|
On December 02 2015 08:56 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2015 08:45 Clear World wrote:On December 02 2015 08:29 Big J wrote:On December 02 2015 08:09 Clear World wrote: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. 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." 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.
If you stated that on a different page, I didn't see that and I apologize. But on the last page, all your statement are just aimmed at energy in general.
But really, there is no boundries. It's not like the dev declared that energy MUST be like this. Everything is just assumption by the community. The dev's could do whatever they want if they wanted to.
|
On December 01 2015 21:42 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On December 01 2015 20:17 Kenny_mk wrote:On December 01 2015 19:13 ledarsi wrote:On December 01 2015 18:46 deacon.frost wrote:
In the context of Colossus-heavy metas - that was the mech people here cry for. The army was super immobile, that army was super fragile when it was in bad spot. Yes, it was easier to use it, but I wouldn't say it was easier to control than other armies because your units were dumb(colossus dance), slow(templars, sentries) and very, really very depending on proper positioning. 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/Colossusi 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 
The sad and funny thing is you don't realize how absurdly entitled you're being to suggest such a thing.
No. Protoss is not "designed" around reliable AOE. It just had it. For free. For no reason. For five years. Which just happens to be one of the reasons many people hated the shit out of Protoss.
What are the other races designed around, pray tell?
Are Terrans designed around having reliable bio drops? Can't be that, because an opponent can have perfect drop defense and you lose all your Medivacs/do zero damage to their ramping economy, and then you just roll over and die as a Terran. You know what that's called? Getting outplayed.
Are Zerg designed around having reliable Baneling damage against bio? No again, all it takes is some great splitting and some A-moved Banes into WM fields and suddenly you have no Banes and they still have all their Marines. You know what that means? Outplayed again.
Are you sensing a pattern here?
There's no "reliable" anything. You have to work for EVERYTHING in SC2. If a Protoss didn't land money Disruptor hits, that means he got outplayed. He doesn't deserve to stay in the game just because he's such a peerless strategic genius that he knew Disruptors were the right unit to build. That this shit worked with Colossi for five years is a very unfunny joke.
|
Northern Ireland25289 Posts
Protoss without storm and Collosus would have been pretty garbage in the previous two iterations. It's less of an issue now that the game's pacing is different and adepts give more heft to gateway armies to the extent that you can get away without consistent splash for quite long periods.
Quite enjoying this thread, a lot more interesting ideas and discussion than often results in balance discussion threads.
I'm still not sold on Legacy one way or the other yet, part of me does enjoy some of the unit interactions, but part of me feels the game just seems a bit too fast and volatile at times.
|
Post-DH? I have a hard time believing that TY and Bomber are worse than the numerous foreign Protoss and Zerg who took Bo3s off them.
|
United States7483 Posts
On December 02 2015 07:13 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On December 02 2015 05:01 Whitewing wrote:On December 01 2015 08:00 pure.Wasted wrote:On December 01 2015 06:07 Whitewing wrote:On December 01 2015 05:21 pure.Wasted wrote:On December 01 2015 04:00 Whitewing wrote:On December 01 2015 03:20 WrathSCII wrote:
Since this thread is a review for all DH not just Disruptor PvP stalemate, anyone else was bothered that Mech was pretty non-existent in any match up? It's too slow, and with the accelerated game pace, mobility and speed is the name of the game. Are you saying that 1) TvT won't ever see pure mech being viable again And 2) Tanks wouldn't even be viable in TvT now without Tankivacs? So far as I can tell, both have to be true in order for your analysis of mech's theoretical chances to be right. And I very much doubt both of those things. TvT will be the only match that might see pure mech, and only on maps which are designed for it to flourish well. 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. 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.
The problem is that the game is too fast now. Mech production rates and ability to defend multiple locations early on in the game makes it quite a bit weaker than bio. It has a lot less to do with hard counters per say.
The developers have always had the power to make mech strong. They don't want it strong because whenever mech is strong, everyone is complaining and whining about it. The reason why? Because there's no advantage to mining from more than 3 bases, so out-expanding the mech player is pointless, so you can't play an economic game vs. a mech player when it is strong.
Thus, mech has to be weak and crushed early in order for economy to matter. Economy is the central core mechanic of starcraft, it needs to always matter.
If you wanted mech to be viable, you needed to push for a double harvesting economic model. Without the ability to throw wave after wave of units and trade inefficiently as a strategy by mining from 5 or more bases, the only way to play against mech is to out-maneuver it or hard counter it with correct unit compositions. As long as those two are viable and the economy solution isn't, mech cannot be made strong or the game will become hilariously boring.
