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On August 17 2016 05:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
no, it is declining it won't die. there are still new dot-eating-maze games being made even though it peaked 35 years ago. RTS will continue it won't die.
i've basically made all my points though. i've been happy with SC2 for years even as the community shrinks i still have lots of people i can play against.
#Head in the sand
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On August 17 2016 04:56 spown wrote:
holy shit cyclones are so much fun
i hope they avoid nerfing the terran ground units as much as possible and as testing continues if they do have to nerf something make it an air unit.
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On August 17 2016 05:15 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2016 03:59 Grumbels wrote:No one is increasing their investment in the genre and many continue to pull back their investment. But that's also because SC2 has a stranglehold on the genre. Developers are afraid to compete with Blizzard, for instance virtually all of the MMO's that tried to compete with World of Warcraft miserably failed. Why should you create a competitor to Starcraft? Starcraft 2 has the name recognition, the established professional scene and over a decade of development. It is difficult to compete with Blizzard's resources, even if the game is technically underwhelming. ya, no one made any MMO's after WoW... because they all said.. "hey guys... let billionaire mike keep it all.. we can't compete with him"
Or its more like
"Shit look at what Blizzard made, lets clone it and put a new skin"
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Now that the Test Map is up, I have a few concerns about the changes...
Siege Tank:
Holy shit. Siege Tanks are OP as fuck in this build.
Perhaps 70 damage vs Armored is too big a change, considering the fact that Brood War Siege Tanks actually fire considerably slower than SC2 Siege Tanks. I'd personally tone it back down to 35 damage (+25 vs Armoured, to a total of 60 damage.) That way, Ravagers still get 3-shotted without weapon upgrades.
Either that, or I'd slow down their attack speed to reduce their damage per second and keep everything at 40 (+30 vs Armoured)
Cyclone:
I like the redesigned Cyclone, but I feel like Blizzard could be fixing even more problems with Mech with the new Cyclone; namely the style's pitifully weak anti-air capabilities.
Requiring Cyclones to Lock On to air targets is good and all, until you realise that:
- If you have Cyclones and Hellions selected at the same time, you have to hit Tab in order to use Lock On. Lock On should be useable regardless of whether you have other units selected within your control group.
- Lock On is far too weak for a unit that costs 150 Minerals and 100 Gas to produce. Maybe if Cyclones were cheaper, then the weakness would be justified.
- On the other hand, Cyclones are FAR too strong against Armoured targets. They can just about contend with Zerglings, and completely wreck Roaches and Stalkers.
Instead, I'd like to see Blizzard reduce the cost and the damage that Cyclones deal to ground targets, while at the same time buffing Lock On to be a viable anti-air option. This would basically give Terran Mech the anti-air unit it deserves, because let's face it, the Thor is and will always be shit.
Or - failing that - stop trying to make the Cyclone and Thor work, and just remove them in favour of bringing the Goliath back; because the Goliath was at least good and performed its role well.
Baneling:
I'm just a lowly Platinum League 1 player, and the amount of High Master and Grandmaster ranked players I've been able to successfully cheese out with 40HP Banelings is already quite absurd. I think this one - if it goes through - will lead to fast expand builds become unviable in TvZ, and instead Hellion Expands, Siege Expands and 111 Expands taking their place.
This change cannot surely go through? We don't need another patchzerg era...
Tempest:
No. Just.... No.
The range reduction was quite good, but its new ability is the most absurdly broken thing I have ever seen. Either reduce the range, reduce the duration and overall DPS, or just go back to the drawing board overall.
While I support Stargate tech getting some form of aoe, the Tempest is now better at doing it than High Templar...
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The freaking tempest ability does damage to buildings, lol
Better than storm
Not to mention the lockdown on mineral lines
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hellion + cyclone a move against pretty much anything. That's mech for ya!
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If you have Cyclones and Hellions selected at the same time, you have to hit Tab in order to use Lock On. Lock On should be useable regardless of whether you have other units selected within your control group.
You could always put Cyclones in a different group.
