Has Blizzard thought about fixing the unit clustering?
I think that is like the main problem of starcraft II.
If you look at the only match up (TvZ) where the units are forced to be spread out (marines have to spread out to avoid getting fucked by banelings, mines spread out to minimize cluster damage, etc) and look how long a single push/engagements can last. You can have like 5 minutes of tug-of-war as both armies keep getting reinforced and keep fighting for every inch of space, unlike other match ups where a single engagement can determine the whole game.
I feel like the economy change is a good chance for blizzard to make harassment like mutas/massive warp ins/ doom drops a lot less effective. Being able to harass without needing to have some way to get over cliffs due to more spread out bases means hopefully things like medivac speed can be removed.
I always felt like medivac speed was a kind of arms race blizzard had with the pros, they found that dropping wasn't as effective so they made it far easier to drop. In reality, all this does is pros start using builds that defend drops more easily and the meta is back to square one, while the average ladder player is super frustrated by how drops are now far lower-risk. Does anybody else feel this way?
As much as I would like some battles to be slowed down just a touch, I think it's impossible; it will require the whole game to be rebalanced, since not all unit interactions scale linearly with damage or speed.
On February 13 2015 11:07 SoleSteeler wrote: I've watched almost every Korean pro game this year so far. Please someone show me one game that shows mutalisks are deserving of statements like
I think accepting that the mutalisk and medivac are too powerful is beyond Blizzard's collective intelligence level, given that they were already very proud they came up with the concept of enabling harassment tactics as a panacea for improved game design.
Same deal with medivacs. Please someone link me a VOD that shows medivacs are too powerful. At the highest level. Preferably within the last 6 months but anything might do...
Am I making too big a deal over regular balance whining or something? Maybe I'm just having a bad week...
Since that statement was made as response/agreement to a post of mine I think I can give the details/context: No this is not balance whine. What this is, is the idea that boosting around with 10medivacs filled with tank/bio in TvT destroys a lot of the opportunities to regularily move around on the map. Because if you go out, your opponent boosts in and kills you. Or say you have a tank that is positioned to cover the front. Then a bunch of hellbats get boosted onto it (and I'm absolutely no flash fetishist or wanting to blame some game aspect on why he loses here)
I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move, boosters+air movement always means that the attacker has a movement advantage. You have to sit tight if your opponent goes for these sorts of strategies (medivacs or mutalisks; personally I'd add Zerglings in ZvP too, since Protoss doesn't have a mobile counter like the hellion or the zergling/the roach). What it does is that because one side has a massive movement advantage in certain situations, the game has to be balanced in ways that the side without the movement advantage is allowed to play the most boring sit-back style and keep all the army together, because you cannot split if your opponent has the ability to fly/run in and overwhelm half your army with all of his army quickly.
It works out nicely if both sides have the fast units (hellions vs zerglings; mutas vs drops). It's interesting if the units are used in low amounts (the single/double drop; the first 10mutas; small groups of zergling harass). It becomes a turtlegame quickly if one side cannot (Protoss vs bio, Protoss vs Zerg) field appropriate fast counters. And when you can field such counters, you are often forced to field them (hellion openings, muta/ling/bling playstyle) and cannot use other playstyles.
It's not that the units lead to racial imbalance. But I feel like they are passing a threshold where their mobility becomes counterproductive to the amount of action going on. One side simply cannot move out or they will quickly be overwhelmed either on the map or in their base, the other side cannot move in, because the other player does nothing but take more countermeasures so that eventually he can move out when everything in his base is bulletproof and his army "unbeatable".
On February 13 2015 05:37 Noocta wrote: Sounds to me they still have no idea in which direction going and they're testing random stuff they throw at each other in meetings.
Exactly and this worries me. Where is the directing idea ? It's like they listen to the community on some things but throw in random retarded things with them, and all this is ending up to be a mess.
I mean why so many changes ? If you take out the SH stalemates and a rather stale PvT, everything else is going quite fine. SH stalemate is being dealt with -even in HotS- and that's absolutely fine, but what do the other changes achieve and what is their goal ? I don't see any deep insight here. It's a bit of this, a bit of that, bones thrown at us, food for thought that doesn't seem to feed anything concrete yet.
People have done nothing but complain about their not being enough changes in HotS coming from WoL.
