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Major Balance Design Patch
First we would like to thank everyone for understanding that a lot of these proposals aren’t final yet. We were a bit worried that people will jump to extreme places and make immediate conclusions that aren’t necessarily correct, and was so awesome to see that this was largely NOT the case. For just over a year now, we’ve been working to integrate the community as part of our design process, and this response has given us even more confidence that this was definitely the right call. There have been drastic improvements to the flow of discussion and the thought processes of our community, and it is just really awesome to see.
We expect that working together on finalizing changes for this major patch with you guys will be a great experience!
With that said, because the changes have been out for such a short time, let’s focus a bit more on the high level goals and mindset we should approach this process with going forward. And we can definitely talk about the details of each change in the weeks to come.
Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the Game
We’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game.
Competition of which race got how much more or less than another race
We wanted to point out that things like “giving an equal number of changes to each race” is not the goal of the proposed changes. In Legacy of the Void’s current state, It’s super clear that not every race is in an equal state, and it’s never been the case that each of the race gets an equal number of changes in any balance update we’ve done (expansions were an exception for their own reasons). With these design changes, we have a unique opportunity to put our entire focus on making sure that every matchup is in a balanced, fun, and diverse state. With this in mind, if a race already has more options in a matchup, it will not get as many ‘diversity’ buffs as the other race who only has one option. In short: the end result of these changes is what is important, not the changes themselves, and we hope everyone can get onboard with this way of thinking.
Matchmaking for the test map
As you may have heard, we intend to get a matchmaking service online for those interested in playing more with the upcoming changes. We wanted to give you guys a rough estimate of when this could go into the game; currently we’re aiming to release this a bit less than a month from now, but we’ll let you know once the release date is looking more solid.
Thanks again for being so patient and precise with your feedback! We’ll continue reading through your thoughts, and we look forward to continuing to work on this update together with you.
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Cannot wait for the matchmaking! Good job blizzzzz
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Wow.... a lot of stuff going on. I'll hope they'll bring some more, for instance: seting opponent's race in unranked (practice purposes).
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the matchmaking thing on the balance test map is neat. I will definitely play the shit out of it.
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what i want to see is more people rallying behind each other for specific changes, instead of people fanning out too much into a thousand changes.
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Nice fast reaction from blizzard i played like 15 games of balanc test map, and actually i know some changes wont make itto the end, for example its cool to see cyclones but it needs at least a bit of nerf cuz its damage per secodnd is insane  , also like the hydra change and zealot charge gain, but tempest, i dont think its usable anymore, its like only purpose is to kill broodlord and liberator which feels sad , it got nerfed hard like thor counters it ! and hydra eat them for mreakfast, the ability is cool idea but its useless during battles with no stationary battle like fight vs hydra queen lurker baneling u can fire the ability but u wont be able the gain any thing from it cuz battle is going to end before it deals damage... als voidra is just dead need some work on that gu in my opinion, i would also like to see 50 hp taken at start of lotv for no reason to giv eit back after taking release interceptors away... also i think toss need some buff on some of the infantry units, T feels imba with changes it got cuz they just can go every tech route and stil be able to deal early damage, hold off attacks, however i like old tanks back , seems like tank pushes are great now ) zerg is kinda ok i think with changes love hydra change sorry for long read
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Well I personally agree with what Lokwo and Winter said.
Terran feels very strong but they want Zerg and Protoss to get buffed not Terran nerfed. So with that in mind as a Zerg player I must say what I like and dislike and what I would really like.
First of all I think 4 larva should be tested , the economy of 3 larva for Zerg has been quite the obvious problem in LotV.
Then I would love for a "new" early unit, because lings and roaches can't deal with the early and midgame anymore.
So the new unit could maybe be a SH redesign since we really don't like the current SH design.
It could be a unit that helps Zerg buy more time and deal with the already brutal harassment in the early game, Queen AA helps defend the air harassment but the ground is a big problem.
As for the Zerg changes suggested by Blizzard.
I love the new Infestor, the new ability can be used to reposition and surprise attack. It can't be a harass tool because 100 for 2 trips is to much energy.
Casting FG is way better now.
Would love upgrades back to the infested terrans and no research for the neural parasite.
Hydralisk are better now but the cost and the low HP can't make this unit a core for Zerg.
Would like a bit more HP at least or make them cheaper.
Banelings are good and bad , better vs T and P but bad for ZvZ.
I'm hoping they make banelings way faster instead of HP buff.
SwarmHost are just bad at this role, you guys tried this role to much, it's time for a redesign, make this unit be something else.
Ravages are in a bad spot because they are basically worse roaches... marauders, tanks, cyclones, stalkers and immortals just destroy them.
I think they don't need the armored tag, at all.
Brood Lord seems the same but I would prefer a Thor buff instead of a Brood Lord nerf.
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how about they just delete the SH
why do we need 20 units per race (exaggeration obviously), what we need is the core units to be good and a handful of fun abilities as a bonus. I'd much rather see less than more, Zerg got the lurker, that's great, do we really need a SH now when we also have Mutas, Nydus, Ovie drops, Ravagers and now the new infestor?
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Golly, this game is so technical; perhaps that's the type of game people really want?
I would do the following: enlarge bounding box parameters (units can't squeeze together so tightly, causing Massive Units to single-file down some corridors).
Enlarge maps and create real open spaces; asymmetrical shapes to a lot of the map;
and make it harder to get to Tier 2 and 3.
Those are the things that will most help, not unit balance.
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On August 20 2016 05:04 Edowyth quoting David Kim:
Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the Game
We’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game.
the core of the game is fun. a total overhaul is going overboard. the changes made to the economy and the foundation of the game made during the LotV beta are still working well. No need to revisit it again.
i'm glad DK addressed this loud minority of players directly so that every one knows a total overhaul is not imminent.
On August 20 2016 05:04 Edowyth Quoting David Kim:
Competition of which race got how much more or less than another race
We wanted to point out that things like “giving an equal number of changes to each race” is not the goal of the proposed changes. In Legacy of the Void’s current state, It’s super clear that not every race is in an equal state, and it’s never been the case that each of the race gets an equal number of changes in any balance update we’ve done (expansions were an exception for their own reasons). With these design changes, we have a unique opportunity to put our entire focus on making sure that every matchup is in a balanced, fun, and diverse state. With this in mind, if a race already has more options in a matchup, it will not get as many ‘diversity’ buffs as the other race who only has one option. In short: the end result of these changes is what is important, not the changes themselves, and we hope everyone can get onboard with this way of thinking.
i'm fully on board with this way of thinking.
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On August 20 2016 08:15 emc wrote:
how about they just delete the SH
why do we need 20 units per race (exaggeration obviously), what we need is the core units to be good and a handful of fun abilities as a bonus. I'd much rather see less than more, Zerg got the lurker, that's great, do we really need a SH now when we also have Mutas, Nydus, Ovie drops, Ravagers and now the new infestor?
We rarely see Mutas and Nydus.
The best diversity is within Protoss. Almost all of their units are viable in some shape or form.
