LotV Design Changes announced - Page 43

On August 20 2016 15:50 jinjin5000 wrote:
as good as cyclone changes look, more and more I play balance test map, it doesn't really feel like it adds anything and that it actually isnt that good

it nigh unmicroable with its 0.07 attack, scales ridiculously hard with upgrade, even more so than BC, and while it does heavy damage vs ground armored (stalkers in particular), it doesnt really excell at anything else.

Making double cyclone with reactor vs protoss is death sentence as 2 cyclones cannot kill oracle even if reacted as soon as you can and is a huge investment early on. It also doesn't trade well vs adepts, which is big problem when you are going tank mech vs protoss (because shading on top of tanks) and it rather gets destroyed by adepts, especially with new redesign

I mean, does mech need another stationary anti-armor unit?

Not only that, heavy armor damage is a role already filled with tank. What mech really lacks is anti air and I feel like cyclone should be able to fill in that instead. Nerf its ground and make it bit more mediocre and give it a good anti-air is my idea, especially with blizzard pushing viper-hydra style with new zerg vs mech and carriers.

On August 20 2016 11:50 Destructicon wrote:


Wrong! Because of how fast paced SC2 and punishing the game is the better player doesn't always win because he isn't afforded a chance to come back. That 1 moment of intention where you lose your economy or army is all that it takes.

Its the same thing as forcing players to play a BO1 style format, we can all agree that its volatile, boring and there isn't actually much skill to it as you could potentially have the reigning champion knocked out just because of 1 weird cheese.

You also severely underestimate what kind of an impact slowing the game down will have, instead of making the game easier, quite the opposite will happen, the game will become harder.

Think about it, if combat takes longer, players have a bit more time to do more of everything else, harass, macro, etc.

Since combat is slower now, economies don't die as fast to a single or small groups of units.

Since the economy is now more resilient, to be able to gain the benefits of one attack you should, perhaps do many more attacks across multiple bases.

Since the combat is slower you now have more time to do more multi-pronged attacks/harass.

Since the combat is slower, your adversary also has more time to do more multi-pronged harass and defense.

And that's how a perfect little dance of micro, macro and multi-tasking occurs.

If the pacing is done just right, no one move is enough to kill one player and it takes several fights worth to do it.

SC2's pacing now is just wrong since the fate of either player can be decided in 1 second, where as in a game like Warhammer Dawn of War 2, or BW or Company of Heroes, the game gives the player time to recover.

On August 21 2016 01:12 vult wrote:


Changing the pace of the game will also allow better players differentiate themselves from others through deeper aspects of macro, micro, and harass. Slowing the game down even slightly will provide opportunities for players to locate weaknesses before, during, and after battles, as well as allow a player who loses a certain battle or takes heavy damage to come up with a way to mitigate their current resources to accommodate.

On August 21 2016 01:12 vult wrote:
What I don't think you are grasping as a concept is that SC2 is a game above all else. Sure, it's a spectator's esport and more people probably watch than play. But that sort of environment has a limited shelf life. Once current pros that you claim everyone should enjoy spectating retire due to lack of funding/popularity of events, the professional scene will in theory die because new pros are so few and far between. In order to successfully sustain and nurture growth at all levels, especially the professional level, the game needs to be more accessible and less punishing.

Your arguments against changing the pace of the game are misguided as well. While you say the game would be "easier", I argue the opposite. While you say the better player shouldn't win every time, sure that's not a realistic expectation, but a better player should not be brutally punished by one misplay, where the game should promote and reward a higher ratio of good plays vs. Bad plays. A better player will essentially have less bad plays than good, thus rewarding them and putting them in a better place in the long run as a game/series goes on.

Changing the pace of the game will also allow better players differentiate themselves from others through deeper aspects of macro, micro, and harass. Slowing the game down even slightly will provide opportunities for players to locate weaknesses before, during, and after battles, as well as allow a player who loses a certain battle or takes heavy damage to come up with a way to mitigate their current resources to accommodate.

For example, let's take a 200 vs 200 battle between a Terran and Protoss. In the current state of the game, all focus basically needs to be on the battle for the terran or they lose. They need to focus on things like EMP, viking target fire on colossus/tempests, Bio stutter step, storm dodging, concaving, etc. That is a lot to do in the 1 sec it takes to decide the battle. If you take that one sec and slow the pace down by .25 (exemplifying a 25% damage or speed reduction of the game) that allows a better player to find weaknesses and even use their other aspects of the game to take advantage (expand, backstab, reinforce, etc). While that .25 seconds in the moment might not seem to be much, that .25 sec over time allows for both players to use their skills to attack in different locations, micro, and test their skills. From the Protoss perspective, this allows for more micro in stalker blinks, Templar splitting/storms, tempest spreading/targeting, and colossus target fire and pulling back the ones weakened by the Viking target fire, while at the same time also allows for macro opportunities like chronoboost (imo they should bring back old chrono) as well as warp prism harass, DT harass, etc.

