EPTLotV post-DH reactions - Page 17
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b_unnies
3579 Posts
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Salteador Neo
Andorra5591 Posts
On December 01 2015 07:29 sAsImre wrote: it's not expensive. 150/150 isn't expensive in sc2. I stand corrected. Didn't remember the cost was changed (a lot). | ||
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Kenny_mk
50 Posts
On December 01 2015 19:13 ledarsi wrote: Are you fucking kidding? You try attack-moving with siege tanks and see how far that gets you. For that matter, Colossi are not immobile. I don't know where people got the idea that they are. Blizzard originally thought the Colossus would be a fast, cliff-striding RAIDER. The damn thing moves at 3.15 (that's almost as fast as a stimmed marine- all the time) and can fire instantly at a rate of 1.18. Not to mention it ignores cliffs. The Colossus is not a positional unit. No siege, no burrow, no shuttle required, no nothing. It doesn't zone units away from itself; it just pewpews lazors with high damage. You are smoking something if you think the motherfucking COLOSSUS is positional "mech" play. Lurkers, even goddamn DISRUPTORS are more positional despite their speed. Shit, people who think the COLOSSUS is immobile are freaking spoiled. Not everything can be as fast as the freaking Stalker, for crying out loud. That thing is on chemicals. Positional play means you control space, and force the enemy to either avoid it, or engage with special care or tactics. Like a siege line in BW would prompt zealot bombs or picking them off with mutalisks rather than just attack-move an army directly into it. Disruptors do this; as DH PvP showed us, you don't aggressively blink on top of Disruptors unless you want to lose a lot of Stalkers. So you have to stay away, either pushing the enemy back across territory, and destroying a base that way since the enemy army is zoned away from their own expo, or skirting the edges, or straight up attacking an entirely different area. Colossi never did this ever, not one time. You make the counter unit and you attack move into it with an army. Vikings, Corruptors, what have you, and attack alongside your Marauders or whatever. Instead of having this positional dance for many minutes trading units and territory all over the map, you have a single, decisive clash of two deathballs that ends in seconds. http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Colossus i don't know what you are smoking, i would said i want some if i did'nt stopped some months ago edit : 1) While a collossus kitting marines without cliff would be very funny 2)as i said earlier, i agree that the collosus is a bad designed units,mostly because it can do a large amount of damage without any micro. That's why i think disruptor is pretty fine designed,and i don't want collosus back at all | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
On December 01 2015 20:17 Kenny_mk wrote: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Colossus i don't know what you are smoking, i would said i want some if i did'nt stopped some months ago edit : 1) While a collossus kitting marines without cliff would be very funny 2)as i said earlier, i agree that the collosus is a bad designed units,mostly because it can do a large amount of damage without any micro. That's why i think disruptor is pretty fine designed,and i don't want collosus back at all The problem is that Protoss is designed around reliable splash damage and that's where disruptor fails in low numbers. And PvP is boring with it, but I guess that's just PvP beyond early game. IMO LASER wars were actually better because it wasn't all the same. Shooting balls until you have the proper hits over time. It's exciting for the first time, but then you are waiting for the money shot and I found that boring. Anyway, TIL that stimmed marine is as fast as colossus. I was doing the PvT all the time wrong when I couldn't escape with colossi from stimmed bio  | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On December 01 2015 06:48 PepperMintTea wrote: I know snute brought this up but I would like a high level discussion about energy vs cooldown. Getting the perspective of the top minds in the scene. If this has already been done then I apologise and if someone is kind enough then provide a link. The more I think about it the more I dislike cooldown and I think Energy based spells give a more dynamic/decision making side to the game. There are some cases where energy runs into usability issues, such as with stalkers and adepts where it might cause certain units to arbitrarily not respond. In the case of the ravager and the disruptor, it's closer to the standard spell caster model of treating unit energy as a shared pool that represents a certain number of casts. i.e. it's target oriented rather than agent oriented and therefore energy might be appropriate in both cases. However, the two main differences between the disruptor and the ravager versus traditional casters is firstly, that they are supposed to reliably, frequently cast