On November 30 2015 05:32 ledarsi wrote: The Tempest was a terrible idea. Why does Protoss even need another capital ship? Much less the Tempest specifically. Just... what is it for?
Starcraft II is both good and original. The problem is that the parts of it that are good are not original, and the parts of it that are original are not good.
Its main purpose was to give protoss a good way to deal with broodlords in the absence of vortex. It also made for some interesting PvP games when it was used to counter colossi -- this is probably where we saw them the most. And in a very niche role, it was used in some crazy one-time-use strats as a harass/pressure unit if the map was good for it -- if you could safely "rush" to tempest and the tempests had somewhere they could safely sit and do damage to the enemy base or workers.
Tempests exact role is to replace carrier, since it failed with that it tried to replace phoenixes vs mutas, after failing against that too, it has the role of a "Reverse Player" that comes to counter anything to propose to be problematic to Protoss.
Seriously that units needs to be removed a long with Mother Ship Core.
On November 30 2015 06:08 CosmicSpiral wrote: That's my concern. We can say that BW was fairly balanced because individual players discovered new ways to play matchups in times of crisis, but that's because we have hindsight to thank for that. I'm wary of applying the same rationale to LotV, as if the same phenomena would inevitably happen just because the games are related. The sheer speed of SC2 and the damage output of units makes tactical innovation unlikely, if not impossible, and limits the range of strategic innovation.
We are in agreement here. I'm even more concerned about the accelerated economic pacing: due to expansion pacing requirements, you have even less time available for small, subtle but tactically useful plays to develop into an advantage. Small harass becomes negligible: you don't have time to wait for the advantage from such things to grow. Harass becomes relevant only when people are losing significant portions of their economy. Taking a clever position which causes your force to take out an extra 5-6 units when you trade it just doesn't mean anything.
Back in WoL, my favorite matchups were TvT and TvZ because of all the back and forth trading and positional play. The marine tank push strategy in TvZ in particular was very fun: terran would build up a small tank and marine force, push to a good location, and try to trade cost effectively to keep zerg from growing too fast. If he was efficient enough, he'd develop a lead. If he wasn't efficient enough, he'd fall behind. Positioning from both players (flanks from zerg, solid siege positions from terran) was the name of the game. There was room for tactical plays with drops, and mutalisks didn't regen super fast so you had to be careful and clever with them. Fast forwards to now, there isn't enough time available for players to do things like this. Units have been modified to fit with faster gameplay, or they aren't used. Mutalisks heal super fast so you don't have to care about minor defenses, so you can keep harassing non-stop. The Liberator does hilarious amounts of damage and is rather mobile by virtue of being an air unit.
Everything has become focused on speed and mobility. If it isn't fast, it has to do tremendous damage. If it doesn't do either of those, the unit isn't used: it serves no purpose.
On November 30 2015 03:28 ChristianS wrote: I mean, I don't even think his argument was good – the players are always changing in digital games too, so it's a bad analogy – but saying he doesn't have an argument, and then immediately quoting his argument, is pretty thick. My own argument would be more along the lines of "Digital sports aren't like conventional sports! The game changes frequently, and that's really cool! This has always been true of digital sports (even BW was always changing map pools), and it's one of their greatest assets. If you're really so serious as you say about promoting e-sports, why do you not appreciate this fantastic feature of the enterprise?"
Man, my orginal response contained an argument about him having that argument and some jokes about it silliness, but i went with plain and simple answer just not to escalate this. Anyways, can you name a single top tier esport discipline that changes drastically every 2 years? BW and CS are stale for AGES. I don't follow moba much but afaik both dota and lol have passed the stage of constant adding new heroes long ago. Yes, there are balance patches, but they dont turn the game on its head. Again. Even if so. There ARE (to say the least) examples in esports where, games with, as you call it, stale meta, are not just surviving but beating new records of viewership every single year. Does their success comes from constant rewamp? No. Because this is bullshit. You just continue to claim that esports =/= traditional sports because you want to think that way. But its just your prejudice. And it's silly.
Okay, there's two parts to this debate. One is just a matter of opinion – is it an asset or a detriment that esports tend to change so frequently? Ultimately there's no accounting for taste. I like it, and I would have thought most Starcraft fans like it; if you don't, that's too bad.
But the other dispute is more factual: do most esports change fairly frequently? For that, the answer is pretty unambiguously yes. Brood War stopped its balance patches fairly early, but map pools changed frequently; anybody who I've ever heard talk about it would insist that Brood War [u]could not[/u[ have remained balanced if the community hadn't continually balanced the game with maps. I challenge you to find an analog in basketball, or baseball, or American football. In soccer (football, w/e) they might change their ball design every once in a while or adjust some minor aspect of the rulebook, but no change so drastic as a map pool change in Brood War ever happens.
I don't know much about CS: GO (although I assume they do balance patches and map changes as well), but MOBAs make changes constantly. In fact they make unnecessary changes to freshen up the game so often that they have a term for it: "quality of life" changes. In other words, the game is perfectly balanced and fun, but they change some stuff just to keep everything new and interesting.
