.
So you think they are lying and even more, that that is ok. Nice set of morals you have <3
|
What i think happened with mech:
During WOL they were 100% focused on achieving some sort of balance to live up to the BW brand and to create a good esport game. Big changes were to big of a risk at that point.
They heared and agreed with the community that mech needs to be a thing so that was the goal of the expansion. They worked on it, they marketed it, etc.
BETA comes out and we find out that Blizz completely miss understood what "mech" is or what SC fans mean by mech, so they had to scrap the bad ideas like the Warhound. Unfortunately it was to late to test more changes, the game had to come out and had to have decent enough balance, mech or not.
They made a PR 180, saying how bio is cool and fun and everything. It was a contradiction to what the original stated goal was and what every trailer and blue post and battle report etc was saying, but it was better to play stupid then admit failure.
A few months later, with the past behind us, Dustin Browder moved to a new project and some level of decent balance achieved, it is time to make up on some promises and game faults. So it is now, in the last few weeks that i think the only real work on mech (positional tank play) has started. Due to how neglected it has been it's expected that they don't really know where to start. The Tank is not good enough as a unit so it needs to be better but the Immortal has uber special Browder Shields so Ghosts might need to be buffed. A slow process, but AT LAST it started.
So i don't think Blizz is the Devil, they just fucked up with HOTS mech and now are playing catch up.
|
It really irks me the way all the randoms in here are coming up with unnecessarily complicated band-aid applications in order to "fix" mech. Mech cannot be fixed in its current state, because it was BROKEN from the start.
There are 3 things which break Mech:
1. Protoss units in general. The Immortal, Zealot, Stalker, Archon, Tempest, Voidray etc etc all hard/soft counter Mech in some way shape or form. This is undisputed knowledge and anyone arguing against this needs to go back and review the match up. Terran units do not have much in response and are either at a mobility disadvantage or cannot match the quantity of counters that Protoss has against it. You can say "Ghosts", but by that time the Terran is already trying to build Tanks, Thors, Ravens and Vikings.. Lets not talk about a heavy air transition here.
2. Maps. I've said this several times but I always get lambasted for it. The maps are utterly trash. I remember the early days of WoL where Terran fully abused the varied maps (of which they had much better thought and imagination poured into them) whilst the other 2 races were utterly clueless and cried imba. I saw Thor drops, Tank suppression from ledges overlooking greedy expands, height differences and blind spots which encouraged positional play and positions of power. I have not seen that since Antigua Shipyard. Mech can't function properly on these ridiculously huge maps with wide open planes, lots of dead air spaces and pretty much no chokes or positions of defence or slow pushing.
3. This is the most important point. What safeguards alot of the common strats of Zerg and Protoss? A unit with good utility and supply efficiency. For Zergs, this is the Roach and for Protoss, this is the Zealot. These are units with flat damage, few hard counters and are good (or do reasonably well) against virtually every other unit. They are also easy to build en masse. Terran only has this option in the Marine, Marines are ridiculously efficient, kill everything in large enough numbers and have the cost and supply to justify high numbers of them. But that is Bio and a completely different tech path from Mech (its interesting how the other 2 races do not deviate so much from a core tech path no matter what the lategame build is apart from Terran). Mech has no such unit. In the campaign, this is the Goliath - excellent utility, attacks both land and air, easily produced. In the HoTS beta, this was the Warhound (same thing but cluster rockets was just imba). It would have been the Hell Bat but it got nerfed, now it can't even kill a Zealot on equal tech. Terran Mech needs such a unit to act as a buffer and provide missing utility that would take a Mech army 4 different units to provide.
Giving Tanks EMP attack will not solve because Immortals and Archons will still 2 shot mech and Chargelots are still beefy enough to close the distance and start dicing the Mech. Increasing the flat damage (at least without DRASTICALLY rethinking map design) also will not help, because there is no circumstance or opportunity to take advantage of it when a Protoss army is so much more mobile on these huge, open maps. Its either you nerf Protoss into the ground, or Terran needs a new unit! That or Terrans just accept that you cannot go full Mech and instead go Bio Mech with Marines as good utility.
Utility should be a keyword in this game from now on.
|
How about this:
Tanks receive an upgrade, researched at the tech lab, that widens the splash radius against shields. Think of it like an EMP-shell type thing. Perhaps the splash radius stays the same but the upgrade results in full damage to shields in the entire radius rather than the current graded radius system in place now.
|
^ Some interesting thinking
|
On January 08 2014 02:21 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) So you are saying they are lying the community in an effort to keep potential new customers for a new expan$ion. My opinion on the current Dev team and Blizz in general has been very low in the last few years, but what you describe is just Kotick level Evil.
They are stalling, just like at the end of WoL. If mech is really gonna be viable pre LotV, this would be a miracle imo.
|
On January 08 2014 03:25 gingerfluffmuff wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2014 02:21 Sapphire.lux wrote:On January 08 2014 02:07 aZealot wrote:On January 08 2014 00:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Blizzard has always been very vague when talking about mech and this next step is no exception. Will it be the Tank? The Ghost? Air? LAN? We don't know.
It's difficult to give suggestions when you can't really tell the direction the devs. want to take. Different people give different suggestions because they see different problems.
I hope for a more focused assessment in a next update. And a Tank buff. Quite possibly because they don't want to do it, but feel they have to respond to "community desire" for Mech. I think they are well aware of the large stone thrown into the pond that will be. I'm hoping they stay well away from buffing Mech until LoTV. But, then, I'd prefer no further changes to the game, period. (Unless, if pressed, a time warp nerf and reversion of Oracle speed.) So you are saying they are lying the community in an effort to keep potential new customers for a new expan$ion. My opinion on the current Dev team and Blizz in general has been very low in the last few years, but what you describe is just Kotick level Evil. They are stalling, just like at the end of WoL. If mech is really gonna be viable pre LotV, this would be a miracle imo.
Might be, but i heard that LOTV is about 3 or 4 years of and if that's true, it's a long time to keep finding excuses. I think this time they are really trying.
|
On January 08 2014 03:24 SC2Toastie wrote:
^ Some interesting thinking
Shock Shells...or something. Removing the Siege Mode upgrade was good for general tank use, but maybe it needs to be replaced with some kind of Ghost-ability so that TvP mech is actually doable. Hell, the explosion could be colored blue, it'd be cool lookin'.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
