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On January 21 2015 20:54 SatedSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 19:47 Homunculus159 wrote:On January 21 2015 19:40 Everlong wrote:On January 21 2015 19:38 Squat wrote:On January 21 2015 19:35 Everlong wrote:On January 21 2015 19:29 Homunculus159 wrote:On January 21 2015 19:26 Everlong wrote:On January 21 2015 19:24 Swisslink wrote:On January 21 2015 19:24 Everlong wrote:
Acknowledge own mistakes, remove SH from the game, problem solved, everyone is happy now... And every Zerg is dead if he doesn't go for some kind of mid-game push. Great. They could buff something else, or add new unit, whatever.. Just remove the fucking thing from the game already. Care to make some suggestiones? I'm not a game developer, nor am I a game designer. But I can tell when something is clearly wrong. I'm pretty sure a team of people which can come up with a unit like Swarm Host is able to come up with some ideas to tweak some Zerg units to make up for the removal of it. They're doing that. It's called legacy of the void. Last time I checked, Swar Host was still the unit they plan on to be involved in LotV. Has this changed? So what in your opinion is wrong with new swarmhosts (keeping in mind it is still alpha) Still spawns free-units. Ergo, still anti-RTS. You can't balance free units in an economy-driven game.
Of course you can. It is all about whether you risk putting the swarmhost in danger while using them.
Broodlords for example, though broken in combination with the old fungal, are perfectly fine even though they spawn free units. The reason being that you expose them to a great danger of being picked off when using them. That way, it becomes very hard to get infinite value out of their spawning capabilities because they will be killed in action sooner or later.
The old swarmhosts are not fine however. They can spawn units which engage the enemy halfway across the map, so they are rarely in danger themselves. No clue about the new swarmhosts though, haven't played them yet.
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On January 21 2015 22:01 SatedSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 21:54 syroz wrote:
It's strange. Such a core change before LotV.
It is very couragous but it will change the game balance drastically.
I don't know yet if it's a good idea. Balance isn't bad right now as far as win-rates go. Terran has looked favoured but only because of the maps being Terran favoured. The game as it is can be balanced using maps alone, no changes need to be made to the units. These changes aren't aimed at balancing the game in a win-rate sense (if they are then Blizzard are being dumber than usual), they're aimed at removing two things that nobody finds fun to watch/play against. Fun requires "balancing" as well!
Don't equate "balancing for fun" with "balancing design". Calling it a "for fun" thing greatly understates our efforts to get Blizzard to fix some of SC2's shitty design.
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On January 21 2015 22:07 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 21:12 Hider wrote:The problem remains that the Swarm Host is able to deal damage without taking any risk whatsoever Exactly. It really doesn't much as much difference whether SHs will be used defensively or offensively if the unit-interaction consist of free units attacking enemy units from a 30-range distance. Compare that to somone dropping Marines from a Medivac and the enemy zerg player trying to deal with that by splitting up his Muta/bling army. The latter actually creates interesting interactions while the former maintains the main issue with free units and long range. Free units can be interesting if the "spawning unit" needs to be close to the battle. For instance, I like the concept behind ITs on the Infestor as the Infestor needs to be part of the actual engagement, and if you harass with it you neeed to get into the enemy base (not 100% sold on the actual implementation of the ITs though - but the concept works unlike any of the SHs concepts). Artillery units have existed from the start of RTS games. Only difference with SH is their projectiles are slower and killable
Yeah, but most of them have some of those traits with good reasoning:
- often being slow
- often only 2-3times the range of a standard infantry unit
- often unprecise, slow moving projectiles
- often requiring vision to fully capitalize on the range
- often only good against buildings and certain units
The swarm host has much more range than that, doesn't require vision (!!!) and is just good or at least OK vs everything (exception: air). With the drawback being that it isn't good at actually doing what an artillery is designed to do, which is killing a position if you get in siege range.
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So what happens to late game ZvP if these changes get implemented? Roach Hydra Viper is hardly an efficient alternative when fighting colossus heavy comps.
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Huge and bold move, which I can appreciate.
