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Sweden33719 Posts
On February 11 2014 19:05 Foxxan wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2014 17:43 Liquid`Jinro wrote:On February 10 2014 23:03 Destructicon wrote:
I think the economy really is the way to fix this. In BW you needed lots of bases just to be able to sustain a 200 supply army, you could turtle on 3 bases, but it took way, way longer to max then in SC2, I think a whole 10 minutes more. However, if you wanted to take more bases you had to spread out more then, inevitably, you will be spread thin in some points, and there are more places where you can be attacked and broken.
Lastly, because there where more places where you could be vulnerable and broken, there was a lot more action as all players where constantly adapting to the state of the map, repositioning units to defend breaches, rallying back defenses, maneuvering to cut off armies, flanking etc
Also because you want more bases to sustain your army and remax quickly you had more incentives to take more bases and defend them, and the enemy had more incentives to be out and attack you and prevent you from getting more bases.
A lot of that dynamic doesn't exist in SC2 yet.
However, that doesn't take away from the fact that units like SH shouldn't exist. Its fundamentally wrong in several ways, its a non committal unit, it just sends waves of free units at the enemy, this isn't at all exciting because you don't care for them, they are free but it creates an ugly dynamic where the other guy has to invest so much into being cost efficient just because of the locust. There is never a huge risk of losing your SH when you attack, but there is a real danger of losing your tanks or lurkers if you ever left them vulnerable or out of position.
With tanks or lurkers, even with their range, they where still vulnerable to lots of things tank lines could still be zealot bombed, mine dragged into or broken if it was thin enough, or killed from the air.
Another huge problem with SH, is that, its a self contained unit. Because of locust, SH is its own DPS and its own tank. The locust are both the hellbats in front of the tank line, and the tank line rolled into one. And that is just plain wrong, so much strength and versatility shouldn't exist in one unit.
Hell, its even worst then BL was, at least the BL had only a range of 9 and couldn't spawn broodlings from half the map away. While I agree that the economy could be improved by making it more bw like, ya'll forgetting some things about broodwar. First of all, maxing out at 13 min pvt was fairly commonplace, certainly not 10 min later than sc2. Second, if anyone here was around for when arbiters started becoming mainstream in pvt, you'll remember the initial terran response to this shift in metagame. Traditionally terran had been able to apply pressure pretty freely and not worry much about counters or being caught toooo off guard, and generally the protoss would try to get ahead in bases and transition safely into carriers (and this was the window the terran would try to deal enough damage in). Then arbiters became popular and suddenly terrans found their pushes not only doing worse just in terms of army vs army efficiency, but also had to contend with a much more mobile protoss with tonnes of new tricks (personal favorite was the recall into main and stasis their ramp for the free win). The terran reaction? Turtle and never attack. Seriously, there was a 6ish month period where every terrans gameplan was early timing or split the map with 30 turrets and mines in their main. Gradually as people improved in their vs arbiter play the matchup got less and less turtly again. Another example: destination mech tvz. Split map games into no minerals left was not rare at all. What im saying isnt that this will for sure happen to sh zvp zvt but lets give it a little more time and focus on some smaller changes before axing a unit that actually has done a ton of good in terms of creating more positional play... Oh and I enjoyed reality vs sk. Yeah it shows some problems but people are overreacting. This was an very interesting read. Was it around 2007 the arbiter play got more common? And would you say broodwar were funnier to observe before this camp time? When terran learned to be more agressive again, was it better or worse gameplay than before?
2005-6 I think. I quit in 2007 to play poker.
Yeah I would say games improved, terrans became a lot better overall at dealing with arbiters (sci vessel for instance to emp before recall) and they made builds that got to 3-3 a lot more efficiently.
Another era people like to forget is the zvp 3 base spore lurker sunken turtle into either more turtle (with more sunk spore lurker) or island expands with ultra ling snd ling drops.
Protoss players in general were horrible at dealing with this for the longest time. My approach was to be as lame as them which lead to a lot of long games :p
The matchup grew out of it as both sides got better and better.