Even fighting games tend to change to a new iteration every few months, from Street Fighter IV to Street Fighter IV Ultra to Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition to Street Fighter x Tekken to Street Fighter V to Street Fighter V Ultimate Dance Remix...
About the only exception I can think of is SSBM, and SSBM is such an anomaly that I don't think you can really consider it representative of a trend. In general competitive digital games change frequently, in fairly significant ways, to keep the playing and viewing experience fresh.
So? In what way are traditional sports different from epsorts? And is constant changing a necessity? and no, valve doesn't even touch cs maps. People play on dust2 since the birth of times.
Traditional sports are different from e-sports in a lot of ways. One of the biggest, though, is that strategy and deception are a much bigger component of the competition. Here's an extreme case: if I'm watching people run track, the game doesn't need to change ever because there's very little strategy in the competition; the challenge is almost entirely in execution. Of course, basketball and football (both American and otherwise) have more strategy and deception than track, but still the main basis of the game is execution.
Chess is based on strategy, but not really deception (it's a perfect knowledge game); it gets its longevity purely from having such an infinity of permutations that any game can easily end up in a position nobody has seen before, and players will have to figure out their strategy on the fly. That's simply not true for SC2; the fact is, we frequently wind up in stale metas where things don't really vary all that much. Not to mention, people don't really play chess much anymore, and one of the biggest reasons is because its meta has gotten a bit stale; it's mostly draws.
So is it any surprise that most e-sports, particularly those with greater emphasis on strategy, like to make changes periodically to keep things fresh? People clearly like it (present company excepted); if they wanted to stick with HotS or even stick with WoL they could have, but everybody wanted to see shiny new metas with shiny new units.
As mentioned, I don't know anything about CS:GO, but even someone else in the thread has suggested Valve actively changes the game. That's in keeping with what I had heard, too; didn't Destiny make a big thread here a while back saying Blizzard should emulate Valve's policy of lots of sponsored tournaments and frequent patches?
On November 30 2015 03:09 friendlyscv wrote:That's because balance overhauls weren't possible, so maps had to change to accommodate the various imbalances between the races. Acting like it was some conscious decision by the BW team to never address imbalance is beyond delusional
didn't even notice but that's also, what? why not possible? The balance between the races is fine in starcraft it has always been. It's not 50-50-50 but it's good, and most importantly the match ups have great depth, are fun and interesting. (exception is zvz but some like it I think? well if not bad it is just not as good as the others) Yeah BW team stopped addressing balance because it was fine! The game was really good and polished there were no huge hard counter ultra damage crap in the game that kept breaking it like in SC2! Beyond delusional what are you talking about man, you don't know anything about starcraft.
Name one of them that broke an expansion beyond being repairable by maps and enough time to learn how to counter such strategies (past the early few months after release which is the time frame in which SC1 and BW also got balance patches)?
broodlords, colossus, ultralisks, disruptors, bioballs and liberators!
Also care to elaborate in which way they keep on breaking the game? Like, giving an example of an actual strategy where those were actually broken beyond being repairable by maps and time?
I guess they are all very "critical mass" units, you build them until you have enough that they will unleash so much damage in the first second of a fight that the weight of the game shifts entirely to these units together in a spot at that point. So it breaks everything that could happen if they weren't so dominant and powerful. They tend to break possibilities of any smaller engagements or tactical spread of forces on the map because of that + mechanics that further add to that like broodlings or concussive shells.
None of that has anything to do with imbalance, nor is it an example of an imbalanced strategy.
That's the answer you get cause I can't give you a specific example of a strategy first because I don't play with fixed strategies I adapt in all my games (best way to play a real strategy game) and second because it's been too long that I played SC2 myself to give such a specific example. But yes it has to do with imbalance, it's not who is the strongest but what possibilities it allows. Balance in a game means this also, that's the first important thing, we often call it design nowadays but it is directly tied, the second important thing is polishing balance so that the initial system doesn't favor one race or style over another.
On November 30 2015 03:09 friendlyscv wrote:That's because balance overhauls weren't possible, so maps had to change to accommodate the various imbalances between the races. Acting like it was some conscious decision by the BW team to never address imbalance is beyond delusional
didn't even notice but that's also, what? why not possible? The balance between the races is fine in starcraft it has always been. It's not 50-50-50 but it's good, and most importantly the match ups have great depth, are fun and interesting. (exception is zvz but some like it I think? well if not bad it is just not as good as the others) Yeah BW team stopped addressing balance because it was fine! The game was really good and polished there were no huge hard counter ultra damage crap in the game that kept breaking it like in SC2! Beyond delusional what are you talking about man, you don't know anything about starcraft.
Name one of them that broke an expansion beyond being repairable by maps and enough time to learn how to counter such strategies (past the early few months after release which is the time frame in which SC1 and BW also got balance patches)?
broodlords, colossus, ultralisks, disruptors, bioballs and liberators!
Also care to elaborate in which way they keep on breaking the game? Like, giving an example of an actual strategy where those were actually broken beyond being repairable by maps and time?
I guess they are all very "critical mass" units, you build them until you have enough that they will unleash so much damage in the first second of a fight that the weight of the game shifts entirely to these units together in a spot at that point. So it breaks everything that could happen if they weren't so dominant and powerful. They tend to break possibilities of any smaller engagements or tactical spread of forces on the map because of that + mechanics that further add to that like broodlings or concussive shells.
