The goal to split the map quickly and zergs need to prevent it in broodwar if the mech player managed to split the map he pretty much won the game. terran had the strongest late game army by a large margin. defender advantage was a big thing in broodwar however it didnt stop terran from attacking in late game to be cost effective anyway.
zerg always had the job to prevent the split map situation from happening against terran because of this. in result there would be natural incentive to constantly attack to fight over position and never sit back.
in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge. whoever attacks in late game usually ends up losing the game.
One race having a stronger late game army in starcraft 2 is problematic having this in starcraft 2 sounds imbalanced and we already been through WoL having zerg broodlord infestor army simply being stronger than protoss late game. the concept itself is not bad because it worked in broodwar but there are a few key reasons why this concept of design doesnt work well in staracraft 2.
1) the way economy works have been talked about a lot so i wont go into it too much in detail. basically mining from over 4 bases at a time doesnt give you an economical advantage where as in broodwar it was crucial for a player to keep expanding at a rapid rate. this created the dynamic of the terran player stretching out as much and as fast as possible while still being able to hold attacks. this allowed the zerg to find wholes in his defense and be successful by attacking to delay the terran. zerg could expand much more and waste more resources during this battle because he has a higher income.
the need for rapid expanding beyond 3 bases in starcraft 2 is not needed so zerg struggle to find the ways to be aggressive against a meching player.
2) the incentive to attack at all is lower because zerg isnt guaranteed death in a split map situation the same way they were in brood war. one could argue a spore crawler swarm host viper infestor army is just as strong as a mech late game army where attacking for either one of them means getting ineffective trades.
Final thoughts you can blame units like ravens, swarm hosts, siege tanks and broodlords all you want but i think the roots of the problems are at a much more basic level.
you watch proleague and think this is a minor issue because it almost never happens but in regions like europe this is not too uncommon that games end up with both players benefit from not attacking, or rather attacking means death.
im one of those guys who love mech and have been trying to make it work at many occasions, however because of the problems ive mentioned is a main reason why i dont like playing or watching it so much. i want mech to work but this is not the way i want it to play out.
i believe similar issues exists in every matchup in starcraft 2 and i think these problems will always be around and we will be reminded of them once in a while in games where split map games does happen.
i just wanted to share my view on why we see stalemates in starcraft 2 more often than broodwar and why turtle playstyles are much less action packed and uninteresting than they were in broodwar.
Terran, Zerg and Protoss all need a major rework. Urgently. I have no idea how but I'm not a game designer. I just know that if only slight changes are made until LotV whenever that is, it'll be too late.
Protoss mass carriers were always considered unbeatable once you got to a certain point. Artosis said it right when he said, don't let them get there. I think Soulkey did not try the right ways to battle this.
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.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
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.
As usual a good and accurate post on what lies beneath the units and the builds (which most people seem to focus exclusively on). I do however have a point of contention with something you said:
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote: in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge.
Is this really true? We have always talked about how it takes an entire army to deal with an entire army, that zoning and area control units are far less effective (compared to lurkers, old tanks, storm, etc) in SC2. And indeed when you look at most of the strategies considered game-breakingly strong, what were they? Pushes and timing attacks that would almost always cost the defender the game if he didn't properly defend. Bunkers rushes, 5rax reapers (which I'm sure you're familiar with ), 4gate, 7 roach rush, blue flame hellion drops, Polt's 1/1/1 marine-tank-raven shenanigans and every derivative timing attack, Stephano's quick mass Roach max into attack, PartinG's soul train immortal push, hellbat drops, widow mine parade pushes, and now we have the Blink attack in PvT which isn't even an all-in to boot.
I'd love to see your reasoning as to why the defender's advantage is huge in SC2. Or perhaps I misunderstood and you meant in late game specifically.
I am going to hit a dead horse and put some blame on the map used. Star Station is an outdated map first of all but also it's transition into a 2 player map have been anything but smooth.
We have been here before and it is an overly repeated concept that doesn't work. You can't have a map where 4 or more bases are covered with only 2 entrances.
These kinds of games. They are not new just because Swarm hosts are new. WOL had them as well. It happened on the Original Shakuras Plateau. Dare I remind you about Metropolis where this was basically the norm. Mech and Swarm host just extends this even further, and Blizzard does seem to be aware of this problem.
We can all agree that games like those shouldn't happen but there are multiple factors that all cause this. Proleague tends to have some innovative maps but in this case they are hopeless behind with a map that everyone else already have trashed.
This kind of playstyles must be completely removed from game or reworked. Its very frustrating to watch games like Soulkey vs Reality and much more frustrating to play. Blizz, do something!
A symptom of this is that you need to lose units once you reach 200/200 to build your ultimate composition. Even if that means just throwing them into a meatgrinder for 0 gains. Roaches and stalkers are prime examples of this. This also implies that army composition gets much more important than tactics in the later stages of a game and players are free to almost mindlessly spam static defenses (and orbitals) just because you accumulate resources you can't actually spend on army since you don't want (edit: or don't need to) to attack. I absolutely dislike it.
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.
Well, by the same token, turtle mech is kind of the only choice when facing someone with muta ling bling control of Soulkey. The chances of beating SK with 4M is pretty low after the nerfs.
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.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
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.
Well, by the same token, turtle mech is kind of the only choice when facing someone with muta ling bling control of Soulkey. The chances of beating SK with 4M is pretty low after the nerfs.
Or other top 10 korean zergs.
edit: Also the OP is a little long drawn. All of that could be said in 4 sentences.
Noobs making games. Need to be a good reason to leave your base, all game long, and fight for positions. There ain't always. Hence, turtle. Obvious to anyone with a brain, really.
Noob game designers not taking this into account since the dawn of multiplayer.
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.
Well, by the same token, turtle mech is kind of the only choice when facing someone with muta ling bling control of Soulkey. The chances of beating SK with 4M is pretty low after the nerfs.
I'm not debating that, I'm just kind of annoyed that people are acting like sitting in your base and building turrets is a great display of skill. The mine nerf should never have happened, combined upgrades is retarded, and the pdd needs to get removed along with the swarmhost.
On February 10 2014 22:08 MasterOfPuppets wrote: As usual a good and accurate post on what lies beneath the units and the builds (which most people seem to focus exclusively on). I do however have a point of contention with something you said:
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote: in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge.
Is this really true? We have always talked about how it takes an entire army to deal with an entire army, that zoning and area control units are far less effective (compared to lurkers, old tanks, storm, etc) in SC2. And indeed when you look at most of the strategies considered game-breakingly strong, what were they? Pushes and timing attacks that would almost always cost the defender the game if he didn't properly defend. Bunkers rushes, 5rax reapers (which I'm sure you're familiar with ), 4gate, 7 roach rush, blue flame hellion drops, Polt's 1/1/1 marine-tank-raven shenanigans and every derivative timing attack, Stephano's quick mass Roach max into attack, PartinG's soul train immortal push, hellbat drops, widow mine parade pushes, and now we have the Blink attack in PvT which isn't even an all-in to boot.
I'd love to see your reasoning as to why the defender's advantage is huge in SC2. Or perhaps I misunderstood and you meant in late game specifically.
im sorry for not being very clear in my post. i meant defender advantage in split map is very huge by the fact that if you have your zerg army attack into PFs tanks pdds raven hsm etc you lose everything. and if terran moves out on creep their units get abducted into spore crawlers and swarm hosts are difficult to get through and getting chain fungeled is hard to deal with. thats what i meant with defender advantage. in broodwar the mech army didnt get weaker by moving outside planetary turret range because you could easily set up mines and stuff to push forward. also there was no creep speed advantage (which makes units like ultralisks almost useless as an aggressive unit)
On February 10 2014 22:08 MasterOfPuppets wrote: As usual a good and accurate post on what lies beneath the units and the builds (which most people seem to focus exclusively on). I do however have a point of contention with something you said:
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote: in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge.
Is this really true? We have always talked about how it takes an entire army to deal with an entire army, that zoning and area control units are far less effective (compared to lurkers, old tanks, storm, etc) in SC2. And indeed when you look at most of the strategies considered game-breakingly strong, what were they? Pushes and timing attacks that would almost always cost the defender the game if he didn't properly defend. Bunkers rushes, 5rax reapers (which I'm sure you're familiar with ), 4gate, 7 roach rush, blue flame hellion drops, Polt's 1/1/1 marine-tank-raven shenanigans and every derivative timing attack, Stephano's quick mass Roach max into attack, PartinG's soul train immortal push, hellbat drops, widow mine parade pushes, and now we have the Blink attack in PvT which isn't even an all-in to boot.
I'd love to see your reasoning as to why the defender's advantage is huge in SC2. Or perhaps I misunderstood and you meant in late game specifically.
im sorry for not being very clear in my post. i meant defender advantage in split map is very huge by the fact that if you have your zerg army attack into PFs tanks pdds raven hsm etc you lose everything. and if terran moves out on creep their units get abducted into spore crawlers and swarm hosts are difficult to get through and getting chain fungeled is hard to deal with. thats what i meant with defender advantage. in broodwar the mech army didnt get weaker by moving outside planetary turret range because you could easily set up mines and stuff to push forward. also there was no creep speed advantage (which makes units like ultralisks almost useless as an aggressive unit)
Ah I see. It certainly makes a lot of sense now, thanks for clarifying. ^^
So to put both of these into perspective, the game's in this weird place where earlier on you're quite vulnerable to timing attacks, whereas late-game (and especially in split map situations) whoever makes the more aggressive moves is punished. Doesn't this mean that trying to fix either of the problems without a significant overhaul to other aspects of the game (indeed you might even say the game's fundamental core design) will just exacerbate the other?
Is there a way to rework units or add in upgrades for instance so as to make aggressive play more viable later on that would not be exploited early on by people simply rushing for it and optimizing their builds to get it as soon as possible and use it to just crush the other guy outright?
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.
Why do you think that happens?
Oh right, it's because you can't actually leave your base or you die to everything the zerg has. You're forced to turtle with mech it it gets past a certain part in the game or if you have the map advantage since zerg has such a strong lategame vs mech.
Much like in BW mech should be a powerful army that either needs to be stopped before it gets too big, or get shut down by sending multiple waves of units after using your insane map control against it. It shouldn't be completely screwed because everything the zerg has makes it impossible to move out of your own base. Infact, it was that reason that stopped me playing and watching (unless it's SKT rarely) SC2 all together months ago.
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.
their apm was over 200 when they showed the apm-tab quite late in the game. apm really doesnt say anything.
I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote: The goal to split the map quickly and zergs need to prevent it in broodwar if the mech player managed to split the map he pretty much won the game. terran had the strongest late game army by a large margin. defender advantage was a big thing in broodwar however it didnt stop terran from attacking in late game to be cost effective anyway.
zerg always had the job to prevent the split map situation from happening against terran because of this. in result there would be natural incentive to constantly attack to fight over position and never sit back.
in starcraft 2 every race has a strong late game army and the defender advantage is pretty huge. whoever attacks in late game usually ends up losing the game.
One race having a stronger late game army in starcraft 2 is problematic having this in starcraft 2 sounds imbalanced and we already been through WoL having zerg broodlord infestor army simply being stronger than protoss late game. the concept itself is not bad because it worked in broodwar but there are a few key reasons why this concept of design doesnt work well in staracraft 2.
1) the way economy works have been talked about a lot so i wont go into it too much in detail. basically mining from over 4 bases at a time doesnt give you an economical advantage where as in broodwar it was crucial for a player to keep expanding at a rapid rate. this created the dynamic of the terran player stretching out as much and as fast as possible while still being able to hold attacks. this allowed the zerg to find wholes in his defense and be successful by attacking to delay the terran. zerg could expand much more and waste more resources during this battle because he has a higher income.
the need for rapid expanding beyond 3 bases in starcraft 2 is not needed so zerg struggle to find the ways to be aggressive against a meching player.
2) the incentive to attack at all is lower because zerg isnt guaranteed death in a split map situation the same way they were in brood war. one could argue a spore crawler swarm host viper infestor army is just as strong as a mech late game army where attacking for either one of them means getting ineffective trades.
Final thoughts you can blame units like ravens, swarm hosts, siege tanks and broodlords all you want but i think the roots of the problems are at a much more basic level.
you watch proleague and think this is a minor issue because it almost never happens but in regions like europe this is not too uncommon that games end up with both players benefit from not attacking, or rather attacking means death.
im one of those guys who love mech and have been trying to make it work at many occasions, however because of the problems ive mentioned is a main reason why i dont like playing or watching it so much. i want mech to work but this is not the way i want it to play out.
i believe similar issues exists in every matchup in starcraft 2 and i think these problems will always be around and we will be reminded of them once in a while in games where split map games does happen.
i just wanted to share my view on why we see stalemates in starcraft 2 more often than broodwar and why turtle playstyles are much less action packed and uninteresting than they were in broodwar.
that pretty much describes what a tvz mech game in SC2 looks like, so you're not helping your point
thanks for saying this. Was just writing the same thing in the Proleague LR thread.
It is not the units. The basic problem why this stuff is happening is the economy. And if you want proof for that, go back to 2011 when Daybreak got introduced and before Ghosts were nerfed. TvZ also sometimes became a splitmap scenario. Same with BL/Infestor later on, especially on maps (mainly Metropolis) where the Terran could actually get to the mass Skyarmy that actually could combat BL/Infestor. Or just watch any avilo games. Or some Stephano. Or some goody.
Those players were pretty strong turtleplayers regardless of the exact balance and which units were involved exactly. It is not the units in particular, it is the economy that allows for tight, defensive play. Which then punishes attacking.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
I watched the first game between SK and Reality and i have to say it was the most boring game ever, 2 hours of locust genocide, 500+ kills on a single tank. Some changes need to be made, cause if more games become like this viewer numbers will drop. But hey, maybe David Kim will decrease neosteel bunker upgrade cost and "balance" all matchups.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
Blizzard is a fossil. It's way too big to be the reactive power it needs to be, and the people in charge are way too scared of consequences if they fuck up. David Kim isn't a lead designer at this point, he's a fucking statistician that doesn't want to shake anything up in case numbers starts to look wrong in his monthly report to Bobby Kottik.
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.
On February 10 2014 22:51 bokchoi wrote: let's just drop hots and play starbow competitively
i'm curious. How is the popularity of starbow their S. Korea ?
do pro players try the game ? or have BW stars tried the game yet ? never heard any news or opinions about starbow from S. Korea
I'd also be interested to know what the general Korean community and pros thinks about it.
What I can say though, is that the Axiom-Acer guys seem to really like it, that is the Axiom team and also MMA and Bogus. In fact they've even held an in-house tournament (which Bogus won ).
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
Blizzard is a fossil. It's way too big to be the reactive power it needs to be, and the people in charge are way too scared of consequences if they fuck up. David Kim isn't a lead designer at this point, he's a fucking statistician that doesn't want to shake anything up in case numbers starts to look wrong in his monthly report to Bobby Kottik.
This. People need to realize that the Blizzard of today is not the same company that made Brood war, Diablo II and Warcraft III. The Blizzard of today is the trainwreck company that made Battle.net "2.0", Diablo III, and Heart of the swarm. Blizzard will not save Starcraft. The only way to get the Starcraft that we, the community wants, is to make it ourselves. I personally believe that Starbow can be just that, the community taking Starcraft into it's own hands.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
Blizzard is a fossil. It's way too big to be the reactive power it needs to be, and the people in charge are way too scared of consequences if they fuck up. David Kim isn't a lead designer at this point, he's a fucking statistician that doesn't want to shake anything up in case numbers starts to look wrong in his monthly report to Bobby Kottik.
This. People need to realize that the Blizzard of today is not the same company that made Brood war, Diablo II and Warcraft III. The Blizzard of today is the trainwreck company that made Battle.net "2.0", Diablo III, and Heart of the swarm. Blizzard will not save Starcraft. The only way to get the Starcraft that we, the community wants, is to make it ourselves. I personally believe that Starbow can be just that, the community taking Starcraft into it's own hands.
Lol, yeah. "the community". Where has the community been in the last 2years of Starbow? The community doesn't take anything in their hands, because the community in general is clueless, lazy and whiny. Compared to how much bullshit has been suggested - no sorry - demanded by "the community", blizzard is really acing it with SC2.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
Blizzard is a fossil. It's way too big to be the reactive power it needs to be, and the people in charge are way too scared of consequences if they fuck up. David Kim isn't a lead designer at this point, he's a fucking statistician that doesn't want to shake anything up in case numbers starts to look wrong in his monthly report to Bobby Kottik.
