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Why do thors have an absurd 0.831 damage point for their ground attack, but not their air attack? Why favor bio so much?
0.831 damage point lol. I didn't know it was that bad, and it wouldn't surprise me if this was an area where Blizzard is trying to make the casuals happy as a big mechanical unit like the Thor (lore-wise) is "supposed" to be slow and unresposnsive.
That's my biggest wish for LOTV: Rework the stats of all of the units with the intention on improving micro-interactions while giving zero shi.t about "lore".
Yes, the unit forces the terran to play differently. That's exactly what we want units to do. Impact the way we micro and play. Otherwise, you wouldn't get the unit in the first place.
Yeh, but it shouldn't impact the interaction for the worse. Instead, it should make the overall game-dynamic different (allow zerg to attack into different locations than prevoiusly, and rewarding a mech transition is fine). But it should never make engagements less likely to occur, that's just a bad thing in itself.
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To be honest, at some point campaigning for some of these unit stat changes is like arguing for introducing limited unit selection, new pathfinding and BW economy. Maybe the game would be better with some or most of those, but Blizzard is never going to make those changes. I think it's frustrating because Blizzard never properly explains their reasoning, so they don't seem rational at all and you start to really worry about their competence.
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Yea, I hope they look at damage point. It seems to dramatically affect the "feel" of the unit.
I think it makes sense to have a variety of damage point numbers to make units have different feels and responsiveness, but they should aim low whenever sensible.
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Working on unit stats instead of engine changes sounds a lot like the thing blizzard wants to do. But it kind of feels like they are partly out of touch with the game and have forgotten that there are stats besides damage, armor, speed and health.
Also I feel like they think these kinds of things are what they call "they make the game harder for pros because you have to be more careful when kiting a hydralisk to not cancel its attack". While the reality is that you just don't kite hydras because the time you could actually use for running doesnt get you anywhere.
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On November 13 2014 08:09 Grumbels wrote:
To be honest, at some point campaigning for some of these unit stat changes is like arguing for introducing limited unit selection, new pathfinding and BW economy. Maybe the game would be better with some or most of those, but Blizzard is never going to make those changes. I think it's frustrating because Blizzard never properly explains their reasoning, so they don't seem rational at all and you start to really worry about their competence.
Compare this to Riot.
http://www.surrenderat20.net/2014/11/red-post-collection-singed-champion.html
They clearly state out their thought proces, and the cause and effect of the expected changes.
Blizzard is more like: "We buff medivacs becasue we want to see more aggression". Then it leaves the community up to guessing whether they know more than we do or whether they really are this unnuanced in their approach.
But given their track-record, it's just very difficult to give the game-developers of blizzard the benefit of the doubt here.
If Blizzard on the other hand, had a track-record of consistently being able to proove the community wrong. Like If Swarm Host had turned out fun when they everyone playing the beta called for large changes. Or if Viper had a fun interaction vs mech-play or if Raven @ 2 supply + PDD turned out to be a great idea. And I almost forgot the Oracle, that wasn't fun during HOTS beta either.
So if they cannot properly explain the effects of each of their changes, I am therefore much more inclined to believe that there isn't more to their thought proces than can be seen on the surface.
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On November 13 2014 08:18 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2014 08:09 Grumbels wrote:
To be honest, at some point campaigning for some of these unit stat changes is like arguing for introducing limited unit selection, new pathfinding and BW economy. Maybe the game would be better with some or most of those, but Blizzard is never going to make those changes. I think it's frustrating because Blizzard never properly explains their reasoning, so they don't seem rational at all and you start to really worry about their competence. Compare this to Riot. http://www.surrenderat20.net/2014/11/red-post-collection-singed-champion.htmlThey clearly state out their thought proces, and the cause and effect of the expected changes. Blizzard is more like: "We buff medivacs becasue we want to see more aggression". Then it leaves the community up to guessing whether they know more than we do or whether they really are this unnuanced in their approach. But given their track-record, it's just very difficult to give the game-developers of blizzard the benefit of the doubt here. If they cannot properly explain the effects of each of their changes, I am therefore much more inclined to believe that there isn't more to their thought proces than can be seen on the surface. If Blizzard on the other hand, had a track-record of consistently being able to proove the community wrong. Like If Swarm Host had turned out fun when they everyone playing the beta called for large changes and Viper really had created a fun interaction vs mech-play or Raven/PDD really shouldn't have been changed going into HOTS, I wouldn't be so negative towards them right now. Or let's not get started about Oracle: This was not a fun during HOTS beta either. Many of the previous decisions by Blizzard didn't exactly require rocket-science to figure out wouldn't work.
