EPTOn February 14 2015 12:00 ROOTFayth wrote:
why does blizzard need to make mech work?
why does blizzard need to make mech work?
Because it would be nice to have more viable compositions and - by extension - more strategies.
Legacy of the Void: Multiplayer Development Update - Page 21
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
Because it would be nice to have more viable compositions and - by extension - more strategies. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On February 14 2015 12:00 ROOTFayth wrote: why does blizzard need to make mech work? If you really want to bait it: Blizzard doesn't need to do anything. Blizzard doesn't need to have 3 viable races. If you want to play competitively, just pick the one that is overpowered. But if blizzard is clever, they will try to give the players reasons to buy and play the game*. And making Mech viable vs Protoss has been at the top of the list of community feedback since mid-WoL. And they aren't dumb, that's why they promised to make it viable in HotS in one form or another. Just that they didn't/couldn't hold that promise. They have another chance with LotV, they'd be pretty dumb if they didn't at least try. (and well, what they are doing seems promising. Giving Mech a Marine and changing Immortals amongst other tweaks like Banshee/BC/Siege Tank buffs) *and before some kiddo comes in yelling that playing the game isn't necessary, "people just have to buy it". Just no. It's called branding. It's called good publicity. It's called customer service. It's called building/holding/extending a customer base. It's called standing at the frontline of the cash cow that is esports. A good product is worth much more than the customer pays for it. | ||
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Topin
Peru10112 Posts
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FabledIntegral
United States9232 Posts
Nah, it just becomes "the tech to unit" for SCV allins in TvP... | ||
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[UoN]Sentinel
United States11320 Posts
Maybe redesign Blink so it's like this? Let's say you can rally your shade to a location, cast it, and then it'll move at speed 6 and after 1 second (or more, depending on if we want to buff) your stalker will teleport there. That way we can buff blink for positional engagements, but you can't rush it in PvT and then use MSC to all-in the Terran. Or you could, but you'd have to go in through the ramp. Could experiment with the shade having noclip. | ||
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pmp10
3396 Posts
But when it comes to terran I'm not optimistic. | ||
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TAMinator
Australia2706 Posts
On February 14 2015 15:53 pmp10 wrote: I'd be a lot happier about HERC removal if I thought Blizzard could come up with a better idea. But when it comes to terran I'm not optimistic. wouldnt be surprised if they take the lazy route and just put back in something from Sc1 like the science vessel | ||
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graNite
Germany4434 Posts
On February 14 2015 13:01 FabledIntegral wrote: Nah, it just becomes "the tech to unit" for SCV allins in TvP... upgrade herv transformation so that scvs can transform to hercs and back so that you can pull them if you need them for a finishing move, maybe that would give t more options. | ||
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
On February 14 2015 12:00 ROOTFayth wrote: why does blizzard need to make mech work? Because Swarm Hosts and Protoss deathball suck and are boring and noskill while Mech is an insanely exciting, fun, skill-based, fast-paced, action-packed style of play. | ||
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RaFox17
Finland4581 Posts
On February 14 2015 16:25 graNite wrote: upgrade herv transformation so that scvs can transform to hercs and back so that you can pull them if you need them for a finishing move, maybe that would give t more options. You do realise that that would be like the most op shit ever in any game known to man. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
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 know what you mean, but according to my definition of skillcap - where higher skilled players can be easily differentiated from less skilled players - it will be reduced here. The reason is that in a lot of engagements, the microskillcap isn't infinitive. There comes a point in time - especially when you play toss - where the reward of additional actions isn't very high/almost nonexistant. Vs Banelings, it's alot more valuable to split them than kite with them, and therefore terran players priortize doing the former. If the speed of the game was reduced so much so that every single diamond player could split his Marines almost perfectly, and then the only differentiating factor would be whether you could kite with them as well, the skill-cap would be reduced as the latter is less valuable. That said, Marines vs Banelings is definitely the scenario with the highest microskillcap, and thus the effect of a change in attack-speed will have the least impact on Marines vs Banelings. But in other micro-interactions, it will be really bad as the "valuable" microskillcap is reached significantly faster, and therefore the factors differenating the best players in the world will be even less related to micro than what it is now. Reducing the speed of engagements therefore only makes sense when the skillcap is basically infinitive. Otherwise it will result in a reduction in the skillcap. 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. The armysize is one variable here, but other variables such as the responsiveness, movement speed and attack-range are relevant as well in the determination of whether micro is rewarded or not. If you reduce every speed-variable by X%, then it doesn't change the fact that big Roach wars will continue to be microless. I have for a while advocated a significant increase in the movement speed of Roaches and a removal of the unburrow/burrow delay of Roaches in order to increase the reward of micro (instead it's damage values can be reduced a bit to balance it). If we look at the Immortal, I would love to see this with 2.75 movement speed, 0 damage point and 7-8 range. It would then be rewarded to target fire enemy units during an engagement, and it would also be possible to pull it back if it was target-fired by the enemy. With these changes, warp-prism also doesn't need any pickuprange and the Immortal doesn't need any extra weird abilities. 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". So just two clarify two things here. (1) Assuming no special abilities exist, the general reward of micro depends on this ratio: DPS/(Movement speed + responsiveness) of units. If movement speed is low but damage values is high, you almost only wanna amove during the engagement. Therefore, it's important to not talk about the damage values in a vacuum, but it must be done in a relation to the speed of the units. (2) If you speed up both attack speed (DPS) and movement speed, the skillcap is increased as long as long as there is a declining value of each additional action that the players can perform during an engagement. | ||