If anything I've kept complaining about how HotS kept creating problems WoL did not have. Medivac boost + muta regen forced mothership core + spore bio damage buff, tempests killed brood lords that were already fine after infestor nerf and SH... do I need to elaborate on that one ? WoL + fungal nerfs + phoenix range increase + ultra buffs + maybe viper would have been a great game.
I like both the medivac boost and muta regen, actually these makes the games both more fun to play and more fun to watch. Terran is basically awesome to watch now if you see players using them to their full extent. Muta regen is actually needed to even have a chance against medivac boost, thor prioritizing air and phoenix range upgrade. I think mutas were better in WoL because of how much better counters the other races have to it now.
Spore damge boost to bio is super important, I play muta in ZvZ everyday and I like this change, says quite a bit.
MSC and tempest is a problem I agree, they are working on trying and fixing that for lotv.
Not at all. Most Zergs are abusing how good mutas are now.
On February 13 2015 11:07 SoleSteeler wrote: I've watched almost every Korean pro game this year so far. Please someone show me one game that shows mutalisks are deserving of statements like
I think accepting that the mutalisk and medivac are too powerful is beyond Blizzard's collective intelligence level, given that they were already very proud they came up with the concept of enabling harassment tactics as a panacea for improved game design.
Same deal with medivacs. Please someone link me a VOD that shows medivacs are too powerful. At the highest level. Preferably within the last 6 months but anything might do...
Am I making too big a deal over regular balance whining or something? Maybe I'm just having a bad week...
Since that statement was made as response/agreement to a post of mine I think I can give the details/context: No this is not balance whine. What this is, is the idea that boosting around with 10medivacs filled with tank/bio in TvT destroys a lot of the opportunities to regularily move around on the map. Because if you go out, your opponent boosts in and kills you. Or say you have a tank that is positioned to cover the front. Then a bunch of hellbats get boosted onto it (and I'm absolutely no flash fetishist or wanting to blame some game aspect on why he loses here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hI1UuY06GCM#t=1238 I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move, boosters+air movement always means that the attacker has a movement advantage. You have to sit tight if your opponent goes for these sorts of strategies (medivacs or mutalisks; personally I'd add Zerglings in ZvP too, since Protoss doesn't have a mobile counter like the hellion or the zergling/the roach). What it does is that because one side has a massive movement advantage in certain situations, the game has to be balanced in ways that the side without the movement advantage is allowed to play the most boring sit-back style and keep all the army together, because you cannot split if your opponent has the ability to fly/run in and overwhelm half your army with all of his army quickly.
It works out nicely if both sides have the fast units (hellions vs zerglings; mutas vs drops). It's interesting if the units are used in low amounts (the single/double drop; the first 10mutas; small groups of zergling harass). It becomes a turtlegame quickly if one side cannot (Protoss vs bio, Protoss vs Zerg) field appropriate fast counters. And when you can field such counters, you are often forced to field them (hellion openings, muta/ling/bling playstyle) and cannot use other playstyles.
It's not that the units lead to racial imbalance. But I feel like they are passing a threshold where their mobility becomes counterproductive to the amount of action going on. One side simply cannot move out or they will quickly be overwhelmed either on the map or in their base, the other side cannot move in, because the other player does nothing but take more countermeasures so that eventually he can move out when everything in his base is bulletproof and his army "unbeatable".
Yeah I'm with you in that TvT is becoming so stale nowadays, all games are doom drop base trades, all the positioning wars from WoL are gone.
And this is not only with medivacs; mutas, oracles, warp prism (to an extent) and others have this problem.
It's bad design, because these units create very hard counter situations, like the oracle where if a build doesn't have 6 marines, a turret or a WM is just an insta lose, and in response it narrows down the strateginc options that a player needs to make.
I'm okey with fast stuff that keeps the game flowing and about encouraging aggression and harras, but not to the extent were they shut down strategies and play styles, a player should be rewarded for microing their units instead of making such hard counter situations.
The worst is that this is was Blizzards supposed way to discourage death ball play, instead what we had is that death balls are still strong but now we get punished if we don't turtle defend.