Mech will remain non-viable because the economic system does not support it.
|
On December 02 2015 10:06 Wombat_NI wrote:
Quite enjoying this thread, a lot more interesting ideas and discussion than often results in balance discussion threads.
Re-read my OP 
I didn't ask what people thought about balance. We've been getting a lot of discussion that has been interesting but I wish we'd have more conversation about gameplay and unit interactions that aren't Disruptor Wars.
|
Thanks for that post Whitewing.
Blizzard fucked up real bad, the double harvest model was superior to this current model.
SC2 is still the most fun RTS to play, so I'll keep enjoying it. I won't expect it to live up to its potential with the current development team at the helm.
They got so much right in LoTV, but so much still was missed. At least they're good at balancing, if not designing.
|
what is the double harvest ? read this expression many times still not sure? probes getting double minerals and mine twice as long?
|
United States7483 Posts
On December 02 2015 16:38 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
what is the double harvest ? read this expression many times still not sure? probes getting double minerals and mine twice as long?
That was the basic idea. The notion was to de-couple worker pairing. It wasn't quite double, but that was the short hand for the initial idea.
In essence, one worker goes, mines, then goes back. The next worker gets there while the first is mining, has to wait until the first leaves, then mines.
The numbers are tweaked so that 16 workers have the same income rate as the current system does. This means that 8 workers on one mineral line work much faster than 8 do on live.
Thus, with the same 48 workers on minerals that is typical now, you still gain additional income from going up to 6 bases instead of 3, whereas the current system only supports 3 bases at a time being mined from.
Blizzard opted not to use it because up until 4 bases, the economy was basically the same as it was in HOTS... which was the entire point. The purpose was to create late game economic options and support mass expansions as a response to a turtling opponent, and then throw wave after wave of units at them.
Blizzard wanted an economy that was faster right off the bat, which I personally believe was the exact wrong direction to be going in, and which is why mech, at least siege tank based mech, cannot be viable and have the game be healthy.
They could have kept the 12 worker start with DH economy and had a functional economic system with a faster start, but they specifically said they wanted rapid expansions to be forced.
Thus, here we are. Differing design views.
|
ah yes yes always thought that was a significant flaw in the economy of the game because the resource model is close to BW but you have less incentive to add more bases and each worker you lose tends to be a flat loss in income which coupled with workers dying very fast anytime you use them in a fight (or now with "free" harrass due to things like adepts) means you have less choice in when/how to expand or how to defend yourself. That also means that adding worker is most of the time also a flat gain in income which also gives less incentive to do things like stop producing workers to use the resource on something else, again less strategic possibilities. Too bad double harvest would definitely have been good for the game I think.
personally with the fast start, I also think it would have been smarter to go with like 8 workers start instead of 12 because if you give 8, it would give the choice to players to do anything like pylon 8.. which scales much better with the cost of things early on, it's more meaningful at this point to choose to spend 150 on a gate or 200 on a cyber or 400 on a nexus or 75 on a gas and commit probes to it etc. Essentially 12 start means you "have to get 12 workers before you build anything else" and gives less choice in early strats. When I see things like blind FE+gates+tech I'm like mehhhh.. I could be wrong though since I don't actually play. There seems to be still an amount of build diversity but less meaning. More poker-like?
i'm still thinking we could make this game great in a mod.. even keeping a lot of the units or base ideas that differ from bw in an interesting way
|
i think the most logical way to design energy would be to give the same regeneration rate to every unit, but play with max energy and energy cost of abilities. that would make energy much more predictable.
eg: snutes suggestion for disruptors would work like this: give disruptors 15 max energy and make one shot cost 10 energy
|
(writing from mobile) since my post on energy vs.. was mentioned I want to add that most of the time when I said energy I meant the traditional 200 energy for casters implementation Blizzard use, so it might have been confusing when I brought up or tacitly referred to different energy models intermittently, apologies for that
|
So, I have not read all the pages so far, but at least the first few and I'd argue that neither of the sides (pro/contra LotV) are right. Right now, many people tend to overhype what's going on because the game is new and that amazement might not last. On the other side it's definitely too early to say the game is gonna suck. The game just has not been figured out and I think that has been the problem as well as the amazement in most of the games.
Right now I'm kinda uncertain if I like it. Of course the game were great and refreshing after a rather boring period of time in HotS. But some things worry me. Especially the fact that the big fights might last even shorter than thes did before. Distuptors as well as Lurkers just wreck an entire army in seconds. Probably even faster than a Protoss Deathball in HotS. One good Disruptor hit and the game just ends right there. I don't like that.