I would wager a guess that Blizzard have largely become victims to their own success and are unwilling to make changes that go against their original mechanics.
Remember that people a year or two ago were practically begging Blizzard to try out different pathing and/or unit collision sizes? Their response was basically "We played around a bit with it and didn't see the point". Many other proposed changes have been waved away as being something spectators "won't get", or wouldn't be understood by casuals. This was very much evident at Blizzcon when they explained why they didn't want regular moving shot; if they can't do it in their internal playtests, or if it doesn't seem "cool", low-level players will apparently dislike it for some reason.
Their design philosophy is very confusing, the game is more or less built around the idea of making it a popular spectator sport like BW, which makes pros and a high skill ceiling important. But at the same time they're unwilling to make unit mechanics that allow for that ceiling because they're afraid low level players won't like it, instead of thinking that they will be impressed and enjoy the spectator experience more knowing how hard it is.
The same goes for the coolness of units, which seems more important than use in many cases. I mean the Herc could essentially just be an upgrade for the Hellbat, in HOTS they tried the Warhound and the Shredder, both having to be scrapped. I've wanted the Thor to be removed since WOL since it's more like a mobile missile turret than a unit, completely uninteresting, but still there because it's deemed "cool". In the end they have to change the units so much it becomes obvious it was mostly the aesthetics they wanted, not the use.
Blizzard aren't the only ones guilty of this, the coolness curse and pandering to what I suspect to be a rather small segment of low-level players have been quite common in many gaming companies for some years now. I don't think they're going to change any time soon unfortunately, unless the beta becomes a shitstorm. :/
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Well regarding both pathing and economy, I honestly think it's 10 times easier to mess up, than actually make a meaningful improvement. It without a doubt requires a high level of development-skill to implement these succesfully, and let's be honest here - Blizzard isn't capable of that. Therefore I would suggest to stay away here and focus on unit interactions, as I think you can get much more meaningful changes here with less time spent.
@ moving shot: Actually, they have misunderstood what Lalush was talking about. I wrote this earlier today.
Another thing that has gone completley unnoticed is that the Blizzard dev-team still didn't understand what Lalush was talking about when he mentioned seperation radius.
At the multiplayer-panel, they said that seperation-radius was an unintuive way of rewarding moving shot. But the reason Lalush brought up seperation-radius was due to a "bug" in the Starcraft editor where air units will prioritize seperating before attacking. Therefore having multiple air units makes a moving shot less practical.
A seperation radius of 0 is therefore just a band-aid fix, but shouldn't be seen as the best/only solution.
Blizzard could therefore improve the moving shot while maintaining a higher seperation radius.
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On November 13 2014 09:08 Hider wrote:Well regarding both pathing and economy, I honestly think it's 10 times easier to mess up, than actually make a meaningful improvement. It without a doubt requires a high level of development-skill to implement these succesfully, and let's be honest here - Blizzard isn't capable of that. Therefore I would suggest to stay away here and focus on unit interactions, as I think you can get much more meaningful changes here with less time spent. @ moving shot: Actually, they have completley misunderstood what Lalush was talking about. I wrote this earlier today. Show nested quote + Another thing that has gone completley unnoticed is that the Blizzard dev-team still didn't understand what Lalush was talking about when he mentioned seperation radius.