But I get your point. Maybe Cyclones can be put as a priority when mixed in a group. Taht way if you box select hellions and cyclones, lock on will be usable easily and you don't have to tab.
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On August 17 2016 06:14 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote:Show nested quote +If you have Cyclones and Hellions selected at the same time, you have to hit Tab in order to use Lock On. Lock On should be useable regardless of whether you have other units selected within your control group. You could always put Cyclones in a different group. But I get your point. Maybe Cyclones can be put as a priority when mixed in a group. Taht way if you box select hellions and cyclones, lock on will be usable easily and you don't have to tab.
I already need 3 (poss 4) control groups to micro units for the way I play. I have main army assigned to 4, siege tanks assigned to 5, and air forces assigned to 6, and banshees assigned to 7 if I ever use them to poke/harass.
Adding another one for Cyclones would just be stupid amounts of complexity.
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570 Posts
Some thoughts after playing and obsing several games on the test map.
I played mech in most of my games even before this new map.
Cyclones completely dumpster everything armored, but get dumpstered on by anything non-armored. Mech, and terran in general, doesn't really need more anti-armor damage imo, i'd rather see their damage changed to 4 and bonus to armored removed. That said, the speed with which they currently kill pylons is just something to behold.
The liberator nerf makes it so you can never attack with mech in tvz. Any sort of early muta play basically makes you have to sit there and turtle with turrets and mines till you get a good number of thors. Even then, a cloud of mutas guarantees that any attack you're gonna do is basically all-in.
Blink DTs are not such a big deal after all. I eagerly await Zest to prove me wrong though.
7 range hydras are insane. They might completely break ZvP and they're great in ZvT. They're not great vs mech, but they could be amazing sitting under the Brood Lords in the lategame.
I didn't get a chance to see the new tempest in action.
The banshee change is kinda cute, it makes it easier to incoporate speed banshees into more standard terran play. I'm sure someone in Korea will come up with some crazy build abusing this though and we'll see it nerfed.
Tanks are borderline. I think taking away some of the extra armored damage and giving it back with an upgrade would be better. Currently, I can see some early tank pushes be extremely dangerous.
Every Terran game I played/obsd was mech, so the new blings didn't come into play alot.
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Cyclones just kill everything. Spider mines would do everything Blizzard wants to accomplish with the cylcone and its a lot more interesting than a unit that simply kills everything thats armored.
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On August 17 2016 04:11 Foxxan wrote:They are doing such a great job that they need to redesign lots of stuff in the middle of an expansion. Really great job right there.
They don't have to. The game would be fine as it is. They wanted to shake things up and make it more fun for everyone while also making new styles viable
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I think the people shitting all over the announced changes will never be happy with the state of the game. It's a pity. These changes look like a huge step in the right direction. And they'll be missing the opportunity to help shape the game we all love into something better.
I can foresee early pressure into turtle mech being a huge problem. Blue flame Helions make Vultures look like an absolute joke. And the low level of execution required on the turtle mech player means little room for counterplay.
Add more mechanics like Cyclone air attacks only being able to manually attack air units so mech requires more APM. It'll be more satisfying for the player using mech and feel less cheap for players playing against them.
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are there any "looking for game" rooms or a test map chat room where you can find people to play with?
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On August 17 2016 06:45 royalroadweed wrote:
Cyclones just kill everything. Spider mines would do everything Blizzard wants to accomplish with the cylcone and its a lot more interesting than a unit that simply kills everything thats armored.
I'd be all for giving Hellions Spider Mines, especially if they interact the same way as in BW and don't target or hurt workers.
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I was watching mech in broodwar and I was struck by how seige tanks didn't become so much progressively stronger the more seigetanks there was. In small numbers they were far stronger than in large numbers. Due to slow firing speeds and overkill, it was difficult to attack with seige tanks since the seige tanks needed to be spread out and the other units were needed to counterplay drops and the like against the seige tanks seiging out. It wasn't just some perfect slippery ball that seiges and unseiges and annihilates all that stands before it that wasn't a deliberate antimech unit.
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Fucking cyclones man XD....
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I think void rays have a good spot against mech right now.Not a team game's unit anymore.
