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On March 01 2015 23:09 Quineotio wrote:
The thing about harass in sc2 is that it's relatively cheap, low supply and high impact. The defending player needs to spend a large amount of time and army to defend, meaning they are less likely to use their army offensively.
Like I asked before: for what?
If I can't keep your army at home with harassment, then I'm never going to harass you, because you'll just march across the map and kill me. And I know you're not going to harass me, for the same reason. So all either of us has to worry about are timing attacks. But as I mentioned before, you've made it so much faster to recoup the investment of a new base that timing attacks have a smaller window to succeed. So you've removed harassment and nerfed timing attacks. What's left? NR15?
As for the economy, by needing less workers per base you can more quickly build army units, and have more army units at max. This would enable players to split the army up
Why would us both having more units at max allow us to split them up, especially when you've just made it harder to do anything useful with small groups of units?
Deathball play is caused by high mobility relative to health and/or damage. In BW, units died far more quickly relative to how rapidly they could be brought to bear in numbers, meaning that a well-set-up defence could significantly slow down a large army. This made splitting the army worthwhile on both sides - me because I can defend with less, you because otherwise you're bottlenecked.
Look at roach vs roach in SC2 - extreme mobility, low DPS and high health. Consequently it's a pure numbers game, and very dull to watch. Compare that with ling/bling/muta vs MMMM: lings and mutas die super-fast to marines, which die super-fast to banelings. Constant action and micro on both sides, with the threat of drops, run-bys and muta flocks to create multiple simultaneous engagements and prevent every game being a parade push.
Look at the colossus: almost as mobile as an air unit, supported by blink stalkers and chargelots. Extreme mobility, large amounts of health. The only thing that prevents it being the perfect deathball is the slow movement speed of templar, which means it is possible to catch them out of position. Think about how often the fate of the templar is decisive in PvX.
In short, you get deathballs because of how the units move and fight. All this change would do is ensure deathball play was the only viable strategy, and allow people to get there more quickly.
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On March 02 2015 20:39 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2015 19:26 Tuczniak wrote:
Don't reapers still have those timed bombs in LotV or was it scrapped? Pretty sure that was WOL Campaign. Haven't heard about that btw They had some bombs that you throw on the ground and explode after few seconds. It was pretty fun, like ravager. But I don't know if it made it.
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Multiplayer wise, those time bombs were WoL Alpha.
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On March 02 2015 18:48 SC2Toastie wrote:I was just thinking about how to make the Reaper more useful past early game. What I came up with: As an upgrade:- Techlab upgrade at factory level. Gives the Reaper his WOL weapon set back (+5 light*2), (+30 vs Structures grenade). This makes the Reaper a very threatening mid to lategame harrassment unit, capable of dealing with Zerglings, banelings and drones really well and aren't denied by structures alone. Their cost and build time should still discourage mass-reaper production, but with Terran gas banking in lategame, these might be interesting additions.
- Ghost Academy tech Cloak upgrade. Allows Reapers to cloak for a short amount of time. They have a 2 second activation animation (can still move during this time) to give the opponent time to snipe them and make sure it does not replace medivac micro. it's a short Cloak for a couple of seconds to allow repositioning, retreating, sniping a few more units. Healing does not work during the cloak. Cooldown is long enough to make it not spammable. ( somewhat comparable to Medivac Boosters in a way)
- Jetpack Detonation when Reaper dies, similar to the Baneling, Reapers deal a small AOE when dieing. Probably too much overlap with the Baneling and Widow Mine, but it might be fun, somehow?
- Allow Reapers to benefit more from upgrades. Give +2/shot/upgrade or combine the damage into one tick so armor applies only once. This way, Reapers become high-DPS glass cannons mid-lategame with superior mobility compared to the marine.
- Spider Mines. Allowing Reapers to upgrade Spider Mine after Factory tech would massively help Mech get off the ground. Coupled with maybe another stat buff Reapers could be the unit that allows Mech to properly transition without having to turtle for too long.
Some comments?
Reapers are already insanely good as an opening and now you want to buff then so you dont need to transition out of them anymore? Makes no sense, also terran has plenty of harass options as is. If anything i would like a reaper nerf in the early game so that we can see a larger variety of openings from Zerg (and Terran).
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On March 02 2015 23:07 zerge wrote:Show nested quote +On March 02 2015 18:48 SC2Toastie wrote:I was just thinking about how to make the Reaper more useful past early game. What I came up with: As an upgrade:- Techlab upgrade at factory level. Gives the Reaper his WOL weapon set back (+5 light*2), (+30 vs Structures grenade). This makes the Reaper a very threatening mid to lategame harrassment unit, capable of dealing with Zerglings, banelings and drones really well and aren't denied by structures alone. Their cost and build time should still discourage mass-reaper production, but with Terran gas banking in lategame, these might be interesting additions.