Tempests will need to be nerfed to the ground though, and I hope it happens. This unit is terrible and boring. It made sense when it was first introduced, as an anti muta flock weapon ; in its current form, it just doesn't fulfill any role a fully-fledged carrier -that, thank God, LotV will give us- couldn't fulfill. And hopefully, from this situation shall a harass oriented SH play and a strong brood lord arise.
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Not that they were very strong to begin with, but with flying locusts i see Tanks being useless. Tempests probably need to be nerfed to.
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On January 21 2015 22:07 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 21:12 Hider wrote:The problem remains that the Swarm Host is able to deal damage without taking any risk whatsoever Exactly. It really doesn't much as much difference whether SHs will be used defensively or offensively if the unit-interaction consist of free units attacking enemy units from a 30-range distance. Compare that to somone dropping Marines from a Medivac and the enemy zerg player trying to deal with that by splitting up his Muta/bling army. The latter actually creates interesting interactions while the former maintains the main issue with free units and long range. Free units can be interesting if the "spawning unit" needs to be close to the battle. For instance, I like the concept behind ITs on the Infestor as the Infestor needs to be part of the actual engagement, and if you harass with it you neeed to get into the enemy base (not 100% sold on the actual implementation of the ITs though - but the concept works unlike any of the SHs concepts). Artillery units have existed from the start of RTS games. Only difference with SH is their projectiles are slower and killable
Most artillery units are part of an actual unit vs unit interaction. With Siege Tanks you can (typically) fight them. You don't just run around from their projectiles all day long (Locusts are kinda like the projectiles of the SH).
Honestly the SH is probably better off removed (a worse designed toxic version of the Lurker which is a unit that they avoided out of pride but ended up adding in LoTV anyways), but I'll take a harassment focused SH over the current one any day.
The SH could have been redesgiend to have the same role as a Lurker. That means a mobile medium-to-high range unit which is a bit better defensively than offensively, but could be used in both situations.
With the Lurker being added to LOTV, I just rather see the SH being removed, and I rather see them working on overlord drops in order to buff zerg harass play.
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On January 21 2015 22:31 Jvattic wrote:
So what happens to late game ZvP if these changes get implemented? Roach Hydra Viper is hardly an efficient alternative when fighting colossus heavy comps.
Broodlord + Corruptor + Viper + Ultralisk? I don't know, but Zerg really needs a better way to deal with late game ZvP because I really don't see Zergs winning late-game ZvP easily without base racing or getting said comp with Broodlord etc, which is super expensive and I'm pretty sure Zergs can't turtle up that long without dying.
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On January 21 2015 22:20 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 22:07 -Archangel- wrote:On January 21 2015 21:12 Hider wrote:The problem remains that the Swarm Host is able to deal damage without taking any risk whatsoever Exactly. It really doesn't much as much difference whether SHs will be used defensively or offensively if the unit-interaction consist of free units attacking enemy units from a 30-range distance. Compare that to somone dropping Marines from a Medivac and the enemy zerg player trying to deal with that by splitting up his Muta/bling army. The latter actually creates interesting interactions while the former maintains the main issue with free units and long range. Free units can be interesting if the "spawning unit" needs to be close to the battle. For instance, I like the concept behind ITs on the Infestor as the Infestor needs to be part of the actual engagement, and if you harass with it you neeed to get into the enemy base (not 100% sold on the actual implementation of the ITs though - but the concept works unlike any of the SHs concepts). Artillery units have existed from the start of RTS games. Only difference with SH is their projectiles are slower and killable Yeah, but most of them have some of those traits with good reasoning: - often being slow - often only 2-3times the range of a standard infantry unit - often unprecise, slow moving projectiles - often requiring vision to fully capitalize on the range - often only good against buildings and certain units The swarm host has much more range than that, doesn't require vision (!!!) and is just good or at least OK vs everything (exception: air). With the drawback being that it isn't good at actually doing what an artillery is designed to do, which is killing a position if you get in siege range.
Slow? Check. Both host and "ammo".
2-3 times range? Only in Blizzard games. There were plenty of really high range artillery units in other games.
Uprecise? Yes. Slow? check.
Vision? yes, but their projectiles usually would not be stopable and they fire faster. And some allowed firing into dark like in Total Annihilation.
