On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
On February 14 2015 02:50 dUTtrOACh wrote: Am I the only one who thinks it's pretty half-assed of Blizzard to still be ironing out ideas for Legacy of the Void?
How long has it been since HotS? Why does Blizzard still sound so clueless? How is this not going to be a shitty expansion?
So many questions and so little confidence in Blizzard right now... For fuck's sake!
WoL was out for almost 3 years. Almost 3 years since Hots's release would be late 2015/early 2016. Also the beta came about 6 months earlier, which is in line with blizzard claiming they plan on launching LotV beta during this summer.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
For all we know -the ones, who, unlike you if I'm to believe your last sentence, still play this game-, none of the issues is solved. They've been making announcements saying they would make the game more action packed/dynamic/interesting forever. And yet all I see is they gave medivacs speed and muta regen + speed buff, forcing mothership core and stale gameplay. After the masterpiece that was HotS, we HAVE to be wary. Be an enthusiastic yes-man if you want, but don't call cautious people who actually care for the game and raise important issues toxic haters for Christ's sake.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
SC2 needs to slow down, not fasten up.
But man, don't you understand? If you slow the game down it reduces the skill level. Blizzard knows and Blizzard said that.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
SC2 needs to slow down, not fasten up.
But man, don't you understand? If you slow the game down it reduces the skill level. Blizzard knows and Blizzard said that.
The marine has ~260% more damage per resource. The roach has ~160% more HP per resource.
The roach vs roach combat is much, much, much, much (it's hard to actually describe with words how much!) slower than the marine vs marine combat. People still don't micro more in roach vs roach than in marine vs marine. Nor do they micro more in roach vs marauder than marine vs marauder. It is rather that in roach vs marauder, the amount of micro actions/second is much less than the amount of micro actions/second in marine vs marauder. In both instances player wants to micro forward to catch up with the 6marauder range. In both instances, once you have everything in range the amount of micro decreases to a little bit of target fireing once you have all your stuff in range. In the marine vs marauder example, all of that happens quicker, the micro actions are closer together in time than in roach vs marauder. In roach vs marauder, there is a lot of time in between the one targetfire and the next because marauders die slower to roaches than marines.
Now of course, if there is combat lengthening stuff involved (blink), it becomes significant whether you can dps your opponent down faster, or if more cooldown periods are involved. It makes the blinks much easier against roaches than against marines in bigger combats. But that is not a question of the pace of combats in general, but about the specific unit interactions. Say, we go with the 40% that blizzard had tested. Now blink stalkers are much better against marines, because they can blink more often. This imposes a balance problem that needs to be solved in one of two ways: marines also need to be more durable against stalkers. Or marines need more damage output against stalkers to make up for it. The first one just means that the protoss player now blinks more, but the terran player doesn't really micro more because of that. The battle is just longer for no real reason. The second one just restores the status quo. The only interesting solution would be if now instead of just counterbuffing marines or counternerfing stalkers, marines would get a cool micro trick of their own that the player can perform in the extra time and that makes up for the extra blink power. Again, we are back to creating interesting micro-intense unit relations to begin with. The slow down of the combats in general is not necessary for that. It might be interesting for the marine vs stalker example to make room for more micro tricks, but for the roach vs stalker example on the other hand which is already an incredibely slooooooooow combat, one could just start out by introducing more ways to use the time for micro. Or intensifying the micro by speeding up the combat in that particular scenario. It is all about the specific combat interaction we are talking about!
Now the argument that gets most brought up in that context is deathballs evaporating other deathballs. Seeing how very low-dps/high HP Protoss deathballs + Show Spoiler +
yes they are low dps, just check the dps values of those units. Like 80%+ of the units in the typical Protoss deathball are basic gateway units with some of the highest health/res and lowest dps/res values in the game
win games rather quickly, I don't believe that making all armies behave like that would do any good for making battles more interesting. If you actually watch a deciding combat, many players will type out before their units are even killed. Why? Because it doesn't matter if the combat is long or short, there is a critical value of units that if you drop under it, you know you are going to lose sooner or later and you tab out. Whether this is sooner or later does not influence the outcome of the battle.