On February 13 2015 11:07 SoleSteeler wrote: I've watched almost every Korean pro game this year so far. Please someone show me one game that shows mutalisks are deserving of statements like
I think accepting that the mutalisk and medivac are too powerful is beyond Blizzard's collective intelligence level, given that they were already very proud they came up with the concept of enabling harassment tactics as a panacea for improved game design.
Same deal with medivacs. Please someone link me a VOD that shows medivacs are too powerful. At the highest level. Preferably within the last 6 months but anything might do...
Am I making too big a deal over regular balance whining or something? Maybe I'm just having a bad week...
Since that statement was made as response/agreement to a post of mine I think I can give the details/context: No this is not balance whine. What this is, is the idea that boosting around with 10medivacs filled with tank/bio in TvT destroys a lot of the opportunities to regularly move around on the map. Because if you go out, your opponent boosts in and kills you. Or say you have a tank that is positioned to cover the front. Then a bunch of hellbats get boosted onto it (and I'm absolutely no flash fetishist or wanting to blame some game aspect on why he loses here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hI1UuY06GCM#t=1238 I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move, boosters+air movement always means that the attacker has a movement advantage. You have to sit tight if your opponent goes for these sorts of strategies (medivacs or mutalisks; personally I'd add Zerglings in ZvP too, since Protoss doesn't have a mobile counter like the hellion or the zergling/the roach). What it does is that because one side has a massive movement advantage in certain situations, the game has to be balanced in ways that the side without the movement advantage is allowed to play the most boring sit-back style and keep all the army together, because you cannot split if your opponent has the ability to fly/run in and overwhelm half your army with all of his army quickly.
It works out nicely if both sides have the fast units (hellions vs zerglings; mutas vs drops). It's interesting if the units are used in low amounts (the single/double drop; the first 10mutas; small groups of zergling harass). It becomes a turtlegame quickly if one side cannot (Protoss vs bio, Protoss vs Zerg) field appropriate fast counters. And when you can field such counters, you are often forced to field them (hellion openings, muta/ling/bling playstyle) and cannot use other playstyles.
It's not that the units lead to racial imbalance. But I feel like they are passing a threshold where their mobility becomes counterproductive to the amount of action going on. One side simply cannot move out or they will quickly be overwhelmed either on the map or in their base, the other side cannot move in, because the other player does nothing but take more countermeasures so that eventually he can move out when everything in his base is bulletproof and his army "unbeatable".
Like you said, "in certain situations". Im not the worlds greatest player and I dont keep up on everything that goes on in the scene but I recall the reason why Terran got med boost was because drops became extremely risky and all inish and were doing little to no damage (especially after they nurfed the medivacs base speed and accel). Most drops ended with lost medivacs and supply, especially against Protoss who have warp ins.
In limited situations a boosted all in drop is devastating, but what about Warp Prisms? You get the same effect from much less of an investment anytime you're playing against T or Z. If Terran moves out and somehow doesnt build enough Vikings to dismantle that first Warp Prism then P just ties up their army mid field while they freely warp in in their base. They arent just limited by whats in that ship either, they get to warp in an army of zealots and DTs, forcing the Terran/Zerg Player to have to split their attention. I will freely admit that if the Warp Prism does die then it becomes much less of an issue because a Toss is rarely going to spend the time needed to remake one when they need Col more, but again, if we are talking about "specific situations" it seems more like that Warp Prism and Muta regen are way more of an issue than speedvac.
Zerg has trash in base def against Warp Prism when having to also multi task against Toss death ball, Terran is in the same situation against both. What does Toss have to deal with all of these things? Recall, Warp In, Storm, Blink, and if theyre being extremely frisky, Phoenix. Keep in mind here that the ONLY one of these options a Protoss player wont have in most of their match ups is Phoenix.
Its clear that all match ups arent going to be "even", simply because how the game works now you are always limited in your builds. So yeah while MedBoost kind of OP for TvT and those base trade scenarios vs other races (which the other races have a much better ability to blunt or rebuild from than T) I dont think Medboost is the problem everyone keeps wanting to say it is. Between Toss myriad of defensive abilities and Zergs rallying potential vs light drops TvT is the only time where I see Medboost being an "issue", and thats if you ignore all the other ways in the other match ups that Z and P just trash Terran mech in general.
To me this line of yours: I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move Can be applied to so many different sitations that applying it only to medboost seems disingenuous.
