EPTit's like making mass voidray when you're ahead and your opponent has one mining base around 130 supply.
like holy fuck they cost so much
Unused units in LOTV - Page 4
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nanaoei
3358 Posts
it's like making mass voidray when you're ahead and your opponent has one mining base around 130 supply. like holy fuck they cost so much | ||
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tokinho
United States792 Posts
On February 11 2016 17:19 DropMsZ1 wrote: Hello guys, + Show Spoiler + This is my first post on TL so please be clement. Since the beginning of LOTV, I hear a lot of things regarding balance. My point of view is that we are going on the correct way at the moment. The only thing I dislike at the moment is the way Blizzard is working on "new" maps. Having a particularity on each is something I totally agree with and trying to balance these maps after there released is something I also totally agree with. BUT, I think I should be done faster with like 2 new maps each season. Anyway this isn't what I want to discuss with you but I think this is also a big factor that should be more taken into consideration when Blizzard is trying to balance the game. At the moment, there is a lot of units which aren't used or used a very little and I'd like to point it out and discuss about it with you guys. Because, in my opinion, most of the time we are trying to balance the game by using current statement and current unit comp/units used. I would love to see more diversity in unit used (even if It's still already for me to micro properly). For examples: T : Why Raven isn't used ? Or why BC couldn't be used vs Ultra when Yamato seems to be the issue? Z: Why Swarm hosts aren't used at all in LOTV? and why neural control isn't used anymore? P: Why protoss aren't using colossi anymore? I totally understand that Blizzard is trying to balance the game by looking at current statement/meta. But why are they sometimes not trying to fix the issue by using other units and especially units which aren't used in current statement/meta? Let's not be this slanderous because they already tried to do it in LOTV with Ghosts vs Ultras and I feel it's still not used enough often to figure if it's a proper counter or not. BUT, in my opinion, the ghost unit is a counter to mana units (HT/Ghost/Raven/Infest) not heavy units. So here is my question, what do you guys think? Do you also think that making unit comp in SC2 a lot more diversified would be more entertaining or will it just be a nightmare to try to balance the game afterwards? The way I approach the game is very different from this post. I don't think every unit has to be able to be part of a core composition most competitive games. I would like to see burrow move for swarm hosts to make them viable again. I think the game is more about a composition that fits the scenario you are playing. I think in fact Swarm hosts, Ravens, and Colossus are still useful. The problem is, in a large fight at the current state, very few games go low econ/turtling so swarm hosts and ravens aren't common. ------------------------------------------------------------ Compositionally least used- Least used units(buildings)- Terran- Ravens, Nukes, BC's, Hyperflight Banshees, Vikings, (Sensor Towers) Protoss- Colossus, Carriers, Motherships, Voids rays, Sentries Zerg- Swarm hosts, infestors, vipers, corruptors, BroodLords ------------------------------------------------------------ Why are these the least used? What do these units all have in common? They all are late game units which usually aren't good at breaking positions and require tech and gas to be useful. The economic changes effect this more than the nerfs to be honest. The reason being in small numbers in turtling, almost none of these units are extremely useful The map pool/economy has an effect on what types of units give the most bang for the buck. If you have the same requirements to get a liberator as a raven... Let's ask the question, when is a raven more cost efficient and serves more purposes than the liberator. It works better when the opponent has bc's vikings; island base with turrets, deflect blink shots if you have no tank support for liberators, Clearing creep with limited scans from slow expanding. When you build units they have a purpose. The ideal situation is that a unit fulfills that purpose in the most cost efficient way as well as gives you the most options after its primary purpose. So I think in the players mind, they are choosing between different things. ------------------------------------------------------------ Common Decisions and why they are made compositionally- + Show Spoiler + Liberators vs ravens- Liberators require time to set up to be effective, so liberator play see's much more sensor tower usage. Gasless openers from zerg have much more creep and more aggressive ravager timings, so Hyperflight banshees/ravens are more ideal against gasless styles from zerg. Colossus vs Disruptors- Colossus require the opponent to not have direct access to air units. Most terrans push for 2 starports late game most games. Colossus are more reliable than disruptors at hitting shots, but require an upgrade to be effective. Early game units like roaches, and marauders do well to split the army and make colossus harder to execute. Colossus rely heavily on a sentry backbone as well to control engagements. Sentries are not as easy to get with the changes in the econ. Colossus can still work for 4 base protoss with phoenix openers and close proximity between bases. Colossus vs Archons- Archons can be hard to get to if you have already commit to 2 tech trees (i.e. Phoenix, disruptor) Colossus could be viable off of adept/oracle opener into a sentry colossus backbone against a passive player. This sort of passive play is not common though. Keep in mind, this is setting up for an engagement which in the passive section of the game the opponent is not going mass air styles to counter the phoenix not units that go through the sentries. (an example would be infestor/ roach/hydra/ling or Marine heavy/ghost styles.) Most players are not rushing ghosts or going infestor heavy early. Archons are more reliable in open field engagements and do not require a sentry backbone. Colossus vs Tempests- Once you get to 4-5 bases. Often to push through defensive positions tempests are more common. The reason being that tempests give you more potential to push past lurkers, spores, and liberators. I think the choice to break the player it makes more sense to push with tempests than colossus. Mothership vs Tempests- The mothership requires a large amount of gas and time to morph. It also has weakness in its mobility. When the game has slowed down the mothership would be better than a tempest. It gives recall so you can push one side of the map, then reposition and army to the other side. It pairs better with carriers which take a long time to build a count up. Carriers vs Tempests- Carriers build much slower and require about 6-8 before they have enough dps to stack and not lose to many to fast. Tempests compliment lower tech units better. Carriers are better at pushing through defensive armies where dps is a limiting factor to the engagement. (i.e. against marine/mutalisk compositions) Swarm hosts vs Infestors- Infestors take a considerable amount of time to generate damage just like swarm hosts. The biggest difference is the burrow move. Infestors can inflict damage than leave more safely. Also, Infestors pair well with ravagers. Swarm hosts are better than infestors if there are static defense around the map and econ is low. Swarm Hosts vs brood lords- Swarm hosts are better than brood lords only when zerg has lost the capacity to get brood lords. Brood lords serve basically every function of swarm hosts but also are really good in engagements. Swarm Hosts vs ravagers- Ravagers are also gas heavy units. Ravagers have range just like swarm hosts. If the tank count has reached critical mass, spire tech is unavailable and the opponent is passive in a low econ situation where you don't need to break them quickly, you might consider swarm hosts. Swarm hosts also can hit island bases, which aren't too popular in the current map pool. ------------------------------------------------------------ Increasing usage? To be honest to increase usage, the most important thing will be players playing more passive in the mid game and a map pool which facilitates player passiveness. Blizzard has said, they don't want to mess with mineral counts per base for play style diversity. Mostly this is due to players taking wins off better players by turtling. This would be the first change made to see an increase in passive play. Eventually to see more diversity Blizzard might drop this premise. The problem is that some races are much easier to play in a passive game(I.e. zerg/protoss have less abilities in the late late game.) Its much harder to differentiate pro skill with passiveness. If these units were more common, players with less multitasking and slower decision making would be more successful. If Blizzard had a non-competitive casual based ladder with more maps and more economic variety, they could implement something like this that would favor more styles and more success to players with less multitasking and slower decision making. Blizzard has made the choice to not commit to a casual scene though. | ||
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nanaoei
3358 Posts
it's going to hang on the casual player's mind that they have it easy mode and there's no way to validate their play without that being a thing. the only way to be a true casual is having a bunch of friends in the same court and playing together for the sake of it, as it has always been for any game ever. | ||
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tokinho
United States792 Posts
On February 12 2016 12:21 nanaoei wrote: separating casual and less casual base is no gucci. it's going to hang on the casual player's mind that they have it easy mode and there's no way to validate their play without that being a thing. the only way to be a true casual is having a bunch of friends in the same court and playing together for the sake of it, as it has always been for any game ever. How do you figure? I mean honestly, the casual base is strong in sc2, coop is faster finding a game any time of the day. In Cs:go people play more casual games with custom maps. In dota you can queue multiple modes. In diablo 3, more people play softcore than hardcore. In heroes of the storm more people play quick match than queue as competitive teams. Almost every game players play more casual and its more popular. You really have no idea what you are talking about. None of my closest friends like starcraft against people because they get crushed. I play more coop with friends than ladder with friends. A casual ladder would be more popular. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
What do these units all have in common? They all are late game units which usually aren't good at breaking positions and require tech and gas to be useful. The economic changes effect this more than the nerfs to be honest. Colossi are still used some now. They would be used way way more if they got their damage back. At +3 attack and with opponent +3 armor, it's a 1.5x damage nerf against normal units and a 1.55x damage nerf against units with 1 base armor. Those are INSANE nerfs for a unit that was relatively well balanced for 5 years and recieved no compensation. No reduction in supply cost (still 6), resource cost, availability (still a t3 unit gated behind a long 200/200 research) etc. Economic changes are nothing compared to the scale of such nerfs. Passivity won't fix it either as it's not a case of "i want to build colossi but i can't get to them" - it's a case of not wanting them Colossus require the opponent to not have direct access to air units. Most terrans push for 2 starports late game most games. Protoss have been effectively building Colossi for 6 years with terran and zerg building AA units because they brought something to the table that made that vulnerability worth it. Starport habits have not changed that much, nor is it honestly that difficult to get half a dozen sentries - i think you're way overthinking it here, it's a simple case of power vs cost (in time, resources, supply) | ||