their projectiles and secondly, that the unit has no other ability to compete for energy, and therefore they blur the line between regular attack (which is cooldown limited for all units) and spell. A note here on the distinction between energy and cooldown and other models, which is that you can use multiple methods to achieve the same kind of model and properly speaking the only actual difference between energy and cooldown is the interaction with EMP and the like. You can use energy to function exactly like cooldown by setting maximum energy as the ability cost, and similarly you can make cooldown function like energy by adding stacks. By setting the maximum energy in between one and two times the ability cost you achieve something like the reaver in Brood War which can fire scarabs faster than it produces and therefore benefits from building up before the fight, although an exact duplication requires a cooldown in addition to energy afaik. Although to be fair, not all of those exist in the game and maybe Blizzard doesn't like using energy for non-caster mechanics. Also, I imagine that Blizzard is not particularly keen on adding energy to units. I'll paraphrase an earlier post I've written which speculates that energy is an archaic concept that will in due course be phased out and replaced by cooldowns, stacks, fast regeneration, combos and so on in modern games because energy suffers from a couple of principle problems: its use is strategic as well as tactical and so if unbounded by cooldowns it tends toward extremes of either casting everything or nothing and as such frequently punishes players for using their abilities and requires them to take into account some high level, unintuitive considerations. Secondly, it frequently creates scenarios where one can't cast anything because of the slow energy regeneration, which might be frustrating for players. In general energy creates overhead where a cooldown is simpler. Think of how over the last few years Blizzard has moved toward more accessibility and more rapid game pace, to the point that many units have stronger hit point regeneration too; think of how unlikely it would seem for Blizzard to rollback such changes, including ones such as increasing ghost starting energy. Personally I just don't think it's likely that Blizzard would arbitrarily switch to energy as opposed to cooldowns unless they had compelling reasons and maybe a more careful look at changes they made to the game in recent years would back this up. If one looks at a possible counter-example in the ghost: one might bring up snipe as a candidate for a cooldown-type ability, but since the ghost is a traditional caster and has competition from other spells such factors would not apply, and Blizzard might be loath to add unnecessary changes to the game. The disruptor however is a new unit and as such it offers them the opportunity to experiment with new forms and models. I think the lesson here is that in considering Snute's suggestion, one shouldn't blindly consider the specifics and it might be wise to choose a higher level of abstraction and neglect implementation issues such as whether to choose energy (which really is Blizzard's responsibility). I might also add that Snute's specific suggestion runs into the issue of having to add either custom energy regeneration or custom maximum energy for one particular unit, and would therefore already be non-standard and require justification. I don't know Blizzard's policy though, maybe they're okay with it being like that. Questions to discuss might be: 1. do disruptors fire too frequently in the normal cause of an engagement; and 2. would they benefit from being able to charge up before battles, possibly in conjunction with change #1. And of course you can find such discussion here already so it might be a moot point, although that was before the evidence from the recent DH. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
1) all 200energy max (1 exception: nexus), all same energy regeneration, all abilities use 25 energy steps 2) little interaction with energy pools. Terran cloak, EMP, feedback. That's it. 2a) No manaburn-type of damage. E.g. units could always deal 1/4th of their damage to energy too/instead?! 2b) No inherent profit/repercussion of storing energy, besides the spell usage (e.g. extra damage from full manapool; movement slowdown from full manapool) 2c) No energy trading between units. 3) Sometimes cooldowns are still present on top of energy to prevent the energyesque spamming of abilities to begin with. 4) Sometimes the energybase of an ability just feels like the generic solution for something that could have been implemented much cooler and doesn't necessarily feel Sci-Fi-esque. I think in the Starcraft enviroment the upside of strong cooldown abilities is that they are used frequently and constantly and easier to balance. With the downside of players often storing for them and not really having good ways to emphasize on the ability (disruptor PvP, Swarm Hosts, widow mines). On the flipside energy creates a lot of tension early, but is often hard to balance. Units become easily unuseable due to being so costinefficient initially (Ravens, HotS Infestors) while they easily become the most powerful and gamedominating elements once they gathered energy (WoL Infestors, pre-nerf Ghosts, Templar, Ravens). I think by far the most interesting implementation of energy is with the Viper, because it has the energy tension once it runs out of energy, but it is also quickly available through the consumption spell and therefore easier to balance since it will usually just have full or nearly full energy before bigger engagements. | ||