Both Zerg and Terran are forced for now in certain unit comps.
For example in the current meta , you will never see Lurkers,Mutas,Hydras, SH vs T
Just like you don't really see Ultralisk, Brood Lord, Infestor vs P ( that mostly because Zerg is forced to all in vs Protoss or die in late game )
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On August 20 2016 05:04 Edowyth Quoting David Kim:
Major Balance Design Patch
First we would like to thank everyone for understanding that a lot of these proposals aren’t final yet. We were a bit worried that people will jump to extreme places and make immediate conclusions that aren’t necessarily correct, and was so awesome to see that this was largely NOT the case. For just over a year now, we’ve been working to integrate the community as part of our design process, and this response has given us even more confidence that this was definitely the right call. There have been drastic improvements to the flow of discussion and the thought processes of our community, and it is just really awesome to see.
We expect that working together on finalizing changes for this major patch with you guys will be a great experience!
With that said, because the changes have been out for such a short time, let’s focus a bit more on the high level goals and mindset we should approach this process with going forward. And we can definitely talk about the details of each change in the weeks to come.
in my view you are at the stage where you are throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. As I see it, We are in a similar stage to the times when the Marauder Concussion Shell was not even an upgrade back in early WoL. So people should not freak out if certain "super builds" or "super micro tactics" get discovered.
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we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
To the contrary, big improvements imply drastic changes from what Starcraft II is now. The resulting game must look 'much' different. But by what standard? There is no true way to tell, and I think so many people misunderstand that. When some say 'large,' and 'entire game,' it is not as absurd as one may think. What constitutes similarity? Apparently, it means not changing any designs outside of particular unit designs, to Blizzard.
My argument is that they avoid such things because the cost is too high, and they are a risk-averse (as any company might be). There's nothing wrong with that, per se.
The reason for their aversion is not, as they say:
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game.
The contention is that no major changes would make Starcraft II better. Such is... plain absurdity, which is why I don't believe they hold such a position. What he says is a very weak sentiment opposed.
I contend that there are sweeping changes which would make the game, and the whole situation, better and give a profit for their troubles: removing macro boosters (properly called, they are not macro mechanics (a rhetorical sleight of hand from Blizzard / booster's proponents, I think)) and re-balancing the game around that (if necessary) is one such change I believe would entertain such great increase in this game's popularity, and the reader may disagree but they certainly should not disagree with the principle which allows one to forward such suggestions.
Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game.
Which leads me to believe this is deflection. They wish to oust the most clear and principled sort of criticism, which generally calls for such large and sweeping changes. The 3x5 index card of allowable opinion has been filled, there is no room for systematic opposition.
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Anyone else feel ultimately we will get a few minor changes? They are already back peddling out of aggressive changes to help grow the game.
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On August 20 2016 09:55 Jaedrik wrote:Show nested quote +we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it. To the contrary, big improvements imply drastic changes from what Starcraft II is now. The resulting game must look 'much' different. But by what standard? There is no true way to tell, and I think so many people misunderstand that. When some say 'large,' and 'entire game,' it is not as absurd as one may think. What constitutes similarity? Apparently, it means not changing any designs outside of particular unit designs, to Blizzard. My argument is that they avoid such things because the cost is too high, and they are a risk-averse (as any company might be). There's nothing wrong with that, per se. The reason for their aversion is not, as they say: Show nested quote +We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. The contention is that no major changes would make Starcraft II better. Such is... plain absurdity, which is why I don't believe they hold such a position. What he says is a very weak sentiment opposed. I contend that there are sweeping changes which would make the game, and the whole situation, better and give a profit for their troubles: removing macro boosters (properly called, they are not macro mechanics (a rhetorical sleight of hand from Blizzard / booster's proponents, I think)) and re-balancing the game around that (if necessary) is one such change I believe would entertain such great increase in this game's popularity, and the reader may disagree but they certainly should not disagree with the principle which allows one to forward such suggestions. Show nested quote +Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game. Which leads me to believe this is deflection. They wish to oust the most clear and principled sort of criticism, which generally calls for such large and sweeping changes. The 3x5 index card of allowable opinion has been filled, there is no room for systematic opposition.
What kind of changes? Just remove chrono/inject/mules and add a thesaurus or two? He's talking about turning SC2 into an entirely different game, which would mean a lot more changes than that.
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Matchmaking is going to be fantastic.
David Kim, if you read these comments, thanks man.
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I am a Grandmaster Starcraft II Viewer! With these changes, I just want:
1. Mech to be viable. It can get boring seeing Bio, Bio, Bio, Bio, Bio, Bio, Bio, Bio... Terran needs an alternative. Protoss and Zerg have alternatives, why can't Terran? Terran is the only race that never moves into Tier 3 tech.
2. I want to see units that don't get used actually get used. The following units either never get used at a competitive level, or are used very rarely: Thors, Battlecruisers, Colossi, Void Rays, offensive Ravens, Brood Lords, Swarm Hosts, and Infested Terrans. Variety is good!
3. I want Siege Tanks to feel like Siege Tanks, and Lurkers to feel like Lurkers. The element of siege is very absent in this game.
4. I know pros hate them, but yellow bases are exciting to watch.
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Not qualified to opine on the balance these days but good to see the communication is a two-way street.
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How bout we just get rid of the gimmicks!
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T: Liberator's mode feels a bit redundant, since Tanks are buffed. Though it`s not identical (e.g. you cannot harass with Tanks), it feels quite overlapping. should be redesigned or removed.
Z: Zerg should get air superiority against Terran in order to deal with Tanks. However, it is not easy to use Mutas against Tanks because of Liberators and Vikings. And we know buffing Muta is out of the question, because it`s harassment would be overpowered. Hence, I`d suggest that Swarm Host be redesigned to make scourges with appropriate cost, making it Zerg version of Carriers.
Ravagers are vulnerable for its cost; its health should be 150 or so.
P: Still, Adept needs nerf; its ability is nonsense, forcing opponents to choose bad moves.So I`d say it should be impossible to recall. Or, simply, make Adepts armoured.
Buffing Zealot's health (10 or so) would be great, making this unit more viable.
Tempest's ability sucks; it is gimmicky(I understand some people do not like this expression, but I had to say), not cool and overlaps with storm. It can paralyze a whole base over 30 seconds, which is nonsense.
Just remove its ability and AG attack. In return, buff its AA bonus damage to counter BC.
Blinking DT is not as bad as I thought. But speed upgrade seems better.
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I must say, I don't know if the execution will be good, but I definitely dig the team's mindset for SC2.
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This has been said a lot, but I'm still confused by the redundant units like swarm host / lurker still in the game. I'd like more niche units or something thats more crazy. They don't feel like two distinct tools which units should feel like in an RTS.
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diversity: the possible choises of different strategies. Thats the way we should primarily follow
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Yeah this is why I'm not too sad about few changes to Protoss, even though Zealot+Carrier is massive changes. Protoss is by far the best designed race in LotV, while Terran is severely lacking behind and every matchup with a Terran in it, is mildly frustrating. I really hope Terran becomes super awesome, if this patch makes me wanna play Terran, even though I'm a Protoss, it means they did a damn good job!