Only good vs buildings? That is different from game to game.
I feel like you are only looking at Blizzard products. How many different RTS games did you play?
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On January 21 2015 23:02 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Not that they were very strong to begin with, but with flying locusts i see Tanks being useless. Tempests probably need to be nerfed to.
I would say it's the opposite, Flying Locusts are useless if you have few Thors and Vikings around. They are light 65 HP units, 3 Thors could probably wipe majority of them before they land.
On the other hand, I don't think that Swarm Hosts will be even used against Mech in their new form, or at least not the same way they are used now because they cannot contain Terran anymore, and that was the most important thing that they were used for. I guess that we will see them for harassment or for some timings but I doubt that mech will have big problems with Swarm Hosts as they had with the old ones.
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On January 21 2015 23:02 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 22:07 -Archangel- wrote:On January 21 2015 21:12 Hider wrote:The problem remains that the Swarm Host is able to deal damage without taking any risk whatsoever Exactly. It really doesn't much as much difference whether SHs will be used defensively or offensively if the unit-interaction consist of free units attacking enemy units from a 30-range distance. Compare that to somone dropping Marines from a Medivac and the enemy zerg player trying to deal with that by splitting up his Muta/bling army. The latter actually creates interesting interactions while the former maintains the main issue with free units and long range. Free units can be interesting if the "spawning unit" needs to be close to the battle. For instance, I like the concept behind ITs on the Infestor as the Infestor needs to be part of the actual engagement, and if you harass with it you neeed to get into the enemy base (not 100% sold on the actual implementation of the ITs though - but the concept works unlike any of the SHs concepts). Artillery units have existed from the start of RTS games. Only difference with SH is their projectiles are slower and killable Most artillery units are part of an actual unit vs unit interaction. With Siege Tanks you can (typically) fight them. You don't just run around from their projectiles all day long (Locusts are kinda like the projectiles of the SH). Show nested quote +Honestly the SH is probably better off removed (a worse designed toxic version of the Lurker which is a unit that they avoided out of pride but ended up adding in LoTV anyways), but I'll take a harassment focused SH over the current one any day. The SH could have been redesgiend to have the same role as a Lurker. That means a mobile medium-to-high range unit which is a bit better defensively than offensively, but could be used in both situations. With the Lurker being added to LOTV, I just rather see the SH being removed, and I rather see them working on overlord drops in order to buff zerg harass play.
It does not matter as long as they work as artillery units.
The problem of SH was that their interaction with other units caused slow, long and boring games. Free units themselves are not cause of problem.
I am not defending old SH design, I love new SH and they should have been like this from the start.
I just think the problem is not in "free units". I just see locusts as ammo that creates different interactions with other units than Tanks or Colossi do.
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On January 21 2015 23:09 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 23:02 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Not that they were very strong to begin with, but with flying locusts i see Tanks being useless. Tempests probably need to be nerfed to. I would say it's the opposite, Flying Locusts are useless if you have few Thors and Vikings around. They are light 65 HP units, 3 Thors could probably wipe majority of them before they land. On the other hand, I don't think that Swarm Hosts will be even used against Mech in their new form, or at least not the same way they are used now because they cannot contain Terran anymore, and that was the most important thing that they were used for. I guess that we will see them for harassment or for some timings but I doubt that mech will have big problems with Swarm Hosts as they had with the old ones.
I don't see how a couple of thors could take out those things in time. Maybe SH would turn out as a bad solution vs mech in the first place though, so we'll see. I just really hate the idea of flying free units.
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It does not matter as long as they work as artillery units.
What do you mean it doens't matter? If a unit prevents actual engagements from occuring, then it's super-boring, regardless of whether it's an artillery unit or not.
The problem of SH was that their interaction with other units caused slow, long and boring games. Free units themselves are not cause of problem.
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Yes, free units in itself isn't in the issue, that's what I implied in my previous comment.. But any type of unit that just fires an ability from a long range and doesn't reward any interesting micro is at best "boring". At worst, it can stale the game (which is what the current SH does).
