Starbow - Page 305

On July 21 2014 17:20 Foxxan wrote:
New shock still feels like shit.

On top of that, reducing attackspeed? Feels very uncreative.

On July 22 2014 02:28 404AlphaSquad wrote:

Have you even played with the shock of the testmap or are you just generally complaining?

On July 22 2014 02:46 Foxxan wrote:

Wtf do you want someone to say then if u call this generally complaining.

I state my opinion on it.
Jesus crist dude.

On July 22 2014 02:51 Xiphias wrote:


"New shock still feels like shit." sound more like complaining than constructive feedback to me as well. Try to rephrase your sentences please if you want us to take you more seriously.

I can understand that it sounds like feedback to you, but it sounds like complaining for a lot of others.

On July 22 2014 03:04 RoboPuG wrote:
As a spectator of Starbow only, I think the shock ability is nice. I have only seen a few games with bio in Starbow and the ghost's shock ability has never stood out to me as a serious balance issue. Maybe it was too strong before (I'm no expert on balance) so nerfing it was probably for the best.

In the game between Kalevi and Mazx it seemed that the ghost/banshee was vital to breaking sieged positions which I thought looked awesome. I think bio might still be a bit too strong considering Kalevi wasn't macroing as well as he could have in the midgame until the end and he was still breaking Mazx's sieged positions when he could have had a lot more bio which would have made it even easier but maybe Mazx expanded to heavily. But like I said, i'm no expert on balance, so the developers and playtesters of starbow can probably analyse this game better than me.

In conclusion, I think players should be allowed to explore bio more in tvt because it definately seems viable (maybe too strong). To the developers of Starbow, keep working guys. You're doing great work and I'm really enjoying watching Starbow. I just want MORE!!!

I find it interesting that abilities in starbow are generally designed to allow more counterplay. Rift being an example: it's more modest than recall and you can take more time to shoot the protoss units making the ability more strategic and difficult to use. On the other hand, as a protoss player recall is undoubtedly cooler to use as it's rather effective.

I wonder if this could be part of the reason for why starbow has never quite caught on with the general public. Everything in the game can be countered and shut down by a superior opponent and it's difficult to exploit abusive aspects of the game as much. For casual players that take the initiative to play just once this could be rather daunting and paradoxically make it feel like you have no agency in the game, and nothing in the game is actually effective.

On July 22 2014 07:05 Hider wrote:


General characeteristic of poorly designed abilities = No (practical) countermicro.

On July 22 2014 09:24 404AlphaSquad wrote:

Like dark swarm?

On July 22 2014 07:05 Hider wrote:


General observation: Poorly designed abilities can seem fun and cool the first time you see them, but when they are used on a more stabile basis, the design flaws become apparent to anyone.

Examples: In beta Day9 thought Forcefielnds and Collosus were awesome....
Fungal growth was also considered cool once.

General characeteristic of poorly designed abilities = No (practical) countermicro.

On July 22 2014 13:36 RoboPuG wrote:


Hider: You often have very good insights but aren't you being a bit to negative regarding the shock ability? No countermicro? Really??

What about baiting shocks with vultures, splitting against it, having turrets in front of tanks for detection and scanning wisely if your position is good to detect advancing cloaked ghosts?

In the vod Mazx was scanning pretty much every time Kalevi tried to nuke with the ghosts and it's definately possible to focusfire down ghosts with vultures or tanks when bio tries to push against sieged positions.

I really don't understand why you think this ability is so bad. It can be countered in many different ways, either before engagements or during.

It would be nice if you could either explain more precisely why this ability is so poorly designed or if you could show why through vods.

I wonder whether anyone tested whether it's actually efficient to try and actively avoid Shock during battles or by presplitting prior to battles. To me, that seems impractical in theory and thus it wouldn't surprise me if all you could do was just to accept getting hitted by Shocks during the battle with your Dragoons while focussing on keeping Reaver alive. If the intention of the projectile speed is to reward "avoid"-micro during actual battles (thus not rewarding "kite"-micro), then I would have preferred a much slower projectile speed with a larger AOE and casting range.

If we assume countermicro should come after the ability has been casted on the units - by moving "shocked" Dragoons away from the battle (as they can't attack anyway) - what is the purpose of the slow effect then? All that accomplishes is to make the micro less practical. Why not simply opt for no slow-effect, but slightly larger AOE instead?

To me the current Shock just feels like a bunch of random concepts being mixed together without any real focus on specific micro interactions.

On July 22 2014 12:13 royalroadweed wrote:
I heard that the ghost regular attack will go pew pew. Awesome idea.