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imre
France9263 Posts
On December 01 2015 19:32 Salteador Neo wrote: I stand corrected. Didn't remember the cost was changed (a lot). No problem we fucked up this during NW3 qualifiers... I was schocked when I realized how cheap it was | ||
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JazVM
Germany1196 Posts
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
a side note re: the swarm host, some people used to say that the locusts should cost energy (maybe still with a CD) so that you could save them up a little bit and the sh would be less helpless in direct combat, while making the constant locust stream less powerful, but that's also something Blizzard didn't implement on another side note re: the disruptor, I kind of don't like that they're immune to their own shots. It feels like a leftover from the earlier design and leaving it in seems unnecessary and sloppy (it going through forcefields does too). I don't understand why Blizzard is not more up-to-date on such consistency issues, though to be fair I'm personally constantly annoyed by Blizzard's lack of interest in standardizing various data. | ||
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Kenny_mk
50 Posts
oops, he said "blizzard originally thought" But even if we were back to HoTs i disagree with a ms nerf since low ms are already the weakness of toss and a part of the cause of the mc (which i like,but u guys have to know what you want) i also disagree with laser wars being better,cause aside the fight itself, it was a meta where fight were very rare and that's bad to me. I personnaly don't find disruptor wars that boring,and personnaly at my level PvP games are now "1,5 bases" instead of mostly 1 base or 3 base macro into final fight, and i got great stats (top plat though) with playing 4-5phoenix THEN oracle for stasis-mine his army when he want to come with his stalkers,while doing some immo obs (low gate-unit count ofc), other case are phoenix war or straight robo then stargate pretty own it. | ||
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deacon.frost
Czech Republic12129 Posts
oops, he said "blizzard originally thought" But even if we were back to HoTs i disagree with a ms nerf since low ms are already the weakness of toss and a part of the cause of the mc (which i like,but u guys have to know what you want) i also disagree with laser wars being better,cause aside the fight itself, it was a meta where fight were very rare and that's bad to me. I personnaly don't find disruptor wars that boring,and personnaly at my level PvP games are now "1,5 bases" instead of mostly 1 base or 3 base macro into final fight, and i got great stats (top plat though) with playing 4-5phoenix THEN oracle for stasis-mine his army when he want to come with his stalkers,while doing some immo obs (low gate-unit count ofc), other case are phoenix war or straight robo then stargate pretty own it. But that's your personal preference vs. mine. Once the tennis play of doomballs isn't that new and shiny it won't be that appealing and some players are already frustrated with that shit now. Without proper player base you may have viewers, but that's a short term solution. He said blizzard originally thought and then moved to colossus moves at almost the same speed as stimmed marine all the time which is bullshit. What Blizzard originally though is pointless discussion. Colossus is a slow unit compared to composition it is supposed to counter and the counter to colossus is actually overrun it(SCV pulls), lure Protoss into bad position(open space/cliffs for vikings) or don't fight the Protoss and attack at multiple places at the same time because protoss sucks at defending these. I am not defending colossi wars, but neither am I defending tennis wars. Both of it is shit from my perspective. Tennis wars because I play it and it's annoying and shit. If you start a game and your first thought is "PvP, better leave this game, PvZ, better leave this game" until you play against way worse players the game design is bad. But as long as I can leave games to play worse players I am fine. Edit> And if you fuck up quote marks at least fix them... | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7028 Posts