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On August 17 2016 04:11 Foxxan wrote:They are doing such a great job that they need to redesign lots of stuff in the middle of an expansion. Really great job right there.
DK is probably not as good as Rob Pardo. Rob Pardo is the best game designer of the last 20 years. DK is doing great job but isn't as good as the best in the world.
it took 18 months for Rob Pardo and his team to fully balance Brood War and when SC1 came out a bunch of really fundamental stuff like speed of larva generation had to be reworked. Blizzard did a great job of EVENTUALLY getting SC1:BW, WC3:FT into great condition. All of these releases were perfected a long time after release.
Lets not pretend Rob Pardo showed up , wrinkled his nose a couple of times like that chick on bewitched and BW and Frozen THrone magically appeared on every store shelf in perfect balance.
DK , Greg Black and the rest of the team are doing a great job.
The very best game designers in the world are working on other game genres that pay real money and not this RTS penny ante stuff.
Considering the small amount of cash RTS generates we are damn lucky to have Blizzard supporting the genre so well.
Any how, i'm having too much fun playing with the new units to talk about the boring business side of games.
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After first day of playing:
Cyclones weren't as broken as I thought. They actually look like they're in a really great spot, always thought the unit was a little too weird, but now it makes so much more sense and it's strong too.
Siege Tank is lovely to see actually just sit and be Sieged for once.
Carriers and Zealots are freaking awesome, it really feels amazing and seems super viable, finally I can be like White Ra.
Swarm Host seems useful and funnily enough is not super broken even though it got such an insane buff, which is kind of hilarious.
DT Blink isn't very amazing and is honestly unimaginative, it's Protoss it needs something new and fancy, not a reused ability, but I agree with the thought of giving some more game time to the DT other than the sweet little window where you reveal your hand.
Ways you could do this: Buff Archon, introduce super awesome Dark Archon + (possibly a Twilight Archon?!,) Give it an ability where you click a unit and it swaps positions with it, give it Blink Strike (Charge+Blink combined!)
Hydra 7 range is a little too much, I like the strength it gives the Hydra, but comboed with the right units it seems a little too strong. It would push out niche strategies such as opening with Voids and Forcefields will be way worse vs them and actually work against the Protoss a lot of the time.
I think it would be cooler if Hydras could be used more as a monobattle unit, instead of it being an obvious glass cannon unit that you put behind the Roach and it just does some nice extra dps. I think giving it a Regeneration upgrade similar to the Mutalisk or something could fit it nicely. 6 range upon spawn is nice though and the extra speed on creep makes it feel more Zergy.
I would like to see Tech Lab Liberators with perhaps 6x2 dmg, so it's not complete garbage vs Air, but at the same time you can't just crank them out super fast when you see Mutalisks. Then Banshee could be Reactor-able, with Speed Upgrade back on Fusion Core and I think something like that would really bring back the Banshee in full power.
Infestor Neural on Burrow is super cool, I think Fungal is too much however. It creates a cool moment when suddenly Infestors pop up from the ground and Fungal all the Mutas in a ZvZ, doing so from just underneath the ground would feel kind of cheap.
You could however go with a different kind of Infestor, more like Abathur from HeroesOfTheStorm.
-Infestor can use all abilities while Burrowed.
-Infestor cannot Burrow Move.
-Deep Tunnel doesn't cost energy, has low cooldown, Deep Tunnel reveals the Infestor and like Snipe breaks if it takes damage.
Lastly I just wanna say that Tempest sucks now, maybe I didn't have enough game time with it, but the ability seemed too low range and because it's pretty hard to kite with the Tempest, low range anti ground really doesn't make it great. I don't mind it that much though, since I wanna just make Carriers instead, but yeah, hopefully someone finds an exciting use for it.
Edit: Ohye another thing, I would like to see Immortals with 3-4 range attack, but have the Barrier absorb unlimited amounts of damage. Too many simply ignore the Barrier and they should be severely punished for that. Also for people who actually take the time to manually click Barrier should be rewarded. But also just aesthetically I would like to see low range tanky Immortals.
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EPT