Shade sounds pretty interesting but I wonder how that would work in the actual game. Also glad that they are taking out herc and with the change in damage rate, I think protoss will have easier time to focus on gateway units rather than stay clumped because of hyper aggressive mobile terran army
Again: new unit idea for terran. There is no race with an air unit that deals aoe (with exception o seeker missile and not counting glave worm). Give terran a bomber that has an ability to go on a "bombing run". The terran player would draw a line on the map LoL esque of set length. This path would be visible to the opponent and he would then have so many seconds to micro his units from the bombing run path. Give the bomber a lot of health so it can just be focused down midway through its run. This ability could be used to cut off armies from retreating, dividing armies, making air only a more viable option for terran, etc. It could be used to harass min lines too. Idk. I hope they read this.
Medivacs are rediculously strong. Probably the strongest caster / support unit in the game. If there was a unit that just did drops, even without the speed boost, Terran would still make it. If there was a ground unit with no attack and no abilities that just healed Bio, Terran would likely still make it. The myth about Terran Bio being so strong is entirely because we see Bio getting supported by Medivacs which turn the relatively slow, fragile, kamikaze bioball into a tanky, mobile, high DPS, microable, regenerating force. Speed boost reduces the risks involved with drops substantially and opens new opportunities, and the fact that you'd make medivacs for healing alone means that you'll have a lot to use for big doom drops later in the game.
At the same time, the game is currently balanced around Terran having the speed boost Medivac. If you try to remove the speed boost or otherwise nerf Medivac's, you'd need to give Terran some serious staying power or mobility buffs to compensate.
On February 13 2015 07:39 ZenithM wrote: It's at least good that they try shit and aren't afraid to break the game in the process, it's pre-beta, let the crazy ideas flow and don't listen to the "b-b-but mah forcefialds!!!!" whiners.
Ok, let's reduce marine's dps. How about that? Don't listen to whiners yo.
I'd be fine with it, if it gave way for some other crazy change of course. Nerfs just for the sake of nerfing isn't all that fun. What is happening here is a new unit with new spells being introduced that allegedly render one of the most controversial abilities in Starcraft 2 less powerful. Call me crazy but I don't think it's that bad, really.
I'd be fine if Marines took a more secondary role in favor of something else. For example, I'd trade some of my marines' power for Protoss being a more interesting race, that's how much I like the game. Manly Terrans are like that, we will take nerfs if it makes the game more interesting. Quite unlike Protoss wusses who just like ever faster oracles and tempests shooting colossus beams, and Zerg sissies who would love nothing more than cliff-hopping banelings and mutalisks spawning by pairs.
It all sounds fine until you realise why Blizzard insists gateway units must be weaker. Because of force fields. If you want to make force field useless, that's fine, but you have to fix gateway then.
The reason gateway units has to be weak according to blizz is because warpgate gives P too much power otherwise. They can warp them in anywhere, stuff like warpprism would be insanely much harder to deal with.
The way I've understod it according to blizz, either gateway units remain weak or warpgate tech has to go, which they really really don't want to do since.... its pretty much Ps staple thing nowadays.
Blizzard seems to believe that what protoss lacks is a dedicated niche harass unit. Instead, I believe that what they need is the ability to move out on the map and do light pressure without (a) being worried about dying to a game-ending counterattack and (b) without being worried about surrounded and instantly dying.
Despite the consensus that warpgate buffs can accomplish this, that recommendation ignores the fact that a buff to warpgate units would strenghten either protoss all-ins/timing-attacks, instead of making it easier for toss to do light pressure in the game (as we see in TvZ for instance). Thus, the solution should be to make protoss more reliant on production from "normal" infastructure where your units takes time to build and doesn't spawn right next to the enemy base. "Normal production" units can be buffed so they are strong enough to combat the enemy in the midgame without resulting in unintended consequences (unlike warpgate units).
We've also seen some community feedback about changes that can be made to the scan range to increase the responsiveness of units in combat. We’ve made some adjustments internally and we’re initially liking how it plays out. This is something we’re planning on testing further in the beta.
I still have no idea how a scan range will change the responsiveness of the unit. I thought this only had noticeably impacts for situations such as Stalkers vs Widow Mines.