Another thing that it does influence is that replenishing units during a battle becomes much stronger. You introduce more of the "Swarm Host-syndrom" into all battles, which means stuff dies, but not a lot of stuff and you have a much harder time actually breaking through your opponent, because 40% longer battles also means 40% faster reinforcements. And while you have been slowly killing units, he has also been rebuilding them (faster than right now relatively speaking), which means ultimately the strategies become more about mining the map more than your opponent, instead of actually trying to kill his bases.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
SC2 needs to slow down, not fasten up.
But man, don't you understand? If you slow the game down it reduces the skill level. Blizzard knows and Blizzard said that.
I think it's important to differentiate between various types of "speed". Does it come from a reduction in damage values only? If so, battles will indeed be longer and there will be more opportunities for micro. If it comes from a reduction in movement speed, micro will generally be less rewarded during engagements as it for instance isn't efficient to pull back targetted units (assuming damage values are unchanged). If it's due to a change in attack speed, it will reduce the APM-requirement for kiting/stutter-stepping, but also increase the lenght of engagements.
If every "speed-related" variable (attack speed and movement speed) is reduced by X%, then it doesn't change the reward of microing the units. Your still rewarded for doing the same type of micro, and PvP deathball engagements won't be more microintensive with this change. Instead, the microless engagements will just take longer. And in the engagements wiht lots of micro (such as bio vs zerg), players will have more time to execute the same type of micro. This is actually equal to a reduction in skill-cap since a high (mechanical) skillcap comes from the aiblity to make the most amount of efficient actions in the least amount of time.
As an extreme example to make this point obvious, imagine that you have 10 seconds to split 5 Marines. That's pretty easy right? On the other hand, if you only have 1 second to split each Marine indiviudally, then it's a ton harder, and it will be easier to seperate those who are really good from those who are subpar.
Therefore my recommendation is to leave attack-speed unchanged, but in some situations movement speed can be increased while damage values can be reduced in order to increase the duration of engagements.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
SC2 needs to slow down, not fasten up.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Browder now out from SC2 development? If he is, that's reason to be optimistic that it's gonna be different this time around.
I think he was the reason they've taken such a conservative approach in the past. They thought the game could be made substantially different by just adding/tweaking units. Now they're actually exploring with making changes to fundamental game mechanics.
It's the unit scan range, not the range of the scan from orbital commands. It determines from how far away units recognise enemy units.
I had know idea! Turns out think this could be a really cool change. Also, can Blizzard pplleeaase bring back the Reaver :D. I'd rather have the reaver than some (big-ass target) collosus!
On February 13 2015 05:23 The_Templar wrote: Experimenting with slowing down the pacing of combat in SC2
This is a topic we got a lot of community feedback on, so we did some heavy exploration in this area. The biggest thing we tried here was reducing the attack speed of each unit in the game by 40% and altering some damage values to compensate. Even though a change like this would seemingly have a huge implication on balance, we realized the gain wasn’t as big as we expected. Games feel different from before, but the main question has to be “Is this a positive change that makes games better?” We’re just not sure of this yet. For example, we’re seeing that slower engagements seem to reduce the skill component in combat. Additionally, games feel more dragged out than before. But we’ve only had limited testing at this point, so we’ll continue to explore this area in more detail before making a final call.
[/QUOTE]
Soooo, you want to add a bit of strategy into your strategy game? Blasphemous!
Afraid that it reduces skill level because you don't have to click 1000 things at once in order to be good making it accessible to people who aren't Korean? How dare they!?
Seriously, though... They should do this. We don't need faster paced games that are 10 minutes of build up that are over in 30 seconds. I get what they're trying to do and make it so its micro intensive all over the map but you also have to make the game fun for normal people to play as well. I'm not a pro nor will I ever be one, having more abilities to micro at faster speeds does not appeal to me as much as being able to actually control engagements because my units won't die in the blink of an eye.