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TheBloodyDwarf
Finland7524 Posts
On February 14 2015 16:29 OtherWorld wrote: Because Swarm Hosts and Protoss deathball suck and are boring and noskill while Mech is an insanely exciting, fun, skill-based, fast-paced, action-packed style of play. ummmmm | ||
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Xamo
Spain886 Posts
On February 14 2015 11:22 darkness wrote: 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. You cannot say they are not TRYING right now. I have the feeling that they have the right approach now, not the very limited one that governed the HotS design. Too late? Perhaps... and they should also address the commercial side.I still have the (crazy?) hope that multiplayer will be free-to-play or almost (i.e. First 10 games free for each race, $1 for additonal 50 games). That approach, together with a better designed game, would be refreshing for the whole scene. Mech would be viable in TvP with an additional transition/support unit, more viable in TvT with that unit and/or a slight nerf to Medevacs and/or Marauders, and is viable in TvZ without swarm hosts, perhaps with a buff to the Thor. The worker change will also make mech strategies develop faster, and that is good. The protoss deathball issue can be fixed with less dependance on AoE and/or by making the collosus at the same time less fragile, less strong and cheaper. Other solutions are possible and probably better, these things can be fixed in all match-ups with a constructive approach from Blizzard and the community. That includes a LONG ENOUGH alfa/beta, or blizzard-supported mods that let us test these new things. | ||
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Loccstana
United States833 Posts
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On February 14 2015 16:29 OtherWorld wrote: Because Swarm Hosts and Protoss deathball suck and are boring and noskill while Mech is an insanely exciting, fun, skill-based, fast-paced, action-packed style of play. Haha, fair enough. Honestly I'm Terran and I'm not too keen on seeing mech viable, especially at low levels of play. Don't want to have to wait 20 minutes to kill a gold noob with my decayed MMR :O I know that mech is viable in TvT (a bit too much imo :D), but what I mean is that I wouldn't wish it on Protoss and Zerg to have to beat a 30 APM mech guy every single vT game. Terran users have to remain the high APM proud manly players, not become slow-witted from building too many turrets and sensor towers. | ||
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DemigodcelpH
1138 Posts
On February 14 2015 18:39 ZenithM wrote: Haha, fair enough. Honestly I'm Terran and I'm not too keen on seeing mech viable, especially at low levels of play. Don't want to have to wait 20 minutes to kill a gold noob with my decayed MMR :O Then kill them. Mech is extremely vulnerable. That doesn't mean we don't need a viable mech for the best SC2 possible. | ||
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ZenithM
France15952 Posts
On February 14 2015 18:42 DemigodcelpH wrote: Then kill them. Mech is extremely vulnerable. That doesn't mean we don't need a viable mech for the best SC2 possible. I don't understand what you're saying. Thank god I can currently kill them, no shit, I'm talking about when the much-desired mech super buff will come. What then, mech will still be "extremely vulnerable"? What people mean when they want a "mech buff" is being able to sit on their asses with 50 APM and build nothing but tanks safely for 20 minutes (then lose all the same when they try to get out) because they hate that Terran is so much reliant on micro and reaction time. I love it about Terran so I don't want that to go away. As for the watching experience, only super top players (I'm not talking about Avilo and random European terrans) make mech interesting. So yeah, sure, buff mech, but just for those 5-10 players then. | ||
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Shield
Bulgaria4824 Posts
On February 14 2015 18:39 ZenithM wrote: Haha, fair enough. Honestly I'm Terran and I'm not too keen on seeing mech viable, especially at low levels of play. Don't want to have to wait 20 minutes to kill a gold noob with my decayed MMR :O I know that mech is viable in TvT (a bit too much imo :D), but what I mean is that I wouldn't wish it on Protoss and Zerg to have to beat a 30 APM mech guy every single vT game. Terran users have to remain the high APM proud manly players, not become slow-witted from building too many turrets and sensor towers. Mech can be exciting as well. For example, it is subjective but I do think BW mech made more interesting games than sc2 bio vs P. And trust me, low APM didn't really work for them back then. | ||
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
On February 14 2015 19:06 darkness wrote: Mech can be exciting as well. For example, it is subjective but I do think BW mech made more interesting games than sc2 bio vs P. And trust me, low APM didn't really work for them back then. Well, the problem precisely is that sc2's mech is nowhere similar to BW's, and while ppl want to see mech because of BW nostalgia or some idea that mech is awesome because it was awesome in BW, a mech buff with the current design Blizz made for fac/port units wouldn't lead to BW-style mech at all. | ||
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404AlphaSquad
839 Posts
On February 14 2015 19:14 OtherWorld wrote: Well, the problem precisely is that sc2's mech is nowhere similar to BW's, and while ppl want to see mech because of BW nostalgia or some idea that mech is awesome because it was awesome in BW, a mech buff with the current design Blizz made for fac/port units wouldn't lead to BW-style mech at all. But only because they made Thors: expensive high cost unit which you cannot let on its own. (no split up of forces) Hellions: that cannot provide any form of mapcontrol (because of hardcounters you can only hope to achieve killing probes, if you split them up) Hellbats: boring amove unit Siegetank: useless Widowmine: bandaid fix to every mech problem. So the best they came up with in HOTS was combining mech and air upgrades. So every air unit can be assimilated into a normal mech composition. That again was another bandaid fix to me. | ||
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