Our current plans are to remove this ability for the start of beta and see how the Thor works without the added complexity of a different mode or an active ability.
The Thor is extremely boring, and needs to be a lot more responsive in order to be more microable. Click-and-effect abilities are pointless in themselves, but abilities can be fun if they are part of a great micro-interaciton. I happen to believe that the transformation-concept has potential, but it needs to be something which you need to do frequently during engagements to optimize its usage. When transformation is only something you can do prior to a an engagement it becomes quite boring.
Roach burrow move now works when Burrow is researched and no longer requires an upgrade. This ability allows for some cool micro that we’d like to see more of in Void, so we made it a bit more accessible for now. We’re also considering increasing the movement speed of Roaches while burrowed.
The by far most obvious change here is to allow Roaches to burrow/unburrow instantly without the 0.5-1 second delay. Some times I don't know why Blizzard constantly try to go for all of the complicated and ineffective "solutions":
Slowing down the game is bad, despite the circle jerk being to the contrary. 99% of the SC2 community just sees a youtube video about slowing down the game and believe what they are told about "more micro" when that is not going to be the case.
This is true though it's important to differentiate between what type of speed we are talking about. For the economy, it is imo very important that players can take bases and have the addequate unit count to be able to defend it. Otherwise, it will lead to slower base-taking and in fact less multitasking. In terms of the duration of engagement, Sc2's main issue is that micro in many situations (esp with protoss) simply isn't rewarded. E.g. changing the movement speed of units wouldn't make Collosus and Immortals more microable, while changing the attack-speed merely inflates the duration of engagement (without adding more micro), and it will also reduce the skill cap of stutter-stepping as a high battle-APM is less rewarded.
The duration of the battles therefore isn't the issue in itself, but rather it's the design of the units.
On February 13 2015 11:07 SoleSteeler wrote: I've watched almost every Korean pro game this year so far. Please someone show me one game that shows mutalisks are deserving of statements like
I think accepting that the mutalisk and medivac are too powerful is beyond Blizzard's collective intelligence level, given that they were already very proud they came up with the concept of enabling harassment tactics as a panacea for improved game design.
Same deal with medivacs. Please someone link me a VOD that shows medivacs are too powerful. At the highest level. Preferably within the last 6 months but anything might do...
Am I making too big a deal over regular balance whining or something? Maybe I'm just having a bad week...
Since that statement was made as response/agreement to a post of mine I think I can give the details/context: No this is not balance whine. What this is, is the idea that boosting around with 10medivacs filled with tank/bio in TvT destroys a lot of the opportunities to regularly move around on the map. Because if you go out, your opponent boosts in and kills you. Or say you have a tank that is positioned to cover the front. Then a bunch of hellbats get boosted onto it (and I'm absolutely no flash fetishist or wanting to blame some game aspect on why he loses here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hI1UuY06GCM#t=1238 I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move, boosters+air movement always means that the attacker has a movement advantage. You have to sit tight if your opponent goes for these sorts of strategies (medivacs or mutalisks; personally I'd add Zerglings in ZvP too, since Protoss doesn't have a mobile counter like the hellion or the zergling/the roach). What it does is that because one side has a massive movement advantage in certain situations, the game has to be balanced in ways that the side without the movement advantage is allowed to play the most boring sit-back style and keep all the army together, because you cannot split if your opponent has the ability to fly/run in and overwhelm half your army with all of his army quickly.
It works out nicely if both sides have the fast units (hellions vs zerglings; mutas vs drops). It's interesting if the units are used in low amounts (the single/double drop; the first 10mutas; small groups of zergling harass). It becomes a turtlegame quickly if one side cannot (Protoss vs bio, Protoss vs Zerg) field appropriate fast counters. And when you can field such counters, you are often forced to field them (hellion openings, muta/ling/bling playstyle) and cannot use other playstyles.
It's not that the units lead to racial imbalance. But I feel like they are passing a threshold where their mobility becomes counterproductive to the amount of action going on. One side simply cannot move out or they will quickly be overwhelmed either on the map or in their base, the other side cannot move in, because the other player does nothing but take more countermeasures so that eventually he can move out when everything in his base is bulletproof and his army "unbeatable".