Edit: and the maps got better too.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Btw I think sc2 looks like a way better game nowadays than when I played... maps are 10x better and the games are generally more interesting. Players obv better too.
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On February 11 2014 20:35 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2014 19:55 Sapphire.lux wrote:On February 11 2014 18:51 Big J wrote:On February 11 2014 18:15 Sapphire.lux wrote:On February 11 2014 17:32 Big J wrote:On February 11 2014 10:46 avilo wrote:
Just thought i'd add my two cents here considering i've played hundreds of mech vs swarmhost games since the HOTS beta:
Swarmhosts are the main issue that creates boring long 1 hr turtle games. Mech cannot ever attack into free units and expect to win - much like Protoss cannot do the same in PvZ, and Protoss and Terran mech operate in a very similar fashion.
Stop right there. I have seen you and Goody and others play 1hr long turtle styles in Wings, long before SHs existed. I have played those styles and played against them. I have seen those styles being played by other people like Lyyna. Again, long before SHs existed, in TvZ and TvP. Meanwhile all of those games/styles featured massive siege tank counts... It was because of the BL/Infestor. In HOTS Terran got much better anti air though the combined ups and cheaper SM so the BL is not a sleep and stale mate inducing unit any more. Its place is taken now by the SH. Free units are stupid basically. Lucifron, Mvp where very timingbased Mech players in WoL. Most people would argue that your best chance of beating Zerg was to push before BL/Infestor, regardless of Mech- or Bioplay. That's true and it's because BL/Infestor was broken. That's beside the point though. INnoVation vs Soulkey from the IEM qualifiers, DRG vs Flash... all of those games feature lots of aggression from the Mechplayer. Before the upgrade/tank patch Mech vs Zerg was mainly being played off the back of doing damage with hellions or hellion/banshee and very often transitioning into timingattacks. I disagree about the Inovation soulkey games but agree with the DRG Flash ones. Before the patch, mech was basically very bad and could only get wins if some huge and lucky yearly game dmg was done. There is a bunch of stuff you can do with Mech aggressively. But sitting back and doing nothing is an option for Mech as well in TvZ and some players are going to use that option. Same goes for the Zerg of course, for as long as those games don't become the rule (and proof to be boring!) I don't see the problem. If they become the rule, then Mech is to blame just as much as SHs. I'm not saying it's set in stone yet, but when Zerg goes mass SH the games are 99% going to be turtle vs turtle because there is very little Terran can do about it. On the other hand, when Terran goes mech, Zerg has the option to do a number of things, from the very fun IMO Roach Hydra Viper, Mutas, Nidus etc. So it's not fair to say that mech is just as much to blame. Saying Zerg can go Roach/Hydra/Viper vs Mech is the same as saying Mech can go for a hellbat/tank/thor timing. It works, if it catches the opponent of guard and gets beaten by building enough tanks and vikings.
Everything gets beaten by something or other. This is not just about balance though, like i've said before. It's about boring ass play and uninteresting fights. Maybe Roach Hydra Vipers is not the best way to play, although it's unexplored due to the eficiancy of SH play, but it makes for more interesting fights (Nidus used to augment R/H/V not all in).
I hate to go in to the design argument, but this is where it is. Even ignoring the free units thing, it's retarded to fight siege units with even longer range siege units. In TvT tank vs tank is an equal fight in terms of ease of use and range so positioning wins, but SH and i suspect in the near future Tempests, just make for stupid games. Styles should contrast one another.
Mutalisk switches are strong if you have traded before, else you need something that can prevent the opponent from just moving over and killing you, hence, swarm hosts.
But you can see how SH, unlike Tanks, are not just defensive in that sense. They contain the opponent for large amounts of time making most of the map useless, killing action, map movement, tactics.
Nydus, no clue what you are theorycrafting here. Haven't seen nydus play utlized at all against Mech in a macro game. If anything it is the equivalent to some double factory hellion play.
Yeah, i was theorycrafting about it being used along side a roach/hydra comp, not an all in.
Saying Zerg can rely on all those things while telling the world that nothing Mech works apart from turtling is just plain bias.