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On August 20 2016 18:04 ejozl wrote:
Yeah this is why I'm not too sad about few changes to Protoss, even though Zealot+Carrier is massive changes. Protoss is by far the best designed race in LotV, while Terran is severely lacking behind and every matchup with a Terran in it, is mildly frustrating. I really hope Terran becomes super awesome, if this patch makes me wanna play Terran, even though I'm a Protoss, it means they did a damn good job!
o_O Protoss? That same race that lived with 2 base all-ins at WOL and HOTS, and MSC defense + OP adepts at LOTV? Not that well designed sorry  Zerg is BY FAR the best designed race at the 3 expansions.
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Nice.
However solving the issue "can't chat after game" should be a priority. I can't really play the test map because i have this bug and can't chat with anyone who's not an IG friend
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I would like to see all the units have some kind of utility. Lets give BCs, carriers and SHs a place. The more diverse strategies players have available to them, the more interesting the game will be. Blizz seem to be on the right track.
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Makes sense. The patch can't come soon enough
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I deleted starcraft2 because its so boring to play Terran Bio all the way, fight the survival until unbreakable game as Protoss vs Zerg or do the "ling dance" against other Zergs. You can not deviate from the standard game.
Thats more like Guitar-Hero playing the same Song over and over and over and over and over and over again pressing the right buttons in the right order and time.
I know that this is basicly how you become a pro in Sc...but it is fun to play shitty...ehm creative.
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I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess.
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Zerg has by far the least number of strategic options in each matchup, yet got the least changes.
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On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess.
My knowledge on LotV is rather scant but it used to be the case that protoss early game progression was quite forced with many resources dedicated to warpgate research, building the mothership core and somehow building and defending an expansion with sentries and cannons. And I think that if you look at protoss relative to the other two races that you are more locked into certain choices when you build e.g. a stargate.
I recall watching Minigun stream in HotS and he was talking about how he put a lot of effort into completely obscuring his choice of opening from his opponent, to create a set-up where all outwardly observable aspects of his base and army were the exact same every game no matter what he was doing.
And that seems very clever, if annoying to an opponent who might have to guess whether to prepare for air or ground units, but it's also aided by the fact that so much of what protoss is doing is forced and there isn't that much choice.
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i tested the balance map mod for about 20 games, i think the game is a lot more interesting now with the tank and ravager changes, i think those two are the most important changes and they make the game totally diferent.
i would nerf ground cyclone attack and buff anti air lockon damage a bit.
early speed ferrari banshee is maybe too good.
tempest energy ball is not bad for the game IF they make the damage not stackable, because if u stack a couple of balls it becomes almost like a permanent storm dps.
i still hate adepts.
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On August 20 2016 13:11 Thouhastmail wrote:
T: Liberator's mode feels a bit redundant, since Tanks are buffed. Though it`s not identical (e.g. you cannot harass with Tanks), it feels quite overlapping. should be redesigned or removed.
Z: Zerg should get air superiority against Terran in order to deal with Tanks. However, it is not easy to use Mutas against Tanks because of Liberators and Vikings. And we know buffing Muta is out of the question, because it`s harassment would be overpowered. Hence, I`d suggest that Swarm Host be redesigned to make scourges with appropriate cost, making it Zerg version of Carriers.
Ravagers are vulnerable for its cost; its health should be 150 or so.
P: Still, Adept needs nerf; its ability is nonsense, forcing opponents to choose bad moves.So I`d say it should be impossible to recall. Or, simply, make Adepts armoured.
Buffing Zealot's health (10 or so) would be great, making this unit more viable.
Tempest's ability sucks; it is gimmicky(I understand some people do not like this expression, but I had to say), not cool and overlaps with storm. It can paralyze a whole base over 30 seconds, which is nonsense.
Just remove its ability and AG attack. In return, buff its AA bonus damage to counter BC.
Blinking DT is not as bad as I thought. But speed upgrade seems better.
lib AG just add one shot for each unit that counters it, so instead of one or two shot, two to three shot and dmg becomes spell
mutas should be viable in TvZ again, vikings are fine, some tweaks to lib AA splash radius to fix this (light bonus already removed)
with the way units bunch in SC2 and so many hard counters for it, zealots need to close faster and need more health to be useful in main armies again
leg upgrade for zealots also for DTs would be nice
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Not a fan of the Tempest ability. How about making it channeling (the tempest has to stand still and cannot attack while casting)? Buff the radius a little and prevent stacking.
Then the tempest becomes a zone control unit like the liberator, but without stacking and high supply cost hopefully less of a core unit.
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Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the Game
We’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game.
See this is so vague, what are "drastic changes" really? Would be a high ground advantage already fall under that definition? New pathing probably would i guess.
The problem i have with this is that it basically means that blizzard is 100% happy with the basis of sc2, nothing will ever change in that regard. It's actually quite disappointing to me because i don't think that the basis is as good as it could be.
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On August 20 2016 18:10 StarscreamG1 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 18:04 ejozl wrote:
Yeah this is why I'm not too sad about few changes to Protoss, even though Zealot+Carrier is massive changes. Protoss is by far the best designed race in LotV, while Terran is severely lacking behind and every matchup with a Terran in it, is mildly frustrating. I really hope Terran becomes super awesome, if this patch makes me wanna play Terran, even though I'm a Protoss, it means they did a damn good job! o_O Protoss? That same race that lived with 2 base all-ins at WOL and HOTS, and MSC defense + OP adepts at LOTV? Not that well designed sorry Zerg is BY FAR the best designed race at the 3 expansions.
That's a problem of the Protoss early game being fucked by a series of design decisions that have been carried since the ALPHA of SC2. Protoss has always been balanced around the WoL beta version of Chronoboost (burst speed increase, available since the very first moment of each game instead of behind a tech requirement), slow production on gateways ( to balance the combinaison of rushes + chronoboost), and surviving until Warpgate gets completed. I compiled some nerfs related to Warpgate timings and the strength of early game of Protoss back in the very first days of SC2. (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jAQ1k4mxCXm654cvQlrcVBXm_uuOtjjjNbv5zzRhrsA/edit?usp=sharing)
We also have to consider that Protoss lacked of a good early game unit that countered Light units (Bio and Hydras).
Since warpgate has always been a very strong mechanic and with the old chronoboost, it had perfect synergy for all-ins. And instead of fixing this vicious relationship between Gateway, Warpgate and Chronoboost, they kept it in HotS because they didn't introduce a good anti-light unit at Gateways to deal with bio, and they bandaided the early game weakness with MSC. In consequence, you had a "turtle with hero unit" design early game, followed by a powerful early-midgame peak (Warpgate completed and a research). Since turtling made early game safer for Protoss, it achieved the exactly opposite objective: It didn't make Protoss much more consistent, but just accelerated the tempo of Warpgate and all-ins at the cost of building a 100/100 unit.