Like you said, "in certain situations". Im not the worlds greatest player and I dont keep up on everything that goes on in the scene but I recall the reason why Terran got med boost was because drops became extremely risky and all inish and were doing little to no damage (especially after they nurfed the medivacs base speed and accel). Most drops ended with lost medivacs and supply, especially against Protoss who have warp ins.
In limited situations a boosted all in drop is devastating, but what about Warp Prisms? You get the same effect from much less of an investment anytime you're playing against T or Z. If Terran moves out and somehow doesnt build enough Vikings to dismantle that first Warp Prism then P just ties up their army mid field while they freely warp in in their base. They arent just limited by whats in that ship either, they get to warp in an army of zealots and DTs, forcing the Terran/Zerg Player to have to split their attention. I will freely admit that if the Warp Prism does die then it becomes much less of an issue because a Toss is rarely going to spend the time needed to remake one when they need Col more, but again, if we are talking about "specific situations" it seems more like that Warp Prism and Muta regen are way more of an issue than speedvac.
Zerg has trash in base def against Warp Prism when having to also multi task against Toss death ball, Terran is in the same situation against both. What does Toss have to deal with all of these things? Recall, Warp In, Storm, Blink, and if theyre being extremely frisky, Phoenix. Keep in mind here that the ONLY one of these options a Protoss player wont have in most of their match ups is Phoenix.
Its clear that all match ups arent going to be "even", simply because how the game works now you are always limited in your builds. So yeah while MedBoost kind of OP for TvT and those base trade scenarios vs other races (which the other races have a much better ability to blunt or rebuild from than T) I dont think Medboost is the problem everyone keeps wanting to say it is. Between Toss myriad of defensive abilities and Zergs rallying potential vs light drops TvT is the only time where I see Medboost being an "issue", and thats if you ignore all the other ways in the other match ups that Z and P just trash Terran mech in general.
To me this line of yours: I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move Can be applied to so many different sitations that applying it only to medboost seems disingenuous.
In the original post I was also including warp prisms. Fact of the matter is that this is a relationship problem, as I tried to lay out above. Nearly everything that I describe above can be translated to other units - in particular mutalisks - as well, I should have been clearer about that. Hope that clears
To me this line of yours: I think this limits the players too much. You can't move out, because regardless how you move Can be applied to so many different sitations that applying it only to medboost seems disingenuous.
that up a little more.
And even beyond the mentioned units it is a problem. The blink stalker problem roots back to maps on which the blinking Protoss could navigate his whole combatcapable army faster from one base to another than the defendig Terran. Maps with huge airspaces around the bases have been called out as a problem for WoL PvZ in 2011 due to mutalisks. Now we see that problem again with medivacs (e.g. Catallena). The defensive capabilities in the gameplay of Protoss are so strong, because they are necessary to fend of these sorts of units.
In my opinion, the often quoted blizzard-statement that towards the end of WoL drop-play was extinct is simply not true. There were some great examples of players being dismantled by drop play all through 2012-13 WoL. But yes, the pure "I'm gonna drop till you're dead" approach of 2011 MMA wasn't viable anymore. The question is, was that a bad thing? Everything in the game will always become more and more figured out and more and more methodical. You don't bring the wild days of "on the fly decision-based play" back by making the units faster. All that happens is that those buffs will be used to create new standard method's of play that lead to standard responses of counter-play. I believe that 2012-13 drop play was a very matured and interesting strategy. You could utilize it early, but it needed the opponent to screw up. Where it was shining was in particular in the lategame against slow compositions like BL/Infestor and on specific "bigger" maps (Whirlwind). Innovation picking apar Stephano, Ryung killing DRG are all examples of great play where drops were utilized to punish very slow compositions. But I don't see the need why drops (or mutas, or warp prisms) should be able to punish decently mobile compositions if the defender really plays it well. But that was the intention behind the mutalisk/medivac buffs and it has led to counterbuffs to and introduction of turtle-tools such as sporecrawlers or the Nexus Canon. Regardless how much people whine about the photon overcharge, blizzard cannot really nerf it for as long as the Terran can reach 2-3 Protoss bases faster from an offensive position, than the Protoss from a defensive position. It's the blink problem all over again, just that in this case it wasn't solved by limiting maps, but by giving Protoss an ermergency button that basically says "not here, not now".