Zerg has a choice to not kill the game with mass SH when facing mech (though they would be silly not to since it works so well) and Terran does not seem to have a choice from turtling super hard when fighting against mass SH. This is not bias, it's what i've seen. There were some exceptions, like the DRG Flash games, and maybe it's a sign of the future, or just that, an exception.
Also don't know why you disagree with the INnoVation Soulkey game. INnoVation attacked a lot with stray groups of units to take down hatcheries as far as I remember.
I'm not sure i remember correctly either, but i remember Soulkey being prety much maxed with thousands of min/ gas for most of the game and the Hatcheries killed by Inovation were really of very little if any consequence.
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Russian Federation367 Posts
Blizzard should rework SC2's gameplay overall, just look at Starbow - this thing is just copying BW with a few interesting additions and it is great!
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On February 11 2014 22:07 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
Btw I think sc2 looks like a way better game nowadays than when I played... maps are 10x better and the games are generally more interesting. Players obv better too.
Thanks again for your comments, Jinro. In many cases, BW is (mis)used as the ultimate footnote. It's nice to hear, from someone who was actually involved in the scene for most of that time, that BW looks to have gone through as many peaks and troughs as SC2 is. The more I learn, the more I think that SC2 and BW are more similar than often realised.
It's also a caution for us as a community not to over-react to every damn little thing.
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Sweden33719 Posts
I wouldnt say as many, and I do think bw is the better game, but people sometimes act like bw was only the modern era of good maps and a balanced state.
Bw had balance crying as well, some of it well documented on this site if you search I bet. Especially pvz.
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Oh, I didn't think you said otherwise. 
I didn't play BW at even a semi-serious level so have no way to say which game is better. All things considered it very probably was and is the better game. But, if SC2 is second best to BW, that is still pretty damned good don't you think?
As for me, I really like SC2 to play and to watch. I probably always will. (Maybe much like hard core BW fans.)
I just appreciated your comment because, like I said, BW is often misused as the ultimate footnote so it was good to get correct information from someone who was actually around for most of BW and does not wear rose-tinted glasses.
And yeah, I had suspected that there would be whining then (as now). Human nature does not change. We love to complain.
Nice to see you posting more too, btw.
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On February 11 2014 16:02 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Many people have actually proposed changing them to 1/2 supply, which I think would be a great change. Of course it would completely screw up early game timings, but those would be figured out again and settle pretty quickly I think.
If they do that why not double the supply cost of all other units and make the cap 400/400 ( or 500 or 1000 or whatever if you bump it up), so there aren't any fractions. 1/2 supply Zerglings are fine but 1/2 supply workers would be a bit weird at the start of the game.
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On February 12 2014 12:29 Lunker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 11 2014 16:02 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Many people have actually proposed changing them to 1/2 supply, which I think would be a great change. Of course it would completely screw up early game timings, but those would be figured out again and settle pretty quickly I think. If they do that why not double the supply cost of all other units and make the cap 400/400 ( or 500 or 1000 or whatever if you bump it up), so there aren't any fractions. 1/2 supply Zerglings are fine but 1/2 supply workers would be a bit weird at the start of the game.
This is actually a better idea, because then many units which currently should probably have fractional supplies for balance reasons could be changed to have whole number supplies. The two that come to mind are roaches at 1.5 supply and tanks at 2.5 supply - these could work when doubled to 3 and 5 respectively.
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On February 12 2014 12:50 -NegativeZero- wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2014 12:29 Lunker wrote:On February 11 2014 16:02 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Many people have actually proposed changing them to 1/2 supply, which I think would be a great change. Of course it would completely screw up early game timings, but those would be figured out again and settle pretty quickly I think. If they do that why not double the supply cost of all other units and make the cap 400/400 ( or 500 or 1000 or whatever if you bump it up), so there aren't any fractions. 1/2 supply Zerglings are fine but 1/2 supply workers would be a bit weird at the start of the game. This is actually a better idea, because then many units which currently should probably have fractional supplies for balance reasons could be changed to have whole number supplies. The two that come to mind are roaches at 1.5 supply and tanks at 2.5 supply - these could work when doubled to 3 and 5 respectively.