None of that has anything to do with imbalance, nor is it an example of an imbalanced strategy.
That's the answer you get cause I can't give you a specific example of a strategy first because I don't play with fixed strategies I adapt in all my games (best way to play a real strategy game) and second because it's been too long that I played SC2 myself to give such a specific example. But yes it has to do with imbalance, it's not who is the strongest but what possibilities it allows. Balance in a game means this also, that's the first important thing, we often call it design nowadays but it is directly tied, the second important thing is polishing balance so that the initial system doesn't favor one race or style over another.
Just forget it, you just dance around because you have no argument at all.
On November 30 2015 03:09 friendlyscv wrote:That's because balance overhauls weren't possible, so maps had to change to accommodate the various imbalances between the races. Acting like it was some conscious decision by the BW team to never address imbalance is beyond delusional
didn't even notice but that's also, what? why not possible? The balance between the races is fine in starcraft it has always been. It's not 50-50-50 but it's good, and most importantly the match ups have great depth, are fun and interesting. (exception is zvz but some like it I think? well if not bad it is just not as good as the others) Yeah BW team stopped addressing balance because it was fine! The game was really good and polished there were no huge hard counter ultra damage crap in the game that kept breaking it like in SC2! Beyond delusional what are you talking about man, you don't know anything about starcraft.
Name one of them that broke an expansion beyond being repairable by maps and enough time to learn how to counter such strategies (past the early few months after release which is the time frame in which SC1 and BW also got balance patches)?
broodlords, colossus, ultralisks, disruptors, bioballs and liberators!
Also care to elaborate in which way they keep on breaking the game? Like, giving an example of an actual strategy where those were actually broken beyond being repairable by maps and time?
I guess they are all very "critical mass" units, you build them until you have enough that they will unleash so much damage in the first second of a fight that the weight of the game shifts entirely to these units together in a spot at that point. So it breaks everything that could happen if they weren't so dominant and powerful. They tend to break possibilities of any smaller engagements or tactical spread of forces on the map because of that + mechanics that further add to that like broodlings or concussive shells.
None of that has anything to do with imbalance, nor is it an example of an imbalanced strategy.
That's the answer you get cause I can't give you a specific example of a strategy first because I don't play with fixed strategies I adapt in all my games (best way to play a real strategy game) and second because it's been too long that I played SC2 myself to give such a specific example. But yes it has to do with imbalance, it's not who is the strongest but what possibilities it allows. Balance in a game means this also, that's the first important thing, we often call it design nowadays but it is directly tied, the second important thing is polishing balance so that the initial system doesn't favor one race or style over another.
Just forget it, you just dance around because you have no argument at all.
No no, you can't use one liners if you want to disagree with what I say explain to me why you think I'm wrong. Where are your arguments?
I could write and explain to you why colossus is a shitty broken high damage unit but everyone already knows. You just get a critical mass and go attack with your coloball when you are stronger. It breaks everything else you could do if that wasn't the case, the game wouldn't have been previously so centered around how many colo you manage to get as early as possible (like the big tanks or the alien tripods in C&C3 ^^ hello). Everything you do strategically was centered on that goal, as soon as I realized this I stopped playing because on top of that there was not much different tactical use of the colossus then on the map either. A joke, I am P user, I wasn't learning much playing this game or having fun because of that, you know? I expect it to have something that keeps me playing rather than P in BW which is like 10 times deeper? is it just to get the next rank? so I was top of my diamond division 2 months after WoL came out (max) and quit, then 1 year later I go to master within a month and stop playing immediately, game not good enough.
With broodlords the free unit ensures you can't engage them and they deal free damage. They are another unit that originally in WoL Z had a strategy to go towards and just mass and the number of broodlords determined by itself a lot of the strength of Z. And there are very few ways to engage them since they block the path with broodlings, so blink-in when you know you're strong enough, binary you know? Something that breaks the game.
Disruptors I've already written many times why I think it's broken I think even in this topic.
But I don't want to write 1000 words for you just because you try to ridicule me with one liners.
PS: one last word about balance. Think of balance as something that exists within a race as well, the balance between the units of a race. Not just races against each other.
On November 30 2015 05:32 ledarsi wrote: The Tempest was a terrible idea. Why does Protoss even need another capital ship? Much less the Tempest specifically. Just... what is it for?
Starcraft II is both good and original. The problem is that the parts of it that are good are not original, and the parts of it that are original are not good.
Its main purpose was to give protoss a good way to deal with broodlords in the absence of vortex. It also made for some interesting PvP games when it was used to counter colossi -- this is probably where we saw them the most. And in a very niche role, it was used in some crazy one-time-use strats as a harass/pressure unit if the map was good for it -- if you could safely "rush" to tempest and the tempests had somewhere they could safely sit and do damage to the enemy base or workers.
Tempests exact role is to replace carrier, since it failed with that it tried to replace phoenixes vs mutas, after failing against that too, it has the role of a "Reverse Player" that comes to counter anything to propose to be problematic to Protoss.
Seriously that units needs to be removed a long with Mother Ship Core.