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
That's how we ended up with mutas being crap when below 12 but stupid good in huge flocks, speed medivacs, all protoss all-ins relying on warp-in, maxed supply battles lasting 5 seconds and basetrade being a viable strategy in certain matchups.
SC2 needs to slow down, not fasten up.
But man, don't you understand? If you slow the game down it reduces the skill level. Blizzard knows and Blizzard said that.
I think it's important to differentiate between various types of "speed". Does it come from a reduction in damage values only? If so, battles will indeed be longer and there will be more opportunities for micro. If it comes from a reduction in movement speed, micro will generally be less rewarded during engagements as it for instance isn't efficient to pull back targetted units (assuming damage values are unchanged). If it's due to a change in attack speed, it will reduce the APM-requirement for kiting/stutter-stepping, but also increase the lenght of engagements.
If every "speed-related" variable (attack speed and movement speed) is reduced by X%, then it doesn't change the reward of microing the units. Your still rewarded for doing the same type of micro, and PvP deathball engagements won't be more microintensive with this change. Instead, the microless engagements will just take longer. And in the engagements wiht lots of micro (such as bio vs zerg), players will have more time to execute the same type of micro. This is actually equal to a reduction in skill-cap since a high (mechanical) skillcap comes from the aiblity to make the most amount of efficient actions in the least amount of time.
As an extreme example to make this point obvious, imagine that you have 10 seconds to split 5 Marines. That's pretty easy right? On the other hand, if you only have 1 second to split each Marine indiviudally, then it's a ton harder, and it will be easier to seperate those who are really good from those who are subpar.
Therefore my recommendation is to leave attack-speed unchanged, but in some situations movement speed can be increased while damage values can be reduced in order to increase the duration of engagements.
Well, really there are a lot of speed variables that are relevant when discussing game balance. There are in-game ones like movement speed, attack speed, various cooldowns and duration. There are also meta-variables, like reaction lag (reflexes) and apm that need to be taken into account. In an earlier example: slowing down the game is a nerf for reapers trying to snipe workers because the defending player has more time to react and pull back the workers. Perhaps it would be similar for banshee vs worker interaction if only banshees would three-shot workers, instead of the two-shot which can't be microed against.
There are some micro interactions where slow down is very beneficial. Imagine an idealized version of the marine vs baneling interaction where it's perpetually worthwhile to spread and kite with your marines, meaning that if you slow down the game by half you've actually created twice as much time during which you can micro your units, sort of doubling the micro potential of the engagement. I think that's why WC3 micro can be very micro intensive despite its lengthy engagements, because there are always ways to contribute during a fight (focus fire, pulling back units, abilities, unit formations, kiting, surrounding, blocking, items).
If you increase the army size enough it starts to become very difficult to design micro interactions that are not dependent on initial positioning. Virtually every single micro trick I mentioned in the previous paragraph becomes contrived already at large army sizes in Warcraft 3 and would be completely degenerate in Starcraft 2 (see Big J's example of roach vs roach), simply because unit numbers are too high for focus firing and such to truly stand out. It's not necessarily impossible to create these sort of continuous micro interactions in SC2, but you probably can't achieve full coverage for every battle with every composition (something which is trivial in WC3). And it's not clear that it's desirable to lose your dependence on initial positioning, because that might just be a fact of the genre / scale of the game.
I think the SC2 pathfinding doesn't help in the quest for slower pace, since that speeds up (and in some way trivializes) the initial positioning phase a lot. At that point if you change the stats of the game so that attack speeds are lower you just get battles where all units are comfortably in arcs firing at each other and the most meaningful micro (which is positioning based) is now relatively less important.