But regardless, I don't see any fun about attacking with this unit every 60th second. If the zerg has lots of SHs, the enemy will respond by moving his army away and when the Locusts are gone, he will want to have an engagement and the zerg player will retreat as he has dead weights in the SH. In this scenario, it will be like a cat chasing a mouse.
If on the other hand, the zerg has few SHs, the enemy will simply a-move kill the Locusts.
Regardless of the scenario, the unit doens't create any new fun micro-interactions. Instead, I fear that it may replace other forms of harass-oriented units (since zerg can only afford to have X amount of supply invested into units that aren't good in an engagement).
That's why I wrote that that this unit may give off a good first impression since it will be an improvement over the current SH, but over time people will realize that this type of "harass-unit" is pretty boring.
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On January 21 2015 23:07 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 22:20 Big J wrote:On January 21 2015 22:07 -Archangel- wrote:On January 21 2015 21:12 Hider wrote:The problem remains that the Swarm Host is able to deal damage without taking any risk whatsoever Exactly. It really doesn't much as much difference whether SHs will be used defensively or offensively if the unit-interaction consist of free units attacking enemy units from a 30-range distance. Compare that to somone dropping Marines from a Medivac and the enemy zerg player trying to deal with that by splitting up his Muta/bling army. The latter actually creates interesting interactions while the former maintains the main issue with free units and long range. Free units can be interesting if the "spawning unit" needs to be close to the battle. For instance, I like the concept behind ITs on the Infestor as the Infestor needs to be part of the actual engagement, and if you harass with it you neeed to get into the enemy base (not 100% sold on the actual implementation of the ITs though - but the concept works unlike any of the SHs concepts). Artillery units have existed from the start of RTS games. Only difference with SH is their projectiles are slower and killable Yeah, but most of them have some of those traits with good reasoning: - often being slow - often only 2-3times the range of a standard infantry unit - often unprecise, slow moving projectiles - often requiring vision to fully capitalize on the range - often only good against buildings and certain units The swarm host has much more range than that, doesn't require vision (!!!) and is just good or at least OK vs everything (exception: air). With the drawback being that it isn't good at actually doing what an artillery is designed to do, which is killing a position if you get in siege range. Slow? Check. Both host and "ammo". 2-3 times range? Only in Blizzard games. There were plenty of really high range artillery units in other games. Uprecise? Yes. Slow? check. Vision? yes, but their projectiles usually would not be stopable and they fire faster. And some allowed firing into dark like in Total Annihilation. Only good vs buildings? That is different from game to game. I feel like you are only looking at Blizzard products. How many different RTS games did you play?
The host isn't slow. It just needs to burrow+spawn which means it has a downtime of a few seconds in between movement, but then you can run around at normal speed+creep bonus for 20seconds and quickly change locations or retreat back*. Other siege weapons can't do that, they actually have to stay around to keep on producing damage. And they are really slower. In starcraft for example, all the other siege or siegelike units (Tempest, Broodlord, Colossus, Siege Tank, Carrier) have 2.25 speed or less. Swarm Hosts on creep have the speed of a stalker.
Also the projectiles aren't unprecise in the sense that I thought of, hence, once launched you can just reposition and the projectile will hit the empty location. The locusts don't, they can travel beyond their spawning point or even just sidewards and go where the opponent is retreating to. I guess the unprecise part is of course that they eventually run out of live time, yet still, it is not like with what I describe. Because say you shoot with a CnC dreadnought. Then you either target a building in the base, or the army. If it is the army, the army can move away. If it is the building, the army can just try and engage you meanwhile. With swarm hosts however, you target the area, and when the army retreats you just kill the nexus instead. So there is kind of a guarantee that you get something done - which is the reason why what you get done cannot be much with that amount of range. Which is the reason why most zerg players aren't really happy with the unit either and why games then last 3hours.
*the retreating while the enemy has to fight the locusts is the reason why attacking through locusts isn't fruitful most of the time, as the swarm hosts will be long gone when you reach the origin point of the spawn.