Carriers weren't being used and weren't even intended to be used for competitive play at the time when tempests were introduced to the game. How can you replace nothing? And how does it make sense to say that the tempest replaced the carrier when the tempest was used in ways that the carrier was never used? I'm not sure how replacing a unit is a role anyway. I think of a role in terms of what it accomplishes in real pro games. "Replace carrier" isn't a valid answer to the question, much less an exact answer.
- Lurker needs -1 range, but +5 to light. Maybe also make them burrow slightly slower. - Immortal needs some sort of buff. - Ravager needs a slight nerf, perhaps -1 range and they start of slow, and "roach speed" gives speed to both roaches and ravagers - Liberators need a slight nerf, whether it's ROF or something else - Siege tanks still should not be picked up from a medivac, more from a gameplay perspective. All for buffing them damage wise or some other facet after nerfing this.
On November 30 2015 03:09 friendlyscv wrote:That's because balance overhauls weren't possible, so maps had to change to accommodate the various imbalances between the races. Acting like it was some conscious decision by the BW team to never address imbalance is beyond delusional
didn't even notice but that's also, what? why not possible? The balance between the races is fine in starcraft it has always been. It's not 50-50-50 but it's good, and most importantly the match ups have great depth, are fun and interesting. (exception is zvz but some like it I think? well if not bad it is just not as good as the others) Yeah BW team stopped addressing balance because it was fine! The game was really good and polished there were no huge hard counter ultra damage crap in the game that kept breaking it like in SC2! Beyond delusional what are you talking about man, you don't know anything about starcraft.
Name one of them that broke an expansion beyond being repairable by maps and enough time to learn how to counter such strategies (past the early few months after release which is the time frame in which SC1 and BW also got balance patches)?
broodlords, colossus, ultralisks, disruptors, bioballs and liberators!
Also care to elaborate in which way they keep on breaking the game? Like, giving an example of an actual strategy where those were actually broken beyond being repairable by maps and time?
I guess they are all very "critical mass" units, you build them until you have enough that they will unleash so much damage in the first second of a fight that the weight of the game shifts entirely to these units together in a spot at that point. So it breaks everything that could happen if they weren't so dominant and powerful. They tend to break possibilities of any smaller engagements or tactical spread of forces on the map because of that + mechanics that further add to that like broodlings or concussive shells.
None of that has anything to do with imbalance, nor is it an example of an imbalanced strategy.
That's the answer you get cause I can't give you a specific example of a strategy first because I don't play with fixed strategies I adapt in all my games (best way to play a real strategy game) and second because it's been too long that I played SC2 myself to give such a specific example. But yes it has to do with imbalance, it's not who is the strongest but what possibilities it allows. Balance in a game means this also, that's the first important thing, we often call it design nowadays but it is directly tied, the second important thing is polishing balance so that the initial system doesn't favor one race or style over another.
Just forget it, you just dance around because you have no argument at all.
No no, you can't use one liners if you want to disagree with what I say explain to me why you think I'm wrong. Where are your arguments?
I could write and explain to you why colossus is a shitty broken high damage unit but everyone already knows. You just get a critical mass and go attack with your coloball when you are stronger. It breaks everything else you could do if that wasn't the case, the game wouldn't have been previously so centered around how many colo you manage to get as early as possible. Everything you do strategically was centered on that goal, as soon as I realized this I stopped playing because on top of that there was not much different tactical use of the colossus then on the map either. A joke, I am P user, I wasn't going to learn much playing this game you know?
With broodlords the free unit ensures you can't engage them and they deal free damage. They are another unit that originally in WoL Z had a strategy to go towards and just mass and the number of broodlords determined by itself a lot of the strength of Z. And there are very few ways to engage them since they block the path with broodlings, so blink-in when you know you're strong enough, binary you know? Something that breaks the game.
Disruptors I've already written many times why I think it's broken I think even in this topic.
But I don't want to write 1000 words for you just because you try to ridicule me with one liners.
You were talking about actual imbalance in the game and I was expecting that you meant what everyone else would mean by it. Something that is either statistically or somewhat deterministically broken like BL/Infestor was at that time on that mappool. You basically said it yourself, other people would call what you are saying a design issue.
I would also call the fact that in Broodwar Terran only got to use half their units in two of three matchups a design problem. That Protoss was pidgeonholed into FFE into Corsair everygame a design problem. The reliance on splash like reaver, corsairs and templar is pretty similar in BW ZvP as it was/is with Colossi, FFs and so on. But to be honest, I don't wanna actually judge or discuss BW because my knowledge and interest in it are very much ending with what I wrote. Maybe I'm wrong about it, don't really care because I don't really care for that game. I care for SC2 and I very well believe that what you are saying is just biased anti-SC2 crap. I do very much disagree with a lot of design decision in SC2, some of those you mention. But you are arbitrarily marking them as "balance issues" which they are not to uphold an argument that was just wrong in the sense how everybody else around would read it.
yeah whatever. You know what, you should try and play BW you will see that it's not like you think. As for me, I've tried enough with SC2, and I think now this expansion is out I've seen what I wanted to see and said what I had to say. I wish I was playing a great game with all you guys on a great battle.net with a good chat interface and everything, but I don't like it and I really dislike and distrust the marketing approach that blizzard has towards even designing/balancing the game and all. Maybe later on a different game. Sorry if you think I'm harsh I'm sure we'd get along great around a beer in a LAN party IRL. Peace.