This. People need to realize that the Blizzard of today is not the same company that made Brood war, Diablo II and Warcraft III. The Blizzard of today is the trainwreck company that made Battle.net "2.0", Diablo III, and Heart of the swarm. Blizzard will not save Starcraft. The only way to get the Starcraft that we, the community wants, is to make it ourselves. I personally believe that Starbow can be just that, the community taking Starcraft into it's own hands.
Lol, yeah. "the community". Where has the community been in the last 2years of Starbow? The community doesn't take anything in their hands, because the community in general is clueless, lazy and whiny. Compared to how much bullshit has been suggested - no sorry - demanded by "the community", blizzard is really acing it with SC2.
But the community is really good posting on websites with hyperbolic comments for based on a single proleague game that went full retard.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I'm feeling kinda sorry for Blizzard to be honest, because while they finally wised up and started taking more feedback and taking it more seriously, the changes that they're considering and employing are still far too limited and narrow in scope and focus, and while it's fantastic that they're finally giving things more time and more carefully examining the issues, at the end of the day some small tweaks in terms of a couple of units' spell cost, hitpoints, damage bonus or build time will not change anything in the long run, when the problems seem to be deeply rooted in the core game mechanics.
Honestly, I was gonna say that the fact that the game "drives from player stories" isn't a bad thing, considering many of these stories are created in game (from the in-game chat we used to see at some early MLG events, to even players' specific playstyles and the way they influence strategies and the meta), but then again I am reminded how many people seem to only care for the out-of-game drama rather than any facet of the game itself.
Blizzard is a fossil. It's way too big to be the reactive power it needs to be, and the people in charge are way too scared of consequences if they fuck up. David Kim isn't a lead designer at this point, he's a fucking statistician that doesn't want to shake anything up in case numbers starts to look wrong in his monthly report to Bobby Kottik.
This. People need to realize that the Blizzard of today is not the same company that made Brood war, Diablo II and Warcraft III. The Blizzard of today is the trainwreck company that made Battle.net "2.0", Diablo III, and Heart of the swarm. Blizzard will not save Starcraft. The only way to get the Starcraft that we, the community wants, is to make it ourselves. I personally believe that Starbow can be just that, the community taking Starcraft into it's own hands.
Lol, yeah. "the community". Where has the community been in the last 2years of Starbow? The community doesn't take anything in their hands, because the community in general is clueless, lazy and whiny. Compared to how much bullshit has been suggested - no sorry - demanded by "the community", blizzard is really acing it with SC2.
"The community" is not one entity with one will. There are very talented and passionate people in here, that know that SC2 is not the game that they wanted. Starbow, and other mods such as OneGoal and SC2BW is the result of this, and I admire the developers for all their hard work. It might take a bit of time, but I believe that people in time will choose the better game. SC2 is not that game IMO.
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.
reality will always play turtle mech, whether there is swarmhost or not. you can move against swarmhost style, you can leapfrog with raven pdd and enough tanks. it's just reality prefer sitting back to get that huge sky terran out.
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.
reality will always play turtle mech, whether there is swarmhost or not. you can move against swarmhost style, you can leapfrog with raven pdd and enough tanks. it's just reality prefer sitting back to get that huge sky terran out.
exactly. Think about the Reality vs Hydra game. Hydra didn't make swarm hosts, Reality played exactly like that. And he actually knew that Hydra didn't have SHs, because he saw the large Roach/Hydra army and thus knew that there was no supply left for other units. So he could have done something else, like move out and attack. Didn't matter. Played the exact same turtle style, and it was quite a slaughter. Because it is a very strong way to play regardless, hell, it is even better when the opponent is not constantly throwing locusts at you, since you will reach an even stronger army even sooner.
Well thats pretty much Morrow is saying... Why would you when you have a higher chance of dying if you push out.... Yea it can be done but you could sustain massive losses because of 1 false step where as if you just defend then youhave the higher chance of doing the same to your opponent giving them massive losses without so much as a dent in your army....
Don't really want to quote any post in particular, but Blizzard will never allow Starbow to "replace" SC2, even if it were a hundred times better (I don't know, I haven't played it).
Secondly, there are some design problems with SC2 that have been talked over to death, but I don't agree with people that claim that the units are not the problem. The swarmhost is a horrible unit idea. I'm (was) a Zerg player, and swarmhosts are basically the reason I never liked HotS and ultimately stopped playing. In fact, when the unit was first announced, I remember talking to friends about how horrible it was and hoping it would get scrapped. Sure enough, fast forward a year, and swarmhosts are literally ruining this game (the little awesomeness is had left). They are unfortunately not alone, but it's all been said a million times.
After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
Idk man, I'd figure if Blizzard buffs tanks too much we'd just see some crazy new marine tank timing push that's almost impossible to stop, before we get to see hour long turtle games.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
The dark future is already here and it's called swarm hosts.
I think it is still to early to call how these end game split map situations play out. I just saw that game between SK and Reality and they both seemed to be lost after a certain point in the game. They simply didn't know what to do. Both still hat options. In the end I think Reality should have won that game. He just didn't have enough experience in this situation to play it out. It seemed like he didn't really use his energy units most efficiently.
Soulkey on the other hand also really didn't use the full potential of his army. When there are a lot of point defense drones out he should have started to micro his locusts to kill just a little bit more. (Split, time the move in right, move command to cause splash damage on terran units). I was also quite surprised how well a few zerglings traded if they were sent in with locusts as a buffer. I can also imagine that zerg could do a bit more with other "swimming on the locust wave" tactics.
The situation really seems to be unexplored and nobody wants to attack or loose such long games because of stupid mistakes. I can imagine that once the koreans figure out the right unit comps and tactics one side might have the edge in such passive games. After a certain point this game seemed like early WOL with both players having no idea what the next step is or how to use the unit they have most effectively.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
It took you this long? I basically foresaw this ever since Lucifron vs Goswser.
I've had enough turtle mech, SH and skytoss to last me 10 lifetimes. Now lets think of ways to make the game more dynamic and less turtly for all races.
On February 10 2014 22:51 bokchoi wrote: let's just drop hots and play starbow competitively
i'm curious. How is the popularity of starbow their S. Korea ?
do pro players try the game ? or have BW stars tried the game yet ? never heard any news or opinions about starbow from S. Korea
Starbow is currently not up on KR server. Translation is soon complete and it should be up by the end of this week.
oh .. good good .. it would be nice to know the feedback of KR pros about it. Both BW and sc2 KR pros.
Koreans aren't gonna waste their time playing it lol.
Of course not. I mean, it's not like some of them already do...lol
Just some Axiom players because TB wanted some content for Youtube.
Don't bullshit about that, the players liked it a lot and only then did TB decide to take a look at it and do something a little more interesting (like a mini-tournament) with it.
I Broodwar Siege Tanks are kind of extreme units, when you consider it's huge range. But then in SC2 there's also Tempest with 15 range and Swarm Host with even further range. Just makes the dead zone so much bigger, when there's 20 range between the two armies, it rly does make sense that we have prolonged turtle games. When you have extreme units, you get extreme situations.
Is there an extension mod for the SC2BW/Starbow economy? How would SC2 play out with worker wandering, assuming no balance changes for the moment? Is that not the solution being suggested in the OP?
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
The dark future is already here and it's called swarm hosts.
There are way more issues in this game than swarm hosts. Enough Ravens making terran armies literally unkillable (with ranged units) is equally dumb.
Most of Blizzard's new units are horrible. It's not just swarm hosts.
Broodlords pretty much ruined WoL, but nobody makes them anymore because they have SH. Ravens have been stupid for ages, it's just that you have to play the kind of style mentioned in the OP to afford them (ie: boring as hell). Ghosts are only useful in one M/U or against shit opponents with poor map awareness ever since the massive nerf to snipe + emp (which was to counter an obvious deficiency in zerg where they had no real counter to ghosts - gg Blizz). Widow-mines are shit. Hellbats are shit now, and their circular AoE should have been easy to foresee as a problem when combined with medivacs. Mothership is a hero unit - nuff said - this isn't Warcraft 3 or a MOBA. Let's not forget about the glitch ultralisks that ruined a GSL semi-final.
Starbow may be the answer, but let's see how much of a fuck Blizzard gives about this game once people stop laddering altogether. Knowing them, they'll probably make some shameless copy of the mod, call it Starcraft 3 and make a couple more million dollars off of the last few delusional fans who actually expect quality out of Blizzard.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
The dark future is already here and it's called swarm hosts.
Raven/Viking/tank is just as dark. Just blobed up flying units that alpha strike any unit that comes near. It's has horrible and dull.
On February 10 2014 23:45 Plansix wrote: After that game, I have seen the dark future that we would face if Blizzard buffed tanks to much. Turret rings and Viking blobs. It's a future I am not willing to face.
The dark future is already here and it's called swarm hosts.
Raven/Viking/tank is just as dark. Just blobed up flying units that alpha strike any unit that comes near. It's has horrible and dull.
Lets just agree that any turtle style, regardless of which race is doing it, is boring, dull and uninteresting.
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.
Why do you think that happens?
Oh right, it's because you can't actually leave your base or you die to everything the zerg has. You're forced to turtle with mech it it gets past a certain part in the game or if you have the map advantage since zerg has such a strong lategame vs mech.
Much like in BW mech should be a powerful army that either needs to be stopped before it gets too big, or get shut down by sending multiple waves of units after using your insane map control against it. It shouldn't be completely screwed because everything the zerg has makes it impossible to move out of your own base. Infact, it was that reason that stopped me playing and watching (unless it's SKT rarely) SC2 all together months ago.
Did we watch the same game? Reality had absolutely no intention of going anywhere till he got full upgrades, 5 turtled up bases and 200 army supply of ultimate, unbeatable Terran composition.
Or are you telling me that suddenly Zerg is the race that forces other races into particular unit compositions? Oh, right. Must be why all the Terrans used to play bio in TvZ. They had to adapt to Zerg going Ling / Bling / Muta. /sarcasm
Go look up SK vs. Innovation or Maru vs. SK and you'll see that meching Terran is more than capable of applying pressure vs. Zerg.
I feel like the underlying problem is simply the supply cap. You very rarely get to the 200 cap in BW because you don't need as much workers and units in general cost less supply than in sc2. This means that a turtling player will almost never get to overcome the huge supply advantage that an expanding player has, no matter how awesome their late game unit composition is. I would like to see what happens when the cap gets raised to 300/400 for example, bet everything will change drastically then.
Yep, supply cap. With everyone hitting 200 supply really early every game strategy gets wonky. Traditionally you'd think, enemy expands, I attack. Enemy attacks, I defend. Enemy defends, I expand. Except that last one goes sideways once you hit supply cap.
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.
Why do you think that happens?
Oh right, it's because you can't actually leave your base or you die to everything the zerg has. You're forced to turtle with mech it it gets past a certain part in the game or if you have the map advantage since zerg has such a strong lategame vs mech.
Much like in BW mech should be a powerful army that either needs to be stopped before it gets too big, or get shut down by sending multiple waves of units after using your insane map control against it. It shouldn't be completely screwed because everything the zerg has makes it impossible to move out of your own base. Infact, it was that reason that stopped me playing and watching (unless it's SKT rarely) SC2 all together months ago.
Did we watch the same game? Reality had absolutely no intention of going anywhere till he got full upgrades, 5 turtled up bases and 200 army supply of ultimate, unbeatable Terran composition.
Or are you telling me that suddenly Zerg is the race that forces other races into particular unit compositions? Oh, right. Must be why all the Terrans used to play bio in TvZ. They had to adapt to Zerg going Ling / Bling / Muta. /sarcasm
Go look up SK vs. Innovation or Maru vs. SK and you'll see that meching Terran is more than capable of applying pressure vs. Zerg.
And Inno and Maru did well vs Soulkey, right? Zergs can also try to bust a turtling Terran like Soulkey did in the re-match. It is just much more risky.
Mech just dies to everything Zerg has before mass ravens if T doesn't get a huge economic advantage in the beginning. Almost all Z go into SH when they see mech, regardless if the T is going to turtle or not. If they do not and the mech player tries to move out, you get crushed by vipers clouding the entire army or Mutalisks destroying all the bases.
I don't understand why so many people are against "turtle" play. I think it is quite inreresting to watch, when the players split the map, mine most of it out and then have to think twice about losing every single unit. Maybe it is not fast, shiny and full of explosions, but for me, the "standard" SC2 game is unnecessarrily fast and a lot of detail is lost by simplt not having enough time to watch everything.
The only flaw I see in "turtle" play at the moment is that most of the players haven't studied these situations enough and aren't mentally prepared to deal with them. I don't want to watch 30 minutes of macro with only light harassement into one of the players headbutting into a bad position and losing because he can't be bothered to play for longer, but I surely am willing to watch 30 minutes of macro for an hour of late game dance.
And if neither player ever attacks, that's a fair game too and that's why we have the tie for. The SC2 stalemate detection is probably too slow for that, but I don't see any reason why players couldn't be allowed to mutually agree to a tie using chat. It's just another strategic element to judge whether it is advantageous for them or not.
I thought you used to have the opinion there were too fee space controlling units?
Though I do agree split map is different in sc2 because both sides alvery have very cost effective defensive armies. In the late game its hard to break your opponent in a defensive position. But other than in very rare split map scenarios the attacker can sometimes take a good trade and deny some econ then rebuild and keep an advantage.
This is before the ultra cost effective death army is made though.
I think a lot of people in this thread are jumping to too many conclusions about the game and instead of discussions we are having a flame fest in here.
I feel like the reach and space control of some units like the tempest and swarm host contribute to a turtley play style. I mean Tempests are really weak vs non massive units and are bad without a lot of static defenseman but that was figured out long ago.
Hosts have yet to be figured out. I'm not sure if it will be in time or not though.
The biggest issue for me is the fact that three to 4 base transitions are so late in the game that you already have a very powerful army when you take that 4th for the additional gas to solidify that super late army transition. I think if we saw earlier 4/5 bases being taken with a tangible impact on army size we would see less turtle play since the 4th or 5th would need to be defended by a smaller army. Not sure if this will figure itself out or not. I remember when nats were hard to secure and timings on the third from 2 base were more effective. I think ATM players are taking late 4ths with big armies making trading that army mean the end of game so they turtle.
It might be just a lack of understanding on how to take the 4th without dying or to punish a 4th without going all in that is hurt I g us ATM as well. Though turtley cost effective armies don't help its possible the same understanding concerns that impacted early sc2 is happening again.
On February 11 2014 00:54 DooMDash wrote: How do we fix it pros?
A single match is proleague that went full retard? What and see of it happens again?
It's happening more and more, PvZ too. Shost has been pretty bad since beta anyway, either proxies with nydus/Queen or this turtling malarky
If we get another game where both sides mine out in the next two weeks, I might think something needs looking at. But a shift in the meta to more passive styles does not mean it will stay that way forever.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
really?
First off. Auto-Turrets can't move. Second, Auto-turrets cost energy. Third Auto-turrets don't benefit from fucking upgrades.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
really?
First off. Auto-Turrets can't move. Second, Auto-turrets cost energy. Third Auto-turrets don't benefit from fucking upgrades.
You're seriously trying to call them equal?
it does benefit from building armor upgrade (and the duration upgrade)
On February 11 2014 01:00 ZeromuS wrote: Hosts have yet to be figured out. I'm not sure if it will be in time or not though.
Really?
Is this like theory that Mech works just fine, it just hasn't been figured out yet? Or the old theory that Protoss players just need more time figure out the 1-1-1 and everything will be fine?
The funny thing about these theories is the solution is apparently so complex, that no one can figure them out.
This also reminds me of all the people who told me Terrans would invent new timings when I said the MSC will kill all early Terran aggression (such as 2 rax pressure). And that was before HOTS was released. Look how that turned out.
You see, some things you can just sit down and think about logically to figure out. Swarm Hosts are one of them. They are terrible unit that encourages turtle style.
However I think your next point has a lot of merit.