At the multiplayer-panel, they said that seperation-radius was an unintuive way of rewarding moving shot. But the reason Lalush brought up seperation-radius was due to a "bug" in the Starcraft editor where air units will prioritize seperating before attacking. Therefore having multiple air units makes a moving shot less practical. A low sepeartion radius is therefore just a band-aid fix, but shouldn't be seen as the best/only solution.
Blizzard could therefore improve the moving shot while maintaining a higher seperation radius.
LoL at "blizzard isn't capable of that" , srsly man this is kinda ridiculous.
If some starbow guys can do it decently, blizzard can as well.
You guys simply forget that they wanna cater to guys who didn't play rts games before.
And yeah a moving shot isn't exactly something new players would appreciate tbh, it simply isn't straight forward at all.
Obviously people here would like it, but people here are pretty much the hardcore fanbase, not the mainstream audience blizzard would want to reach with the game (you could argue that they didn't do a very good job with that, mostly cause of the 1vs1 focus)
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If some starbow guys can do it decently, blizzard can as well.
It only worked becasue it copied BW balance and BW economy. BW economy is the best economy here, but combining BW economy and SC2 would still be really time-consuming.
Combining a non-BW more spread-out econ + Sc2 is almost impossible (at least much more difficult than 99% of the community and prob. Blizzard as well realizes).
@ pathing: I still question whether this is actually beneficial. Whenever anyone talks about the advantages of BW pathing, they are always so vague, and at the end of the day, it comes down to whether you visually prefer straight-line pathing or clump-up pathing. In terms of effects of gameplay, I think it doesn't add any unique advantages that cannot easily be replicated through unit-design.
And yeah a moving shot isn't exactly something new players would appreciate tbh, it simply isn't straight forward at all.
For the most part, moving shot works through the concept easy to learn, difficult to master.
But have you seen the Oracle? That's the deifnition of making life unfun for new players. My suggestion is to reduce damage and give this a better moving shot. This way new players playing against it doesn't get fucked. Moreover if you have a more reliable and responsive control (which moving shot gives you), it will be easier to control as a new player.
The reason the development team brought the air-stacking up was becasue they misunderstood what Lalush was talking about. Lalush was talking about the "bug" in the editor where air units will unstack before attacking if you clump the air units together at a smaller radius than the seperation radius value.
Therefore the "easy fix" is to reduce seperation radius which indeed would make it unintuive to watch. But the real fix is to get rid of the bug. This way air units will be able to have a solid moving shot without being packed together all the time.
Lalush also brought up like 4-5 other variables that could be tweaked in to improve micro-interactions, without any "newbie" downsides. Blizzard never responded to that.
FYI, this was what Lalush had to say about the developers response.
The developer on the left seems to be under the impression that stacking is a pre-requisite to moving shot, and proceeds to build his entire argument about why moving-shot might be bad for viewers on that assumption. I assume he believes this because every mod which has wanted the moving-shot effect has been forced to disable Blizzard's own method for separating air units.
...
Throughout the entire answer I felt like they didn't really answer the question. They answered a misrepresentation and mistaken belief of what was being requested.
If your argument is that it's difficult to appreciate moving-shot initself (without 100% air-stacking), then I couldn't disagree more. I remember watching BW highlights early in my Sc2 career without having played the game, and thinking that the Muta-harass looked really cool. That was even without me being able to know how many Mutalisks were grouped up, and I didn't know about the overlord-trick either. But it was just super exciting to watch.
And it seems that the majority of viewers agree with that. At least I have never heard anyone argue that he disliked watching Muta micro in BW becasue he didn't know was going on (?).
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Just played around with some roach changes:
burrow - unburrow delays reduced to 0.167 from 0.555 and 0.43; random ability delay between 0.0-0.1 removed
damage point to 0.0 from 0.167
burrowed roach speed with tunneling claws and glial reconstituion is now 3.00 speed (from 2.00), so same value as unburrowed roach
This is so much more fun. I've done roach vs roach battles in my personal unit tester and blink like
burrow--> pull back --> unburrow micro is so cool. And without the second long delays everywhere totally doable without losing shots. The result is that in 20v20 roaches the microed side can have up to 12remaining roaches to 0 at the end with my amateur micro.