Also, I recall this being a debate in Planetary Annihilation: units there die incredibly quickly and it was said that this made positioning more important, which was desirable for a strategy game, and that the alternative, with units having more health, would not be desirable since that would simply promote rote micro actions, especially given the scale of the game. But I think they went overboard with this concept since a lot of players said something like: "well, okay, but at least double the hp of all the units".
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
For all we know -the ones, who, unlike you if I'm to believe your last sentence, still play this game-, none of the issues is solved. They've been making announcements saying they would make the game more action packed/dynamic/interesting forever. And yet all I see is they gave medivacs speed and muta regen + speed buff, forcing mothership core and stale gameplay. After the masterpiece that was HotS, we HAVE to be wary. Be an enthusiastic yes-man if you want, but don't call cautious people who actually care for the game and raise important issues toxic haters for Christ's sake.
I meant that I might actually participate in a beta for once. I currently play hots. Not a ton, but I'm diamond on the ladder this season (and every damn season).
I think it's silly how entitled you people are. You act like Starcraft isn't the best RTS ever made already, and having spent $80 bucks on the game you think that they need to work for you for the rest of the game's lifespan.
If the game and the company who makes it are so horrible, I stand by by original statement, go play something else.
On February 13 2015 05:23 The_Templar wrote: Experimenting with slowing down the pacing of combat in SC2
This is a topic we got a lot of community feedback on, so we did some heavy exploration in this area. The biggest thing we tried here was reducing the attack speed of each unit in the game by 40% and altering some damage values to compensate. Even though a change like this would seemingly have a huge implication on balance, we realized the gain wasn’t as big as we expected. Games feel different from before, but the main question has to be “Is this a positive change that makes games better?” We’re just not sure of this yet. For example, we’re seeing that slower engagements seem to reduce the skill component in combat. Additionally, games feel more dragged out than before. But we’ve only had limited testing at this point, so we’ll continue to explore this area in more detail before making a final call.
Soooo, you want to add a bit of strategy into your strategy game? Blasphemous!
Afraid that it reduces skill level because you don't have to click 1000 things at once in order to be good making it accessible to people who aren't Korean? How dare they!?
Seriously, though... They should do this. We don't need faster paced games that are 10 minutes of build up that are over in 30 seconds. I get what they're trying to do and make it so its micro intensive all over the map but you also have to make the game fun for normal people to play as well. I'm not a pro nor will I ever be one, having more abilities to micro at faster speeds does not appeal to me as much as being able to actually control engagements because my units won't die in the blink of an eye.
Normal people can have fun playing the game as it is right now. Slow games are boring to watch and play. Try it yourself out with a friend. Custom game on normal speed. Really boring. Part of the appeal SC2 has for me is that it actually requires skill. I am an avid gamer and most games nowadays are way to easy and you can master it in an hour. With SC you always learn. Sure the beginning is hard but when you get more and more into it is insaley awesome.
Trying out new builds you see the pros do. Do some stupid shit yourself. And imo the feeling when you win a hard fought game is way sweeter in SC2 than in any other game I have played before.
Ok that kinda went off topic. To conclude my rambling I do not want the game to be slower. There is no reason whatsoever to make the game easier
On February 14 2015 04:27 TronJovolta wrote: All you toxic haters go play a different game, jesus christ. How is this now incredibly exciting news, these last few updates? The game is going to become even more action packed, fun, and spectatable. Not only that, but they're even addressing the army evaporation issue.
I'm so freaking happy. Cannot wait for beta, I might actually really play it.
For all we know -the ones, who, unlike you if I'm to believe your last sentence, still play this game-, none of the issues is solved. They've been making announcements saying they would make the game more action packed/dynamic/interesting forever. And yet all I see is they gave medivacs speed and muta regen + speed buff, forcing mothership core and stale gameplay. After the masterpiece that was HotS, we HAVE to be wary. Be an enthusiastic yes-man if you want, but don't call cautious people who actually care for the game and raise important issues toxic haters for Christ's sake.