I really hate the disruptor as a viewer, because it looks like it somehow simultaneously makes engaging super risky but also makes it so that losing 20 stalkers doesn't appear to actually matter, because the opponent can't actually capitalize on it.
On November 30 2015 03:54 FireCake wrote: Disruptors are in a way similar to old SH : You have to fully commit against them or never attack, else the disruptors will have free trade against you forever.
So when both players have disruptors the game will take a very long time because both players try not to attack, ever.
I need to switch Protoss :p
Hehe. To be honest, you did pretty well with the other race...
On November 30 2015 06:08 CosmicSpiral wrote: That's my concern. We can say that BW was fairly balanced because individual players discovered new ways to play matchups in times of crisis, but that's because we have hindsight to thank for that. I'm wary of applying the same rationale to LotV, as if the same phenomena would inevitably happen just because the games are related. The sheer speed of SC2 and the damage output of units makes tactical innovation unlikely, if not impossible, and limits the range of strategic innovation.
We are in agreement here. I'm even more concerned about the accelerated economic pacing: due to expansion pacing requirements, you have even less time available for small, subtle but tactically useful plays to develop into an advantage. Small harass becomes negligible: you don't have time to wait for the advantage from such things to grow. Harass becomes relevant only when people are losing significant portions of their economy. Taking a clever position which causes your force to take out an extra 5-6 units when you trade it just doesn't mean anything.
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
On November 30 2015 06:26 Whitewing wrote: Back in WoL, my favorite matchups were TvT and TvZ because of all the back and forth trading and positional play. The marine tank push strategy in TvZ in particular was very fun: terran would build up a small tank and marine force, push to a good location, and try to trade cost effectively to keep zerg from growing too fast. If he was efficient enough, he'd develop a lead. If he wasn't efficient enough, he'd fall behind. Positioning from both players (flanks from zerg, solid siege positions from terran) was the name of the game. There was room for tactical plays with drops, and mutalisks didn't regen super fast so you had to be careful and clever with them. Fast forwards to now, there isn't enough time available for players to do things like this. Units have been modified to fit with faster gameplay, or they aren't used. Mutalisks heal super fast so you don't have to care about minor defenses, so you can keep harassing non-stop. The Liberator does hilarious amounts of damage and is rather mobile by virtue of being an air unit.
Everything has become focused on speed and mobility. If it isn't fast, it has to do tremendous damage. If it doesn't do either of those, the unit isn't used: it serves no purpose.
There's also something to be said about unit synergy in those matchups. Marine/tank was unique in the way it could expand its "zone of influence", so to speak. You could secure a primary position with the tanks, protect them with marines (which could quickly advance/retreat with stim), and do extensive damage with drops. MMA abused that all the time back when he was the best TvZ player: he would drop all the time just to distract the zerg so he could shift his main army to better, more threatening positions. Thanks to all the units having roughly the same speed, ling/bane/muta could constantly move around the main terran force and threaten to isolate/backstab/flank. And unless the terran constantly scanned the main army, he would never know how much of the main army was in position to attack him. Right now the popular zerg compositions are extremely awkward and one-dimensional compared to ling/bane/muta or what the old ling/bane/infestor/ultra would've been if ultra pathing was fixed.
The acceleration of everything in SC2 really bugs me. For me, the game has become so simplified in terms of interactions that it's kinda poisoned how we talk about the new units. For example all discussion on lurkers seems to hinge on its damage or range, not its place within the game. The assumption is that the lurker's value is based on its effectiveness within a direct fight. The fact that no one considers using lurkers to destroy reinforcement lines, delay the advancement of the opponent's army while teching, or cut off retreat is distressing to me. In BW those purposes were apparent after Savior's rise but it's simply impossible to play like that in LotV. There are too many ways to ignore terrain and too many ways to kill them off before they serve their purpose.
I noticed it's mostly complaints in this thread and I doubt I have anything insightful to add to those so I'll just say what I do like in this new expansion: - New economy is nice because games start faster and camping lasts shorter. - While Disruptors are very "all or nothing" units with all it's flaws they're certainly more fun to watch than Colossi. - Pylon overcharge is much better than Nexus cannon. - Zone control from Lurkers creates interesting gameplay. - Viper's anti-air ability gives Zerg a more reliable way of dealing with air deathballs. - I dislike Adept as a unit but it makes Zealot useless and I think Starcraft 2 Zealots are boring - Ghosts were used in TvZ - Instant replays are becoming a standard in esport broadcasts - Reaper bombs are funny
Lol lots of complainers on this thread..Kinda surprised cause i was amazed by the dreamhack! (if it was bad, i would had a bad week-end )
(English for my sorry ,i'm french) I suppose people complain more about lotv, maybe theyare just bored of Starcraft and intense RTS and need to go playing something else, i suppose for people who are playing a lot (or not at all maybe! ) Hots recently LOTV is not enough to keep them playing..
so here's my point,given ~175 platin/diam games and almost alldreamhack viewed
In Hots:
i (personnally) considered TvZ and PvT best match up to watch, TvT was interesting, ZvZ and PvP tho were really boring if the game went long (only roaches for one and no skirmishes for the other). And i also found PvZ well, not spectacular most of the time, im P and also found out it was'nt the best to play...well basically i had 40% trying to take a 3rd,then i went Immo/sentry all in and got 60%. While i enjoyed a lot playing PvT, games were dynamic due to drops.