And it looks cool! As blizzard would put it, it is something that viewers can easily understand!
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Nice work Big J that's pretty cool, 3. speed sounds much, but the burrow micro is the important part!
To Hider: They cater towards both casuals and pros which is absolutely reasonable. Stutterstepping can only be that much fun, if all units act the same with attack point, then you just stutterstep with your deathballs all day.
Having different unit interaction can actually make it harder and a lot more interesting.
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Iam all for increasing burrow micro but perhaps have it feel fun and rewarding but with some drawbacks to it.
Hard to say what kind of drawbacks since we have no clue what direction blizzard truly will take.
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On November 13 2014 18:31 ejozl wrote:
Nice work Big J that's pretty cool, 3. speed sounds much, but the burrow micro is the important part!
Ty. The 3speed change was a bit arbitrary just to have them go backwards a little faster after you burrow. It's not really necessary.
On November 13 2014 19:10 Foxxan wrote:
Iam all for increasing burrow micro but perhaps have it feel fun and rewarding but with some drawbacks to it.
Hard to say what kind of drawbacks since we have no clue what direction blizzard truly will take.
Isn't that counterintuitive? You can mess up the micro anyways, in this example by burrowing the wrong roaches or just by losing shots.
But in general, I think micro should usually just scale a unit up in its performance compared to a-moving. In this case I think the roach could do with a small nerf, given that extra micro is a buff. E.g. make its attack cooldown go to 2.2 (from 2.0) or some small health nerf.
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I dont know. Its important there is countermicro involved. Nerf or buff to health/damage wouldnt fix that if there is any issue with it.
Ex1: Burrow speed 3 but to reach it roach needs to be burrowed for a while.
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On November 13 2014 21:19 Foxxan wrote:
I dont know. It might be hard for countermicro with a movementspeed of 3.
Ex1: Burrow speed 3 but to reach it roach needs to be burrowed for a while.
Well, the 3speed isn't necessary. But in general, the countermicro is to retarget the roaches that have burrowed back and keep on attacking. If they don't keep on attacking the micro may safe the one or other unit, but lose you others because you lose the combat.
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I really hope that the reason that protoss is getting so many pseudo-nerfs is because they're implementing the massive purification laser cooldown from the campaign. That would be fun.
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To Hider: They cater towards both casuals and pros which is absolutely reasonable. Stutterstepping can only be that much fun, if all units act the same with attack point, then you just stutterstep with your deathballs all day.
Having different unit interaction can actually make it harder and a lot more interesting.
I think I spent 5 hours yesterday talking about how kiting/stutter-steping isn't a good interaction when it's all you do, and I tried to be clear that damage point isn't the solution to get rid of infinitive kiting.
I dont know. Its important there is countermicro involved. Nerf or buff to health/damage wouldnt fix that if there is any issue with it.
I think there will be countermicro. It won't be like a blink stalker that just instantly goes back from like 6 range to 13 range.
Here we have a Roach that gradually goes from 4 range to 5 range to 6 range etc.. The advantage of burrow is that it just makes the "pull back injured unit"-micro more practical as the Roach clump otherwise would block movement.
I think the situation where Roach burrow will be mostly advantageous is when the enemy is a-moving all of his units, which gives the zerg roach player time to pull back the injured borrowed Roaches. The enemy can countermico by selecting just the correct amount of nearby units and target fire the Roaches before the they can succesfully burrow back.
And the counter-counter micro will be when the zerg player can predict the behaviour of the enemy and burrow back Roaches before they get target fired in the first place.
So I see lots of opportunities here. And I think burrow-pull back micro is an awesome form of micro as it's very easy for viewers to identify skill.
And it looks cool! As blizzard would put it, it is something that viewers can easily understand!