On December 01 2015 22:55 Big J wrote: I think energy is a bit boring in SC2 which is why I am often cool with more cooldowns instead. Why? 1) all 200energy max (1 exception: nexus), all same energy regeneration, all abilities use 25 energy steps 2) little interaction with energy pools. Terran cloak, EMP, feedback. That's it. 2a) No manaburn-type of damage. E.g. units could always deal 1/4th of their damage to energy too/instead?! 2b) No inherent profit/repercussion of storing energy, besides the spell usage (e.g. extra damage from full manapool; movement slowdown from full manapool) 2c) No energy trading between units. 3) Sometimes cooldowns are still present on top of energy to prevent the energyesque spamming of abilities to begin with. 4) Sometimes the energybase of an ability just feels like the generic solution for something that could have been implemented much cooler and doesn't necessarily feel Sci-Fi-esque. To be fair, not all of those would work that well with the game. Units die very quickly, therefore any damage dealt which also affects energy is likely to be not incredibly significant yet if it is it could lead to snowballing. Similarly, any sort of ability which functions as an energy shield is likely to be very useful, since if you get hit the unit at least survives and you're not supposed to be hit anyhow, so there's not too much risk / tension. Getting extra damage with a full mana pool just encourages turtling and not casting any spells, so the tension there is probably not that interesting. For energy trading, there's the shield battery type designs which Blizzard has consistently rejected and the viper's ability is also not as powerful as consume for in-combat use, so maybe they're not a fan. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 02 2015 01:45 Grumbels wrote: To be fair, not all of those would work that well with the game. Units die very quickly, therefore any damage dealt which also affects energy is likely to be not incredibly significant yet if it is it could lead to snowballing. Similarly, any sort of ability which functions as an energy shield is likely to be very useful, since if you get hit the unit at least survives and you're not supposed to be hit anyhow, so there's not too much risk / tension. Getting extra damage with a full mana pool just encourages turtling and not casting any spells, so the tension there is probably not that interesting. For energy trading, there's the shield battery type designs which Blizzard has consistently rejected and the viper's ability is also not as powerful as consume for in-combat use, so maybe they're not a fan. Yeah true, I was just kind of pointing out stuff that would inherently just add something more to energy besides: this unit has energy, use it for spells. Didn't really think it through for an SC2 context or try to design those things properly. | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On December 01 2015 08:00 pure.Wasted wrote: You say "only," but pure, positional mech being playable in TvT is not insignificant. It means that nothing fundamentally stops mech from being viable in a game like SC2. If it doesn't work in TvZ or TvP, then there is a problem related to the units and abilities of those MUs. Alter the units and abilities available in those MUs, and presto, positional mech is entirely a thing across the board. I know that you have separate concerns about the game being too fast, but 1) I'm not convinced they're not premature, and 2) as long as positional mech is even semi-viable in TvT, there are other things we can fix besides game speed in the problem matchups. It's only viable in TvT because the only tools Terran has to deal with tanks are countered by vikings. Even then, pure mech will still likely be very weak, and I wouldn't actually expect to see it. It's rate of construction and ability to defend multiple bases early on is very poor: a bio player can put on a ton of pressure early and really do some extreme damage without having to hold back on the expansions. | ||
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On December 02 2015 05:01 Whitewing wrote: It's only viable in TvT because the only tools Terran has to deal with tanks are countered by vikings. Even then, pure mech will still likely be very weak, and I wouldn't actually expect to see it. It's rate of construction and ability to defend multiple bases early on is very poor: a bio player can put on a ton of pressure early and really do some extreme damage without having to hold back on the expansions. So that's all to say Terran has no hard counters to the Siege Tank that aren't effectively dealt with by other units. So what's the hold up on A) removing the other races' hard counters to the Siege Tank and/or B) making those hard counters very effectively dealt with by other units? Apart from the fact that Blizzard doesn't give a shit, I mean. edit: to reiterate my point from so many posts ago, I see absolutely nothing in SC2 that fundamentally prevents positional mech, based on Tanks, from being cool and viable in every single MU, except the designers' unwillingness to make it so. The fact that it already existed in TvT for years proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 02 2015 07:13 pure.Wasted wrote: So that's all to say Terran has no hard counters to the Siege Tank that aren't