On February 11 2014 01:00 ZeromuS wrote: The biggest issue for me is the fact that three to 4 base transitions are so late in the game that you already have a very powerful army when you take that 4th for the additional gas to solidify that super late army transition. I think if we saw earlier 4/5 bases being taken with a tangible impact on army size we would see less turtle play since the 4th or 5th would need to be defended by a smaller army. Not sure if this will figure itself out or not. I remember when nats were hard to secure and timings on the third from 2 base were more effective. I think ATM players are taking late 4ths with big armies making trading that army mean the end of game so they turtle.
It might be just a lack of understanding on how to take the 4th without dying or to punish a 4th without going all in that is hurt I g us ATM as well. Though turtley cost effective armies don't help its possible the same understanding concerns that impacted early sc2 is happening again.
You did a nice job spelling out the reason that Morrow alluded to as why any certain race can't have a stronger end game than the other races. And the reason "basic" as Morrow says, it is the way the economy works in SC2.
Sadly, that will never change. The design team is far too stubborn. Instead we'll see odd nerfs or buffs come through.
SC2 is a good game. But I feel like there is so much potential that the current design team is unable to unlock.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
really?
First off. Auto-Turrets can't move. Second, Auto-turrets cost energy. Third Auto-turrets don't benefit from fucking upgrades.
You're seriously trying to call them equal?
it does benefit from building armor upgrade (and the duration upgrade)
Pretty sure it gets +1 from the hi-sec auto-tracking. May have to double-check that. Also, can be repaired (pretty good). The most redeeming feature of the auto-turret is its tendency to make ultras act retarded.
Sadly, that will never change. The design team is far too stubborn. Instead we'll see odd nerfs or buffs come through.
This part really confuses me. If you look at the WC3 expansion it had such huge sweeping changes. Different armor and damage types, racial item shops, a massive % decrease in gold cost to all units. It was a completely different game. I don't understand why HotS tried to play it so safe rather then truly improving the game.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
That isn't what they said at all. They said they are looking into it and want to find a change with will leave the swarm host as a useful unit.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
On February 06 2014 07:20 Pandain wrote:
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
Swarm hosts problem is that small pockets of them aren't particularly good, and they work much better with army/static D support + high numbers of SH. You're not getting around that with changes in the meta, the meta has changed to reflect the role that Swarmhosts fulfil the best
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
really?
First off. Auto-Turrets can't move. Second, Auto-turrets cost energy. Third Auto-turrets don't benefit from fucking upgrades.
You're seriously trying to call them equal?
it does benefit from building armor upgrade (and the duration upgrade)
I know that, the upgrades I was referring to was attack and armor upgrades.
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.
Because having one race designed to turtle and another designed to swarm all over the map was awesome to watch and I would love to see it back. <3
But I agree with Morrow, Raven and Planetaries are too much turtling power while no race ever has incentive to spread out because the economy is maxed out at three bases already.
Sadly, that will never change. The design team is far too stubborn. Instead we'll see odd nerfs or buffs come through.
This part really confuses me. If you look at the WC3 expansion it had such huge sweeping changes. Different armor and damage types, racial item shops, a massive % decrease in gold cost to all units. It was a completely different game. I don't understand why HotS tried to play it so safe rather then truly improving the game.
Dustin Browder literally said that they were thinking of looking into the economy system during htos beta but that it would be a huge endeavour and that they were already "so busy" with the marvel that is swarmhost and oracle that they had no time to look into it.
So basically, regardless of the answers D.Kim might give, they apparently do think the economy system could be better. But theyre not willing to change it nonetheless.
What I don't understand is why people want mech and then complain when it works.
Isn't mech by definition a very passive/turtle-based style? I think that making mech viable may actually be against the interests of SC2 players everywhere.
On February 11 2014 01:31 dcemuser wrote: What I don't understand is why people want mech and then complain when it works.
Isn't mech by definition a very passive/turtle-based style? I think that making mech viable may actually be against the interests of SC2 players everywhere.
yes a lot of complaints in this thread. I'm suprised it made the spotlight so fast as well
While the OP gave me insight about a fundamental difference of BW and SC2, I don't think that the solution to all SC2 problems is to emulate BW. I would still like to see an effort from Blizzard to require the player to expand more.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
You have completely misunderstood what DK said.
A unit is a tool given to the players. The designers had an idea of how the unit would be used, but it is in the players' hands to find alternate ways to utilize the unit. What he says is that they're giving players freedom.
The D3 team went the opposite way by saying "you're going to play the game the way we want it to be played", "we define what is 'fun' and what isn't", and removed gold from urns, nerfed chests and IAS.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
Mass Muta was a problem back in WoL. Tempest was introduced as a unit that is to counter mass muta once it reach critical number in the unit reveal panel, but they have changed it since the beta into a long range siege unit to focus on counting air massive unit The reason is because they went for a different direction on how to deal with mass muta, a buff to phoenix default range. This is probably because of a lot of players saying it will be useless since muta will be able to get a huge mid game advantage and roll the toss before (old) tempest can do anything.
On February 11 2014 01:31 dcemuser wrote: What I don't understand is why people want mech and then complain when it works.
Isn't mech by definition a very passive/turtle-based style? I think that making mech viable may actually be against the interests of SC2 players everywhere.
Shhhhhhhhhhh! We don't talk about that. Mech is the Esports promised land and we do not question it. It's all about positional play and deep SC2 game play that can be mistaken for boring, passive styles. But what you don't see is the beauty and wonder of each tank placement and the wonder of the Viking flock. It is truely a wonder to behold....
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.
Because having one race designed to turtle and another designed to swarm all over the map was awesome to watch and I would love to see it back. <3
But I agree with Morrow, Raven and Planetaries are too much turtling power while no race ever has incentive to spread out because the economy is maxed out at three bases already.
Raven and planetaries do have turtling power. But as you can see in the Soulkey Reality game, it is just enough to hold off the SH. So removing the turtling power would mean Soulkey's SH just breaks through after 5 minutes of constant rallying. One of the big issues is that you just can't really move forward on the ground against SH once they hit a certain number until you have full upgraded mech with air support.
I think banshees is a solution to SH but then you need air support so you just end up with an air Terran death ball.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
On February 06 2014 07:20 Pandain wrote:
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
Mass Muta was a problem back in WoL. Tempest was introduced as a unit that is to counter mass muta once it reach critical number in the unit reveal panel, but they have changed it since the beta into a long range siege unit to focus on counting air massive unit The reason is because they went for a different direction on how to deal with mass muta, a buff to phoenix default range. This is probably because of a lot of players saying it will be useless since muta will be able to get a huge mid game advantage and roll the toss before (old) tempest can do anything.
Let's assume you said is correct.
It just goes to highlight how Blizzard is unable to solve problems in the game.
I'd argue that Mass Muta wasn't a problem ,it just took some time to figure out. By the end of WOL, you never really saw it in tournaments, because Mass Blink Stalker and Storm handled it.
It became a problem again HOTS when they introduced Muta regen.
The main issue is that Blizzard tried and is still trying (rather unsuccessfully) to make SC2 appeal as much as possible to casual gamers, thus simplifying the game to the point where it is somewhat extremely unfit for high level play, mostly due to simplified micro and macro and easy to use, but for high level play badly designed units like swarm host and oracles.
But tell me, what happened to the problem of Zerg not having aggressive options in the midgame? Because that is the reason that Swarmhost exists.
If the problem never existed, then the Swarmhost was made for no reason. And what does that say about the design team?
Are you arguing that Zerg never had that problem or that SH cannot solve it?
EDIT: And from what I remember, wasn't their argument for introducing the SH that Zerg can often be in a lead but has problems finishing off their opponents?
I think the biggest issue is that there are 'free' units or spells. Basically, anything where Time is the limited factor instead of Resources (Swarm hosts versus Carriers for instance, the Swarm hosts have an indefinite supply of locusts so long as they are given the time, whereas carriers can ONLY have interceptors if they use 25 minerals). While it is even more extreme with SH's, it is also the case with basically anything with useful spells to use, like infestors, queens, BC's, ravens, etc.
It makes it so that your investments and efforts can result in no actual damage. So, instead of having something where every single action and attack matters, you have these drawn out situations where players are just waiting on Time before they do another action. [Proleague match with Soulkey and Reality g1] Soulkey has a bunch of swarm hosts, a single infestor, a few spores and a few queens. Reality has a bunch of vikings, ravens, siege tanks, and a few hellions and thors. The locusts were indefinite while the PDD's were indefinite. So, neither player actually is making any real ground because neither player needs resources or a unit's life (SOMETHING FINITE, NOT INFINITE) to sacrifice.
Every single action should be a thoughtful decision, where you must make a strategic choice instead of just falling back on things to refresh over time. Life on units and resources (min/gas) should be the limiting factor for things, NOT time.
But tell me, what happened to the problem of Zerg not having aggressive options in the midgame? Because that is the reason that Swarmhost exists.
If the problem never existed, then the Swarmhost was made for no reason. And what does that say about the design team?
Are you arguing that Zerg never had that problem or that SH cannot solve it?
Both.
And it evidenced by the fact the Swarmhost did not solve the problem, David Kim admitted this, and it has just created other issues.
What matchup are you talking about specifically?
Why do you frame it as me?
Blizzard did not specify which matchup (showing more incompetence...). They said when a Zerg got a big advantage early, they couldn't finish people off because they didn't have the aggressive tools in the midgame.
The Swarmhost was designed to fix this. We all know, and David Kim basically admitted it, that the Swarmhost failed at solving this problem. But what did Blizzard introduce to solve the problem? Nothing.
Why?
Because the problem never existed in the first place. Zergs didn't finish people off in WOL because it was safer to tech up to Hive and guarantee the win, then risk a mid game timing failing. When Hive tech sucked in early HOTS, Zergs did do mid game timings (especially against Terran) and won many games with them, ie Roach/Ling/Bane busts.
On February 11 2014 01:45 xuanzue wrote: I agree with Morrow. the problem is more deep than a simple "lel SH free units"
still I'll change the life-time locust's upgrade by a speed upgrade, and re-balance according to this.
Instead of having Swarmhosts spawn 2 ranged Locusts every 25 seconds, have a Swarmhost spawn 6-8 melee Broodlings (the same ones that come out of a kill Zerg building with the rough the same stats including fast movespeed) every 10 seconds. However the Broodlings have a life of ~5 seconds (upgradable to ~8 seconds).
What does this mean?
Well, it means a few Swarmhosts are much more powerful in small numbers and allow Zerg to tech to late game. But it also means that mass Swarmhosts do nothing since Broodling can't walk through each other, and the low life timer means that most of the Broodlings from a mass of Swarmhosts just die off before they do any damage. Thus, once they reach a certain number they reach maximum efficiency and additional Swarmhosts would do literally nothing.
Finally, it means that Swarmhosts aren't really a siege unit anymore, because their range would be reduced. But they'd be really good for splitting up the attention of your opponent and as a harassment unit to harass expansions.
On February 11 2014 01:25 Wombat_NI wrote: Swarm hosts problem is that small pockets of them aren't particularly good, and they work much better with army/static D support + high numbers of SH. You're not getting around that with changes in the meta, the meta has changed to reflect the role that Swarmhosts fulfil the best
I feel as if they're best suited for the trash bin. They would overlap with broods if they were hivetech, and overall they make the mid-game very boring in almost any match that they're used. Sure, occasionally we're treated to a "creative" use of SH within the bounds of the game's freedoms, but these fall short in the excitement department of creative uses for units that are actually entertaining.
I have been wondering if the economic problems, as morrow puts them, can be worked around with maps.
Could maps of 8 mineral patches and 2 gas geysers be changed to ensure a lower mining per base? Maybe 5 per base and 1 geyser only, however a larger amount contained in each to ensure similar longevity per base. This would make expanding more beneficial. It would of course affect balance, but the effect could be quite equal. I guess the mule would be maybe relatively more effective due to it not blocking other workers, but nevertheless it would still encourage more expanding and a more spread out gameplay.
On February 10 2014 22:43 Noocta wrote: I don't really know how much shit people need to endure to finally accept that SC2 isn't a really good competitive game. It drives from player stories and got its start from the Starcraft Brood war reputation.
I think what you're saying is a little unfair, there have been a fair share of bad games, but we've also witnessed some awesome ones.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
On February 06 2014 07:20 Pandain wrote:
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
Mass Muta was a problem back in WoL. Tempest was introduced as a unit that is to counter mass muta once it reach critical number in the unit reveal panel, but they have changed it since the beta into a long range siege unit to focus on counting air massive unit The reason is because they went for a different direction on how to deal with mass muta, a buff to phoenix default range. This is probably because of a lot of players saying it will be useless since muta will be able to get a huge mid game advantage and roll the toss before (old) tempest can do anything.
Let's assume you said is correct.
It just goes to highlight how Blizzard is unable to solve problems in the game.
I'd argue that Mass Muta wasn't a problem ,it just took some time to figure out. By the end of WOL, you never really saw it in tournaments, because Mass Blink Stalker and Storm handled it.
It became a problem again HOTS when they introduced Muta regen.
You can't just say "mass blink stalker and storm" without understanding the "problem". it's not the unit that makes mass muta a problem you should do some reading here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=287788 it's all about how hard it is to grab that third for protoss and plus other strength from the zerg's macro and map control
hots was revealed during the time when mass muta was a problem. And it is possible that because infestor broodlord became a big problem so that tempest got the change, which makes complete sense too.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
really?
First off. Auto-Turrets can't move. Second, Auto-turrets cost energy. Third Auto-turrets don't benefit from fucking upgrades.
You're seriously trying to call them equal?
it does benefit from building armor upgrade (and the duration upgrade)
I know that, the upgrades I was referring to was attack and armor upgrades.
They're not units, so why should they benefit from armory upgrades? As if the raven isn't fucking ridiculous enough... and this is coming from a Terran player. The point someone made was that they're free. Sure, you got him on the energy cost (which goes without saying - but energy has a cap, meaning if you don't use it you're wasting it, too), but the fact that they cost 200/200 to be at their most useful makes them pretty damn good for technically free units. Raven gets the armor; that's enough. That's all it needs. It's the BEST detector in the game for utility and in numbers is the most abusive caster unit in the game.
On February 11 2014 01:51 Daeracon wrote: I have been wondering if the economic problems, as morrow puts them, can be worked around with maps.
Could maps of 8 mineral patches and 2 gas geysers be changed to ensure a lower mining per base? Maybe 5 per base and 1 geyser only, however a larger amount contained in each to ensure similar longevity per base. This would make expanding more beneficial. It would of course affect balance, but the effect could be quite equal. I guess the mule would be maybe relatively more effective due to it not blocking other workers, but nevertheless it would still encourage more expanding and a more spread out gameplay.
I think a lot of things would need to be tweaked. Most of the timing builds would be changed. Stuff like mass speedlings might be too strong due to the fact they have a lot map control early game in both ZvP and ZvT.
On February 11 2014 01:44 Tiaraju9 wrote: This thread is a waste.
It does seem to be one step above "the power of Protoss" reddit thing that happens every Protoss match. It's basically "Blarg! DK why you no listen to community?!?! S-host is bad design!!!"
On February 11 2014 01:44 Tiaraju9 wrote: This thread is a waste.
The truth right here
All of this stuff has been reiterated and reiterated and beaten to death
The problem is and has been the designers of this game, they've proven they don't know what they're doing numerous NUMEROUS times.
Yet they are allowed to sit back and still spit out balogne to the people that play this game because of the endless fanboys that still hold on to the dream that "just hang on, they're working on it, they'll get it right... IT'S BLIZZARD come on remember??"
I swear if everyone had flipped their lid in wol beta like people did in d3, we wouldn't be having to deal with dustin and david as they would have stepped the fuk down already like they've needed to for a long painstakingly long ass time.
So here we are, 3-4 years later.. in the twilight of a game that in the right hands would have had well over a million viewers for each major tournament by now.
Move on people, the problem is at the core and the core isn't going to change.
This is the greatest game I've ever played in my life, it's a pity that just like our own government.. it fell into the wrong hands.
On February 10 2014 22:08 labbe wrote: Morrow, switch to starbow
Even though it is unlikely, this is probably the most realistic solution.
Assuming Blizzard will solve this issue is ignorant. They tried to solve it with HOTS, eliminating turtling that was a stated objective of theirs, but of course they manage to make the problem worse because the game designers don't understand the game. Remember how David Kim said they designed the Swarmhost to allow for Zerg to be aggressive in the mid-game? Look how that turned out.
Time and again Blizzard has shown an inability to fix problems with SC2.
According to DKs AMA recently they aren't unable they are unwilling. They like how it is.