Yes make a video of it, and post it on Reddit. This is such an easy thing to understand why it's awesome.
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Zealot: Base Speed 2.25 -> 2.4. Zealot Charge removed and replaced with 2.75 -> 3.5 Speed with 25% snare resist. Decrease backswing.
-With upgrade, Stim Marine is 3.325. Zergling is anywhere from 3.8-6.1. Balances basic unit dynamic with no upgrades and also full upgrades. Differentiates Bisu Zealots from decent Zealots. Easier for Zealot armies to conform to larger areas and punish on the move with less of a backswing.
Stalker: +1 -> +2 damage per weapon upgrade. Decrease damage point. +10 shield.
-Stalkers have always scaled tepidly in the latter part of the game. They could use some more microability when they don't have Blink also. They also have the highest tendency to be OP if buffed early game, so I went with their scaling with upgrades and micro. The shield buff is optional if the subtle buffs aren't making ground.
Sentry: Can lock on targets doing additional damage over time 6 -> 8 ... -> 12. Leash longer than target range. +10 hp. +10 shield. Base move 2.25 -> 2.75.
-With FFs indirectly weakened, Sentry's need to justify their 100 gas cost. The increased damage over time will largely impact Zerg over Terran, inline with the Ravager affecting FFs, and Mutas should fear Sentries a little more, given how many bases there will be in the LotV economy. Sentries are way too slow to reach Mutas normally.
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On November 13 2014 09:02 sushiman wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2014 08:18 Hider wrote:On November 13 2014 08:09 Grumbels wrote:
To be honest, at some point campaigning for some of these unit stat changes is like arguing for introducing limited unit selection, new pathfinding and BW economy. Maybe the game would be better with some or most of those, but Blizzard is never going to make those changes. I think it's frustrating because Blizzard never properly explains their reasoning, so they don't seem rational at all and you start to really worry about their competence. Compare this to Riot. http://www.surrenderat20.net/2014/11/red-post-collection-singed-champion.htmlThey clearly state out their thought proces, and the cause and effect of the expected changes. Blizzard is more like: "We buff medivacs becasue we want to see more aggression". Then it leaves the community up to guessing whether they know more than we do or whether they really are this unnuanced in their approach. But given their track-record, it's just very difficult to give the game-developers of blizzard the benefit of the doubt here. If they cannot properly explain the effects of each of their changes, I am therefore much more inclined to believe that there isn't more to their thought proces than can be seen on the surface. If Blizzard on the other hand, had a track-record of consistently being able to proove the community wrong. Like If Swarm Host had turned out fun when they everyone playing the beta called for large changes and Viper really had created a fun interaction vs mech-play or Raven/PDD really shouldn't have been changed going into HOTS, I wouldn't be so negative towards them right now. Or let's not get started about Oracle: This was not a fun during HOTS beta either. Many of the previous decisions by Blizzard didn't exactly require rocket-science to figure out wouldn't work. I would wager a guess that Blizzard have largely become victims to their own success and are unwilling to make changes that go against their original mechanics. Remember that people a year or two ago were practically begging Blizzard to try out different pathing and/or unit collision sizes? Their response was basically "We played around a bit with it and didn't see the point". Many other proposed changes have been waved away as being something spectators "won't get", or wouldn't be understood by casuals. This was very much evident at Blizzcon when they explained why they didn't want regular moving shot; if they can't do it in their internal playtests, or if it doesn't seem "cool", low-level players will apparently dislike it for some reason. Their design philosophy is very confusing, the game is more or less built around the idea of making it a popular spectator sport like BW, which makes pros and a high skill ceiling important. But at the same time they're unwilling to make unit mechanics that allow for that ceiling because they're afraid low level players won't like it, instead of thinking that they will be impressed and enjoy the spectator experience more knowing how hard it is. The same goes for the coolness of units, which seems more important than use in many cases. I mean the Herc could essentially just be an upgrade for the Hellbat, in HOTS they tried the Warhound and the Shredder, both having to be scrapped. I've wanted the Thor to be removed since WOL since it's more like a mobile missile turret than a unit, completely uninteresting, but still there because it's deemed "cool". In the end they have to change the units so much it becomes obvious it was mostly the aesthetics they wanted, not the use. Blizzard aren't the only ones guilty of this, the coolness curse and pandering to what I suspect to be a rather small segment of low-level players have been quite common in many gaming companies for some years now. I don't think they're going to change any time soon unfortunately, unless the beta becomes a shitstorm. :/
I personally think that "coolness" is the last thing Blizzard has been thinking about when it comes to new units. Look how fucking stupid and boring the herc, the cyclone, and the disruptor are. I felt the same way during HOTS release. Mines, hellbats, oracles, etc. None of these are cool at all. Some of the zerg units, maybe.