So LotV is a sucess for me,ending the collosus domination, (i had to admit i was wrong,effectively this unit has maybe hurt starcraft) with the new economy change this really kill the deathball-play and that's amazing.
With drops, PvZ is now really good to watch (playing it is hell for me though xd) for me! Disruptor, while i understand it's hard that u can loose the game in seconds, is a really good unit. Maybe they should make it a even more smaller unit,like less damage and cost 100/100 and so on.. So you get less win on just one ball,but rather on multiple shots.
PvT seems totally reverted,which i like, we don't saw a lot of it, and maybe drop adept need a little less attack speed (it's far less early,but god, 8 stimmed Marines with shift a cleans a mineral line in the blink of an eye too!where with adept u have to split 2 shift a), but i think if the terran get to mass Liberator/viking/marauders/ghosts, the toss is in REAL trouble...
However TvZ.. well i agree bio mine medi vs muta ling bling WAS THE BEST! And i think it's mostly the liberator that kills this style, rather than ravager, that will get more and more weak as player learn to dodge the spell.. and it's too bad cause i don't see why the Liberator need to be so effective Air Air..I think he should get a one target attack with bonus versus "weak" units,since his ground attack proved to be good enough.
PvP and ZvZ are getting better i think, i prefer watching 2 p sending Balls on each other and 2 z sending fireball than just roachs or macro-race for toss..And i think PvP will evovle, just give time to player to train strategy that might be harder to master than the now 2 most used units..
I'd just like to add that I do enjoy playing against Disruptor rather than Colossi. Splitting is hard but fun as a Terran. I feel like my micro has more of an impact on the results of the game more than in WoL or HotS.
On November 30 2015 08:45 Kenny_mk wrote: Lol lots of complainers on this thread..Kinda surprised cause i was amazed by the dreamhack! (if it was bad, i would had a bad week-end )
(English for my sorry ,i'm french) I suppose people complain more about lotv, maybe theyare just bored of Starcraft and intense RTS and need to go playing something else, i suppose for people who are playing a lot (or not at all maybe! ) Hots recently LOTV is not enough to keep them playing..
so here's my point,given ~175 platin/diam games and almost alldreamhack viewed
In Hots:
i (personnally) considered TvZ and PvT best match up to watch, TvT was interesting, ZvZ and PvP tho were really boring if the game went long (only roaches for one and no skirmishes for the other). And i also found PvZ well, not spectacular most of the time, im P and also found out it was'nt the best to play...well basically i had 40% trying to take a 3rd,then i went Immo/sentry all in and got 60%. While i enjoyed a lot playing PvT, games were dynamic due to drops.
So LotV is a sucess for me,ending the collosus domination, (i had to admit i was wrong,effectively this unit has maybe hurt starcraft) with the new economy change this really kill the deathball-play and that's amazing.
With drops, PvZ is now really good to watch (playing it is hell for me though xd) for me! Disruptor, while i understand it's hard that u can loose the game in seconds, is a really good unit. Maybe they should make it a even more smaller unit,like less damage and cost 100/100 and so on.. So you get less win on just one ball,but rather on multiple shots.
PvT seems totally reverted,which i like, we don't saw a lot of it, and maybe drop adept need a little less attack speed (it's far less early,but god, 8 stimmed Marines with shift a cleans a mineral line in the blink of an eye too!where with adept u have to split 2 shift a), but i think if the terran get to mass Liberator/viking/marauders/ghosts, the toss is in REAL trouble...
However TvZ.. well i agree bio mine medi vs muta ling bling WAS THE BEST! And i think it's mostly the liberator that kills this style, rather than ravager, that will get more and more weak as player learn to dodge the spell.. and it's too bad cause i don't see why the Liberator need to be so effective Air Air..I think he should get a one target attack with bonus versus "weak" units,since his ground attack proved to be good enough.
PvP and ZvZ are getting better i think, i prefer watching 2 p sending Balls on each other and 2 z sending fireball than just roachs or macro-race for toss..And i think PvP will evovle, just give time to player to train strategy that might be harder to master than the now 2 most used units..
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Losing those stalkers shouldn't automatically lose you the game, should it? I always thought the volatility of SC2 was the community's major problem with it. It should lose you something, sure, but not the game. And I think taking bad fights will eventually matter a lot more once players are comfortable with using the disruptor and microing against it.
On November 30 2015 07:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
On November 30 2015 06:08 CosmicSpiral wrote: That's my concern. We can say that BW was fairly balanced because individual players discovered new ways to play matchups in times of crisis, but that's because we have hindsight to thank for that. I'm wary of applying the same rationale to LotV, as if the same phenomena would inevitably happen just because the games are related. The sheer speed of SC2 and the damage output of units makes tactical innovation unlikely, if not impossible, and limits the range of strategic innovation.