He made a critical logical error in his argument and I pointed it out.
On February 06 2014 07:20 Pandain wrote:
Do you believe that the swarm host is proving to be used in the way that you wanted it to when you designed the unit for HotS? Do you like the way the swarm host is currently being used by pros?
David Kim wrote: The first question in our minds don't matter as much at this point.
He set out to fix a problem that he identified (Zerg not having aggressive options in the mid game).
As we know, he failed.
And now he says the problem doesn't matter? What happened to the problem of Zerg having issues being aggressive in the mid game? And why did he try to fix it in the first place!? By ignoring Pandain's question, he basically said the initial problem never existed. And what does that say about him? If the problem did not exist, why did he create the Swarm Host? Because he did think the problem existed, but he was wrong, and is unwilling to admit it.
It proves he is unable to correctly identify problems in the game. It isn't that they are unwilling to fix them. They try to "fix" an issue, fail, and then forget about fixing said problem, because they realize the issue actually wasn't a problem in the first place. And we are left the the "results" (ie Swarmhost) which they then try to somehow fit into the game. And often the "results" overlap with existing units, ie Tempests. Remember Tempests solving the non-existent Muta problem in WOL? Yeah, me too. Now Tempests are just a replacement for the Carrier, performing nearly the same role (long range capital ship).
Frankly, I'm not sure what is worse: Blizzard's inability to identify real problems with the game, or their inability to implement in the game what they had planned to implement.
The Swarm Host is evidence of failure on both fronts. And it is why we are left with a unit that makes the game worse. Let's not even get started with other units like the Warhound.
Mass Muta was a problem back in WoL. Tempest was introduced as a unit that is to counter mass muta once it reach critical number in the unit reveal panel, but they have changed it since the beta into a long range siege unit to focus on counting air massive unit The reason is because they went for a different direction on how to deal with mass muta, a buff to phoenix default range. This is probably because of a lot of players saying it will be useless since muta will be able to get a huge mid game advantage and roll the toss before (old) tempest can do anything.
Let's assume you said is correct.
It just goes to highlight how Blizzard is unable to solve problems in the game.
I'd argue that Mass Muta wasn't a problem ,it just took some time to figure out. By the end of WOL, you never really saw it in tournaments, because Mass Blink Stalker and Storm handled it.
It became a problem again HOTS when they introduced Muta regen.
You can't just say "mass blink stalker and storm" without understanding the "problem" you should do some reading here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=287788 it's all about how hard it is to grab that third for protoss and plus other strength.
hots was revealed during the time when mass muta was a problem. And it is possible that because infestor broodlord became a big problem so that tempest got the change, which makes complete sense too.
I understand the problem. I was a High Master Protoss at that time. I lived through Mass Muta. But let's not discuss whether or not I actually understand the problem., because it doesn't matter.
We both know that it took some time to figure out. Which is what I said. Then the problem ceased being a problem. The Pheonix range change did not solve the issue, because Phoenixes can't transition. Mass Stalker/Storm did. And thus, by the end of WOL, no high level Zerg was massing Mutas.
And the question becomes, should Blizzard have been developing units to address swings in the meta-game? I feel like that is a rhetorical question, but the answer is no.
They should be developing units to address a stale meta-game.
You could make an argument that the Tempest did just that, being the answer to Broodlords. But then of course, you'd be ignoring the fact the Carrier was already in the game, performing essentially the same role (flying capital ship siege unit). Why didn't they just fix the Carrier and make it viable you might (or I might) ask?
Because they spent all this time developing the Tempest, and were too proud to admit it was time wasted chasing a swing in the meta-game.
Honestly the main reason I switched from Zerg to random was because I didn't have fun with BL-infestor in WoL and I don't enjoy swarmhost turtle in HotS. I wish Zerg had more aggressive options besides Mutas
The stronger lategame is still true for P vs. Hence the BW logic still applies in this matchup to some extend.
Perhaps when criticizing turtle playstyles you have to take into account how many complaints there are about all ins, not just blink but roach/bane etc. You cannot disincentivize turtle playstyles without making all ins more potent. It is all about the defenders advantage because strategies and unit compositions evolve meaning just nerfing a unit does not mean less effective all ins in the long run.
Starcraft is already a very volatile game. That means either you make it more volatile in order to encourage aggressive play but then you also encourage cheesing and all ins.
Well Morrow i agree completly, however the problem does exist since WoL as you already mentioned. To change this (especially the economy system) you need fudamental changes which Blizz doesnt want to do, neither now nor in a addon.
I just can recommend you (and all the others who feel the same) to check out Starbow. It adressed those problems very well and if it keeps growing it might become something big (i hope so).
I love this game and these stalemates are extremely rare.
What isn't rare is how hard it is to break a lot of hosts.
They are too efficient in high numbers because they are so hard to break but too weakt to allow transitions with a smaller investment.
I for one would love to see the swarm host changed so that you can gain ground vs them more easily. From a protoss perspective there is no real way to clear locust waves fast enough to gain ground especially if there is static D there.
At least vs mech they need to move up unsieged and you can get a position vs them. Vs locusts you can force them to burrow but can't hold your ground without losing stuff.
I just think between the reach of the locusts their DPS and their beefiness its too hard to gain position or punish them easily before you have a lot of AoE as toss.
Maybe if the locusts spawned less frequently or if they lost HP the longer they were alive/further they've walked it could help.
Also can we stop bringing up starbow? It also has its own flaws and if you gave it enough time broken bits of the game would show themselves.
Hell BW had many broken things and there periods in time where a race was so dominant in a matchup it was considered unwinnable (pvz I'm lookin at you) until someone made a magic discovery and changed the game overnight.
I really liked the Race design in BW, where Zerg just couldn't deathball against the other races, that way all matchups looked different. Always felt like in Sc2 every race was balanced and could always deathball and actually had to, because it was to easy to defend the 2 or 3 locations you had. So sitting back and defending is really easy compared to trying to outplay the opponents army and thats why people go for it.
Personally I don't mind games like today happening, it will make players think about why they wasted 2 hours for a draw. And they sat at 70 apm in the end, while they could have actually still made useful actions. Maybe next time both will have better unit control. + Show Spoiler +
For me the funniest part of the game was when Soulkey found out he can control the Locust themself and used it to dance around and not, like many already found out, that you can kill the Terran army with their own splash. Especially after he used it before to actually come back into the game
On February 11 2014 02:21 ZeromuS wrote: Also can we stop bringing up starbow? It also has its own flaws and if you gave it enough time broken bits of the game would show themselves.
The difference is the people who make Starbow are committed to improvement and listen to the community.
On February 11 2014 02:21 ZeromuS wrote:
I just think between the reach of the locusts their DPS and their beefiness its too hard to gain position or punish them easily before you have a lot of AoE as toss.
Again, this is the solution, and I proposed it during the beta:
Instead of having Swarmhosts spawn 2 ranged Locusts every 25 seconds, have a Swarmhost spawn 6-8 melee Broodlings (the same ones that come out of a kill Zerg building with the rough the same stats including fast movespeed) every 10 seconds. However the Broodlings have a timer of ~5 seconds (upgradable to ~8 seconds).
This means that Swarmhosts are much more powerful in small numbers and allow Zerg to tech to late game. But it also means that mass Swarmhosts don't work since Broodling can't walk through each other, and the low life timer means that most of the Broodlings from a mass of Swarmhosts just die off before they do any damage. Thus, once they reach a certain number they reach maximum efficiency and additional Swarmhosts would do literally nothing.
Finally, it means that Swarmhosts aren't really a siege unit anymore, because their range would be reduced. But they'd be really good for splitting up the attention of your opponent and as a harassment unit to harass expansions, and a few Swarmhosts could replace Zerglings for armies.
You could also remove the locust timer but give them negative regeneration, so they're weaker when further away from their hosts. I don't know if I like this solution though.
Sorry to bring up Starbow...again... but watching some random guys play starbow is almost as fun as watching kespa players tho i'd definately looooove to see some proper koreans get into starbow and use their apm over there to the fulluest. Would have been amazing.
On February 11 2014 02:21 ZeromuS wrote: I think this thread is starting to fall apart.
I love this game and these stalemates are extremely rare.
What isn't rare is how hard it is to break a lot of hosts.
They are too efficient in high numbers because they are so hard to break but too weakt to allow transitions with a smaller investment.
I for one would love to see the swarm host changed so that you can gain ground vs them more easily. From a protoss perspective there is no real way to clear locust waves fast enough to gain ground especially if there is static D there.
At least vs mech they need to move up unsieged and you can get a position vs them. Vs locusts you can force them to burrow but can't hold your ground without losing stuff.
I just think between the reach of the locusts their DPS and their beefiness its too hard to gain position or punish them easily before you have a lot of AoE as toss.
Maybe if the locusts spawned less frequently or if they lost HP the longer they were alive/further they've walked it could help.
Also can we stop bringing up starbow? It also has its own flaws and if you gave it enough time broken bits of the game would show themselves.
Hell BW had many broken things and there periods in time where a race was so dominant in a matchup it was considered unwinnable (pvz I'm lookin at you) until someone made a magic discovery and changed the game overnight.
I'm pretty much with you, even more, I do like it when those stalemates occur. They have their own beauty and there are definitely players who would have shown much greater power than SK or Reality in that game. Allowing them to end the game, given how bad both of them played game1 out while they still were mining and could make decisions. Essentially, if it wasn't possible for those stalemates to occur, we would have to question the balance of the game, since it would mean that one endgame army beats another - which means ultimately all gameplay should devolve into turtling and rushing out that composition. (and we had those phases of gameplay; BL/Infestor, mass Ghost in TvZ)
But yes, some compositions/units seem to just lean towards this kind of gameplay to begin with and could use tweaks to allow for more momentum swings. Just throwing some random stuff out: what if SHs were nerfed to something like 25locust lifetime/35cooldown (from 25/25), but had a 2min cooldown ability that lets them "go into overdrive" to spawn something like a double wave of locusts.
So they wouldn't pin down armies as efficiently, but they could actually release a lot of power at one point. Basically something exciting, that "you go for" in critical defensive situations or that you use to push into the opponent.
I think I want to add that. Another problem with turtle play, and in general SC2, the game engine is very, very easy to reach a strong localized critical mass.
As in, tanks aren't actually that strong compared to their BW counterparts, they deal way less damage per shot, cost more and take up more supply. The critical difference however, is that in SC2 if you can get a strong enough concentration of tanks into one tiny area, their combined damage makes them incredibly cost efficient. So SC2 tanks had to be nerfed overall compared to their BW counterpart, because reaching a critical mass is far stronger then it was in BW. Obviously no one wants the old BW interface or pathfinding, I don't either, however there are still a lot of elegant ways to fix this.
Thus, the only good way to adress turtle play, is to tune ALL aoe units in such a way that they start having diminishing returns the more you get. For tanks it should be increasing their damage back but adding overkill. For SH (in case anyone wants to keep them), is as someone has proposed, to make them spawn broodlings, for a shorter period of time but in larger numbers. That way they work better in small numbers, but they trip over themselves once they reach too big a number. Another solution would be adding a sort of a debuff to the locust/broodlings that makes them weaker the more of them are near each other.
Mutalisk also need a fix, they aren't quite aoe units per see, but their bouncing shot is very similar and it allows the to snowball way beyond their regular strength the more there are. Again a solution would be a debuff that makes them weaker if there are too many in a clump.
There isn't any easy way out here, all the aoe units need to be looked at and reworked in some measure or another that makes them way worst in a clump.
I think David Kims answer is going to be to Buff DT speed LOLOLOLOL all Jokes aside SC2 is a good game though there is no comparison to BW for the game I do believe they can fix the game to the point where it is a competitive game... BUT if they keep doing stupid stuff like Buff Oracle Speed and Nerf TW to 100 energy to Fix "Protoss Greed" LOLOLOLOLOL I STILL LAUGH AT THAT ONE..... Then the game is CTD (CTD = Circling the Drain of the esports society) This Saddens me very much to see things BLATANTLY IMbalanced with such questionable and non addressing ways then labeled as "The Fix"
On February 11 2014 02:21 ZeromuS wrote: Also can we stop bringing up starbow? It also has its own flaws and if you gave it enough time broken bits of the game would show themselves.
The difference is the people who make Starbow are committed to improvement and listen to the community.
I just think between the reach of the locusts their DPS and their beefiness its too hard to gain position or punish them easily before you have a lot of AoE as toss.
Again, this is the solution, and I proposed it during the beta:
Instead of having Swarmhosts spawn 2 ranged Locusts every 25 seconds, have a Swarmhost spawn 6-8 melee Broodlings (the same ones that come out of a kill Zerg building with the rough the same stats including fast movespeed) every 10 seconds. However the Broodlings have a timer of ~5 seconds (upgradable to ~8 seconds).
This means that Swarmhosts are much more powerful in small numbers and allow Zerg to tech to late game. But it also means that mass Swarmhosts don't work since Broodling can't walk through each other, and the low life timer means that most of the Broodlings from a mass of Swarmhosts just die off before they do any damage. Thus, once they reach a certain number they reach maximum efficiency and additional Swarmhosts would do literally nothing.
Finally, it means that Swarmhosts aren't really a siege unit anymore, because their range would be reduced. But they'd be really good for splitting up the attention of your opponent and as a harassment unit to harass expansions, and a few Swarmhosts could replace Zerglings for armies.
But then they would REALLY overlap with broodlords. It would also force what should be a ranged attack upgrade path into a melee one, making ultralisk / broodlord transitions even stronger. But then.... why bother making broods when they're pretty much exactly the same as swarmhosts?
It makes it so that your investments and efforts can result in no actual damage. So, instead of having something where every single action and attack matters, you have these drawn out situations where players are just waiting on Time before they do another action. [Proleague match with Soulkey and Reality g1] Soulkey has a bunch of swarm hosts, a single infestor, a few spores and a few queens. Reality has a bunch of vikings, ravens, siege tanks, and a few hellions and thors. The locusts were indefinite while the PDD's were indefinite. So, neither player actually is making any real ground because neither player needs resources or a unit's life (SOMETHING FINITE, NOT INFINITE) to sacrifice.
This is a good point. There's a reason minerals and gas are finite.
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.
On February 10 2014 21:55 MorroW wrote: i just wanted to share my view on why we see stalemates in starcraft 2 more often than broodwar and why turtle playstyles are much less action packed and uninteresting than they were in broodwar.
Maybe you are just romanticizing broodwar because it was a new experience at the time, so in retrospect the games felt more exciting than in starcraft 2, which you have experienced in a more mature and studied approach.
I believe that to be the case. As such you are right, the problem is more basic than people believe, the problem is your lack of careful introspection, and your mistaken assumption that your experience of the game is to blame on the game, rather than yourself.
Unfortunately the problem you're bringing up is so deep in the fundamentals of the game, we'll never see a solution for this not even in a new expansion, but only maybe in a new completely RTS game (SC3?). since the obvious solution will only be a stronger composition for the supply costing units vs the non-supply costing units. DK mentioned his thoughts about an increased damage for tempests vs buildings, but obviously this is not a proper solution for a no-camping game, since tempests are already a unit that is quite a camping required unit to get.
It makes it so that your investments and efforts can result in no actual damage. So, instead of having something where every single action and attack matters, you have these drawn out situations where players are just waiting on Time before they do another action. [Proleague match with Soulkey and Reality g1] Soulkey has a bunch of swarm hosts, a single infestor, a few spores and a few queens. Reality has a bunch of vikings, ravens, siege tanks, and a few hellions and thors. The locusts were indefinite while the PDD's were indefinite. So, neither player actually is making any real ground because neither player needs resources or a unit's life (SOMETHING FINITE, NOT INFINITE) to sacrifice.
This is a good point. There's a reason minerals and gas are finite.
And unit shots are infinite too. And given enough range and damage (e.g. siege tanks, vikings, tempest) they don't sacrifice anything either and it's completely on the other player to a) retreat b) or charge into those units which is the exact same as with swarm hosts or high energy spellcasters. That's exactly what happened in that game, two players that were sieging each others positions and retreating before actually taking damage, since charging into the opponent would have been suicide.