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shin_toss
Philippines2589 Posts
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FFgringo
44 Posts
I also think that in a similar way to what has been done for marauders, i mean modifying the number of shots delivered, i would divide by two the number of shots delivered by the primary weapon but increase the damage output 2 times, while allowing this weapon to deliver a bit more damage to armored enemy units. This could go in the way of coutering a late game unit, the ultralisk, with another late game unit, the battlecruiser. | ||
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Beastyqt
Serbia516 Posts
Ravens got nerfed to the ground and unless you make one early game in TvT you probably won't make them at all. Bc's do almost no damage to ultras and aren't that good vs zerg air nowadays with corruptors and vipers, zerg can either make mass air or mass ground and bc's won't do much. Not to mention they are too expensive for their worth. Game is too fast for swarm hosts, but I heard it has some use in ZvZ late game. | ||
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Sissors
1395 Posts
On February 12 2016 20:00 FFgringo wrote: reducing both yamato cast time and energy cost would be nice, even if it means increasing yamato research time and/or cost to balance. No, no and no. Rather increase the energy cost. And I am a mech terran who loves to go for battlecruisers, but I rather don't have them screw over balance and fun completely. With 100 energy cost for yamato I now already have games where if I got a large group hanging around, quite some have full energy, and then 30 corruptors come in. At which points I fire of 30 yamatos and all corruptors are gone. While you can say 15 battlecruisers should maybe kill 30 corruptors, doing it with no losses except energy is questionable. Meanwhile if you lack energy you get whiped out. So that heavily promotes just hanging around doing nothing besides gaining energy, and it makes balance impossible. Especially if you low the energy amount of yamato further: Yamato kills everything, including its supposed counter. I rather got a less accessible yamato with better stats for the BC itself. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
The BC? Does it have any outstanding weakness? Not really. Does it have any outstanding strenght or utility? Not really. There is hardly any scenario in which you'd want a BC over a Viking/Liberator or a Tank/Thor (the only semi-popular use has been to combat siege lines and even there it always competed with banshees or just dropping onto the tanks). The only power the BC has is that it makes for one of the most supplyefficient army units. In a game in which you don't turtle really, really hardcore and are rather concerned with your income that means it has no real role at all. It's similar for the Carrier, though the unit feels a bit more specialized with its greater range and the interceptor mechanic, which makes it a bit weaker as an unsupported combatant and a bit stronger in an active game. Imo both those units should have undergone some redesign some time ago. E.g. the BC could be made cheaper, a little less durable with more attack and less anti-air capability. Thereby making for a more efficient antiground unit that you may want to switch into against a typical composition, but with better ways to take them down with the dedicated antiair units. Or in case of the carrier, adding some damage vs light and removing vs armored to make it more of a supplement to the voidray, while again, strengthening certain armored units against them. With such redesigns there would be clear unit compositions against which you'd want to go for BCs and Carriers without having to turtle to 10 of them, but also they wouldn't make for those ultimate air armies anymore. | ||
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nanaoei
3358 Posts
On February 12 2016 12:37 tokinho wrote: How do you figure? I mean honestly, the casual base is strong in sc2, coop is faster finding a game any time of the day. In Cs:go people play more casual games with custom maps. In dota you can queue multiple modes. In diablo 3, more people play softcore than hardcore. In heroes of the storm more people play quick match than queue as competitive teams. Almost every game players play more casual and its more popular. You really have no idea what you are talking about. None of my closest friends like starcraft against people because they get crushed. I play more coop with friends than ladder with friends. A casual ladder would be more popular. watching streams and not playing is another form of being a casual. us talking here is pretty damn casual. it's pretty popular isn't it? except sometimes it's the next step down from not actually playing the game. i understand that readily-made and sanctioned modes gain popularity, but because it appears on the choices on the queue list does not necessarily do it any favors. in dota 2, you have many modes you can work with but by far the most played modes are All Pick, and Ranked All Pick. there are literally several other modes including the options to coach, spectate, and 1v1 (unconventional mode) as a mode to improve. it's all casual, it's about the way you play, and of course what keeps you playing is that you're enjoying whatever it is you're into. Friends, however, provide a really big bonus and make you want to play and try new things, even when you don't want to. for HotStorm, it's first setting is that it's a casual game, but through winning, losing and matching against other people it's a competitive game by nature. people don't queue to suck and get flamed, it just feels bad and you lose. they queue because it's a less stressful and more friendly environment to test or get better in. it's also