Now that in LotV we've got a good early game unit (Adepts) and Chronoboost was reworked to be research-oriented being a single target, slow-boost mechanic, it is time to rework the vicious relationship of Gateway/Warpgate (caused by the design of Chornoboost) and the need of MSC (caused by having a bad early game production and lacking of a good core unit againt early aggression).
It is pretty simple indeed.
- Using Chronoboost now requires CyberCore (every race has their macroboosters under a paywall). This.
- Reduce build times at Gateways by 10-15s. Maybe reduce build times of some midgame techs like Robo too by 10-5s.
- Study a rebalance of Warpgate, maybe as a mid-game tech, delaying all-in potential (but protoos can straight up be very active with Gateways too).
- Reevaluate the need of MSC and Photon Overcharge, making them a situational need or just straight rework them.
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Am I the only one who feels the Liberator AG is basically redundant with the tank buff?
I would love for the lib's AG to be massively nerfed and the unit remade as a mostly anti-air option. Maybe tech-labbed with 6 damage? So we can actually push with mech before we have 12 turrets and 5 thors.
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On August 21 2016 00:35 ihatevideogames wrote:
Am I the only one who feels the Liberator AG is basically redundant with the tank buff?
I would love for the lib's AG to be massively nerfed and the unit remade as a mostly anti-air option. Maybe tech-labbed with 6 damage? So we can actually push with mech before we have 12 turrets and 5 thors.
I actually think that the game needs to evolve a bit after they start testing the tank change to evaluate what do they want to do with Liberators. Air siege with 90 DPS is fucking dumb.
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The role of the cyclone in the balance patch overlaps with the tank a bit, what mech needs is a reliable anti-air unit other than the expensive thor. My suggestion, in the spirit of the roach-hydra suggestion that was made awhile ago, it's time for the goliath riding on the back of the hellion, we can call it the goliath-hellion (Kappa).
User was warned for this post
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On August 21 2016 00:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the GameShow nested quote +We’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game. See this is so vague, what are "drastic changes" really? Would be a high ground advantage already fall under that definition? New pathing probably would i guess. The problem i have with this is that it basically means that blizzard is 100% happy with the basis of sc2, nothing will ever change in that regard. It's actually quite disappointing to me because i don't think that the basis is as good as it could be.
when i get sick and tired of half of all my units being harvesters and sick of spending too much time managing my economy i just play some Red Alert 3 instead. in that game i spend less than 5% of my time managing my economy and most of the time i've got 2 or 3 harvesters.. hell there is a viable way to play with 1 harvester. Sc2 ain't changin'... C&C damn sure ain't changin'.. and both have their strengths and weaknesses as games.
yelling and screaming on forums about it being Blizzard's responsibility to initiate a radical change to the Starcraft economy won't give me what i want.
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On August 21 2016 01:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 00:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the GameWe’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game. See this is so vague, what are "drastic changes" really? Would be a high ground advantage already fall under that definition? New pathing probably would i guess. The problem i have with this is that it basically means that blizzard is 100% happy with the basis of sc2, nothing will ever change in that regard. It's actually quite disappointing to me because i don't think that the basis is as good as it could be. when i get sick and tired of half of all my units being harvesters and sick of spending too much time managing my economy i just play some Red Alert 3 instead. in that game i spend less than 5% of my time managing my economy and most of the time i've got 2 or 3 harvesters.. hell there is a viable way to play with 1 harvester. Sc2 ain't changin'... C&C damn sure ain't changin'.. and both have their strengths and weaknesses as games. yelling and screaming on forums about it being Blizzard's responsibility to initiate a radical change to the Starcraft economy won't give me what i want.
I think this is the first time that blizzard actually kinda defines which changes they are willing to make and which not. IIRC they actually said "big changes" are a thing in the next few years, or that they are at least willing to do these. Now we know that "big" apparently doesn't mean "fundamental changes". It's still kinda vague but i feel have a better understanding now and thus can better deal with it, even though it's frustrating that they aren't willing to try these things the community asked for since day 1.
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Here's why I am skeptical about Mech being viable:
1. It requires far less APM than Bio.
2. It just takes less skill than bio in general (Less micro because no splitting/stutter-stepping, less macro because units are more expensive and build more slowly, less multi-tasking because no/fewer drops).
3. Minerals are not nearly as important, which means Mech players can plaster their bases with Planetary Fortresses and Turrets, which only exacerbates the defensive playstyle and makes it even harder to harass them. It also means that harassment against Mech is not as effective, and that a Mech player risks next to nothing when he's harassing because his harassment units (Hellions/Hellbats) are essentially free.
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage.
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On August 21 2016 02:02 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 01:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 21 2016 00:07 The_Red_Viper wrote:Completely Changing the Fundamentals of the GameWe’ve seen some international feedback requesting that we make drastic, sweeping changes to how the game functions. Though this isn’t representative of the feedback we’re seeing most often, we wanted to make it clear that our goal is to keep StarCraft II similar to the game it is now, while making big improvements within it.
We strongly believe that the worst thing we can do to StarCraft II is make changes that turn it into a completely different type of game. Therefore, we’d like to ask everyone to keep focused on keeping the core fun of StarCraft II while making improvements within the game. See this is so vague, what are "drastic changes" really? Would be a high ground advantage already fall under that definition? New pathing probably would i guess. The problem i have with this is that it basically means that blizzard is 100% happy with the basis of sc2, nothing will ever change in that regard. It's actually quite disappointing to me because i don't think that the basis is as good as it could be. when i get sick and tired of half of all my units being harvesters and sick of spending too much time managing my economy i just play some Red Alert 3 instead. in that game i spend less than 5% of my time managing my economy and most of the time i've got 2 or 3 harvesters.. hell there is a viable way to play with 1 harvester. Sc2 ain't changin'... C&C damn sure ain't changin'.. and both have their strengths and weaknesses as games. yelling and screaming on forums about it being Blizzard's responsibility to initiate a radical change to the Starcraft economy won't give me what i want. I think this is the first time that blizzard actually kinda defines which changes they are willing to make and which not. IIRC they actually said "big changes" are a thing in the next few years, or that they are at least willing to do these. Now we know that "big" apparently doesn't mean "fundamental changes". It's still kinda vague but i feel have a better understanding now and thus can better deal with it, even though it's frustrating that they aren't willing to try these things the community asked for since day 1.
i see your point about Blizzard's comments having low granularity.
i prefer for software designers, artists, and designers to create their own vision based on their own fundamental principles and their own internal vision of what they want the game to be. and once that is complete then they can tweak stuff in the final stages due to solid community feedback.
as an example. i like how Overwatch was made.
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i totally agree with u a_flayer
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i like that the lib gives siege from air giving terran more options for position compared to the tank. Maybe that opinion will change once i actually start playing with the new tank who knows
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Swarm hosts are cool in the zerg arsenal now. Such a strong and interesting unit.
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Completely remove the Mothership Core and make Protoss able to defend itself in the early game without this idiot band aid unit please, by far one of the most requested design changes in the game.
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I totally agree with the removal of the heroic MSC/Mothership. Just give a speed buff to the zealot and a flat damage to the stalker, could be enough.