No, I'm not just looking at blizzard products. I'm talking about the usual artillery-like units. I can give you a lot of non-blizzard examples. Of course there are others too. And I wrote those traits as "often", not always. And not all of them of course. But there are certain patterns that if you do deviate from them, the artillery units can easily become kind of boring:
e.g. I don't like the static artillery in SupCom too much. They have so much range (if you play on smaller maps), that you can destroy targets from your own base. Same goes for nukes in that game. They don't require ghost targetting or something, you just kill a base with it unless he has the anti-nuke. Not very good design imo.
For the better examples of siege weapons I like:
Dreadnought (and similar water units) in CnC:
slow moving, bad against all air and most sea units, can only move on water and can be attacked from the coast if it really tries to use its full range into the land. The projectiles are slow and can be dodged, but on the upside, the unit really gets shit done. It's not like a swarm host that you deal with in 5mins when you have enough colossi, it kills your base now. Deal with it. Now.
Artillery in CnC:Tiberium Wars:
The damage in a battle was not that high and the shot was dodgeable. Also the unit was slow and had a siege mechanism.
Empire Earth:
Various siege engines that often were only good against buildings/walls/towers; or if not had a dodgable shot (or usually both)
Warlords Battlecry:
Most siege weapons were only strong against buildings and barely outranging towers.
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That is slow man. Fast is marine or unsieged tank. Slow is SH no matter how you try to spin it. Speed is not just moving but also how often it can "fire" and how long it needs to set up.
Tanks are also slow units as they need 1.5s to set up before firing.
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On January 21 2015 23:09 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 21 2015 23:02 Sapphire.lux wrote:
Not that they were very strong to begin with, but with flying locusts i see Tanks being useless. Tempests probably need to be nerfed to. I would say it's the opposite, Flying Locusts are useless if you have few Thors and Vikings around. They are light 65 HP units, 3 Thors could probably wipe majority of them before they land. On the other hand, I don't think that Swarm Hosts will be even used against Mech in their new form, or at least not the same way they are used now because they cannot contain Terran anymore, and that was the most important thing that they were used for. I guess that we will see them for harassment or for some timings but I doubt that mech will have big problems with Swarm Hosts as they had with the old ones.
Take all the bases in the map. Hope terran waits for 25min. Hit him with 7 200/200 armies, after that switch to mutas with no drones and basetrade or die to seeker missiles :D
Edit: Hope they increase the energy requirement for PDD cause thats the terran version of free unit that makes the games alongside with SH idiotic.
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Btw, two concerns about the new Swarm Host:
1) The locusts are better. How this does not make me wanna use them to overrun a tank position is beyond me. Like, previously I got little done with a wave of locusts. Now I get more done with a wave of locusts, for the price of less waves. So where do I send those waves? In a base to die to the counterattack while my 30 supply of more expensive Swarm Hosts are afk, or at his army? Well, when I send them, I propably need to kill army with them. Because when I invest into Swarm Hosts instead of something else, I have to rely on them preventing my opponent from just killing me.
2) flying locust looked cool in the current videos. But think about it, the locust then is a light, air unit that needs a landing animation before it attacks:
Phoenix
Thor
Turret
Marine
Viking
Meanwhile the Locusts don't tank for your Ultralisks and Infestors anymore! I'm not sure that the upgrade does improve the locust, or rather makes it more vulnerable as then it can be countered by air and ground attacks when those attacks are properly coordinated.
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I think the point is to use them to attack less defended bases and hope terran Mech is too slow to counterattack.
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On January 21 2015 23:33 -Archangel- wrote:
That is slow man. Fast is marine or unsieged tank. Slow is SH no matter how you try to spin it. Speed is not just moving but also how often it can "fire" and how long it needs to set up.
Tanks are also slow units as they need 1.5s to set up before firing.
And unsieged tank or stimed marine are 2.25. When they are on the map, they have to be in a ball that cannot be overwhelmed by something that is actually fast like 3.0 speed roaches, 4.7speed zerglings, 2.95speed Stalkers with blink,
4.25speed hellions. Those things are fast. A marine on its own isn't very fast. Stim helps of course. What makes it mobile is the medivac allowing it to go out even if it could be overwhelmed and of course the transport function of the same unit.
The swarm host isn't fast, but it is on the top end of siege weapons in starcraft and additionally has much more time to move around because it actually does not fight.
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EPT