effectively dealt with by other units. So what's the hold up on A) removing the other races' hard counters to the Siege Tank and/or B) making those hard counters very effectively dealt with by other units? Apart from the fact that Blizzard doesn't give a shit, I mean. edit: to reiterate my point from so many posts ago, I see absolutely nothing in SC2 that fundamentally prevents positional mech, based on Tanks, from being cool and viable in every single MU, except the designers' unwillingness to make it so. The fact that it already existed in TvT for years proves it beyond the shadow of a doubt. I believe the main problem with buffing the tank is not that you would overpower mech or something, but you - at least - risk overpowering marine/tank. Because basically B) applies to most of what you say with marines and the other races. Stuff that counters tanks is usually countered by marines (and medivacs). But marines counter so many more things than tanks that your core unit defaults to marines anyways and the tank becomes a sidekick or just a support unit that competes with other support units in the marine-composition. Which it naturally has a bad time with the way Terran production and upgrading works, at least if there is an alternative on the barracks (marauder vs armored, ghost for splash and range vs toss) or if it is somehow not as restricted (reactored widow mines + need no upgrades, reactored liberators + upgrades aren't as necessary). I guess you could make the tank a better support for marines in any case, but just making it a very strong core unit when the marine is so hard to counter and the marine and tank complement each other that well by concept is probably very hard, all things considered (balance, TvT design, hardcounters, general design questions like anti-turtling). | ||
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Clear World
125 Posts
On December 01 2015 22:55 Big J wrote: I think energy is a bit boring in SC2 which is why I am often cool with more cooldowns instead. Why? 1) all 200energy max (1 exception: nexus), all same energy regeneration, all abilities use 25 energy steps 2) little interaction with energy pools. Terran cloak, EMP, feedback. That's it. 2a) No manaburn-type of damage. E.g. units could always deal 1/4th of their damage to energy too/instead?! 2b) No inherent profit/repercussion of storing energy, besides the spell usage (e.g. extra damage from full manapool; movement slowdown from full manapool) 2c) No energy trading between units. 3) Sometimes cooldowns are still present on top of energy to prevent the energyesque spamming of abilities to begin with. 4) Sometimes the energybase of an ability just feels like the generic solution for something that could have been implemented much cooler and doesn't necessarily feel Sci-Fi-esque. I think in the Starcraft enviroment the upside of strong cooldown abilities is that they are used frequently and constantly and easier to balance. With the downside of players often storing for them and not really having good ways to emphasize on the ability (disruptor PvP, Swarm Hosts, widow mines). On the flipside energy creates a lot of tension early, but is often hard to balance. Units become easily unuseable due to being so costinefficient initially (Ravens, HotS Infestors) while they easily become the most powerful and gamedominating elements once they gathered energy (WoL Infestors, pre-nerf Ghosts, Templar, Ravens). I think by far the most interesting implementation of energy is with the Viper, because it has the energy tension once it runs out of energy, but it is also quickly available through the consumption spell and therefore easier to balance since it will usually just have full or nearly full energy before bigger engagements. In regards to this whole energy conversation, if the Dev's wanted to, they could make energy more 'attractive' like cooldown. I think the actual problem, based on the conversation I saw on this page, is being fixtated with the current energy numbers. For example, what if this situation they boost the energy regen rate to like 1~2 energy per second, and lowered the maximum energy to 100, at the same time, setting up energy cost to be multples of 20 instead of 25. And this is done to every unit in the game. Now, in this situation, we get a situation in which you can't store as much energy to performed multple abilities at once, avoiding a lot of the issues you, Big J, brought you while gainning all the advantages that you guys like about cooldown. And, unlike cooldowns, the game already has a visual indicator on the map for energy unlike cooldown. As Grumbels said, energy and cooldown are just both gating tools for abilities. If anything, energy has more 'potential' if the dev's really wanted to expand or change it, but they don't. They kept to what it was from SC1, which I think is why someone may say it feels like an archaic concept. Cooldown is actually very limitied in what you can do, unless you start adding other things to it, like charges for example, but even then, energy can already do that. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 02 2015 08:09 Clear World wrote: In regards to this whole energy conversation, if the Dev's wanted to, they could make energy more 'attractive' like cooldown. I think the actual problem, based on the conversation I saw on this page, is being fixtated with the current energy numbers. For example, what if this situation they boost the energy regen rate to like 1~2 energy per second, and lowered the maximum energy to 100, at the same time, setting up energy cost to be multples of 20 instead of 25. And this is done to every unit in the game. Now, in this situation, we get a situation in which you can't store as much energy to performed multple abilities at once, avoiding a lot of the issues you, Big J, brought you while gainning all the advantages that you guys like about cooldown. And, unlike cooldowns, the game already has a visual indicator on the map for energy unlike cooldown. As Grumbels said, energy and cooldown are just both gating tools for abilities. If anything, energy has more 'potential' if the dev's really wanted to expand or change it, but they don't. They kept to what it was from SC1, which I think is why someone may say it feels like an archaic concept. Cooldown is actually very limitied in what you can do, unless you start adding other things to it, like charges for example, but even then, energy can already do that. Yeah, but that is a lot of work to balance properly and blizzard doesn't want to put a lot of work into anything that is not a new shiny unit. Lots of strategies and energy units depend heavily on the burst of a large energy pool acquired over time and not balanced out by 25-->20 steps of energy. E.g. sentries with a max of 2.5 FFs are much weaker, queens with only 2.5heals are much weaker in the lategame, the Viper specifically wouldn't benefit as much from the extra regeneration to begin with due being able to regenerate much faster anyways, but would be heavily hit by the nerf to max energy. In other examples - Terran cloak on banshee and ghost, Terran medivac, Mothershipcore Photon Overcharge - the extra energy regeneration would be a tremendous buff. All of that would require blizzard to actually think about stuff that they could also mark as "that's just how the game is" and go home tuesday noon (Austrian reference if anyone gets it :D ). | ||
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Clear World
125 Posts
On December 02 2015 08:29 Big J wrote: Yeah, but that is a lot of work to balance properly and blizzard doesn't want to put a lot of work into anything that is not a new shiny unit. Lots of strategies and energy units depend heavily on the burst of a large energy pool acquired over time and not balanced out by 25-->20 steps of energy. E.g. sentries with a max of 2.5 FFs are much weaker, queens with only 2.5heals are much weaker in the lategame, the Viper specifically wouldn't benefit as much from the extra regeneration to begin with due being able to regenerate much faster anyways, but would be heavily hit by the nerf to max energy. In other examples - Terran cloak on banshee and ghost, Terran medivac, Mothershipcore Photon Overcharge - the extra energy regeneration would be a tremendous buff. All of that would require blizzard to actually think about stuff that they could also mark as "that's just how the game is" and go home tuesday noon (Austrian reference if anyone gets it :D ). Ignoring balance concerns and who benefits from what (that really shouldn't even be important when dicussion about something this board), I concure, blizzard aren't willing to do any of that. It's their unwillingness to tweak the energy system that makes it a poor state now since the game, from SC1 to LoTV, has changed it's pacing. Which in my point is, "saying that energy is a poor design is wrong, because it's not energy is a poor design. It's how the dev poorly designed energy that makes it poor." | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On December 02 2015 08:45 Clear World wrote: Ignoring balance concerns and who benefits from what (that really shouldn't even be important when dicussion about something this board), I concure, blizzard aren't willing to do any of that. It's their unwillingness to tweak the energy system that makes it a poor state now since the game, from SC1 to LoTV, has changed it's pacing. Which in my point is, "saying that energy is a poor design is wrong, because it's not energy is a poor design. It's how the dev poorly designed energy that makes it poor." Yeah, I also didn't critizise energy in general, neither do I believe Grumbels wants to say that. My point is that it hasn't been fit into SC2 properly as you say. I wouldn't even go so far to say that it is poorly designed or plays out poorly in SC2, but I think it speaks volumes if suggestions like Snute's disruptor suggestion immediately overstep boundries of the SC2 energy design (in this case the unorthodoxly high regeneration rate) to make the idea actually interesting. It just works in some cases and in others not so well. | ||
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