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On August 21 2016 02:08 Aesto wrote:
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage.
You can make the same argument about every race. Playing vs roach/ravager is inherently much different than playing vs mute/ling/bling. In ZvT Zerg need only learn to play against bio, and how to rush ultra safely for an easy win, which is an advantage.
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On August 21 2016 00:40 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 00:35 ihatevideogames wrote:
Am I the only one who feels the Liberator AG is basically redundant with the tank buff?
I would love for the lib's AG to be massively nerfed and the unit remade as a mostly anti-air option. Maybe tech-labbed with 6 damage? So we can actually push with mech before we have 12 turrets and 5 thors. I actually think that the game needs to evolve a bit after they start testing the tank change to evaluate what do they want to do with Liberators. Air siege with 90 DPS is fucking dumb.
Is it less or more dumb than an 8 armor unit?
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They should just scrap the whole thing and redesign the 3 races from scratch. It would give SC2 massive hype and publicity.
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lol 4 larvas u can't be serious
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On August 21 2016 16:23 yolteotl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 00:40 JCoto wrote:On August 21 2016 00:35 ihatevideogames wrote:
Am I the only one who feels the Liberator AG is basically redundant with the tank buff?
I would love for the lib's AG to be massively nerfed and the unit remade as a mostly anti-air option. Maybe tech-labbed with 6 damage? So we can actually push with mech before we have 12 turrets and 5 thors. I actually think that the game needs to evolve a bit after they start testing the tank change to evaluate what do they want to do with Liberators. Air siege with 90 DPS is fucking dumb. Is it less or more dumb than an 8 armor unit?
That's dumb too. Well not THAT dumb if they actually had spent some time tweaking the marauder. Nevertheless 7 armor is more than enough.
The ultra needs some design upgrade too, terrible terrible damage everywhere.
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On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise.
From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that.
On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess.
I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise.
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On August 21 2016 00:40 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 00:35 ihatevideogames wrote:
Am I the only one who feels the Liberator AG is basically redundant with the tank buff?
I would love for the lib's AG to be massively nerfed and the unit remade as a mostly anti-air option. Maybe tech-labbed with 6 damage? So we can actually push with mech before we have 12 turrets and 5 thors. I actually think that the game needs to evolve a bit after they start testing the tank change to evaluate what do they want to do with Liberators. Air siege with 90 DPS is fucking dumb.
Did you watch Innovation vs Losira in today's Proleague? Innovation is certainly evolving the meta. He made mech work against a zerg player.
Granted Losira's build choice was a factor in his loss, but Innovation really made it seem like mech doesn't need a lot of changes.
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The fast pace of the game makes Zerg the only race truly open to "techswitch". Protoss units are good all around, you´d never need more than 2 robos or 2-4 Stargates even in late late late late game, roll with a gateway backbone until you make air.
Terran Bio can just bulldoze through bases and non prepared armies, especially on an upgrade lead with many medevacs.
Reduce buildtime on mech. Make hellions kite Roaches again.
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I'm quite tired of ... DK ?!? is him the... (don't really think so), so, got quite tired of Blizzard bait'n'switch behavior, promise Earth and the Sky, deliver .., i don't know .. seems like randomly generated stuff.
You , the one reading this post, take a moment and reflect upon the changes since WoL. Notice the moment DK got involved and every change that followed. Notice what happened before. Notice
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I'm not playing much lately, but from watching the pros I think the game improved a lot and with these changes might become even more diverse. This shows that blizzard is more ready to make changes now.
I hope they will finally listen and remove the stupid msc early-defense hero unit concept. I seriously dont know why they stick to it, it has barely any meaning besides early defense and drop defense, for which a better solution should and, I am sure, could be found.
About the other macro mechanics/boost.. i dont think their effect is too terrible, except for terrans not really carrying about worker losses, but that sort of became part of the game.
The idea of boosting hatchery larva generation more and weakening larva injection sounds good too.
I really love the new siege tanks, infestors and dts though.
Just really want to see the MSC go (and the mothership too). We are the proud and noble protoss, not some generic earth invading alien race with their one big mothership.
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On August 21 2016 02:08 Aesto wrote:
Here's why I am skeptical about Mech being viable:
1. It requires far less APM than Bio.
2. It just takes less skill than bio in general (Less micro because no splitting/stutter-stepping, less macro because units are more expensive and build more slowly, less multi-tasking because no/fewer drops).
3. Minerals are not nearly as important, which means Mech players can plaster their bases with Planetary Fortresses and Turrets, which only exacerbates the defensive playstyle and makes it even harder to harass them. It also means that harassment against Mech is not as effective, and that a Mech player risks next to nothing when he's harassing because his harassment units (Hellions/Hellbats) are essentially free.
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage.
Pretty solid points!
Mech can be changed to require more skill. Not sure how it fits the current meta of changes but in general I propose to
a) reintroduce the siege mode upgrade
b) increase siege/unsiege times
with stronger tanks.
The skill in playing mech accrues from tanks being very strong when in position but can be punished easily when out of position and too many unsieged at the same time. The mech style with stronger tanks should leave enough window for opponents to counter and be slowed down through this.
Good mech play should rely on precision instead of speed. The exact distances and positions of sieged tanks, when exactly to siege and unsiege and how many at the same time, to have the perfect composition against what your opponent is planning to do through transitions always in time, etc.
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I think the patch changes will adress a lot of the community's concerns about tvz. The removal of tankivacs is a large blow to a lot of the 2 base pushes that follow up 16 marine drop builds. This combined with the bane buff should help high level Korean Zerg preform better on the other hand viable mech play could make Terran who are not the top 10-15 Korean terran's in the world preform better by giving Terran a less micro intensive composition that can function well in the late game and can deal with 8 armor ultra. The raveger nerf could further improve the state of the foreign meta were roach raveger is very common and very strong.
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On August 22 2016 17:20 LSN wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 02:08 Aesto wrote:
Here's why I am skeptical about Mech being viable:
1. It requires far less APM than Bio.
2. It just takes less skill than bio in general (Less micro because no splitting/stutter-stepping, less macro because units are more expensive and build more slowly, less multi-tasking because no/fewer drops).
3. Minerals are not nearly as important, which means Mech players can plaster their bases with Planetary Fortresses and Turrets, which only exacerbates the defensive playstyle and makes it even harder to harass them. It also means that harassment against Mech is not as effective, and that a Mech player risks next to nothing when he's harassing because his harassment units (Hellions/Hellbats) are essentially free.