It makes it so that your investments and efforts can result in no actual damage. So, instead of having something where every single action and attack matters, you have these drawn out situations where players are just waiting on Time before they do another action. [Proleague match with Soulkey and Reality g1] Soulkey has a bunch of swarm hosts, a single infestor, a few spores and a few queens. Reality has a bunch of vikings, ravens, siege tanks, and a few hellions and thors. The locusts were indefinite while the PDD's were indefinite. So, neither player actually is making any real ground because neither player needs resources or a unit's life (SOMETHING FINITE, NOT INFINITE) to sacrifice.
This is a good point. There's a reason minerals and gas are finite.
And unit shots are infinite too. And given enough range and damage (e.g. siege tanks, vikings, tempest) they don't sacrifice anything either and it's completely on the other player to a) retreat b) or charge into those units which is the exact same as with swarm hosts or high energy spellcasters. That's exactly what happened in that game, two players that were sieging each others positions and retreating before actually taking damage, since charging into the opponent would have been suicide.
That true in nearly all situations and in regards to most units, except SH.
As I said in a earlier post, the problem with SH is that its a 3 in one unit, its both the equivalent of the hellbats protecting the siege tanks, and its also the equivalent of the siege tanks doing the shooting and, its also the vikings providing the spotting. If you factor into that creep, the SH can also siege from a far, far larger distance then both siege tanks or tempest. Both Siege tanks and tempest kind of still put themselves at risk of being destroyed even if they skirt at the edge of range, but SH defy that.
It makes it so that your investments and efforts can result in no actual damage. So, instead of having something where every single action and attack matters, you have these drawn out situations where players are just waiting on Time before they do another action. [Proleague match with Soulkey and Reality g1] Soulkey has a bunch of swarm hosts, a single infestor, a few spores and a few queens. Reality has a bunch of vikings, ravens, siege tanks, and a few hellions and thors. The locusts were indefinite while the PDD's were indefinite. So, neither player actually is making any real ground because neither player needs resources or a unit's life (SOMETHING FINITE, NOT INFINITE) to sacrifice.
This is a good point. There's a reason minerals and gas are finite.
And unit shots are infinite too. And given enough range and damage (e.g. siege tanks, vikings, tempest) they don't sacrifice anything either and it's completely on the other player to a) retreat b) or charge into those units which is the exact same as with swarm hosts or high energy spellcasters. That's exactly what happened in that game, two players that were sieging each others positions and retreating before actually taking damage, since charging into the opponent would have been suicide.
That true in nearly all situations and in regards to most units, except SH.
As I said in a earlier post, the problem with SH is that its a 3 in one unit, its both the equivalent of the hellbats protecting the siege tanks, and its also the equivalent of the siege tanks doing the shooting and, its also the vikings providing the spotting. If you factor into that creep, the SH can also siege from a far, far larger distance then both siege tanks or tempest. Both Siege tanks and tempest kind of still put themselves at risk of being destroyed even if they skirt at the edge of range, but SH defy that.
When were Reality's Siege Tanks at the risk of being destroyed when they were hunting Soulkey's Swarmhosts and Spores around in circles? Charging anything that actually costs something into those tanks would have been as intelligent as unsieging the tanks and charging them forward to kill a few hosts before going down to the locusts.
Yeah, Hosts have a "bigger range" in absolutes. But absolutes mean little on their own, it's about speed and range and all the other relations to each other. And if all the locusts just die without doing anything, while all the tanks do nothing because the opponent already retreated neither of them actually "does more". Sure, enough locusts tank for the hosts. On the same page, enough tanks don't need any tanking, because there is nothing getting into range to touch them to begin with.
And unit shots are infinite too. And given enough range and damage (e.g. siege tanks, vikings, tempest) they don't sacrifice anything either and it's completely on the other player to a) retreat b) or charge into those units which is the exact same as with swarm hosts or high energy spellcasters. That's exactly what happened in that game, two players that were sieging each others positions and retreating before actually taking damage, since charging into the opponent would have been suicide.
Somehow it seems different. If you take TvT marine tank vs marine tank, you don't get situations where both armies stand there staring at each other just outside tank range, at least not for very long. Once you're in range of the tanks, you have to commit or retreat as you say, but in either case there are losses.
In the case of SH vs Tank/raven, the terran IS in range of the SH but they are forced to neither commit nor retreat, they can just wait. The zerg is already in range and "attacking" so he has no incentive to do otherwise.
Weird example but think of a pvp MMO game. If a dps is beating on a healer but the healer is healing himself and regening mana faster then expending it, you've got a stalemate. This is immediately boring for spectators and players alike and has to do with infinite resources.
Any game with infinite resources has a high potential for perpetual stalemate. Often this is resolved by alternative victory conditions (civilization space victory).
Imagine a unit in chess that spawns more pawns, high potential for stalemate I'd imagine. Or an infinitely sized board in Go.
Now infinite resources on something like psy-storm isn't that bad because templars alone can't kill everything, they are a support role. But give storm a root (aka WoL fungal) and suddenly you have mass infestors with infinite resources killing armies single handed. Same problem with swarm hosts. I don't think PDD is really guilty on this front as much, it just reacts poorly to the swarm hosts.
On February 11 2014 02:21 ZeromuS wrote: I think this thread is starting to fall apart.
I love this game and these stalemates are extremely rare.
What isn't rare is how hard it is to break a lot of hosts.
They are too efficient in high numbers because they are so hard to break but too weakt to allow transitions with a smaller investment.
I for one would love to see the swarm host changed so that you can gain ground vs them more easily. From a protoss perspective there is no real way to clear locust waves fast enough to gain ground especially if there is static D there.
At least vs mech they need to move up unsieged and you can get a position vs them. Vs locusts you can force them to burrow but can't hold your ground without losing stuff.
I just think between the reach of the locusts their DPS and their beefiness its too hard to gain position or punish them easily before you have a lot of AoE as toss.
Maybe if the locusts spawned less frequently or if they lost HP the longer they were alive/further they've walked it could help.
Also can we stop bringing up starbow? It also has its own flaws and if you gave it enough time broken bits of the game would show themselves.
Hell BW had many broken things and there periods in time where a race was so dominant in a matchup it was considered unwinnable (pvz I'm lookin at you) until someone made a magic discovery and changed the game overnight.
I'm pretty much with you, even more, I do like it when those stalemates occur. They have their own beauty and there are definitely players who would have shown much greater power than SK or Reality in that game. Allowing them to end the game, given how bad both of them played game1 out while they still were mining and could make decisions. Essentially, if it wasn't possible for those stalemates to occur, we would have to question the balance of the game, since it would mean that one endgame army beats another - which means ultimately all gameplay should devolve into turtling and rushing out that composition. (and we had those phases of gameplay; BL/Infestor, mass Ghost in TvZ)
But yes, some compositions/units seem to just lean towards this kind of gameplay to begin with and could use tweaks to allow for more momentum swings. Just throwing some random stuff out: what if SHs were nerfed to something like 25locust lifetime/35cooldown (from 25/25), but had a 2min cooldown ability that lets them "go into overdrive" to spawn something like a double wave of locusts.
So they wouldn't pin down armies as efficiently, but they could actually release a lot of power at one point. Basically something exciting, that "you go for" in critical defensive situations or that you use to push into the opponent.
hold on I need to clarify:
I love SC2
I hate turtle host because it always seems to turn into a stalemate. In EU PvZ if more protoss would just not attack, we would get more stalemates, but they try to win by attacking and lose because of a bad position or something.
In reply to snute:
What units would you give a higher gas cost? How would more gas not support a turtley composition? Protoss is gas starved and focuses on gas primary armies, and this is part of the reason hosts in PvZ are so problematic, we cant always get the bases we need to support our army. But once we do its a very very positional fight trying to kill the spores and then then the hosts. But even so its very fragile and not at all forgiving for protoss. which is fine, but what units would you make cost more gas for Zerg? Or Terran?
Its an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how it would work.
The problem with SC2 is, that the huge damagedealers have way too many dps and few drawbacks. Even though collossi, broodlords, tanks, swarmhosts, ravens, whatever have their weaknesses, they can be easily bypassed by just massing a fleshy ball around it. In WoL due to the unit design and maps, we had this peaking in deathball massing. The reason is easy - why would you split your army up if the only thing you had to do is to guard your main damage dealer with everything you have until he eats up the enemies army (which tries exactly the same). As of this, buildings have no value in the late late anymore - you can't go above 200 supply, therefore your army will never be stronger if you get a ton of bases - it will only get weaker if you split it up and have only 70 supply instead of 140 between your main damage dealers and your enemies army. But how to change it? If you ask me, the main point would be to learn from starbow/bw (I will focus on starbow since I didn't play the latter) - the higher the damage output, the higher the drawbacks I am not talking about the current drawbacks in sc2: "omg, the collossus can be attacked by air units, broodlords can't attack air" - NO! - they need to implement real drawbacks to those units. As a result, matches wouldn't be about massing high cost units and building a living/static defense shield around them. Games like the one we saw would never happen if it had a downside to mass ravens and swarmhosts. I am talking about things as ALL pdds in range cast their ability on EVERY single projectile, not one per pdd or swarmhosts having a longer timer inbetween locusts dying and locusts hatching, etc.
A simple solution to mass-SH play would be to nerf Locusts' range to 2: this way only few of them could shoot at the same time, so that massing SH beyond a certain number is useless.
What bothers me is that BOTH sides are willing to go into a turtle strategy. There needs to be an incentive to attack, like there was in WoL TvP where terran would play agressive and protoss turtle, or in TvT in mech vs bio. You can't just sit on your ass and watch the other guy build his army of doom. But you can only achieve that if one race has weaker late game. The proleague games were painful to watch and had to be boring as fuck to play.. But as Morrow said the problem probably comes from the fundamentals of the game (economy mainly), so unit design will never totally fix sc2's problems, and I doubt blizzard will resort to modify the economy mechanics. It's pretty sad but heh. At least they can try to make matchups entertaining via unit design, TvZ was pretty awesome for a while in HOTS.
I completely agree with Morrow here though. I think the core problem is the economy. If players were rewarded for taking more bases then the whole face of game-play would be different. Zoning units, like the swarmhost or the lurker are important when you try to defend 6-7 bases, but might not shine in a game which is based on having no more than 3 active mining bases at a time.
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.
Kind of big deal when you consider that it's meant to be a competitive E-sports title and Blizz throws money at it
@Plansix, BW mech was cool because you'd be down bases, holding territory and slow pushing, especially Protoss would have a big income/base advantage over you and try to tear you apart from multiple angles. Starbow Mech is kind of similar in a way, you CANNOT A-move into it and have to engage in cool ways, like with Zealot bombs or mine dragging I agree with you though, SC2 mech doesn't work like that and is so boring to me sometimes. Trying to force it into a game where it doesn't fit properly (imo due to the aforementioned 3 base being optimal), is actually damaging the game.
Combined air ups with mech upgrades have as predicted also enabled the dreaded SkyTerran with raven comp to be that much more effective.
This way, SH are a units that needs to move were your opponent is not to do damage. And you can also charge into the SH between two waves. But locusts are still dangerous and you have to be very cautious when moving around a SH army.
That's so obvious. We are many to suggest this since the beta...
And I agree with Snute. The core of SC2 expanding is the need of gas. So if you want to give players and advantage by expanding, make good units cost more gas.
There is a game of Zero vs Flash on a map I've forgotten taking place sometime I cannot remember in a tournament whose name has slipped my mind, but it was probably the most awe-inspiring Zerg vs Mech I've ever seen. Endless waves of zerglings and defilers, using dark swarm and plague to weaken flash's forces and gain territory, inch by inch.
8-9 bases for Zero, incredible macro and constant pressure, Flash with immaculate defensive play and layered defenses being worn down one by one by Zero's relentless onslaught. I was just gaping for the last 10 minutes at the sheer level of skill being displayed.
If Zerg could play llike that vs mech and toss in the late game in Sc2, I would weep in joy. But they can't because they'd get massacred, and because out-expanding your opponent in this game just doesn't give enough of an edge. There are more factors, but in the interest of keeping the post on the readable side of things: the host is a symptom, not the disease. The root causes are buried far deeper, in the economical system, macro mechanics, and other things.
The swarm host is simply the ultimate expression of the idiotic gameplay these mechanics produce. Zerg cannot function at the competitive level without this unit. Already in Korea, almost every macro ZvP features swarm hosts in relatively large amounts. In the coming year or so, if mech becomes the go to build for terrans vs zerg, virtually every game of ZvT and ZvP will be both players turtling to massive late game doom armies, which will then proceed to posture and grind one other down over a long period of time, with very little action. The risk of trying to be aggressive is too great, the reward to paltry.
We can remove the swarm host and just accept that zerg will no longer be viable for competitive play, but if we want to fix turtle play styles, we have to dig deeper. The odds of blizzard having the inclination or incentive to do so seem poor at best. The turtle is here to stay. This is what, at the very least, HotS is going to look like. As of right now, we'll have to work with what we have.
I think locust should be completely reworked. Ranged, high dmg, slow unit doesn't feel like zerg whatsoever. They should make locusts low hp, low dmg, maybe even melee with fast movement speed so it at least fits into the race.
I am kinda worried that swarmhost will work balancewise like infestor in end of WoL: Everyone knows they are stupid and boring but youo can´t nerf them because they are the only viable option.
I've not read the whole thread, just the OP, as I have to start my workday in a few minutes.
But, throwing something out there, how about less resources at natural and third (say 6+1) with the main as standard? You could have the fourth as a 8+2 location. And play with variations of these. The turtler has to then spread himself.
Edit/ Generally though, it's best not to knee-jerk react. We do this all too often. Top Korean P generally have little trouble against turtle SH style Z. We should not rush to changes on the basis of games played on lower skill levels. As to TvZ, that may be a case of two immovable objects staring at each other from opposite sides of the room. This is new-ish though. If it does become established though, turtle mech vs turtle SH then that certainly would be a problem for the game.
On February 11 2014 03:16 BisuDagger wrote: Flash vs Action. Winning with Mech in BW. You won't regret watching what I believe is a top 10 game for me on the entertainment level. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YT5YgKlhoC0
On February 11 2014 03:19 Nimix wrote: What bothers me is that BOTH sides are willing to go into a turtle strategy. There needs to be an incentive to attack, like there was in WoL TvP where terran would play agressive and protoss turtle, or in TvT in mech vs bio. You can't just sit on your ass and watch the other guy build his army of doom. But you can only achieve that if one race has weaker late game. The proleague games were painful to watch and had to be boring as fuck to play.. But as Morrow said the problem probably comes from the fundamentals of the game (economy mainly), so unit design will never totally fix sc2's problems, and I doubt blizzard will resort to modify the economy mechanics. It's pretty sad but heh. At least they can try to make matchups entertaining via unit design, TvZ was pretty awesome for a while in HOTS.
What if Locusts actually cost a small sum of 1 or 2 minerals each? Zergs would have the incentive to attack because at some point in the game they could no longer afford more Locusts? It may also be interesting to reduce the cost of SHs to something like 125/100 or 150/100 and add a more hefty price to locusts like 5 each. They would be better for certain timings, but pure defensive play would run out of minerals at some point. As the unit is used very rarely offensively right now, this might not be the worst alternative. Just from a lore standpoint it feels right that zerg should be the race to go for a final push in such stand-off situations.
Same ol' problems, same solution, need new designers; or to back one of the community modding efforts to make an alternate version. As always, I'm willing to do design work, but I haven't the community credibility for people to care.
Certainly there's plenty of ways to cut down on turtling behavior by changing in-game incentives.
On February 11 2014 04:01 aZealot wrote: I've not read the whole thread, just the OP, as I have to start my workday in a few minutes.
But, throwing something out there, how about less resources at natural and third (say 6+1) with the main as standard. You could have the fourth as a 8+2 location. And play with variations of these. The turtler has to then spread himself.
This was proposed in early WoL and has been discussed ever since. Blizzard basically said "nah, too much work" and then refused to comment further.
Also, Rain was up 7 bases to 4 today vs Roro and lost, quite badly.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
On February 11 2014 04:06 zlefin wrote: Same ol' problems, same solution, need new designers; or to back one of the community modding efforts to make an alternate version. As always, I'm willing to do design work, but I haven't the community credibility for people to care.
Certainly there's plenty of ways to cut down on turtling behavior by changing in-game incentives.
Blizzard has already allocated a lot of money into WCS, and a self-inflicting financial hit in making the arcade F2P. Granted, making the arcade F2P is an obvious ploy to generate future purchases of the game, but this is a longer process.