I really like this idea and maybe you could even go to 300 instead of doubling to 400 so deathballs are even less deathbally.
If you have 60 1 supply workers out of 300 you have 240 left for army which would be 120 in the current system which is pretty good except with mech but then if you round down like you mention for the tank it's pretty close to the same. You can do it for the Thor and BC as well, Carriers, Hydras, Corruptors...
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On February 10 2014 22:14 Phaenoman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2014 22:07 bo1b wrote:On February 10 2014 22:03 Qikz wrote:
Swarmhosts just shouldn't exist. Reality should have won the first game with his slow push but he could barely move because soulkey had an endless supply of free units. They're just simply badly designed, nothing should be free in an RTS. How can you be so unbelievably biased as to believe that building pfs turrets ravens and vikings then sitting in your base for 1.5 hours before moving out, losing half your army and then still having an army zerg can't beat is a strat worthy of winning? That strat is fucking stupid, sh are the only way zerg has a chance, and that map is awful. The combined apm in that game must have been like 150. Think the other way round. Maybe the way Terran is forced to play like this is bcuz of the SH itself. U just cannot move out unless u have 10+ Ravens. I bet no Terran wants to play like this. Turtle 1,5h or move out earlier and get smashed in most of the games.
No, in the SK vs Reality game, the turtle mech army was established before the sh were produced. It's the zerg who was forced to turtle because the terran had started massing ravens behind his tank/vikings line. Terrans must be really biased to see this game and thing the problem only comes from zerg. If I had to choose I would say it's the terran who started turtling, but obviously this all comes from the game design for the TvZ match-up.
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Regarding all those ideas about increasing supply limits, this is certainly a possible approach but it is not the only one. The very same issue can be approached from the opposite angle. Instead of increasing supply limit to accommodate for SC2's economy and more rapid production, we can slow down the economy and production.
This can net us similar result with several benefits compared to the limit increase.
1. Hardware issue. With larger limits from both sides we would increase hardware requirements of the game. This is not always an issue but it certainly can be one in some cases. There's a reason pro players usually don't use high graphical settings. Plus, while 1vs1 is considered the main game mode, team games (2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4) are still played by people and they usually put a much higher load on the user's PC because of the amount of units involved.
2. Micro and game pace issues. The more units you have the less time and attention you can spend on microing them.
In low counts many units can be microed individually or in small groups which may enhance their performance greatly. But when you have a lot of them, microing just becomes less and less efficient because it is physically impossible to spent the same amount of attention/time per unit/group. At some point you can't do anything better than to A move most of your troops and micro only a select few or spend your APM elsewhere instead. The game is played in real-time, so there's only that much you can do during a given time period.
You would have more time/opportunity to micro because critical amount of firepower, when the fights tend to end very quickly, will be harder and slower to reach for both sides. Which in its turn would reduce those cases when you are losing the whole game just because you weren't looking at the exactly right spot for ~3 seconds and lost something very important, like half of your army, before you could react.
Additionally, in large mass units start to hinder each other because of map constraints and even pathing issues.
I feel like I can elaborate on all this a lot more and make many examples, but it's probably not needed. I'm not the only one who thought about this and probably not the first one who mentioned something similar to this.
This approach is much better than simply increasing max limit, but it also requires more effort from developers. And, what's more important, it involves making changes to the very core game mechanics, like economy and production as well as rebalancing a lot of things.
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On February 11 2014 02:43 Liquid`Snute wrote:
What is the problem exactly?
You get a late-game, players expand towards each other, split the map and then they trade. Whoever trades better (this takes skill) wins.
There's not more to it and there is nothing wrong about it from a game perspective except for most humans finding it boring.
...
Blizzard have all the options in the world to promote expanding and aggressive plays in SC2 by making gas units more worthwhile (buff), introducing gas units to T3/T4(!) tech, shifting the mineral:gas ratio of powerful units more towards gas ...
6 workers mining gas get 228 gas per minute.
6 workers mining minerals get 270 minerals per minute.
However:
Gas income is limited to 6 workers per base.
Mineral income is limited to 16-22 workers per base.