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage. Pretty solid points! Mech can be changed to require more skill. Not sure how it fits the current meta of changes but in general I propose to a) reintroduce the siege mode upgrade b) increase siege/unsiege times with stronger tanks. The skill in playing mech accrues from tanks being very strong when in position but can be punished easily when out of position and too many unsieged at the same time. The mech style with stronger tanks should leave enough window for opponents to counter and be slowed down through this. Good mech play should rely on precision instead of speed. The exact distances and positions of sieged tanks, when exactly to siege and unsiege and how many at the same time, to have the perfect composition against what your opponent is planning to do through transitions always in time, etc.
a) The entire point about mech is supposed to be positional play, right? Making sm an upgrade slows mech's expansion timing down (something DK described as a problem last patch already)/prolongs mech's timing when they are weak. I'm not sure that's desirable.
b) is what I'd propose too. Make basic tanks weaker and buff siege mode setup time, so when tanks are unsieged you really can catch them with their pants down. Force terran to either march very slowly, making them vulnerable to harass/attacks on their base, or risk getting hit badly if they don't scout where your army is.
I agree that Mech needs a mineral dump outside of hellions. Either make tanks more expensive or make cyclones more min heavy. Their defense should come from some tanks, building placement and a few turrets. Not dozens of turrets and PFs that make attacking their base suicide.
If we'd be in the alpha I'd propose a turret/pf cap.
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I think if you want to play Mech, you have to switch to "Dropzone".
Playing the oldschool "cancer Mech" style where you turtle to ultimate army...well you earn 11 Minute 3-3-3-3-3-3 Broodlord ultralisks and Corruptors that run arround and NUKE CCs left and right.
Everything Ground you start to mass up...well against Air it is useless, because other races air does not need to be combined with ground units anymore.
Go AIR > Massing units fast > Combining units the right way.
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On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise.
I think that they could keep some mechanics in the game, but only if they make them not a must-have. I posted a suggestion a while ago that was approximately like this:
Terran:
- MULE removed.
- Calldown supplies being more usable (upgrades also bunkers individually, but provides less supply buff and is more spammeable).
-Terran gets a nerfed version of Techreactors, that can't research and can only produce one massive unit at a time, maybe at Armory tech level (or Armory + Shadow Ops). Or just an upgrade to reactor marauders.
- Maybe another ability at Orbital.
Terran has been given a ton of reactored units in LotV that intend to be core units, so a semi-Tech reactor makes relative sense. A semi-lategame Tech reactor makes bio less dependant on mules (Reactored Marauders) and is a big buff to mech, although several iterations need to be tested. With the removal of MULES, building Orbitals is noticeably optional, and once the supply limit is reached there's no reason to build more of them.
Zerg:
- Inject Larva removed, replaced with an ability that increases the morph speed of building hatcheries and zerg cocoons nearby.
- Hatcheries can bank 4 larva (but produce them at the same speed), Lairs and Hives have slightly increased larva production speed and Larva limit.
With baseline buffs to larva Production, an ability that enchances the building speed of Hatcheries would make a ton of sense, and it would have exactly the same feeling and micro than Injecting Larva. Increasing the building speed of Zerg units is not as broken as it is to other races, because Zerg is highly dependant on the production speed of Larva, not the morphing speed of them. THe morph speed buff to Zerg cocoons is just a buff in defensive situations, for example when you have a push knocking the door.
Protoss: The easiest.
- Chronboost requires energy again, but it has a high energy cost (75-100)and is oriented towards long-term rewards, for example with 60s-80s duration, 50% speed buff. Cannot target nexuses, pylons or cannons, only production and reasearch buildings.
- Some defensive ability is given to nexus, like Pylon Overcharge (with balance adjustements) it costs energy too (50), and has limited cast range (2-3 bases long MAX)
- Both abilities and maybe the energy regeneration of Nexus require CyberCore.
- MSC reworked.
This balances the small early game advantage that protoss has in terms of Workers, has an interesting strategic choice on energy usage of Nexuses, and Chronoboost is mostly tech oriented as it is in LotV. Removes the need of a unit to cast a core defensive ability
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On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise.
While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game.
They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs.
So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose 
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On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose
I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution.
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Ok then I'll adress your post. I still think that for Blizzard the topic is closed after the macro mechanics patch and that Blizzard wants boring macro units/mechanics in the game that just eat apm up.
Terran
I doubt blizz is gonna remove the mule for reasons listed above. And tbh I'd rather have the very limited strategic possibilities mule provides than having to spam supply drop at the speed I spam mules.
I think your techreactor is directed at countering Ullis with marauders? I don't see the big advantages of it anyways because most of your buildings are in place when you build an armory. And afterwards people would only build techreactors for their other buildings, because why not?
Zerg
Your inject change takes apm out of the game, inject would become mainly a warpin mechanic whenever your unit building finishes. While I think that that's an interesting approach, I covered earlier why I don't think that Blizz is gonna implement something similar.
Also massive macro changes that would be a massive nerf for Zerg and they'd need a big rebalancing as a result. Also prepare for muta switches being on a whole new level.
Protoss
Chrono would take way less APM. I prefer your chrono to the one in game, but I doubt blizz sees it the same way.
Also despite all the hate I think that MSC is valuable for the game for scouting.
TLDR:
If we want to talk about changing macro mechanics, I think adding situational utility is a more promising way. Blizz likely won't change their basic behavior, else they'd have likely taken out or redesigned the macro mechanics during the lotv beta.
F.e. make spines morph out of creep tumors instead of larvae, adding tumor placement as a strategic component. Or transfuse can add hp to a building that isn't finished so it finishes faster. Make units chronoable, f.e. reducing cd or build time in the case of the carrier.
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On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution.
I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways.
I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel.
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On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel.
Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor.
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Just wanted to post that I love the direction that you are going with this Blizzard.
Given the apparent high level issues that you are trying to address with this new game design, I believe that one of the top priority items must be to look at Factory based ground-to-air options. At the present time, they still appear to be lacking in their current form.
So long as there is a broad "hard counter" to the Factory - we will see Terran having to keep the investment in Factories very minimal, and phase out very quickly. Mech will still be dead because of the race to build mass air. Perhaps some relatively minor changes to the Thor would be the best solution (not sure exactly what they should be, but as noted by many, the unit is very slow and "clunky" in dealing with massed air threats).
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On August 20 2016 08:43 WeddingEpisode wrote:
Golly, this game is so technical; perhaps that's the type of game people really want?
I would do the following: enlarge bounding box parameters (units can't squeeze together so tightly, causing Massive Units to single-file down some corridors).
Enlarge maps and create real open spaces; asymmetrical shapes to a lot of the map;
and make it harder to get to Tier 2 and 3.
Those are the things that will most help, not unit balance.
This is something I'd really like to see tested that isn't brought up much. I think there is too much clumping in this game compared to BW and often makes it hard to watch at times
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On August 23 2016 03:05 Yogurt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 08:43 WeddingEpisode wrote:
Golly, this game is so technical; perhaps that's the type of game people really want?
I would do the following: enlarge bounding box parameters (units can't squeeze together so tightly, causing Massive Units to single-file down some corridors).
Enlarge maps and create real open spaces; asymmetrical shapes to a lot of the map;
and make it harder to get to Tier 2 and 3.
Those are the things that will most help, not unit balance.