We are in agreement here. I'm even more concerned about the accelerated economic pacing: due to expansion pacing requirements, you have even less time available for small, subtle but tactically useful plays to develop into an advantage. Small harass becomes negligible: you don't have time to wait for the advantage from such things to grow. Harass becomes relevant only when people are losing significant portions of their economy. Taking a clever position which causes your force to take out an extra 5-6 units when you trade it just doesn't mean anything.
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
On November 30 2015 06:26 Whitewing wrote: Back in WoL, my favorite matchups were TvT and TvZ because of all the back and forth trading and positional play. The marine tank push strategy in TvZ in particular was very fun: terran would build up a small tank and marine force, push to a good location, and try to trade cost effectively to keep zerg from growing too fast. If he was efficient enough, he'd develop a lead. If he wasn't efficient enough, he'd fall behind. Positioning from both players (flanks from zerg, solid siege positions from terran) was the name of the game. There was room for tactical plays with drops, and mutalisks didn't regen super fast so you had to be careful and clever with them. Fast forwards to now, there isn't enough time available for players to do things like this. Units have been modified to fit with faster gameplay, or they aren't used. Mutalisks heal super fast so you don't have to care about minor defenses, so you can keep harassing non-stop. The Liberator does hilarious amounts of damage and is rather mobile by virtue of being an air unit.
Everything has become focused on speed and mobility. If it isn't fast, it has to do tremendous damage. If it doesn't do either of those, the unit isn't used: it serves no purpose.
There's also something to be said about unit synergy in those matchups. Marine/tank was unique in the way it could expand its "zone of influence", so to speak. You could secure a primary position with the tanks, protect them with marines (which could quickly advance/retreat with stim), and do extensive damage with drops. MMA abused that all the time back when he was the best TvZ player: he would drop all the time just to distract the zerg so he could shift his main army to better, more threatening positions. Thanks to all the units having roughly the same speed, ling/bane/muta could constantly move around the main terran force and threaten to isolate/backstab/flank. And unless the terran constantly scanned the main army, he would never know how much of the main army was in position to attack him. Right now the popular zerg compositions are extremely awkward and one-dimensional compared to ling/bane/muta or what the old ling/bane/infestor/ultra would've been if ultra pathing was fixed.
The acceleration of everything in SC2 really bugs me. For me, the game has become so simplified in terms of interactions that it's kinda poisoned how we talk about the new units. For example all discussion on lurkers seems to hinge on its damage or range, not its place within the game. The assumption is that the lurker's value is based on its effectiveness within a direct fight. The fact that no one considers using lurkers to destroy reinforcement lines, delay the advancement of the opponent's army while teching, or cut off retreat is distressing to me. In BW those purposes were apparent after Savior's rise but it's simply impossible to play like that in LotV. There are too many ways to ignore terrain and too many ways to kill them off before they serve their purpose.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you're saying. I was really hoping that LOTV would slow down economic development pacing to allow an extension of the early and mid game, not speed it up dramatically.
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Losing those stalkers shouldn't automatically lose you the game, should it? I always thought the volatility of SC2 was the community's major problem with it. It should lose you something, sure, but not the game. And I think taking bad fights will eventually matter a lot more once players are comfortable with using the disruptor and microing against it.
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
Couple things: He's not suggesting that losing the stalkers to a hit should lose you the game outright, but it should probably cost you position or momentum or something. It didn't do any of that at all. You'd have to deal 50-60 supply of damage before any sort of position is sacrificed, and that's not good for healthy gameplay. It all becomes about power moves, nothing subtle matters. If I drop a few zerglings in a terran base and kill a supply depot, then get the lings out, odds are pretty good that it's not going to make a measurable difference on the game at all. Small chipping damage should mean something, but for it to start adding up you need to extend the game. Harassment has become about wiping out entire mineral lines, not about getting a few kills here and there.
As for that game, I'd argue that TY's army wasn't actually inferior at all. His army was so much more mobile that all he had to do was poke around constantly and eventually he'd starve Parting out. Liberators in particular are outrageously powerful. In a straight up fight his army was weaker, but it was hardly an inferior force, because it was designed entirely to thoroughly punish the main weakness of protoss: immobility. In fact, in terms of ability to win games, that army is much more powerful. And if Parting had to attack directly into TY sieged up and ready for it, Parting would have lost due to how strong liberators were. Parting's only shot was to flank the liberators and pick them off without the rest of TY's army there.
Liberators are so bloody powerful that you can't fight under them at all.
On November 30 2015 06:08 CosmicSpiral wrote: That's my concern. We can say that BW was fairly balanced because individual players discovered new ways to play matchups in times of crisis, but that's because we have hindsight to thank for that. I'm wary of applying the same rationale to LotV, as if the same phenomena would inevitably happen just because the games are related. The sheer speed of SC2 and the damage output of units makes tactical innovation unlikely, if not impossible, and limits the range of strategic innovation.