Also the fact that Mutalisks lost its place in most situations because there are just too many units to counter them nowadays. In my opinion Mutalisks have always bern one of the most interesting units in the game and I hope they'll find their way back into the game.
But some things definitely turned to the better as well. HotS was all about Deathballs - that's most likely gone. No more Turtle-Styles, because it just does not seen viable anymore. And that's a huge improvement, imo.
I guess we'll just have to see how the game turns out to be, once the players know what they're doing. DH was mainly an experimenting and "throwing everything at the opponent and check if it works".
One thing that confused me was the comparison with real sports and that real sports aren't changed the sams way SC2 is.
Of course they are?
It might not be the game that changes, but the way the game has to be played due to changes in the surrounding environment, may it be material or new rules. Both happen quite frequently and these changes affect the sports an insane amount. New material brings new possibilities which are most likely gonna be abused. Either these changes are accepted (-> The sport changed), or it's denied (-> Rules change), but the sport changes either way.
Ski Jumping changed due to new materials, which allowed for new techniques. Initially the technique everyone uses nowadays was critizised, nowadays everything else is not accepted anymore. It's just blatantly wrong to say that normal sports don't change due to the environment the sports is in. And I'd assume that's not too bad of a comparison: Athlets in these sports got to change the way the sport is executed due to the surrounding environment and can't really do anything about it, because someone else makes the rules and comes up with new material which innovates the sport. Same as a StarCraft player has to adapt to patches which change the way their sport is played.
Even closer to the situation in eSports are sports that are highly dependant on the technology - which is the case for StarCraft as well. Formula 1 for example radically changes the rules every few years, explicitly to avoid a stale environment in the sport. Many other sports with a technological, rather than purely manpower related background deal with similar situations. And quite frequently the rules are explicitly changed in order for the sport to get more exciting for the viewers.
|
sorry I hit quote instead of edit
|
On December 02 2015 10:06 Wombat_NI wrote:
Protoss without storm and Collosus would have been pretty garbage in the previous two iterations. It's less of an issue now that the game's pacing is different and adepts give more heft to gateway armies to the extent that you can get away without consistent splash for quite long periods.
Quite enjoying this thread, a lot more interesting ideas and discussion than often results in balance discussion threads.
I'm still not sold on Legacy one way or the other yet, part of me does enjoy some of the unit interactions, but part of me feels the game just seems a bit too fast and volatile at times.
I was thinking the same,but you have to take in account the word "reliable"
I think he talk only about collosus which is the only truely "reliable" aoe,i mean both storm and disruptor shot can be avoided,(not talking about the fact that storm can be hard-countered)unless you have to truely go in,in which case it's similar to going into lurker/tanks.or that you got outplayed (better shots who are'nt anticipated)
Now Collosus is nerfed and is a bit less reliable due to the range nerf making him more vulnerable
But i admit i don't really like the range nerf..
edit: but i agree that without a strong collosus and gateball getting owned by bio-ball and roach hydra,only rely only on storm would had make P pretty weak
|
|
|
Thing with PvP is that while people might hate Disruptor tennis, if they remove the +shields bonus damage the matchup would most likely become pure blink stalkers wars, which is even more 1dimensional.
|
On December 02 2015 21:08 Salteador Neo wrote:
Thing with PvP is that while people might hate Disruptor tennis, if they remove the +shields bonus damage the matchup would most likely become pure blink stalkers wars, which is even more 1dimensional.
immortals?
|
On December 02 2015 12:50 jalstar wrote:
Post-DH? I have a hard time believing that TY and Bomber are worse than the numerous foreign Protoss and Zerg who took Bo3s off them.
Bomber is not very good on LotV right now.
Please have a look at the replay pack of Dreamhack, Bomber rely on the old push/strategies that worked in WoL/HoTs, it can work but not playing the new units doesn't seems optimal for a terran.
|
I think energy is a bit boring in SC2 which is why I am often cool with more cooldowns instead. Why?
Generally speaking I prefer cooldowns of 20-50 seconds for abilities, regardless of whether its energybased or not, and I also dislike when you can cast more than one ability during a short period.
You can create this type of effect with maximum energy of 100 and energy regeneration of 1.5 for most spellcasters. Blizzard has for some reason opted for 0.56 and 200 maximum energy for all spellcasters which is one of the reasons why spellcasters feel so boring in Sc2.
The only real difference (after you make the above adjustment) is that energy can create opportunity cost between using differnet types of abilites. Hence I prefer energy when you have more than one ability and if you only have one ability, cooldowns should be the default.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