This is something I'd really like to see tested that isn't brought up much. I think there is too much clumping in this game compared to BW and often makes it hard to watch at times
Starbow has custom pathfinding, have you seen that?
https://www.youtube.com/user/Isaksen85/videos has some games if you're curious
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On August 22 2016 17:20 LSN wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 02:08 Aesto wrote:
Here's why I am skeptical about Mech being viable:
1. It requires far less APM than Bio.
2. It just takes less skill than bio in general (Less micro because no splitting/stutter-stepping, less macro because units are more expensive and build more slowly, less multi-tasking because no/fewer drops).
3. Minerals are not nearly as important, which means Mech players can plaster their bases with Planetary Fortresses and Turrets, which only exacerbates the defensive playstyle and makes it even harder to harass them. It also means that harassment against Mech is not as effective, and that a Mech player risks next to nothing when he's harassing because his harassment units (Hellions/Hellbats) are essentially free.
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage. Pretty solid points! Mech can be changed to require more skill. Not sure how it fits the current meta of changes but in general I propose to a) reintroduce the siege mode upgrade b) increase siege/unsiege times with stronger tanks. The skill in playing mech accrues from tanks being very strong when in position but can be punished easily when out of position and too many unsieged at the same time. The mech style with stronger tanks should leave enough window for opponents to counter and be slowed down through this. Good mech play should rely on precision instead of speed. The exact distances and positions of sieged tanks, when exactly to siege and unsiege and how many at the same time, to have the perfect composition against what your opponent is planning to do through transitions always in time, etc.
i'm a low APM terran player and if i sense i'm up against a guy whose APM is 30% or more higher than me i go mech... i feel its my only chance... when the game is 3+ bases i'm much better at spending all my money when i've got 5+ factories as opposed to a dozen Rax... its just less clicking... it doesn't sound like much but it adds up. your macro cycle is much longer when u go Mech. Queue up 2 Thors or 2 Tanks and you don't have to revisit that factory forever.
i think Mech deserves to be weaker than Bio. How much weaker? i'm not sure.. that can be debated forever. But I dont thnk pure Mech and Bio and Bio/Mech should be equal in strength.
I'm probably going to have my membership in the Avilo fan club revoked for these blasphemous comments. then i'll be branded a heretic.
i love C&C .. i love having 349538947 Tanks .. and Sieging someone's ramp and watching the infantry fly through the air and scream as they die.. but i just gotta tell it like it is man.
I dont thnk pure Mech and Bio and Bio/Mech should be equal in strength. Whatever requires the most skill should be the strongest.. and i don't think pure Mech requires the most skill.
I can't get more granular than the comments i've offered. Guys who know way more about the game can give a more precise measure on the skill differences required to handle Pure Mech, Bio/Mech, and Bio. Its based on these measures that the strengths of these 3 techniques should be decided.
sry Avilo.
On August 22 2016 23:12 Blackfeather wrote:
Ok then I'll adress your post. I still think that for Blizzard the topic is closed after the macro mechanics patch and that Blizzard wants boring macro units/mechanics in the game that just eat apm up.
Terran
I doubt blizz is gonna remove the mule for reasons listed above. And tbh I'd rather have the very limited strategic possibilities mule provides than having to spam supply drop at the speed I spam mules.
I think your techreactor is directed at countering Ullis with marauders? I don't see the big advantages of it anyways because most of your buildings are in place when you build an armory. And afterwards people would only build techreactors for their other buildings, because why not?
there is a tension between SCANS and Mineral Collection on the energy in your Orbital Command. THat is what makes the MULE interesting and not "boring".
Devastate a Terrans SCV count and you know they can't scan as much... and u use that ur advantage in the game.
the labelling of all macro-mechanics as boring is a vast oversimplification and does a gross injustice to the decision-making Terrans must navigate through as they decide between a MULE and a SCAN. Also, if you MULE all the time you will mine out your base much faster. More tension and another factor that's part of the MULE/SCAN decision.
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Protoss is by far the best designed race in LotV
Protoss is, by far, the worst designed race in the game, and has been since the release of WoL. Why? Because the entire faction is built around gimmicks that ignore the basic mechanisms of the genre and game. RTSes are, to my mind, ultimately built around the basic challenges of logistics - making enough stuff, acquiring and securing resources, getting the right stuff to the right place at the right time, and basic unit combat: That is, units that move around and make stuff go boom in interesting ways. Things moving around and threatening other things with damage creates interesting tensions that can be explored for months, sometimes years on end without being bored.
Protoss is a faction built to fuck over all that beautiful, nuanced, natural tension with all the subtlety of a jackhammer or an iron mallet. It's a menagerie of bad unit designs.
Warpgate probably needs no introduction. Low-cost, low-risk (your production is still at home so home's not defenseless), in the Warp Prism's case goddamn flying mobile proxies really brings in that nice sense of fairness. Especially if Sentries are involved.
Forcefields, likewise. The Protoss player can simply dictate what is a good engagement or what is not, and disengage relatively unilaterally by a quick edit to the terrain. This is a very different mechanism from threatening the area with damage (eg. AoE from Ravagers/Tanks/Disruptors/Liberators, building bunkers etc.), because you can gauge the threat and choose to dare the damage, which is pretty much how TvTs are won. An indestructible wall, not so much. Protoss is absolute, unilateral, binary. It lacks nuance.
The same trend continues with the Mothership Core. Photon Overcharge is, again, hilariously powerful to the point it invalidates many small harassment forces. There's something morbid to being deathly afraid of farms in an RTS. And the bad thing about is is, again, the lack of nuance. It has both huge range and insane dps which shuts down harassment. There's no tension there like with more normal methods of defense.
Recall is like that too. With other races, if you overcommit you're SOL. Your stuff is either going to die so bad, or suffer harsh losses on the retreat. In some situations even turbo-vacs can be chased down and punished for overcommitment. Toss, press a button. I don't mind that they have a retreat-easing mechanism. I mind how binary and unilateral it is.
I probably don't need to mention how hilarious such an early flier is against Zerg pokes.
Finally, the Adept. Who designed Shade, I don't know, but the ability is yet another milestone of no-commitment "I have the option to..." type design. Press a button, and you can threaten an army very good at killing workers in two places at once. The ability might be interesting if you couldn't cancel it or the adepts couldn't fight when shading, but no. You get the cake and get to eat it and decide if the shade is worth it at the last second. Meanwhile the opponent has to treat it as a serious threat all the time. Because you can always choose to let it go off, at which point it's not a single dodge. Overcommitted? Just shade out of the damn base while killing workers because the shades just happen to be that damn fast. Again, no tension. Just unilateral low-risk, low-commitment decisions by the Protoss player.
Thank goodness they had the sense to make Oracles shoot stuff instead of the forced rule-alterations they used to in the HotS beta. Even then, the damage is so insane idk what they were thinking. But it's still miles better than the mineral-boxing abomination we first saw.
The nasty thing is that all that dog**** is probably balanced enough. But goddamnit if it isn't boring to watch once you get what kind of jig is up. It's just a victim dealing with bullshit. There's nowhere near as much interesting, nuanced tension as there are in the more normal engagements you mostly see in TvT, TvZ and ZvZ, where things primarily work by movement speed and threat of damage.
