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Not sure what to do with Corruptor other than change it. It's so far from interesting that basically anything would improve it.
Yeh, indeed. And then when you look at BW and see that there exist this concept which isn't added into Sc2, but people really like... Then it just makes sense to add a variation of that to the Corrupter which already lacks ATG utility.
For the SH I fully agree. Did you happen to fall over that video I once posted about a SH variation I created with the editor? (Can link you tomorrow, just turned off the PC :-) )
No I didn't see it.
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On July 24 2014 07:23 Jarree wrote:
When is the last time someone has seen roach drops (do ventral sacs still even exist??)? Banshee/hellion harass against P? 2-base tank pushes against P? Nukes against z? etc.
I can't believe people are saying the game is close to what it should be. There is not even half the diversity WOL had. And in the end that game was ruined by horrible balance, but it still produced a hell lot of more diverse games than HOTS does currently.
While I agree that some of these things disapeared, beside banshees/2base push against P that became impossible because of MSC (that should be reworked).
About nuke, or roach drop... Nothing prevent players to do it. Absolutly nothing. That was terribly rare in WoL and it still is now. But nothing in the game changes that would make it impossible.
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this patch cant come sooner so tired of mass muta. really silly to see in a rts.
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Call me crazy. I dont see this changing TvP late game in the slightest.
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I'll quit Zerg then I guess. I can't win against Terran anyway and now the shittiest unit in this game (mine) (after SH) gets even stronger =/ Can't deal with this as Zerg
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Just read one of Dustin Browders old comments on TvP mech viability during HOTS Beta. It was kinda interesting.
After holding early pressure a Terran player can them go with a ground-based Tank army through the mid-game which gives the Terran the flexibility to deal with a variety of Protoss threats. For example, a possible Protoss counter would be to go to the air against a Terran Siege Tank and Hellbat heavy force. Terran players can sometimes transition into Thor + Hellbat + Viking if this occurs. With Factory and Starport Terran players can sometimes create a well-rounded army that can deal with many Protoss threats.
Obviously a large number of Immortals can be an issue for a Tank heavy force but sometimes Ghosts can make the difference if EMP is used as the Protoss engage.
What I find interesting here is that DB seems completely unfocussed on whether terran mech has any aggressive timing/harss tools or whether there are any types of fun interactions.
All he is focussed on is unit-counters. When enemy gets unit X, you can get unit Y and win. I kinda hope that he isn't involved in the development of LOTV, and that David Kim instead has his responsibilty. Not that David Kim is perfect, but overall his comments (given his limitations) showcases a better understanding of the acutal issues.
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On July 24 2014 07:32 NKexquisite wrote:
Call me crazy. I dont see this changing TvP late game in the slightest.
Not sure if ironic, but it's pretty much safe to say this patch is not going to change PvT lategame in decisive fashion.
A point though ; when P and T reach lategame in good conditions and the armies trade evenly, sometimes the P could just remake 50 supply of chargelot archon and walk his way to the win. If the T is smart, sacrifices some SCVs and keeps a defensive mine field, he would be able to deal with those kind of situations far better because those mines just obliterate any chargelot archon army. Just theorycrafting ofc, not even sure that's practical, but that's something I'd really love to see T experiment with.
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i really wish they would stop using such wishy-washy expressions like "feel" "looking at" "sometimes" "believe".
man up and make a fking statement ffs!
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On July 24 2014 07:41 Hider wrote:Just read one of Dustin Browders old comments on TvP mech viability during HOTS Beta. It was kinda interesting. Show nested quote +After holding early pressure a Terran player can them go with a ground-based Tank army through the mid-game which gives the Terran the flexibility to deal with a variety of Protoss threats. For example, a possible Protoss counter would be to go to the air against a Terran Siege Tank and Hellbat heavy force. Terran players can sometimes transition into Thor + Hellbat + Viking if this occurs. With Factory and Starport Terran players can sometimes create a well-rounded army that can deal with many Protoss threats.
Obviously a large number of Immortals can be an issue for a Tank heavy force but sometimes Ghosts can make the difference if EMP is used as the Protoss engage.
What I find interesting here is that DB seems completely unfocussed on whether terran mech has any aggressive timing/harss tools or whether there are any types of fun interactions. All he is focussed on is unit-counters. When enemy gets unit X, you can get unit Y and win. I kinda hope that he isn't involved in the development of LOTV, and that David Kim instead has his responsibilty. Not that David Kim is perfect, but overall his comments (given his limitations) showcases a better understanding of the acutal issues.