Now instead of solving problems by countermeasures, I'd like blizzard in LotV to directly target the problems and all the established-but-problematic countermeasures affiliated. That is tuning down the medivac boosters in some way (in the most uncreative case, removing them). That is tuning down the mutalisk regeneration, so that you actually have to care for defenses more. That is warpgate nerfs so that a single warp prism cannot just win the game all that cheaply (blizzard is doing something there) but is used more for normal dropping. That is tuning down the photon overcharge. Getting rid of the bandaid +vs bio sporecrawler solutions that were abused to create ultimate swarm host turtles until they also repaired BLs against Vipers. Do something that prevents the insanely early blink/MsC allins even on maps like Yeonsu (though they did some good stuff; but for LotV they could just go with the warp-in solution, stalkers cannot blink up anymore and then that problem simply cannot reoccur and maps can stop featuring dead space everywhere).
But yes, the pure "I'm gonna drop till you're dead" approach of 2011 MMA wasn't viable anymore. The question is, was that a bad thing?
I think the MMA style of 2011 was very entertaining because the drop-play didn't replace actual engagements from happening. Loading out 2 dropships in two different directions while moving out with the main army at a 3rd location added so many opportunities for micro, which made it more exciting to watch.
Moreover note that the zerg could respond to this dropplay reactively while doomdrops is something that must be prevented from ever occuring in the first place.
There were some great examples of players being dismantled by drop play all through 2012-13 WoL.
You seem to imply that we saw lots of drops at that time but just not the mass medivac-thing, but I think that's misleading. The "examples" you bring up are games you remember for the sole reason that they were unique/rare. That would be ok if the standard type of game was entertaining and had lots of engagements, but it wasn't. The normal game was timing-attack/passive deathball, and dropplay was really the only way that frequent engagements could occur in the first place.
HOTS buffed both the doomdrop style and the 1-2 medivac dropplaystyle. Ideally, only the latter (1-2 dropship) should have been buffed, and I think part of the issue here is that terran gets the doom-drop style for free. If on the other hand, Medivac required like a 25/25 cost be able to load units in, people would think twice before getting lots of dropships in the midgame. On the other hand, it would also complicate the game a bit.
Why does the new units (specifically the toss ones) have to have quirky abilities. Toss needs a core unit. Not a "phantom stalker" or whatever. and the stupid whirlwind unit or whatever just makes yet ANOTHER unit for terran to micro against and one that toss merely a clicks into the opposing army
On February 13 2015 11:07 SoleSteeler wrote: I like how people in the past have asked Blizzard to be more open about their development process, then we get that now and people are saying "omg blizz seriously has no clue..." "clearly blizz doesnt understand a single thing about their game" and other such hyperbolic statements... The game is in pre-alpha. Units will be added, removed, redesigned a shit ton. You think they sat down and designed SC:BW and all its units in one go without making any mistakes or something? Yeah, tier 1 burrow-movement roaches are probably too strong if they were implemented right now. Does that mean things can't change? I mean, pre-alpha is set in stone right?
The negativity of this community really gets me down sometimes... I don't know why I bother reading these threads. :/
And also wtf are wrong with current mutalisks from earlier pages in this thread? They are necessary vs Terran to shut down drops, otherwise marines/widowmines/thors absolutely annihilate them. The only game where I saw them abused recently was Life vs. Flash on Deadwing in the NSSL. He refused to make thors and Life just kept him pinned in his base otherwise. vs. Protoss they seem to be mostly a unit designed to finish a game, or some mid game harass, same as always. ZvZ well they are decent but hardly overpowered especially with the way spores are.
I've watched almost every Korean pro game this year so far. Please someone show me one game that shows mutalisks are deserving of statements like
I think accepting that the mutalisk and medivac are too powerful is beyond Blizzard's collective intelligence level, given that they were already very proud they came up with the concept of enabling harassment tactics as a panacea for improved game design.
Same deal with medivacs. Please someone link me a VOD that shows medivacs are too powerful. At the highest level. Preferably within the last 6 months but anything might do...
Am I making too big a deal over regular balance whining or something? Maybe I'm just having a bad week...
I think people's complaints are kind of justified when they're going back on pretty much every change they proposed at blizzcon other than the resource thing. It just seems like they've given up.
EPT