With the money already being allocated into WCS, etc., how is it economically feasible to re-design the game at this point? I would think re-design as an option for LoTV, but not right now.
Balance patches seem the only viable option at this time, but I certainly agree the turtle play is boring for many to watch. I would also counter that argument by looking to recent Proleague games that show more aggressive strategies for stereotyped "Turtle" units. Sometimes, things just need to play out more. This is particularly interesting for professional players with money on the line. I know if it were me, I would turtle, or do whatever I needed to do to win. After all, it is a job to these players.
Let's be fair. Turtling sucks cause it brings no action. For the today's proleague match, if it were only reality vs SK it'd be sort of fun. Just for one game everyone would have taken it as another wierd rare episode. But after the zvz that i assumed all found ligtning fast we watched other 3 turtle games. Frankly, i even stopped watching as soon as i saw swarmhosts and i just >> to the end to find out about the winner.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
Maybe they're crazy and wrong.
A lot of people look at aspects of BW with rose color glasses or just don't know and simply assume everything was better win BW.
On February 11 2014 04:29 FatCat_13 wrote: Frankly, i even stopped watching as soon as i saw swarmhosts and i just >> to the end to find out about the winner.
I do this exact same thing now. The Hour Long Swarmhost Game simply has no interest to me anymore. The fleeting satisfaction I get from watching swarm hosts die if the Zerg happens to lose is not worth the hour leading up to it.
On February 11 2014 03:49 Insoleet wrote: How to fix swarmhosts
Nerf lifetime of locusts
Nerf Life HP for locusts
Buff damages for locusts
Longer time between two waves
Faster burrow/unburrow for SH
This way, SH are a units that needs to move were your opponent is not to do damage. And you can also charge into the SH between two waves. But locusts are still dangerous and you have to be very cautious when moving around a SH army.
That's so obvious. We are many to suggest this since the beta...
And I agree with Snute. The core of SC2 expanding is the need of gas. So if you want to give players and advantage by expanding, make good units cost more gas.
It's not obvious at all. I'd suggest the opposite, REDUCE the timer between waves, together with making the SH more mobile and shorter lifetime of locusts.
I agree with everything Morrow said, except about defenders advantage in sc2. Perhaps late game Defenders advantage is a thing, but early to mid game there is no such thing as defenders advantage, especially when anti-micro spells exist.
Even more so early game. Early game defenders advantage is mostly high ground based, go ahead and go tank first in TvP, I dare you. and when a MsC and 2 stalkers show up you'll realize no such thing as defenders advantage exists. Any opener as terran against MsC rush grants protoss high ground vision and takes away high ground advantage. Consider all the moments when you should have defenders advantage, and then imagine your opponent has anti-micro spells or is rushing you with Fungals, Force Fields, Time Warp, PDD, etc and watch as your defenders advantage disappears.
People look at Turtle mech as an example of defenders advantage, but most anti-micro spells will negate this. In most matchups, trying to harass a player on 2 base is a scenario that's easier for said player to defend, where as when terran needs to defend 3 bases at once it becomes much harder to defend, and easier for the opponent to break.
But I suppose it all depends on the player, since everybody's skill level or quality of player will change from game to game. However some fundamentals that are built into SC2 will always be there and always be a problem unless changed.
On February 11 2014 05:06 ZenithM wrote: Haha there is the most ridiculous ZvZ going on on Stephano's stream right now. Stephano vs Firecake: 70 swarmhosts vs 70 swarmhosts.
Edit: I'm not sure "turtle" is the appropriate word at that level.
It's like Broodlord vs Broodlord. Watch or do something else, because nobody wins.
On February 11 2014 05:14 Armada Vega wrote: I agree with everything Morrow said, except about defenders advantage in sc2. Perhaps late game Defenders advantage is a thing, but early to mid game there is no such thing as defenders advantage, especially when anti-micro spells exist.
Even more so early game. Early game defenders advantage is mostly high ground based, go ahead and go tank first in TvP, I dare you. and when a MsC and 2 stalkers show up you'll realize no such thing as defenders advantage exists. Any opener as terran against MsC rush grants protoss high ground vision and takes away high ground advantage. Consider all the moments when you should have defenders advantage, and then imagine your opponent has anti-micro spells or is rushing you with Fungals, Force Fields, Time Warp, PDD, etc and watch as your defenders advantage disappears.
People look at Turtle mech as an example of defenders advantage, but most anti-micro spells will negate this. In most matchups, trying to harass a player on 2 base is a scenario that's easier for said player to defend, where as when terran needs to defend 3 bases at once it becomes much harder to defend, and easier for the opponent to break.
But I suppose it all depends on the player, since everybody's skill level or quality of player will change from game to game. However some fundamentals that are built into SC2 will always be there and always be a problem unless changed.
Anti-micro spells are defenders' advantage. You may think zerg has no defenders advantage, but queens are pretty good. Protoss has PO and TW + FF. Terran has repair. Take into account map length and early-midgame the defender should always have more stuff unless they're playing ridiculously greedy vs a ridiculously cheesey build, in which case it should be a B/O loss but is still survivable, oddly enough. The defenders' advantage in HotS is undeniably much stronger than it was in WoL.
On February 10 2014 21:59 AmuseD wrote: I assume you watched Reality vs Soulkey game 1 and game 2?
I agree, nothing more to say
I thought game 2 was an entertaining game, due to the moves Soulkey used with relatively small attacks with locusts/ultras/hydras/lings and blinding cloud. I think if turtle becomes the norm players will also quickly change their play to avoid that situation, which we already saw after the 2nd game. I think there are going to be growing pains as the game is figured out and people just jump to conclusions.
On February 11 2014 05:14 Armada Vega wrote: I agree with everything Morrow said, except about defenders advantage in sc2. Perhaps late game Defenders advantage is a thing, but early to mid game there is no such thing as defenders advantage, especially when anti-micro spells exist.
Even more so early game. Early game defenders advantage is mostly high ground based, go ahead and go tank first in TvP, I dare you. and when a MsC and 2 stalkers show up you'll realize no such thing as defenders advantage exists. Any opener as terran against MsC rush grants protoss high ground vision and takes away high ground advantage. Consider all the moments when you should have defenders advantage, and then imagine your opponent has anti-micro spells or is rushing you with Fungals, Force Fields, Time Warp, PDD, etc and watch as your defenders advantage disappears.
People look at Turtle mech as an example of defenders advantage, but most anti-micro spells will negate this. In most matchups, trying to harass a player on 2 base is a scenario that's easier for said player to defend, where as when terran needs to defend 3 bases at once it becomes much harder to defend, and easier for the opponent to break.
But I suppose it all depends on the player, since everybody's skill level or quality of player will change from game to game. However some fundamentals that are built into SC2 will always be there and always be a problem unless changed.
yes im sorry i should have elaborated more on what i meant by that. the defender advantage part is directed about late game how a mech army arguably loses or goes terribly inefficient up against a zerg on creep where as off creep zerg has no chance of attacking either. explained abit to another guy earlier on in this thread. this is off-topic but i totally agree that natural defenders advantage in starcraft 2 in general outside of split map is kind of lacking in some ways http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=443145¤tpage=2#26
Defender's advantage is beneficial for games that have asymmetrical elements. If one race can outproduce another, then strong defender's advantage is needed for the numerically inferior race to survive.
But in a game with more symmetrical elements (economy + 200 cap being reached with great frequency): defender's advantage can be directly detrimental to the entertainment value of that game. A strong defender's advantage in a game where the incentives for attacking are already weak will only lead to deadlocked stalemates.
Whether you remove swarm hosts or not, this will still remain the case with SC2. Removing swarm hosts maybe makes the stalemate game half an hour to an hour shorter. But why would a zerg ever want to leave the comfort of their spines and spores versus mech (whether they have swarm hosts or not)?
New units or changed unit designs won't do much to affect the general game flow of SC2 in LotV. SC2's biggest problem is its lategame and it's always been its biggest problem ever since every progamer learned to macro on an equal level (~12ish months after release).
These problems will always exist as long as players are reliably able to reach ~65-70 workers and max out. The only way you prevent the great stagnation that is the SC2 lategame is if players never reach optimal worker counts and never max out.
For that you need less defender's advantage and not more.
Or... you could just redesign the game and not have these problems.
On February 11 2014 05:38 LaLuSh wrote: Defender's advantage is beneficial for games that have asymmetrical elements. If one race can outproduce another, then strong defender's advantage is needed.
But in a game with more symmetrical elements (economy + 200 cap being reached with great frequency): defender's advantage can be directly detrimental to the entertainment value of that game. A strong defender's advantage in a game where the incentives for attacking are already weak will only lead to deadlocked stalemates.
Only when coupled with bases that provide sufficient resources to justify the turte strat. If you can safely max out on 3 base, why grab 4? If affording things wasn't so easy, you'd see less abuse of defenders' advantage, and things wouldn't stalemate as much because the action is spread out across more bases. The way it is, you have a triangular formation of bases, that you camp in the middle of with your huge army allowing you to defend any location easily. Coupled with a strong defenders' advantage, this can be virtually unbreakable. Less income per base makes more and more sense all the time.
On February 11 2014 04:06 zlefin wrote: Same ol' problems, same solution, need new designers; or to back one of the community modding efforts to make an alternate version. As always, I'm willing to do design work, but I haven't the community credibility for people to care.
Certainly there's plenty of ways to cut down on turtling behavior by changing in-game incentives.
Blizzard has already allocated a lot of money into WCS, and a self-inflicting financial hit in making the arcade F2P. Granted, making the arcade F2P is an obvious ploy to generate future purchases of the game, but this is a longer process.
With the money already being allocated into WCS, etc., how is it economically feasible to re-design the game at this point? I would think re-design as an option for LoTV, but not right now.
Balance patches seem the only viable option at this time, but I certainly agree the turtle play is boring for many to watch. I would also counter that argument by looking to recent Proleague games that show more aggressive strategies for stereotyped "Turtle" units. Sometimes, things just need to play out more. This is particularly interesting for professional players with money on the line. I know if it were me, I would turtle, or do whatever I needed to do to win. After all, it is a job to these players.
I disagree with your estimation of the cost of re-designing the game. Also, a large amount of useful data on possible redesigns can be gained at a very low cost when the community plays test maps.
Balance patches can easily contain elements that significantly effect how a game plays at a more fundamental level, without being expensive at all.
I believe the limitation has more to do with blizzard's design skills and willingness to try alternatives than with the inherent challenges of the situation.
On February 11 2014 04:06 zlefin wrote: Same ol' problems, same solution, need new designers; or to back one of the community modding efforts to make an alternate version. As always, I'm willing to do design work, but I haven't the community credibility for people to care.
Certainly there's plenty of ways to cut down on turtling behavior by changing in-game incentives.
Blizzard has already allocated a lot of money into WCS, and a self-inflicting financial hit in making the arcade F2P. Granted, making the arcade F2P is an obvious ploy to generate future purchases of the game, but this is a longer process.
With the money already being allocated into WCS, etc., how is it economically feasible to re-design the game at this point? I would think re-design as an option for LoTV, but not right now.
Balance patches seem the only viable option at this time, but I certainly agree the turtle play is boring for many to watch. I would also counter that argument by looking to recent Proleague games that show more aggressive strategies for stereotyped "Turtle" units. Sometimes, things just need to play out more. This is particularly interesting for professional players with money on the line. I know if it were me, I would turtle, or do whatever I needed to do to win. After all, it is a job to these players.
I disagree with your estimation of the cost of re-designing the game. Also, a large amount of useful data on possible redesigns can be gained at a very low cost when the community plays test maps.
Balance patches can easily contain elements that significantly effect how a game plays at a more fundamental level, without being expensive at all.
I believe the limitation has more to do with blizzard's design skills and willingness to try alternatives than with the inherent challenges of the situation.
"The community" doesn't play test maps, at least no significant percentage of high level players do. And they rarely give useful unbiased feedback. And with every balance patch, you have the chance of doing more harm than good, especially when you try a design change instead of tweaking numbers.
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.
Ravens have free units as well, PDDs together with tanks achieve the same thing. Both are silly and should be changed imo.
Honestly, it is the Swarm Host that forces terran player to stay in his base. It is almost impossible to engage zerg army after they get good amount of SH and couple vipers. Terrans are forced to create siege line with PDDs just like protosses are forced to get high count of colossus and eventually go for skytoss as long as Swarm Host stays the same.
Zergs can't break positions in SC2 because of the range of tanks + vikings. Defilers could chain dark swarm to protect themselves from tanks so you could funnel cheap units to the front lines counting on spreading to try to achieve cost efficient trades. Countering defilers with vessels can happen but because irradiate took some time to kill them, the defiler could cast a few dark swarms before death. Moreover, scourge vs vessels meant that everytime you went in to cast an irradiate you risked losing them. Because a viper has to be on top of tanks to cast blinding cloud they can be sniped by vikings so it becomes a stalemate. The relationship is too linear, and you can't abuse the positioning of the Terran because swarm hosts are so damn slow. But you pretty much need to make them or the Terran's mech just pushes into you and kills you.
On February 11 2014 06:17 manniefresh wrote: And Stephano just played a 3 hour ZvZ SH vs. SH ... Although it was kind of epic with mass changeling blocks and a super late muta switch ftw!
On February 11 2014 06:17 manniefresh wrote: And Stephano just played a 3 hour ZvZ SH vs. SH ... Although it was kind of epic with mass changeling blocks and a super late muta switch ftw!
Please tell me 3 hours is an exaggeration
I just watched like 5 minutes. The timer was showing more than an hour. Stephano had over 10k mins and i think equal amount of gas. They were dropping SH in each others base and microing Locusts... Whole Yeonsu split into 2 halfs. I dont think manniefresh is exaggerating
OP makes a good point. Blizzard has tried so hard to make SC2 balanced at all stages of the game (largely thanks to community balance complaints) that its really hurt the endgame. There should be a clear hierarchy of races which benefit more in the endgame, as it forces one of the players to play in the role of the aggressor. They could do this by having unequal spellcaster capabilities for the different races like in BW.
On February 11 2014 06:17 manniefresh wrote: And Stephano just played a 3 hour ZvZ SH vs. SH ... Although it was kind of epic with mass changeling blocks and a super late muta switch ftw!
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.
Swarm hosts are a bandaid fix for not having BW/Starbow mining. If taking 4-6 bases gave you a superior economy to taking 3 bases then zerg would be able to trade hydras inefficiently and still win. Since they won't change SC2 economy they gave zerg fake, free hydras that won't shoot up, it accomplishes the same goal of not having to trade efficiently but is 1000x more boring.
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.
I find this much more convincing.
Yeah, Snute very wisely touched upon one of the key problems with SC2, economy, the others are DPS density+ critical mass with no diminishing returns and reliability, consistency and responsiveness of certain units. I think all need to be addressed in one way or another to push this game into a more dynamic and fun direction.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
Maybe they're crazy and wrong.
A lot of people look at aspects of BW with rose color glasses or just don't know and simply assume everything was better win BW.
Or you know, the current turtle play in SC2 is not the same thing as the mech play that exists in BW.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
Maybe they're crazy and wrong.
A lot of people look at aspects of BW with rose color glasses or just don't know and simply assume everything was better win BW.
Or you know, the current turtle play in SC2 is not the same thing as the mech play that exists in BW.
Really? I would never have noticed, it's a shame nobody has written a really long and well-written article on the subject of BW mech and what made it great - especially useful for those who didn't really follow high level BW. Ah well, here's hoping somebody comes along and does one.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
Maybe they're crazy and wrong.
A lot of people look at aspects of BW with rose color glasses or just don't know and simply assume everything was better win BW.
Or you know, the current turtle play in SC2 is not the same thing as the mech play that exists in BW.
Really? I would never have noticed, it's a shame nobody has written a really long and well-written article on the subject of BW mech and what made it great - especially useful for those who didn't really follow high level BW. Ah well, here's hoping somebody comes along and does one.
You can simply watch a few games involving Flash or Fantasy to see the differences b/w SC2 turtle play and BW turtle play.
In BW, if you turtle, you are going to get outexpanded and shat upon w/ plethora of unit streaming down upon your metal. A good mech player find the sweet spot that before the opponent can set up economically their production facilities, they hit a perfect timing to shut down multiple expansion at once. That window of opportunity is very miniscule. Any earlier, you will be meeting against a similar strength army (if you expand, you won't product much units), any latter you won't be able to outproduce them.