- Ghost Academy tech Cloak upgrade. Allows Reapers to cloak for a short amount of time. They have a 2 second activation animation (can still move during this time) to give the opponent time to snipe them and make sure it does not replace medivac micro. it's a short Cloak for a couple of seconds to allow repositioning, retreating, sniping a few more units. Healing does not work during the cloak. Cooldown is long enough to make it not spammable. ( somewhat comparable to Medivac Boosters in a way)
- Jetpack Detonation when Reaper dies, similar to the Baneling, Reapers deal a small AOE when dieing. Probably too much overlap with the Baneling and Widow Mine, but it might be fun, somehow?
- Allow Reapers to benefit more from upgrades. Give +2/shot/upgrade or combine the damage into one tick so armor applies only once. This way, Reapers become high-DPS glass cannons mid-lategame with superior mobility compared to the marine.
- Spider Mines. Allowing Reapers to upgrade Spider Mine after Factory tech would massively help Mech get off the ground. Coupled with maybe another stat buff Reapers could be the unit that allows Mech to properly transition without having to turtle for too long.
Some comments? Reapers are already insanely good as an opening and now you want to buff then so you dont need to transition out of them anymore? Makes no sense, also terran has plenty of harass options as is. If anything i would like a reaper nerf in the early game so that we can see a larger variety of openings from Zerg (and Terran).
What..?
The 'Insanely good' phase ended with WOL Beta. A post factory upgrade really forces you out of reapers as any proper attack can kill you if you don't. None of the proposed buffs make them any better vs roaches or queens.
Really, not making a unit viable through a midgame upgrade because you don't like them in early game is the poorest reasoning I can think of.
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I don't see the need to make reaper viable in mid to mid late game neither.
It's a a specialist unit, just like how some units are meant to work better in mid or late game for example.
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I understand what he's getting at because the unit's only purpose is to scout early in the game. Then it completely lacks a purpose. Though I'd say stopping at giving them their +light damage kit would suffice.
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On March 02 2015 23:24 ETisME wrote:
I don't see the need to make reaper viable in mid to mid late game neither.
It's a a specialist unit, just like how some units are meant to work better in mid or late game for example.
It would be nice to have many units work through long periods of the game. Not sure how to do that with the reaper though. I'm against all the gimmicky ideas like regular cloaks (burrow type of cloak is much cooler; mines, banelings, roaches... not as many freewins due to lack of detection).
The game design currently is that later in the game you build a combat army that can harass too (or a harass army that can combat too). At the end of the day I think that even a reaper would just harass through medivacs and just be a stronger marauder or marine in that context. You are just not going to walk/jump if you can fly+heal+pick up while being surrounded for mere 100/100 more. The fact that the reaper is much more expensive than the regular bio rather enforces that you really want to protect the unit even more with medivacs, than send it alone.
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On February 13 2015 05:55 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2015 05:45 Big J wrote:
Please don't make combats slower. The worst combats in the game are those that involve lots of low-dps/high HP units, such as Protoss, Roaches or Broodlord type of battles. Swarm Hosts are hated exactly because they slow the pace of the battles down so much, making for minute long struggles to kill a unit or two.
The problem isn't dps/health relations, those are pretty good in general. The problem is too much mobility, which is often described by "fast paced play". The fact that you only have like 10vision range from a lot of angles around your base and then suddenly a gigantic army in the form of medivacs or mutalisks or a single warp prism can appear in your base is the problem.
Harass play is fun, but it also should be limited to that. Mass doomdrops in all Terran matchups severely cripple the abilities to actually move out against a bio-centric Terran. Mutalisks and Zerglings force Protoss into stale defensive positions and severely cripple mapdesign to cater to Protoss ability to do that.
Instead of nerfing the damage output of all those units, it would be nice to give players more reaction time against specific very aggressively used units, allowing for smaller repercussions when making rather small positioning mistakes.
Otherwise the changes seem to go into the right direction. Not sure about the new Protoss unit, but that is very hard to tell until one sees it in action. 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. To be honest I'd like to see a 5% decrease in game speed and an additional 5% decrease in attack speeds and a very slight tweak of the pathfinding to make units more clumsy/weighty. It'll be a fair amount of work to implement and it won't fix anything, making it an ill-advised endeavor for Blizzard to undertake, but I suspect they would make for better base values to design the game around.
But the problem, also when watching is the huge frustration when a player gets ahead through many good micro/macro decitsions but then he takes 1 bad fight which lasts 2 seconds -> storm storm bio dead.
Also some unit designs that make it so hard to engage the opponent: A protoss that has HTs + Colossi in a huge ball coming for you makes it (sometimes) so much easier for the toss to fight then for the terran.
Well that counts for non Korean-Pros. The game may be balanced but the feeling that the fights take 2 seconds and are over and after 20 minutes of watching there is just this one fight and then one army wins and moves over the other player is just annoying - to watch and to play (since the problem, one having more to micro then the other isn't big for a 400 apm korean pro, but makes it more and more frustrating the further down you are in the ladder (since it is imbalanced on lower leagues). And ofc the game must be balanced around pro gamers (and it IS balanced there), 99.99% are no pro gamers, and for these 99.99% its sometimes pure frustration.
I think increasing combat duration would lead to a better experience for the 99.99% whilst playing and therefore also whilst watching -> simply because seeing the same 2-second fights I am in myself so often (and lose) are frustrating to me, and if I see them onscreen it is frustrating as well, which led to the case that i don't tune in to certain matchups anymore. Getting Protossed does hurt no matter if you watch it or play it yourself.