We are in agreement here. I'm even more concerned about the accelerated economic pacing: due to expansion pacing requirements, you have even less time available for small, subtle but tactically useful plays to develop into an advantage. Small harass becomes negligible: you don't have time to wait for the advantage from such things to grow. Harass becomes relevant only when people are losing significant portions of their economy. Taking a clever position which causes your force to take out an extra 5-6 units when you trade it just doesn't mean anything.
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
On November 30 2015 06:26 Whitewing wrote: Back in WoL, my favorite matchups were TvT and TvZ because of all the back and forth trading and positional play. The marine tank push strategy in TvZ in particular was very fun: terran would build up a small tank and marine force, push to a good location, and try to trade cost effectively to keep zerg from growing too fast. If he was efficient enough, he'd develop a lead. If he wasn't efficient enough, he'd fall behind. Positioning from both players (flanks from zerg, solid siege positions from terran) was the name of the game. There was room for tactical plays with drops, and mutalisks didn't regen super fast so you had to be careful and clever with them. Fast forwards to now, there isn't enough time available for players to do things like this. Units have been modified to fit with faster gameplay, or they aren't used. Mutalisks heal super fast so you don't have to care about minor defenses, so you can keep harassing non-stop. The Liberator does hilarious amounts of damage and is rather mobile by virtue of being an air unit.
Everything has become focused on speed and mobility. If it isn't fast, it has to do tremendous damage. If it doesn't do either of those, the unit isn't used: it serves no purpose.
There's also something to be said about unit synergy in those matchups. Marine/tank was unique in the way it could expand its "zone of influence", so to speak. You could secure a primary position with the tanks, protect them with marines (which could quickly advance/retreat with stim), and do extensive damage with drops. MMA abused that all the time back when he was the best TvZ player: he would drop all the time just to distract the zerg so he could shift his main army to better, more threatening positions. Thanks to all the units having roughly the same speed, ling/bane/muta could constantly move around the main terran force and threaten to isolate/backstab/flank. And unless the terran constantly scanned the main army, he would never know how much of the main army was in position to attack him. Right now the popular zerg compositions are extremely awkward and one-dimensional compared to ling/bane/muta or what the old ling/bane/infestor/ultra would've been if ultra pathing was fixed.
The acceleration of everything in SC2 really bugs me. For me, the game has become so simplified in terms of interactions that it's kinda poisoned how we talk about the new units. For example all discussion on lurkers seems to hinge on its damage or range, not its place within the game. The assumption is that the lurker's value is based on its effectiveness within a direct fight. The fact that no one considers using lurkers to destroy reinforcement lines, delay the advancement of the opponent's army while teching, or cut off retreat is distressing to me. In BW those purposes were apparent after Savior's rise but it's simply impossible to play like that in LotV. There are too many ways to ignore terrain and too many ways to kill them off before they serve their purpose.
Yeah, I pretty much agree with everything you're saying. I was really hoping that LOTV would slow down economic development pacing to allow an extension of the early and mid game, not speed it up dramatically.
Part of why I dislike Stalker/Disruptor in PvP is the bizarre sense of fights meaning everything and nothing. People cite Showtime vs Parting as an intense back-and-forth, but there were several points when a player lost 15-25 supply to a single Disruptor shot. And it didn't matter. The opponent could not capitalize on the advantage because the threat of Disruptors made them skittish. And since the economy is so ramped up, losing 10-12 Stalkers meant nothing in terms of losing a strong position or ceding map control.
Losing those stalkers shouldn't automatically lose you the game, should it? I always thought the volatility of SC2 was the community's major problem with it. It should lose you something, sure, but not the game. And I think taking bad fights will eventually matter a lot more once players are comfortable with using the disruptor and microing against it.
On November 30 2015 07:41 CosmicSpiral wrote:
Most games in Dreamhack were determined by big moves: hidden tech switches, failed all-ins, fast maxed out armies. Rarely did I see games where a player won with consistently better positioning or better overall strategy. I mean, did anyone win with a "worse" army but better tactics? I'm not a huge BW fanatic but I can recall many games where a winning player used an inferior army in a superior way.
Couple things: He's not suggesting that losing the stalkers to a hit should lose you the game outright, but it should probably cost you position or momentum or something. It didn't do any of that at all. You'd have to deal 50-60 supply of damage before any sort of position is sacrificed, and that's not good for healthy gameplay. It all becomes about power moves, nothing subtle matters.
As for that game, I'd argue that TY's army wasn't actually inferior at all. His army was so much more mobile that all he had to do was poke around constantly and eventually he'd starve Parting out. Liberators in particular are outrageously powerful. In a straight up fight his army was weaker, but it was hardly an inferior force, because it was designed entirely to thoroughly punish the main weakness of protoss: immobility. In fact, in terms of ability to win games, that army is much more powerful. And if Parting had to attack directly into TY sieged up and ready for it, Parting would have lost due to how strong liberators were. Parting's only shot was to flank the liberators and pick them off without the rest of TY's army there.
Liberators are so bloody powerful that you can't fight under them at all.
I wonder how long it takes to max out in relation to HotS Blizzard-seconds. Considering the 3 minutes cut out of the beginning of the game, I figure that it would take much longer to max out now since players are committing more units to attacking. Were there any examples of fast maxes during DH? (A VOD would be great.)
EPT
well if not bad it is just not as good as the others)
)