Could not agree more.
I give a lot of shit to DB, but to be fair he did a good job with WOL, as far as the big picture goes. HOTS showed IMO his limitations in not being capable or not wanting to look in to more detail as far as strategies go. He has an over simplistic view of the game IMO, make army move out, make counter to what the opponent is doing, repeat. When it came to making harass options for protoss again he showed narrow thinking, by making a "harass" unit that's just simplistic and boring in both function and control.
LOTV should have in charge a lead designer that understands the game (pro level play) at a much deeper level. Maybe an overhaul is not needed, but there are a number of units that need special attention to be made in to fun esport units, and strategies need to be viewed in more detail, like the mech harass network that is so bare bones.
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Exactly. Tempest is the epitome of the difficulties DB has to make an unit that is not meant to be a hard counter : remember it was supposed to wreck muta balls and ended up being such a brood lord killer it isn't even fun. A very bad unit which even overlapped in some ways on the role a carefully made carrier could have filled.
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I give a lot of !@#$%^&* to DB, but to be fair he did a good job with WOL, as far as the big picture goes. HOTS showed IMO his limitations in not being capable or not wanting to look in to more detail as far as strategies go. He has an over simplistic view of the game IMO, make army move out, make counter to what the opponent is doing, repeat.
Yeh kinda agree with this. If DB's role is limited to coming up with the overall new concepts of units/game-mechanics and then Blizzard have other guys to refine the ideas in order to create interesting interactions, Sc2 could be pretty solid. Given the way the units ended up being, the outcome wasn't difficult to predict. Below are some quotes of "predictions" I made 1½ years ago (during HOTS BETA), which was at a time where I was very green on game-design.
I haven't played HOTS; only watched a couple of games with the SH, and those games are just terribly boring.
Honestly I think mech now is about getting the critical amount of ravens rather than the critical amount of tanks.
Problem with ravens are that they are kinda a boring unit for 99% of the time. With most units you can do a lot of stuff with them even when your not in a battle. Mech is never goanna be truly viable, the only viable mech we will see is "deathball mech." (Context here was: Deathball mech = Raven/Ghost + Tanks.)
My points with these quotes are that the issues with how HOTS ended up being were quite obvious. It wasn't really something that there was no way Blizzard could have seen coming, and thus it is clear that there was some type of flawed methology in how Blizzard worked on HOTS. Given DB's simplistic view on game-design and the fact that he doesn't seem so involved anymore, there is hope for LOTV.
When it came to making harass options for protoss again he showed narrow thinking, by making a "harass" unit that's just simplistic and boring in both function
Actually I typically defend David Kim when he gets criticied by the wider community and various pro gamers. I read almost all of the suggestions from various people, and most of it is just really bad. In order to be better at a job than someone, you need to at the very least understand the thought proces behind the decision-making of the guy your claiming does a bad job.
Also, I am sure that David Kim in many ways is limited in his job function. There are probably lots of changes he would have liked to make, but isn't capable of, which makes his "results" look worse.
Most pro-gamers could probably be decent/good lead-designers with 1-2 years of "training", however as it is right now, David Kim does a much better job than the average pro would do.
When it came to making harass options for protoss again he showed narrow thinking, by making a "harass" unit that's just simplistic and boring in both function and control.
The idea of a protoss ATG harass unit is very solid, but the execution of this is so incredibly bad. IMO all the Oracle needed was to have a much better moving shot and lower damage vs light units. I don't understand why Blizzard didn't use the concepts that worked in BW (very microable units w/ lower damage values).
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I wish they were buffing the Siegetank instead of the widow mine...
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Exactly. Tempest is the epitome of the difficulties DB has to make an unit that is not meant to be a hard counter : remember it was supposed to wreck muta balls and ended up being such a brood lord killer it isn't even fun. A very bad unit which even overlapped in some ways on the role a carefully made carrier could have filled.
Protoss air in general is just quite bad. It has multiple units overlapping with each other and micro interactions are very boring/non-existant. Thus, it needs a complete overhaul. Here is what I would do.
My suggestions for protoss air changes in LOTV (warning: long post incoming)
Tempest.
- 8 range
- tier 2
- better moving shot
- cheaper.
This means that the Tempest can be a relatively mobile unit in the later game that breakes static defense and work for itself.