In SC2, its mostly that if you turtle, the other player have no incentive of mass expanding due to the game's economical structure and thus it will end up as a 200/200 vs 200/200 short battle.
So... One way to fix it, far from perfect but still something that might address this issue, wouldn't it be to change the cost in gaz of the late game units? Because since the root of this problem seems to come from the way the economy is in SC2 and that you don't mean more than 4 bases to max out, the reason the mech player could want to expand more aggressively is to get more gaz income to get the late game unit. I mean, as you said I would be okay to have a big buff to Battlecruiser such as it makes an unbeatable army if it was way harder to get. So imagine you make the BC stronger but you need 5+ bases, while giving more option to stop the terran to get to that point (like drop/nydus, tweaks on the viper) you could go to a dynamic of the match up similar to the one of BW right?
Everything comes down to how Warpgate is not as much as a race-defining mechanic that is cool and fun as David Kim makes it out to be. Bring back decent defenders advantage, weaken the economy, spread out bases, Balance from there.
On February 11 2014 09:37 Vanadiel wrote: So... One way to fix it, far from perfect but still something that might address this issue, wouldn't it be to change the cost in gaz of the late game units? Because since the root of this problem seems to come from the way the economy is in SC2 and that you don't mean more than 4 bases to max out, the reason the mech player could want to expand more aggressively is to get more gaz income to get the late game unit. I mean, as you said I would be okay to have a big buff to Battlecruiser such as it makes an unbeatable army if it was way harder to get. So imagine you make the BC stronger but you need 5+ bases, while giving more option to stop the terran to get to that point (like drop/nydus, tweaks on the viper) you could go to a dynamic of the match up similar to the one of BW right?
Doing that just slows the game down; you're still never willing to make over 70-80 workers because that cuts into your army too much.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Really? I constantly see vets fondly recalling how most of the BW matchups had one buildorder/strategy/playstyle that played out almost every time (per matchup) and anything else was basically a cheese build.
Maybe they're crazy and wrong.
A lot of people look at aspects of BW with rose color glasses or just don't know and simply assume everything was better win BW.
Or you know, the current turtle play in SC2 is not the same thing as the mech play that exists in BW.
Really? I would never have noticed, it's a shame nobody has written a really long and well-written article on the subject of BW mech and what made it great - especially useful for those who didn't really follow high level BW. Ah well, here's hoping somebody comes along and does one.
You can simply watch a few games involving Flash or Fantasy to see the differences b/w SC2 turtle play and BW turtle play.
In BW, if you turtle, you are going to get outexpanded and shat upon w/ plethora of unit streaming down upon your metal. A good mech player find the sweet spot that before the opponent can set up economically their production facilities, they hit a perfect timing to shut down multiple expansion at once. That window of opportunity is very miniscule. Any earlier, you will be meeting against a similar strength army (if you expand, you won't product much units), any latter you won't be able to outproduce them.
In SC2, its mostly that if you turtle, the other player have no incentive of mass expanding due to the game's economical structure and thus it will end up as a 200/200 vs 200/200 short battle.
Sorry, that was just a REALLY sarcastic post, quoting as it was Falling who wrote the 'In Defense of Mech' if memory serves. 100% agreed mind
On February 11 2014 09:38 SC2Toastie wrote: Everything comes down to how Warpgate is not as much as a race-defining mechanic that is cool and fun as David Kim makes it out to be. Bring back decent defenders advantage, weaken the economy, spread out bases, Balance from there.
Why was PvP in WoL such a frustration to many? Warpgate reinforcements equalising armies and making it super risky to expo. Rather than look at dealing with that, they just gave the MSC with its defensive utility which 'fixed' the matchup in that way.
fundamentally the game is designed to be played on maps such as were originally released with it such as steppes of war and blistering sands where securing three bases was rather difficult.
Everything Morrow says is 100% true...nice post man!
The only fixes possible though are going to be bandaids...that said...if one looks at general trends; the games that extend into 2hrs + tower defense turtle necked fests mostly involve SH.
How can the SH be modified to disadvantage turtle play? I am not sure it can be...
On February 11 2014 09:38 SC2Toastie wrote: Everything comes down to how Warpgate is not as much as a race-defining mechanic that is cool and fun as David Kim makes it out to be. Bring back decent defenders advantage, weaken the economy, spread out bases, Balance from there.
Why was PvP in WoL such a frustration to many? Warpgate reinforcements equalising armies and making it super risky to expo. Rather than look at dealing with that, they just gave the MSC with its defensive utility which 'fixed' the matchup in that way.
I know. And we all know how great that turned out to be.
On February 11 2014 10:29 qGSkipper wrote: Increase the supply cap
That would be insanely fun. How about no limit?
I wonder if the limit is Network Code & CPU related, rather than gameplay.
I've always wondered that.
Ya I do believe lag would be the main limiting factor on this. I think it's a simple yet efficient change in fixing the turtle issue. Income leads could be constantly turned into army units and army supply leads for a much longer amount of time. Thus, turtling players are at more of a risk of simply being "smothered" by overwhelming amounts of units, as opposed to forcing, say Zerg players, to cut off army production at around 150 supply in order to tech up, or forcing units to be sacked in order to make room for higher tech units.
Essentially, a higher supply cap would reward players with map control/economic advantages who look to push their advantages with heavy pressure(mass units) and refuse to play the turtle game.
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.
Protoss has no way to beat swarmhost + static defense until turtling into a 200/200 deathball with a LOT of tempests.
Terran has no way to beat swarmhosts other than accumulating ravens for the point defense drone because this allows your mech units to not take damage and actually allow you to advance into swarmhost locust waves + static defense.
This is not the fault of Protoss design or Terran design, or ravens, or tempests, or deathballing. It is the terrible design of the swarmhost which forces the opponent to do sit there and amass cost efficient units or otherwise lose the game.
Swarmhosts provide free units that are not even energy dependent. It's simply on a cool down and will infinitely spawn free units that trade for the opponent's minerals and vespene gas.
Swarmhost is the issue. Do not put Terran players at fault or start an anti-raven bandwagon because when a Zerg goes swarmhosts the only response is to start accumulating ravens from Terran's side, or a deathball of air units from Protoss's side.
A question we all have to ask right now is: is Zerg capable of beating Terran mech and Protoss without the swarmhost in the game in it's current form? The answer would be most definitely yes they can, through tech switches and use of vipers.
The swarmhost needs a massive re-design or balance tweaks.
As for the other issues Morrow has pointed out and many others like Lalaush in the past - the economy of SC2 promotes getting to 3 bases and maxing out and then the game is about whoever's army is more efficient than their opponent's.
A good example of a mod that changes the economy to matter is Starbow, or just look at good ol' Brood War (SC1). You had to mass expand all over the place in Brood War because you would run out of money otherwise.
TvP in Brood War...was literally the Terran turtling to a cost efficient mech army with tanks that killed things, and the Protoss sometimes being 1 or even 2 expansions ahead wittling away at the Terran mech army through recalls, carrier switches, etc.
But i don't think blizzard will honestly change the economy of SC2 at this point and i would actually recommend they never do because it would kill the game. I have seen another RTS, Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath go through a massive economy overhaul in a patch...and the game entirely changed but too much to keep the player base stable.
At this point it is better if blizzard simply fixes obvious imbalances like blink/MSC and promotes more viable strategies in each match-up (cough mech TvP...)
On February 11 2014 05:38 LaLuSh wrote: Defender's advantage is beneficial for games that have asymmetrical elements. If one race can outproduce another, then strong defender's advantage is needed for the numerically inferior race to survive.
But in a game with more symmetrical elements (economy + 200 cap being reached with great frequency): defender's advantage can be directly detrimental to the entertainment value of that game. A strong defender's advantage in a game where the incentives for attacking are already weak will only lead to deadlocked stalemates.
Whether you remove swarm hosts or not, this will still remain the case with SC2. Removing swarm hosts maybe makes the stalemate game half an hour to an hour shorter. But why would a zerg ever want to leave the comfort of their spines and spores versus mech (whether they have swarm hosts or not)?
New units or changed unit designs won't do much to affect the general game flow of SC2 in LotV. SC2's biggest problem is its lategame and it's always been its biggest problem ever since every progamer learned to macro on an equal level (~12ish months after release).
These problems will always exist as long as players are reliably able to reach ~65-70 workers and max out. The only way you prevent the great stagnation that is the SC2 lategame is if players never reach optimal worker counts and never max out.
For that you need less defender's advantage and not more.
Or... you could just redesign the game and not have these problems.
Less of a defender's advantage for LOTV and perhaps a redesign for SC3, no?
What are some reasonable things they could change, creating less fo a defender's advantage, for LOTV?
Morrow, Blizz have already stated they wont do design changes. Hell, ppl have been asking them to change things about SC2 since it was released. History has shown us that Blizz will do the game THEY want. And it is an ok game, playable, interesting and fun in it's own way. Stalemates are only becoming common with introduction of the swarmhost, which I think Blizz will change as games are getting too long and its embarrassing for them. I think if we get the odd very long game, it is actually a good thing.
I know you and many others love BW, but SC2 doesnt want to be BW, I think that is starkly clear. That is why mods are the answer if you want to play a game that is designed differently. I think suggesting small changes to units will be more beneficial in influencing Blizz, as that is the model they stick with, no matter if a section of the community wants parts of SC2 redesigned. It wont be till LOTV till we see more drastic shifts imho.
On February 11 2014 10:29 qGSkipper wrote: Increase the supply cap
That would be insanely fun. How about no limit?
I wonder if the limit is Network Code & CPU related, rather than gameplay.
I've always wondered that.
Physical limitations are definitely not an issue when 4v4 games are composed of 8 players potentially maxing out and the game is still bearable with good pc. While I disagree with no supply cap, I definitely think the game should have a higher supply cap as games quickly stagnate after you reach the limit. Already in beta I was under the impression that this game was simply not made to have a 200/200 cap because it stopped being an exotic thing, but a standard in every game. Blizzard should have balanced the game around well-established fundamentals and only then fixed the minuscule details and tweaks. Pace of economy is simply too fast for the game, and you can solve it two ways. Either slow down the economy (which starbow did brilliantly) and/or increase the supply cap. I even see many people talk about maps being the problem, but again, you can only design maps based on the principles of the game and if those are flawed, then the maps will just amplify them. Big maps would never be an issue to play on if the game itself didn't promote turtling 3-4 base gameplay.
Units would never need such nitpicky balancing and players would be given many more solutions than just one to deal with a specific play style. Dynamic expanding player against a turtling player is a primitive example, and the turtling player would be forced to move out and fight for control of the game before it gets out of hand (of course it is much more complex than that, as turtling player can still harass the expanding player with mobile units that they have at their disposal) - likewise would the rapid expanding player be forced to keep the turtling player's army OR economy low. Right now there simply is no way to overwhelm an opponent with superior economy, and in the end it always boils down to one fight regardless of how many bases you have. There would have never been any need to add swarm hosts or tempests into the game, no need for mass static and spore strats because you would have the option to go for an inefficient, but massable route.
Having a higher supply cap would not only fix the turtling issues that this game has, but also allow for bigger maps to be in map pool, which would also lead to a more dynamic war of attrition that is currently almost non-existant. The more bases you take, the more exposed and stretched you would be, but in return you would get a better economy. It would allow you to leave more units for defense while still having a healthy main army.
But of course, knowing blizzard they will never make such a rehaul because they are too concerned about the minuscule details while missing the big picture. Sometimes the solution is almost too simple.
edit: I have already tried a few games on customized ladder maps like frost and altrezim and gave them 300 supply. From my experience, I kinda felt sorry that these games weren't the standard of starcraft 2.
On February 10 2014 22:07 TRaFFiC wrote: I never played broodwar, but I played other rts. I don't see any problem. I'm loving the diversity of strategies recently. There are so many ways to deal with mech. I enjoyed the match. Only problem I see is boring the noobie rts fans who aren't used to it or costing tons of extra money to power the studio lol
If you had a BW background the diversity would perhaps not seem so big as you find it now
Lol you really think BW had "diversity of strategy" ? There was the standard composition for each matchup, and this never changed, but there were small tweaks you could do with each composition for each matchup. Definitely not diverse.
I think the major point in the OP is that the economy of SC2 really gives incentive to sit back and turtle because of the 3 base max saturation. If sc2 had the BW economy, I think we'd see a huge improvement in things honestly. Just the fact that 3base is the max bases you need really limits the game, you should gain exponentially with each base up to a certain point, but limiting it to 3 really screws with things.
Looking at this another way, the REAL problem with something like Soulkey vs. Reality was NOT swarm hosts or ravens.
It was MULES.
Think about it: Until he's mined out, Soulkey needs to keep establishing a bank to replenish units. That takes drones - a lot of 'em. There's an opportunity cost to this: his maximum army size will be that much smaller, always.
Soulkey cannot afford a straight-up engagement in most cases once it progresses from mid-to-late, because his half-army, half-drones composition can't beat a nearly-all-mech, some-MULES composition.
The real advantage of building so many orbitals is that you are basically paying to free up more army supply than would otherwise be possible. It allows terran to build a critical mass of end-game units that is THAT MUCH closer to a "true" 200/200, whereas zerg army supply is much lower. You simply don't need SCVs, whereas zerg will still need drones.
And if zerg DOES throw away his drones to get on equal army size footing with terran, he won't be able to get back in the economy game - whereas terran can have both: a maxed out army AND an exploding, growing bank.
That's what is ridiculous about it. And no player should, at end-end-end game, suddenly be able to pull in thousands of minerals per minute with low worker count. I've seen so many games change because of float over + mule shower that it's scary.
Also, specifically on the Soulkey fight: the audience was right, he should have move-commanded his hosts. Rather than waste their shots on endless PDTs, they could have cuddled to tanks and let friendly fire do its thing. Game would have been much different: literally hundreds of waves where it would have been helpful.
On February 11 2014 10:29 qGSkipper wrote: Increase the supply cap
That would be insanely fun. How about no limit?
I wonder if the limit is Network Code & CPU related, rather than gameplay.
I've always wondered that.
Physical limitations are definitely not an issue when 4v4 games are composed of 8 players potentially maxing out and the game is still bearable with good pc. While I disagree with no supply cap, I definitely think the game should have a higher supply cap as games quickly stagnate after you reach the limit. Already in beta I was under the impression that this game was simply not made to have a 200/200 cap because it stopped being an exotic thing, but a standard in every game. Blizzard should have balanced the game around well-established fundamentals and only then fixed the minuscule details and tweaks. Pace of economy is simply too fast for the game, and you can solve it two ways. Either slow down the economy (which starbow did brilliantly) and/or increase the supply cap. I even see many people talk about maps being the problem, but again, you can only design maps based on the principles of the game and if those are flawed, then the maps will just amplify them. Big maps would never be an issue to play on if the game itself didn't promote turtling 3-4 base gameplay.
Units would never need such nitpicky balancing and players would be given many more solutions than just one to deal with a specific play style. Dynamic expanding player against a turtling player is a primitive example, and the turtling player would be forced to move out and fight for control of the game before it gets out of hand (of course it is much more complex than that, as turtling player can still harass the expanding player with mobile units that they have at their disposal) - likewise would the rapid expanding player be forced to keep the turtling player's army OR economy low. Right now there simply is no way to overwhelm an opponent with superior economy, and in the end it always boils down to one fight regardless of how many bases you have. There would have never been any need to add swarm hosts or tempests into the game, no need for mass static and spore strats because you would have the option to go for an inefficient, but massable route.
Having a higher supply cap would not only fix the turtling issues that this game has, but also allow for bigger maps to be in map pool, which would also lead to a more dynamic war of attrition that is currently almost non-existant. The more bases you take, the more exposed and stretched you would be, but in return you would get a better economy. It would allow you to leave more units for defense while still having a healthy main army.
But of course, knowing blizzard they will never make such a rehaul because they are too concerned about the minuscule details while missing the big picture. Sometimes the solution is almost too simple.
edit: I have already tried a few games on customized ladder maps like frost and altrezim and gave them 300 supply. From my experience, I kinda felt sorry that these games weren't the standard of starcraft 2.
I totally agree, the 200/200 supply cap really fit the BW style of economy, but sc2 has a totally different economy and the games stagnate immensely when it is reached. This would also solve a lot of problems with the 3base max saturation, because there would be more supply for workers = more room to expand without cutting into your army value.