I meant that I might actually participate in a beta for once. I currently play hots. Not a ton, but I'm diamond on the ladder this season (and every damn season).
I think it's silly how entitled you people are. You act like Starcraft isn't the best RTS ever made already, and having spent $80 bucks on the game you think that they need to work for you for the rest of the game's lifespan.
If the game and the company who makes it are so horrible, I stand by by original statement, go play something else.
Everyone wants the game to be the best possible game it could be, with the quality and longevity of BW. The benchmark for SC2 is very, very high, for a number of reasons. So people get concerned when it appears the developers aren't going to put in the effort to make what was touted as (and has potential to be) the best RTS of all time. There are a number of issues that have been around since the inception of the game that haven't really been addressed, and it gets a little frustrating imagining how much better the game could be. Nobody is posting on TL because they think the game is terrible: people post because they love the game but think that it's not living up to its potential.
Kudos to Blizzard, I like them trying it hard to actually improve the game, and not just playing around with cool unit designs. I like most of the changes in the OP, including slowing down the combat - but just a bit. I remember Flash saying in an interview that controlling SC2 was more challenging than BW because of the speed of battles. If it is difficult for Flash, mere humans like the rest of the world will surely benefit from a SMALL slow-down in the attack speed and/or DPS.
Please please please also focus on giving the game more viable strategies / unit compositions / gamestyles, most of the posts I see here focus more on the RT part than in the S part of our RTS game. For me BOTH are important, it is just that often the audience is more capable of wondering about a cool micro trick than about a brilliant counter-strategy after a partial scout. In the altar of balance, many cool strategies were sacrificed in several previous patches. Now HotS is 2% more balanced, and 20% less funny.
Here are my (crazy?) comments and suggestions:
Terran I've just read 20 pages of comments and have not seen more than one suggestion for a new unit. For me it should be a T2 unit that helps you transition out of bio play. A unit that synergizes better with positional mech play than with mobile bio play: ranged, not stimmable, not droppable, not as fast as stimmed bio, but with good DPS, health and speed, so that can it be part of your core army in both bio and mech compositions. It could have an ability that, when casted, gives a target mech unit an advantage, like more armor (reducing the effectiveness of enemy T1 units).
Other: Reduce the health of the marauder, make medevac boost consume energy, increase health of banshee.
Protoss A new gateway unit is a good idea, I suggest a T2 that comes out with the Twilight, which currently does not enable any new unit. The goal of the unit would be to help bridge the gap to T3 AoE. I know Blizzard likes the small imbalances between races as the game evolves, but it is ridiculous that P needs always to race to T3 to deal with mass small units. A non-mechanical high-armor (2?) unit with good life, double? ranged attack, no overkill. Perhaps with an ability that, when casted on a building or unit, refills shields and/or mana.
Other: Make FF have hit points so that they are destroyable - but stackable. No abilities in non-T3 units to immediately destroy FF.
Zerg I like its current design in LotV. They need more micro-able units and that's been addressed. Just reduce the Queen's range... ;-)
Overall Workers should have more DPS! Their attack ability does not have any influence in the game right now. Make them be the last line of defense against harassment or all-ins, at the cost of economy.
On February 14 2015 09:45 Xamo wrote: Kudos to Blizzard, I like them trying it hard to actually improve the game, and not just playing around with cool unit designs. I like most of the changes in the OP, including slowing down the combat - but just a bit. I remember Flash saying in an interview that controlling SC2 was more challenging than BW because of the speed of battles. If it is difficult for Flash, mere humans like the rest of the world will surely benefit from a SMALL slow-down in the attack speed and/or DPS.
On February 14 2015 09:45 Xamo wrote: Kudos to Blizzard, I like them trying it hard to actually improve the game
On February 14 2015 09:45 Xamo wrote: Kudos to Blizzard, I like them trying it hard
Nice joke dude. It's been 5 years and Blizzard still has no idea how to make mech work for Terran and to make Protoss more proactive without having to resort to 200/200.
EPT