more fun because everyone else takes it less seriously as well. quickmatch games are also the closest, smoothest, and most convenient ways to get into ranked games which are not too much different. they way they structure ladder climbing in that game is that losing is fine at the start, and only winning counts. it's also the first and one of the only modes in the game. people watch streamers play ranked to learn how to have more fun, or how get ahead of their skill mmr. talking about softcore rather than hardcore in diablo 2 and 3, dozens of hours put on a hero that you may lose in many different situations is already off-putting. i'll cut to the point, if you're still playing these games you have a community or a set of friends you play for, or you enjoy the genre greatly with a lack of better alternatives in an entire package. the only thing that comes close is a korean mmo stylized the same way or path of exile which also has its own flavor to hardcore--being that hardcore characters revive as softcore characters. why is being casual not looked down on? because there's no shame in not wanting to waste time and getting frustrated when it's not for everyone.. along with all the different problems that plagued the hardcore experience earlier on (connection to servers, champion packs, spawns, patterns, etc.) so to gear up for hardcore, or a less casual experience, you do research, watch streams, read guides and builds, and make plans to get yourself ready--reducing the chance you will have wasted your time, and making it overall more enjoyable because you know what you're doing. it's a grind game, and efficiency is always called into question. but then there's the lack of challenge or the adrenaline of having to gear up and fight hard to stay aloft, hoping for the right drops. the economy in hardcore is much less saturated for obvious reasons and you get more street cred for doing the same things playing a HC char. even more so in starcraft 2, the amount of respect you get and the potential rewards/satisfaction go up with your competitive drive and league ranking. if league ranking isn't important, but say playing the same game as your favorite streamers are playing is, reducing the difficulty and making it easier is only a stepping stone for where you'll end up anyway. 1v1 is the most responsibility you'll have as a player in starcraft. it's win or lose, there's no grinding and getting better eventually. it's all up to you, improvement and going through the motions like you're training or understanding as you go on. ladder, league, ranking, and your opponents all add anxiety to that whole experience. overall, i don't think it will change even if you make monobattles a queue-able thing or you significantly reduce the difficulty of mechanics and cater a bit. there are already ways you can do that, like reducing game speed. there's no way that feels good because everyone knows the end-goal in playing starcraft 2 melee is to play or understand ladder. there is no intermingling between the casual and serious base because the games are played entirely differently with different speeds and mechanics. for starcraft 2 specifically, a master league player logging in to only queue lottery defence for a few hours? not so likely. a customs player with 0 league games (very common) looking to hash out some placement and league games? even less likely. different crowd for different games. don't get me wrong, there are people who really enjoy customs or co-op missions/singleplayer as the main gameplay, but there's little to no middleground for what is predominantly a ladder game (i'm including teamplay queues as well). if you could make a game mode to queue monobattles as 2v2/3v3 where it lets you draft out of a list, which units you can make all game, sweet make it happen that sounds awesome but please don't underestimate the general player's mentality when it comes to gaming and how quickly people get bored, especially for a game that's so hard to truly get into in the first place. starcraft 2's selling point at this point is the competition and the difficulty even if you're only there to watch it happen, it is truly the best and most popular (, and best supported) modern RTS title at the moment. if custom games were the solution, they'd erase the delay and add support for a lot of features that were present in wc3 and now dota 2. if they could add an objective-based game in the same sort of RTS setting that makes players love mining and creating units to achieve something (like, team king of the hill, ala overwatch in dota 2), whilst removing the tougher mechanics of melee, awesome! but we have customs for that, it's all possible there and you can even have tournaments and rankings with nothing more than having the map and the community to do so. | ||
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MCThiaz
9 Posts
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seemsgood
5527 Posts
People complain about it should understand. | ||
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Skyro
United States1823 Posts
I'd like to see Void Rays redesigned/buffed somehow so they become more of a soft counter to stationary units like Liberators and Lurkers. I wish they would revert the build time nerf on Carriers too, seemed unwarranted. I think from a design standpoint at least it would be cool if Banshees got a speed upgrade so they can maintain a harassment role into the late game. Would make them more microable in combat as well. I think Raven could use a buff, maybe reduction in the delay on Seeker Missile? | ||
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weikor
Austria580 Posts
The problem that skytoss and skyterran arent viable styles by themselves, so theres no natural way to transition into carriers and bcs using upgrades from the midgame. ie: ( ill start with 1-1 roaches, go into 2-2 hydra, and end with 3-3 lurker hydra broodlord.) compared to (ill go 3-3 bio, then squeeze in 3-3 ship weapons somehow and then suddenly 20 BCs and win) | ||
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