If massing gas units was more valuable than mineral units, there would be more incentive to expand without raising the supply cap. A player running on 14gas could very easily break a 8gas (4base turtle) player after accumulating a small bank.
But there are very few units that are heavier on gas than minerals. This is an opportunity that is currently not utilized by SC2.
Claiming the macro design in itself to be terrible is not entirely true because it's the unit costs and resulting compositions that are causing issues, not the mineral/gas game in itself. Very few seem mindful of this.
This is a great post for any who missed it. Quite the basic concept that no one normally would think about.
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There are some better ideas showing up in this thread and the Swarm Host thread than I have seen in a while.
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On February 12 2014 10:41 Liquid`Jinro wrote:
I wouldnt say as many, and I do think bw is the better game, but people sometimes act like bw was only the modern era of good maps and a balanced state.
Bw had balance crying as well, some of it well documented on this site if you search I bet. Especially pvz.
You are totally right! Nevertheless, I am frustrated that Blizzard didn't learn as much as they should have from Broodwar.
Or maybe it is that they introduced too many new things to the game that makes rebalancing the game based on the old data impossible? Either way, too late for that anyways.
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Northern Ireland23816 Posts
On February 12 2014 18:16 Pontius Pirate wrote:
There are some better ideas showing up in this thread and the Swarm Host thread than I have seen in a while.
There are usually good ideas floating around every TL design/balance thread, not all of them are amazing by any means but there's some good stuff here. I hope Blizz are lurking around to at least consider some things they might not have
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On February 13 2014 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On February 12 2014 18:16 Pontius Pirate wrote:
There are some better ideas showing up in this thread and the Swarm Host thread than I have seen in a while. There are usually good ideas floating around every TL design/balance thread, not all of them are amazing by any means but there's some good stuff here. I hope Blizz are lurking around to at least consider some things they might not have
Do you think it's healthy for a starcraft 2 game designer to spend too much time in the depths of TL design threads? If I was a designer I probably couldn't resist, but I never feel like David Kim does so. Maybe he has good reasons though.
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Northern Ireland23816 Posts
On February 13 2014 01:58 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2014 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote:On February 12 2014 18:16 Pontius Pirate wrote:
There are some better ideas showing up in this thread and the Swarm Host thread than I have seen in a while. There are usually good ideas floating around every TL design/balance thread, not all of them are amazing by any means but there's some good stuff here. I hope Blizz are lurking around to at least consider some things they might not have Do you think it's healthy for a starcraft 2 game designer to spend too much time in the depths of TL design threads? If I was a designer I probably couldn't resist, but I never feel like David Kim does so. Maybe he has good reasons though.
I've long advocated that Blizz should employ some guy just to go around and collate interesting ideas to bring to the dev team.
From personal recollection, I do recall that the Carrier video that Nony did was interesting to David Kim and the team precisely because the way the micro worked in Brood War was actually news to them, and they made statements to that effect.
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On February 13 2014 02:02 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2014 01:58 Grumbels wrote:On February 13 2014 01:51 Wombat_NI wrote:On February 12 2014 18:16 Pontius Pirate wrote:
There are some better ideas showing up in this thread and the Swarm Host thread than I have seen in a while. There are usually good ideas floating around every TL design/balance thread, not all of them are amazing by any means but there's some good stuff here. I hope Blizz are lurking around to at least consider some things they might not have Do you think it's healthy for a starcraft 2 game designer to spend too much time in the depths of TL design threads? If I was a designer I probably couldn't resist, but I never feel like David Kim does so. Maybe he has good reasons though. I've long advocated that Blizz should employ some guy just to go around and collate interesting ideas to bring to the dev team. From personal recollection, I do recall that the Carrier video that Nony did was interesting to David Kim and the team precisely because the way the micro worked in Brood War was actually news to them, and they made statements to that effect.
But that couldn't possibly be news to them if they had been TL regulars, or even if they had always watched State of the Game.
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Northern Ireland23816 Posts
It's annoying me, I can't find the response. I distinctly remember some of the things regarding leash distance and other of the intricacies of Carrier micro being something they weren't aware of, and this was them saying this.
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EPT