But once again, I seriously doubt they would think about doing something like this, only time I could see them doing something like this is with LotV, but even then i'd doubt it. I honestly think an overhaul of the economy or something like that would be fucking huge for this game, because there's a basic underlying problem and that is the abundance of resources making intense battles of attrition extinct, and economical tactics like that are just non existant in sc2. It's severly hampering gameplay in my humble opinion.
On February 11 2014 14:56 nullroar wrote: Reduce worker HP by 50% and change them so they cost 0 supply.
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 so many people are so against how SC2 games play out then why isn't there a huge starbow player base? Most people don't have the apm for a game like starbow or broodwar to be a rewarding experience. From what I can tell there are far more people that like SC2 than people that would like a game like starbow. We all have to keep in mind that people on TL are generally the more hardcore player base of SC2, and are playing, or have played, at a higher level than most of the player base, most likely. Because of this, we see problems that lower level players would never even think about, as unit composition matters far less at lower levels. Because of this, Blizzard doesn't really have an incentive to listen to us, and would would probably even take a loss in sales if they reworked the game.
In terms of game play, it seems pretty obvious to me that the pacing of the game is the biggest issue in SC2, not swarm hosts. Swarm hosts are a problem right now I guess but every other compositional problem in SC2 really stemmed from the fact that everything happens too fast and 3 base mining is optimal. I honestly don't think the units of SC2 are bad ideas at all, they just fail to be what they could be because of the crap pacing and economy. If BW units were put into SC2 people would bitch even more than they do now, imagine a skytoss army that gets killed by one remax of scourge lol.
Of course, as people have said, if the economy were to be reworked, along with pacing of battles, things would have to be tweaked a lot before the game became playable again. However, the game would be so so much easier to balance, because the control of the game would be more in the players hands than it is now. I.e. with more battles across the map that are longer, it gives players more ability to micro said battles, along with macroing across their bases, which would be of greater number than they would be in sc2.
TL;DR more people like sc2 in it's current state than people who don't, so ultimately nothing will change. If you don't like sc2 go play starbow.
If the economy is solely the issue holding back SC2 couldn't this be fixed via Gold Minerals and Rich Vespene Gas?
Both of these collect considerably more resources per minute than their normal counterparts which in turn makes expanding more rewarding. Even if you cut back on the amount of patches/gases per expansion you'd require less workers which would then feed into the army supplies raising the effective cap.
We used to see Gold Patches a fair amount in WOL prior to Antiga. My understanding is the reason they were never used was because of Mules collecting 42 (7 x 6 trips) minerals instead of the 30 (5 x 6 trips) on regular minerals. However, this was fixed way back in Patch 1.4.3.
So, if the economy is the issue why aren't we using Gold and Rich Vespense bases? It seems like half the people in this thread are talking about re-working the economy which would fuck-up the entirety of the games balance. Something like this would at least be map specific.
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.
On February 11 2014 16:50 lost_artz wrote: If the economy is solely the issue holding back SC2 couldn't this be fixed via Gold Minerals and Rich Vespene Gas?
Both of these collect considerably more resources per minute than their normal counterparts which in turn makes expanding more rewarding. Even if you cut back on the amount of patches/gases per expansion you'd require less workers which would then feed into the army supplies raising the effective cap.
We used to see Gold Patches a fair amount in WOL prior to Antiga. My understanding is the reason they were never used was because of Mules collecting 42 (7 x 6 trips) minerals instead of the 30 (5 x 6 trips) on regular minerals. However, this was fixed way back in Patch 1.4.3.
So, if the economy is the issue why aren't we using Gold and Rich Vespense bases? It seems like half the people in this thread are talking about re-working the economy which would fuck-up the entirety of the games balance. Something like this would at least be map specific.
The games would still play out too quickly, even more quickly in fact. Doing what you're saying would actually make the game far worse, not better. People would just rush to get the gold bases and the other person would either all in or get one themself, which leads to death balls even faster than they come out now.
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.
snute you should be on blizzard team
What he's suggesting would make the game even more of a nightmare to balance than it is currently, it wouldn't change the games pacing at all, it would cause huge mineral floats if I'm understanding correctly, and everything would die even faster than it does now, with even stronger death balls. IMO it would make the game worse over all but might fix the stalemate issue.
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.
Protoss has no way to beat swarmhost + static defense until turtling into a 200/200 deathball with a LOT of tempests.
Terran has no way to beat swarmhosts other than accumulating ravens for the point defense drone because this allows your mech units to not take damage and actually allow you to advance into swarmhost locust waves + static defense.
This is not the fault of Protoss design or Terran design, or ravens, or tempests, or deathballing. It is the terrible design of the swarmhost which forces the opponent to do sit there and amass cost efficient units or otherwise lose the game.
Swarmhosts provide free units that are not even energy dependent. It's simply on a cool down and will infinitely spawn free units that trade for the opponent's minerals and vespene gas.
Swarmhost is the issue. Do not put Terran players at fault or start an anti-raven bandwagon because when a Zerg goes swarmhosts the only response is to start accumulating ravens from Terran's side, or a deathball of air units from Protoss's side.
A question we all have to ask right now is: is Zerg capable of beating Terran mech and Protoss without the swarmhost in the game in it's current form? The answer would be most definitely yes they can, through tech switches and use of vipers.
The swarmhost needs a massive re-design or balance tweaks.
As for the other issues Morrow has pointed out and many others like Lalaush in the past - the economy of SC2 promotes getting to 3 bases and maxing out and then the game is about whoever's army is more efficient than their opponent's.
A good example of a mod that changes the economy to matter is Starbow, or just look at good ol' Brood War (SC1). You had to mass expand all over the place in Brood War because you would run out of money otherwise.
TvP in Brood War...was literally the Terran turtling to a cost efficient mech army with tanks that killed things, and the Protoss sometimes being 1 or even 2 expansions ahead wittling away at the Terran mech army through recalls, carrier switches, etc.
But i don't think blizzard will honestly change the economy of SC2 at this point and i would actually recommend they never do because it would kill the game. I have seen another RTS, Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath go through a massive economy overhaul in a patch...and the game entirely changed but too much to keep the player base stable.
At this point it is better if blizzard simply fixes obvious imbalances like blink/MSC and promotes more viable strategies in each match-up (cough mech TvP...)
How can you believe half the shit that comes out of your mouth after playing turtle mech for the last 4 fucking years, most of them without swarmhosts even in the game? In any event, reality vs hydra is a fantastic counter example of a terran sitting in his base vs a non swarmhost zerg until he had an unbeatable army.
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...
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.
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.
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.
watch Mvp play mech in WoL, he is one of the most successful and aggressive mech player out there it certainly isn't a problem of free unit. the idea of free unit is to allow zerg to have ways to break down turtling players without needing to throw away units over units onto PFs, with tanks and missile turrets and starve to death even with pretty much the whole map's resources
if it wasn't for viper corruptor abducts onto the colossus, do you think toss will have any problem at all pushing out against a swarmhost player?
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.
watch Mvp play mech in WoL, he is one of the most successful and aggressive mech player out there it certainly isn't a problem of free unit. the idea of free unit is to allow zerg to have ways to break down turtling players without needing to throw away units over units onto PFs, with tanks and missile turrets and starve to death even with pretty much the whole map's resources
Mvp was the best at hitting some great timings and catching the mass infestor Zerg of guard. When Zergs got the free unit generators plus Infestors, games looked similar to what we see from SH: Zerg camps outside the opponents base and T/P can never move out, and a slow x min death animation ensures.
My problem with free units (do not confuse with energy based units/ structures) is also that is makes battles uninteresting. There is no tension when one of the players has nothing to lose. It is basically an advanced animation to what could just be a static siege unit vs siege unit.
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.
if it wasn't for viper corruptor abducts onto the colossus, do you think toss will have any problem at all pushing out against a swarmhost player?
Well if it wasn't for drones Zerg would not have an army.
The Viper is a skill unit that can create tension, micro vs micro battles, force armies to split (think Tanks), requires positioning from both players. It's IMO the only good unit from the expansion.
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. 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.
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.
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.
if it wasn't for viper corruptor abducts onto the colossus, do you think toss will have any problem at all pushing out against a swarmhost player?
Well if it wasn't for drones Zerg would not have an army.
The Viper is a skill unit that can create tension, micro vs micro battles, force armies to split (think Tanks), requires positioning from both players. It's IMO the only good unit from the expansion.
I don't think you understand what I mean.
Swarmhost corruptor viper is only a problem in ZvP not because of swarmhost, but because of vipers killing off colossus. without these adbucts, free units (if you still think it's a problem) won't mean much because ~6 colossus can shut them down fine.
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?
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.
if it wasn't for viper corruptor abducts onto the colossus, do you think toss will have any problem at all pushing out against a swarmhost player?
Well if it wasn't for drones Zerg would not have an army.
The Viper is a skill unit that can create tension, micro vs micro battles, force armies to split (think Tanks), requires positioning from both players. It's IMO the only good unit from the expansion.
I don't think you understand what I mean.
Swarmhost corruptor viper is only a problem in ZvP not because of swarmhost, but because of vipers killing off colossus. without these adbucts, free units (if you still think it's a problem) won't mean much because ~6 colossus can shut them down fine.
I can see what you mean but even that is a problem. SH were meant to siege and force the opponent out of turtle but they do the exact opposite: as Terran you are forced to mass Tanks (even then it's very very slow and difficult to move out) and as Protoss, like you said, you need lots of Colossus (assuming no Vipers). They make already slow-ish stategies like mech and Protoss macro be even more slow. This is very bad IMO.
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.
Protoss has no way to beat swarmhost + static defense until turtling into a 200/200 deathball with a LOT of tempests.
Terran has no way to beat swarmhosts other than accumulating ravens for the point defense drone because this allows your mech units to not take damage and actually allow you to advance into swarmhost locust waves + static defense.
This is not the fault of Protoss design or Terran design, or ravens, or tempests, or deathballing. It is the terrible design of the swarmhost which forces the opponent to do sit there and amass cost efficient units or otherwise lose the game.
Swarmhosts provide free units that are not even energy dependent. It's simply on a cool down and will infinitely spawn free units that trade for the opponent's minerals and vespene gas.
Swarmhost is the issue. Do not put Terran players at fault or start an anti-raven bandwagon because when a Zerg goes swarmhosts the only response is to start accumulating ravens from Terran's side, or a deathball of air units from Protoss's side.
A question we all have to ask right now is: is Zerg capable of beating Terran mech and Protoss without the swarmhost in the game in it's current form? The answer would be most definitely yes they can, through tech switches and use of vipers.
The swarmhost needs a massive re-design or balance tweaks.
As for the other issues Morrow has pointed out and many others like Lalaush in the past - the economy of SC2 promotes getting to 3 bases and maxing out and then the game is about whoever's army is more efficient than their opponent's.
A good example of a mod that changes the economy to matter is Starbow, or just look at good ol' Brood War (SC1). You had to mass expand all over the place in Brood War because you would run out of money otherwise.
TvP in Brood War...was literally the Terran turtling to a cost efficient mech army with tanks that killed things, and the Protoss sometimes being 1 or even 2 expansions ahead wittling away at the Terran mech army through recalls, carrier switches, etc.
But i don't think blizzard will honestly change the economy of SC2 at this point and i would actually recommend they never do because it would kill the game. I have seen another RTS, Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath go through a massive economy overhaul in a patch...and the game entirely changed but too much to keep the player base stable.
At this point it is better if blizzard simply fixes obvious imbalances like blink/MSC and promotes more viable strategies in each match-up (cough mech TvP...)
Avilo, you understand that swarmhost just gives Zerg the same tool Terran had for a much longer time? A unit to stay defensive on a few bases without worrying about ever attacking before being maxed out. Blizzards solution seems smart on paper: Zerg got Vipers to crush tank lines which themselves crush swarmhosts. But the problem is, that the dynamic of viking range vs viper + ravens defensive abilities makes it a stalemate. Imo they should reduce the defensive abilities of those turtle styles while increasing the aggressive abilities, e.g. nerf locust range and pdd but buff viper range and seeker missile dmg.
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.
You're blindly ignorant of the fact that despite playing against free units for over an hour, the game was still a TIE. Can you imagine how unfairly one-sided it would be without the free units? Does that scenario seem balanced to you? More importantly, have you even considered it? Probably not.
I'm not saying swarhmosts are good for the game. But they are 100% necessary for zerg to be lategame viable, as protoss and terran armies are so cost effective that anything but swarmhost composition will lose 90% of the time given equally skilled opponents.
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.
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. 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. 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.
Saying Zerg can rely on all those things while telling the world that nothing Mech works apart from turtling is just plain bias.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Simple Idea: DRASTICALLY reduce the resources present in main, a bit less in natural, and a good/average size in the 3rd location.
What is a mineral patch now? 1500? Make it 500 in the main, 750/1000 in the natural, and Regular in the other bases. Force people to be aggressive and take bases.
On February 13 2014 04:44 Slardar wrote: Simple Idea: DRASTICALLY reduce the resources present in main, a bit less in natural, and a good/average size in the 3rd location.
What is a mineral patch now? 1500? Make it 500 in the main, 750/1000 in the natural, and Regular in the other bases. Force people to be aggressive and take bases.
No, that's a stupid solution as it leads to situation where you can easily kill a player if you due a very aggressive timing designed to contain on the enemy on 1 or 2 bases.
The best economic solution is to just reintroduce the BW model with even more diminishing returns on workers stacking, so say, if you have 60 workers vs 60 workers, but you have 6 bases compared to the enemy's 3 you'll have like roughly 40% more income, or something like that.
On February 13 2014 04:44 Slardar wrote: Simple Idea: DRASTICALLY reduce the resources present in main, a bit less in natural, and a good/average size in the 3rd location.
What is a mineral patch now? 1500? Make it 500 in the main, 750/1000 in the natural, and Regular in the other bases. Force people to be aggressive and take bases.
No, that's a stupid solution as it leads to situation where you can easily kill a player if you due a very aggressive timing designed to contain on the enemy on 1 or 2 bases.
The best economic solution is to just reintroduce the BW model with even more diminishing returns on workers stacking, so say, if you have 60 workers vs 60 workers, but you have 6 bases compared to the enemy's 3 you'll have like roughly 40% more income, or something like that.
Yeah I mentioned this earlier in the thread, does anyone know if there's a way to use starbow/sc2bw's economy on normal sc2 maps and see how it plays out, no balance changes aside? Or at the very least worker wandering, I know blizz has put their foot on the ground for no distinct economy changes, but they've 180'd on other issues, too ex: "we think competitive maps and ladder maps should be distinct" circa 2011 gdc
On February 13 2014 04:44 Slardar wrote: Simple Idea: DRASTICALLY reduce the resources present in main, a bit less in natural, and a good/average size in the 3rd location.
What is a mineral patch now? 1500? Make it 500 in the main, 750/1000 in the natural, and Regular in the other bases. Force people to be aggressive and take bases.
No, that's a stupid solution as it leads to situation where you can easily kill a player if you due a very aggressive timing designed to contain on the enemy on 1 or 2 bases.
The best economic solution is to just reintroduce the BW model with even more diminishing returns on workers stacking, so say, if you have 60 workers vs 60 workers, but you have 6 bases compared to the enemy's 3 you'll have like roughly 40% more income, or something like that.
Yeah I mentioned this earlier in the thread, does anyone know if there's a way to use starbow/sc2bw's economy on normal sc2 maps and see how it plays out, no balance changes aside? Or at the very least worker wandering, I know blizz has put their foot on the ground for no distinct economy changes, but they've 180'd on other issues, too ex: "we think competitive maps and ladder maps should be distinct" circa 2011 gdc
Well the creators of Starbow said that they worked on the economy for ages to try and make it similar to BW, so I'm not sure how easy its going to be. In theory if you find the winning formula you could make an extension mod out of it.
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.
I just remember a famous Broodwar player stating.
Why is it that as Terran I cannot build two barracks at an expansion and when they finish start mining from them? That's what zerg does...
On February 12 2014 16:17 MyrMindservant wrote: 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.
EPT
), 4gate, 7 roach rush, blue flame hellion drops, Polt's 1/1/1 marine-tank-raven shenanigans and every derivative timing attack, Stephano's quick mass Roach max into attack, PartinG's soul train immortal push, hellbat drops, widow mine parade pushes, and now we have the Blink attack in PvT which isn't even an all-in to boot.