Void Ray.
- Low acceleration
- 4 range
- More beefy (2 armor, more HP/shield
- Leash-range reduced from 2 to around 0.5, so enemy units can actually escape (which should encourage micro).
Due to it's high HP/low range it will synergize well with all other protoss air units, but will be quite medicore in a straihgt up battle asusming the enemy micro's.
Carrier:
The Carrier should be an expensive, supply effective unit that can be used to break someone that goes uber turtle. This can be obtained by increasing maximum amount of interceptors it can fire, which makes it stronger but also more expensive as it needs to pay to rebuild intercettrs.
Further, as I previously wrote, I would like to see the Thor have more of a Goliath-role here. That means that it's anti-armored attack should be buffed signifciantly while it's antilight/splash attack should be changed somewhat. Further, Vikings are weaker vs armored air units.
Given that the Thor has two modes, why not try and create some actually synergy between those two Thor modes. Wouldn't it be cool if you could switch back and fourth during battles against Carriers?
Actually it is possible (I tested it). What is required are the following changes:
- Carrier's intercetpors are more clumped up (more vulnerable to splash from the Thor)
- Interceptors have slightly less HP/more damage
- Thor splash damage needs to be a bit larger
- Thor transformation time needs to be reduced from 4 seconds to less than 1 second.
This way the terran player wanna target fire the Carriers with the Anti-armored weapon, but if he is good, he can move your injured Thors back behind the other Thors and switch them into anti-splash mode where it targets intercetors instead while keeping the Thors out of the Carriers attack-range.
Oracle.
In order to give it moving shot you need to max out it's acceleration and turn-rate + set damage point at 0. For it to be efficient to make the same type of Mutalisk micro vs Marines as saw in BW, the further changes are needed:
- Range increased to 6.
- Attack speed reduced by 50%
- It needs to have less HP/shield (in order to be balanced)
- Damage vs light reduced a bit as well.
- Seperation radius reduced (so you can stack Oracles better, this is important due to how the Starcraft-editor is bugged as Lalush explained in his "depht of micro"-video.
(FYI: I am not making this up. I spent multiple hours tweaking various stats values in order to get the desired "interaction-effects")
The unit roles
Oracle = Good vs Widow Mine if detected, but weak vs it in the sense that it dies in 1 hit. Vs Vikings it has no answer in straight combat, but has a mobility advantage vs Vikings. Thors are decent vs Oracles. Vs Marines, the outcome depends on micro. 4 marines can take out 1 oracle, but if the Oracle micro's well it can take out 6-7 Marines.
Void Ray. Very strong if enemy doesn't micro, Can tank Marine shots quite well and thus synergizes well with the other higher DPS protoss units. It is good vs Widow Mines in the sense that it can tank multiple shots, but weak vs it since it can't outrange it, has no detection and typically can't fly away from it in time. Vikings are very weak in a straight up engagements vs it, but can kite it.
Tempest: You can get it out in tier2, where you can make some pressure oriented builds with it and take advantage of terrain. It needs to kite vs Marines as it's weak vs them in straight combat, but due to it's slower movement speed it can't kite forever. Further, Widow Mines can catch up to it, but on the other hand it can outrange Widow Mines from a safe distance. In a straight up battle, this is very weak vs Thors, but late game it has a mobility upgrade which means it can take advantage of the immoilbity of the mech-army and haras it.
Vikings trade roughly even vs this unit.
Carrier: It's also kinda weak vs the Thor (similar to the Tempest), but there are the following diferences; A) Later tech, B) Slower production, C) Unique micro-interaction, D) much more supply-effective, so if the terran mech player turtles on few bases and has lots of tanks, you cannot finish him off with Tempests, but Carriers can often times be the better job if you have the superior economy
Overall, this should mean that all of protoss air units have unique micro interactions and unique unit roles with various advantages/disadvantage compared to their teran counterparts. There are no hardcounters here as all of the terran "counter"-options have some type of disadvantage against the specific protoss air unit. Instead, the terran player needs to rely on a mix of Thors, Vikings, Mines and Marines to effectively combat a good protoss air player.
But I hope that this just functions as an example of how much new gameplay you can create by just changing stats values. You don't need to come in with completley new units or remove old units. For me, it's instead all about the numbers.