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My 2 concerns is that DKim takes only "selective" and "gradual" approach in his creativity of new stuff:
#1 - "gradual" approach mistake - when they said Banshee +1 range - we wanted to make them better vs Marines, Terran has the Cyclone to deflect harassment.. Well sure Mr. Kim, but what about the other 2 races ? , like - 5 range Queens surely won't be able to beat Banshees, and Stalkers already lose to them in a straight up engagement unless in very superior numbers.. ?
I was SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO w.t.f. when listening to that - as if Starcraft was all about TvT, lol.. Ah sure - we'll see for the other two races later on.. well - w.t.f. - you can't make design gradual like that, means that further requriements will affect changes to current design, it's like 3 times the work required, lol
#2 - "elitist" approach "mistake" - I don't like how DKim has an ALMOST EXCLUSIVE ELITIST approach.. Like - sure - they brought the Reaver micro back, but this is actually even harder , I mean w.t.f. - a unit that's 100/100 and costs 300 gas.. Really ?
I mean the problem is - if you put units in the game that are only usable for pros - you surely won't have a greater playable audience..
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I mean - I'd be pretty satisfied EVEN NOW if there weren't a few w.t.f. factors in the game like:
#1 - Banshee Range = biggest w.t.f. of them all
#2 - Siege Tank Siege drop micro - again w.t.f. with this ?.. I'd be OK if this was an upgrade researchable, or even better some per-siege-tank "individual upgrade" for 25/25 or sth, but there's NO WAY this stays as is defendable.. Are Zergs really committed to Ravager/Queen being the only option to defend this ?, are they supposed to rush to Mutas every game or what ??
#3 - Nydus change - sure it sounds fun when Zerg has one Nydus network, but what to do as Protoss if Zerg has 3 networks or more ?
#4 - Warp-in mechanic change.. How on Earth is Protoss supposed to defend vs Ling runbies and vs Bio Drops ?
As for the new units - well
#1 - Disruptor should be a relatively "expendable" unit, should cost like 150/75, or say 125/100 but do lesser AoE and a lesser Damage.. You'll ask - Banelings for Protoss ? - y, they could make the unit have 50/50 or even 40/40, but it's still something that would make the race work better (perhaps even without forcefields, or with 75 energy per FF) IMO
#2 - Cyclone should have a "role", not kill everything.. Therefore I think it should have something like 9 (+ 9 vs Armored) damage and start with 5 latch and 8 max kiting range, and have it upgradeable for only later stages in the game for those radiuses to be like 7/13 respectively.. w.t.f. with the radiuses even from the early game, lol
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And yes - would've liked for them to test if there were less workers per base saturation, not just the 12 on start.. Think the game would be much more fun if now when the armies are much more have-to-be-microable to require less economy management overall.. Surely - more options for harassment, but harassment as is now is actually brutal - like - GG outright and no chance to come back for-EVER..
If they made it like 12 workers per base (or even 16 to retain the 8 patches per base) - unless being committed to a multi-base harass - 12 (or even 16) workers aren't that much detrimental, so a better gameplay with more army-vs-army "skirmishing/domination" battles rather than army fight and one (or a couple) of drops
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EPT