But I am not only refering to Toss here, I also hate some Units of Zerg and Terran (I play all 3 races btw, but I guess as you can see, T is my favorite to play). For Instance, I don't like the randomness of the WM (does it get its critical connections or does it not...?).
Reducing these extreme high damage "win or lose" (if they hit or if they don't hit) units/abilities would be great and make the fights more about micro and multitasking again.
But these are just wet dreams of a SC2 player that lost his hope for the game feeling more rewarding and less frustrating at some times (the problem is, that I don't hate losing if I think the opponent fought well the whole game, but if the opponent wins because of ONE simple trick instead of doing lots of things better, its pure frustration and hate on the game and other player instead of me thinking "well he outplayed me on several levels, guess I need to improve to win vs a player of his calber")
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On March 02 2015 23:24 ETisME wrote:
I don't see the need to make reaper viable in mid to mid late game neither.
It's a a specialist unit, just like how some units are meant to work better in mid or late game for example.
Mid and late game units are not obsolesced by the very fact that they're, well, mid/late game units. Reapers become worthless the instance the scouting aspect is complete; the pitiful damage output is nice and you might actually be able to end the game with committed reapers, but against anything that could be considered an army or static defense, they die, simple as that.
I don't think it's good game design at all to have a unit become obsolete after the first five or so minutes. Every other early game unit has lasting power; marines and marauders are mainstay, while hellions are good for anything; zerglings and roaches are still good runby fodder in a late game composition, while banelings can be backbreakers; zealots, stalkers and even sentries last well into the midgame, and in the late game still act as buffers for tech units.
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Well personally i think a Mine unit would be good for the terran race since it synergy with tanks so well and also synergise with dropplay.
Reapers with a type of Spidermine could probably be quite cool actually. So reapers+tanks is a thing.
Some other things worth mentioning:
The transform abilities of terran should be redesigned completely so its used in direct combat ,as a micro. On, off and then it will be countermicro for the opponent. Perfect method to make mech more intersting, better and more agressive oriented.
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I like that you brought up the reaper as it is one of those units, that i feel deserve some love and changes. I am not talking about maybe broken mechanics, but units that are used only in very specific situations and MUs. These are bad game design wise imo.
On March 02 2015 18:48 SC2Toastie wrote:I was just thinking about how to make the Reaper more useful past early game. What I came up with: As an upgrade:- Techlab upgrade at factory level. Gives the Reaper his WOL weapon set back (+5 light*2), (+30 vs Structures grenade). This makes the Reaper a very threatening mid to lategame harrassment unit, capable of dealing with Zerglings, banelings and drones really well and aren't denied by structures alone. Their cost and build time should still discourage mass-reaper production, but with Terran gas banking in lategame, these might be interesting additions.
- Ghost Academy tech Cloak upgrade. Allows Reapers to cloak for a short amount of time. They have a 2 second activation animation (can still move during this time) to give the opponent time to snipe them and make sure it does not replace medivac micro. it's a short Cloak for a couple of seconds to allow repositioning, retreating, sniping a few more units. Healing does not work during the cloak. Cooldown is long enough to make it not spammable. ( somewhat comparable to Medivac Boosters in a way)
- Jetpack Detonation when Reaper dies, similar to the Baneling, Reapers deal a small AOE when dieing. Probably too much overlap with the Baneling and Widow Mine, but it might be fun, somehow?
- Allow Reapers to benefit more from upgrades. Give +2/shot/upgrade or combine the damage into one tick so armor applies only once. This way, Reapers become high-DPS glass cannons mid-lategame with superior mobility compared to the marine.
- Spider Mines. Allowing Reapers to upgrade Spider Mine after Factory tech would massively help Mech get off the ground. Coupled with maybe another stat buff Reapers could be the unit that allows Mech to properly transition without having to turtle for too long.
Some comments?
I like the spidermines!
To keep them a harass unit is difficult, because as others mentioned it could overlap with drop harass and in most cases this is the better choice (why spend rax time and supply on a reaper instead of bio which you can use for all kinds of things?).
So a different way of late game harassment could be with low supply, but high cost. From the terra point of view this is the nuke.
Yes it sounds weired, but i think it might work to give reapers the nuke. They are faster and more mobile than ghosts, which are a pain in the ass to move over the map. So what i have in mind:
- Reapers could throw a "signal transmitter" on the ground which is the target of the nuke.
- It has maybe 150 hp, is visible and can of course be destroyed to stop.
- You still need to produce nukes in the Academy, but maybe it could store more than one
So you have to worry about (maybe cloaked) reapers roaming between your bases and could devestate an undefended one easily. Of course it needs balancing, but i think it would fit in and compliments the role of the unit. What do you think?
This also leaves a ability spot open for the ghost. The ghost needs something for TvZ and TvT and since both the races shine with their mobility and speed i would like a way to slow them down.
So maybe a short duration stun or heavy slow to give you time against blings or some enemy stimmed marines?
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When SC2 players talk about "gimmicks", lel
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EPT