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What if Thors could attack both air and ground at the same time? Fuck the mine buff, let's see some thors be -really- useful. They can more reliably fill the role of marines for mech - busting open ground units with thor hammers while simultaneously supporting vikings with their ground-to-air splash. Also solves the ridiculous issue of thor target priority.
Limit it so that thors have to face the direction theyre shooting, so there isn't a thor shooting an ultra in the front and a mutalisk in the back. With their clunky movement and turn-rate, they should lose a lot of effectiveness when flanked. So they'll be stronger defensively; holding frontal all-ins from Zergs and follow-up nastification that is constant tech switching.
It could come as an upgrade or an automatic unlock when Terrans build fusion core or something that opens up late-game.
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On July 24 2014 07:24 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +
Not sure what to do with Corruptor other than change it. It's so far from interesting that basically anything would improve it.
Yeh, indeed. And then when you look at BW and see that there exist this concept which isn't added into Sc2, but people really like... Then it just makes sense to add a variation of that to the Corrupter which already lacks ATG utility. Show nested quote +
For the SH I fully agree. Did you happen to fall over that video I once posted about a SH variation I created with the editor? (Can link you tomorrow, just turned off the PC :-) )
No I didn't see it.
Honestly when you think about it, the expansion units are actually used fairly rarely in Broodwar.
TvT, ZvZ, PvP - Expansion units not used at all.
TvP - Expansion units only used very rarely, DT cheeses are about it.
TvZ - Medics and lurkers are used if Terran goes bio, but expansion units are not used at all if Terran goes mech. Not sure which one is more popular but they're unused in at least half of all these games.
ZvP - Corsairs are used in most games.
So, that's one and a half matchups out of six?
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On July 24 2014 10:14 Xequecal wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2014 07:24 Hider wrote:
Not sure what to do with Corruptor other than change it. It's so far from interesting that basically anything would improve it.
Yeh, indeed. And then when you look at BW and see that there exist this concept which isn't added into Sc2, but people really like... Then it just makes sense to add a variation of that to the Corrupter which already lacks ATG utility.
For the SH I fully agree. Did you happen to fall over that video I once posted about a SH variation I created with the editor? (Can link you tomorrow, just turned off the PC :-) )
No I didn't see it. Honestly when you think about it, the expansion units are actually used fairly rarely in Broodwar. TvT, ZvZ, PvP - Expansion units not used at all. TvP - Expansion units only used very rarely, DT cheeses are about it. TvZ - Medics and lurkers are used if Terran goes bio, but expansion units are not used at all if Terran goes mech. Not sure which one is more popular but they're unused in at least half of all these games. ZvP - Corsairs are used in most games. So, that's one and a half matchups out of six?
What does that have to do with anything? I was talking about how there is a general consensus that people like the Dark Swarm in BW + moving shot of air units, and that Blizzard didn't apply those concepts to Sc2.
And not that it is relevant, but let's get the facts straight: Medics and lurkers are used in almost 100% of TvZ's in BW at current "pro"-level. PvZ = Lurker used quite often.
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I really don't like comparison between BW and SC2, the game's way too different.
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On July 24 2014 10:26 Faust852 wrote:
I really don't like comparison between BW and SC2, the game's way too different.
If you read my prevous post, I think it should be quite clear that this isn't about putting BW solutions directly into Sc2, but about taking concepts that work well in BW and adapt them to Sc2. That's basically how you learn about RTS game-design. You look at previous designs and try to understand why they worked and which variables you would have to change in order to make them work under a different environment.
Moving Shots work well in BW for air units. For SC2, blizzard chose to go a diferent way with air units and fucked totally up (FYI, this was basically what Lalush talked about in his "depht of micro"-video. There is no logical reason for this, and you can easily make the Oracle for instance a moving-shot based unit and create a much more fun playing experience for the protoss player and his opponent.
Now, let's look at at spells. Why are there no spells where you cast them on the ground and then they give your own units some kind of attribute. Dark Swarm did that, but obvously you cannot give Zerg Dark Swarm in Sc2. But the concept of an AOE-ability affecting friendly unit could IMO be applied to the Corrupter. It would just make that unit a ton more fun to use instead of making it an anti-Collosus unit.
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I don't think it was the intention of Blizzard to remove these kind of micro ability. They just make the game and it happens that you couldn't abuse the IA the same way. And they don't want to modify it back because well, it took them 4 years to revert a patch they did, they are way too pride for admitting they did things wrong.
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EPT