This sort of dynamic will stray the game away from "whoever wins the big battle wins the whole game" and brings it more towards "okay player A won the battle but player B took advantage through macro and harass so Player A can try to go for an attack and potentially lose to the defense, thus putting them slightly behind thus player B is still in the game". More opportunities for a player to use every mechance available to them at any given point will differentiate themselves.

The current iteration of SC2 and it's battles are severely underwhelming to play, and allowing for even a shred more variety/opportunity for the main aspects of the game (macro, micro, harass) will only make the game more fun to play. And if the game is more fun to play, more players will stay, more good players will arose, and the game will experience innovations similar to BW. The more eyes/minds that are working with the game, the more potential depth can be found within the game. And that can ONLY be done through experimentation, not through spectating or theorycrafting.

Archon

• Is now an Armored unit.
  

There is no reason for the Archon to not be considered Armored. Back in Brood War, it was considered a Large unit, and therefore took full damage from units that did explosive damage, like Siege Tanks.

In SC2, this isn't the case, and the Archon currently takes 11 hits to kill, unlike the 6 it took in BW. This needed to change.

On August 20 2016 11:50 Destructicon wrote:
SC2's pacing now is just wrong since the fate of either player can be decided in 1 second, where as in a game like Warhammer Dawn of War 2, or BW or Company of Heroes, the game gives the player time to recover.

On August 22 2016 02:11 JimmyJRaynor wrote:


interesting that you characterize SC2 pacing as "wrong". in my view .. it simply "is". like a bishop moves diagonally on a chess board.

the gods at Blizzard have made their decisions on what SC2 will be. DK announced no drastic changes. It appears my strategy for dealing with SC2 pacing for the past 5 years has been more effective than providing "feedback" to the SC2 team.

Here is my 3 point solution.

when i'm in the mood for a faster pace than SC2 i play RA3.
when i'm in the mood for a slower paced game i play Company of Heroes 1.
when i'm in the mood for an SC2 paced game i play SC2.

RA3, CoH1, and SC2 all have a slightly different slant on RTS. I prefer the variety and I'm glad DK is going to keep SC2 exactly where it is as far as pacing goes. Furthermore, i'm glad LotV is substantially different economy-wise than HotS. This offers consumers further choice.

i'm all about having multiple choices because i can pick the game that suits my mood of the day.

if you're in the mood to play a game paced like Brood War or CoH1 .. why not just play those games? they're fun.

On August 22 2016 00:18 Wohodix wrote:


It will still be too fast for some player, so its an endless problem, if you want more time to think you can play turn base games.

I like the speed of the game in lotv as it allows you to play way more games.

I think the game lack of players due to the fact it is label as hard but there is not so much contents up to date .

Also players needs to get in a totally different mindsets than other games : you have to accept you will "loose" a lot, while its not really "loosing" its learning something you didnt know.

You have to not care about your rank, you have to accept there is a lot of people above you that will beat you with no chance for you to win until you learn more.

The rewarding thing of sc2 is learning and then progressing.
Thats why I like this new pace, you have a lot more time outside of the game to learn. Pro games are faster, you can check your replay faster etc... it produce a lot more of experiences to learn.

But this is absolutely not taught to new players.
Instead People are obsessed with ranks and playing macro games like pro when their early game is bad.

Also an important thing to learn to new players is, even if you have a main races you should learn the other races to play better against them.

On August 22 2016 05:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's not about not liking it, it's about not liking everything about the game for reasons we discuss here.
You will never like 100% about a game or any work of art really. Discussing the design behind it, trying to understand why you don't like it and how it would be possible to change that, etc is incredibly fun and rewarding.

A lot of people would never ever play bw because it's as mechanically hard as it is. That doesn't mean that these people wouldn't enjoy the general pace, the units, the economy, the pathing (or rather what it does), etc.

In the end blizzard obviously has the last word, but that doesn't stop people from arguing about the topic, and that is a good thing imo.
Are these discussions gonna change sc2? Maybe not, but it will change your understanding of the topic if there are enough people willing to make (good) points.