I don't want to see toss suck. But as a primary stream monster it just sucks watching toss nowadays, and my inner game designer cries every time I watch a game of SC2 Protoss. I don't want that. I want to be excited for it, but I can't. Even broken versions of liberators are automatically more interesting than the dog**** that composes half the Protoss race because of the simple need to commit with a deployment.
I more or less loathe Protoss. I don't want to, but I can't help it because it's just so offensive both in terms of entertainment value and design sensibilities. There is, however, one exception that's a shining beacon of great unit design: The Disruptor. I love Disruptors to bits. They're a prime example of what a stellar unit design looks like: It's all about blowing stuff up in an interesting but simple way, and allows players to play tricks on each other. It works primarily by threat value like ravagers and siege tanks, but with some delicious potential for toying with your opponent and rewards for invested attention. Simple, tense, interesting, space control tool, rewards micro/attention. It's everything an RTS unit should be.
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Terran plat here.
I just played vs zerg master player
I did a 2 reactored factory all in with cyclones and helions.
Pretty easy win. I guess the current version of the cyclone is imba.
While watching the replay, I realized that spines are armored. May be removing the armored tag + an increase between shots can do the trick. May be something between 0.08 - 0.1 s between shots.
I definately have to say I like the feel of the unit.
From other games, I would say that the air lock on could use soe sort of dmg increase though. May be a tech lab upgrade?
Edit: Before I forget it. Zerglings, Banelings and Hydras had no chance with against this.
I would think that speed banes might fare better, however, this hits way to early to allow for them to arrive in time.
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On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor.
I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that.
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I hate it when people treat the game as if APM is the sole indicator of skill. I can spam my ass off and shift-click 3 medivacs and a bunch of bio around the map, that doesn't make me good at the game.
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
I agree that turtle mech is bad for the game, and while i would argue that turtling and winning by mining the opponent out does take a certain degree of skill and game knowledge, it's not fun for either player. Mech players are forced into turtling because mech itself is so weak atm. Combine that with the fact that if you lose your army once you lose the game, and that's why you get turtle games when mech's involved. With the test map changes we're gonna see less turtle mech from the traditional mech terrans, quote me on that.
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On August 22 2016 17:20 LSN wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 02:08 Aesto wrote:
Here's why I am skeptical about Mech being viable:
1. It requires far less APM than Bio.
2. It just takes less skill than bio in general (Less micro because no splitting/stutter-stepping, less macro because units are more expensive and build more slowly, less multi-tasking because no/fewer drops).
3. Minerals are not nearly as important, which means Mech players can plaster their bases with Planetary Fortresses and Turrets, which only exacerbates the defensive playstyle and makes it even harder to harass them. It also means that harassment against Mech is not as effective, and that a Mech player risks next to nothing when he's harassing because his harassment units (Hellions/Hellbats) are essentially free.
4. Mech and Bio are essentially two different matchups to play against. A terran who plays Bio or Mech exclusively only has to learn one matchup per race. Other players have to learn two matchups against Terran, giving Terrans an inherent knowledge advantage. Pretty solid points! Mech can be changed to require more skill. Not sure how it fits the current meta of changes but in general I propose to a) reintroduce the siege mode upgrade b) increase siege/unsiege times with stronger tanks. The skill in playing mech accrues from tanks being very strong when in position but can be punished easily when out of position and too many unsieged at the same time. The mech style with stronger tanks should leave enough window for opponents to counter and be slowed down through this. Good mech play should rely on precision instead of speed. The exact distances and positions of sieged tanks, when exactly to siege and unsiege and how many at the same time, to have the perfect composition against what your opponent is planning to do through transitions always in time, etc.
Good mech SHOULD also rely on speed, back in BW whereas mech was a very positional based play you still needed a ton of speed and good control, you needed to be constantly doing harass with vultures, to be always laying mine fields, to control goliaths to stop shuttles from zealot bombing/reaver dropping, to be always on top of EMP-ing arbiters. You couldn't just plaster a bunch of tanks and turrets and expected to win, you need to be on top of your game.
SC2 already has this, I think changing cyclones to be more microable than current test map (without being the awkward units they are in live game) and to make them better AA than vs ground is the way to go.
You will do harass with hellions and banshees (some thing already important in mech play in SC2), be on top of cyclones to stop drops and harass, control viking/other air units (something that is already pretty big in mech TvT play), constantly positioning and repositioning, etc.
Mech play has its way to require a ton of skill, APM and speed to execute.
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On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range.
Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time".
Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player.
I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch.
Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech.
How much weaker? Dunno.
To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded.
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On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded.
It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is?
There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever.
I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc.
And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech.
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On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range.
Thats why mech takes skill to play, if you aren't on top of your map countrol and scouting you can't talk about mech.
Mech is a positional play and as such its core value is controlling then map, having good vision and map control, keeping constant tabs on the enemy army and compoisition, being capable to split the right number of units and controlling more than 1 place at once (since you army is strong but slow its better at being split and worst at being moved around in 1 ball).
Positional play is much more than just making a bunch of tanks and planting them perfectly in the ground (altough its is a part of it).
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Anyone tried doing this Cyclone heavy think (kinda like Innovation is trying right now) and it just not work vs Protoss? cyclones just get crushed by even a few stalkers or a single immortal?
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On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech.
yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech.
and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors.
i want the potency of any strategy/composition/technique to be congruent/commensurate with the skill level required to execute it.
as an example, right after LotV was released easy Sky Terran tactics made it easy for me to defeat people who were probably better than me at the game. Blizzard did the right thing and nerfed Terran Air. My ranking went down and it deserved to go down because i was using BS tricks to win games against superior opponents.
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On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors.
You missed my point completely.
I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently.
You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc.
What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long.
You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options.
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On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options.
LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above.
You are totally missing his point.
What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro).
If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame.
They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking.
This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP.
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On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP.
How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out.
The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that.
And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win.
You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much.
Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What?
Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map.
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Can't wait for Blizz to fuck up again :D
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On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options.
i'd like the game to be a mix of both. and intelligently micro-ing marines is not an "asian clicking sim". i like SC2 because it has auto-mining, MBS ,etc.. SC2 has moved away from Brood War's "asian clicking sim". and i like it. CTRL-F1 to gather up idle workers.. etc.
i just think stuff like my Thor, Tank, Medivac, Raven, Marauder, Bashee ( with a sprinkling of SCVs ) a-move deathball shouldn't be rewarded.
i watch other higher level players do the same thing (at a higher level) and claim the only thing stopping them from being the best player on planet earth is Blizzard refusing to buff the tank.
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On August 23 2016 12:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. i'd like the game to be a mix of both. and intelligently micro-ing marines is not an "asian clicking sim". i like SC2 because it has auto-mining, MBS ,etc.. SC2 has moved away from Brood War's "asian clicking sim". and i like it. CTRL-F1 to gather up idle workers.. etc. i just think stuff like my Thor, Tank, Medivac, Raven, Marauder, Bashee ( with a sprinkling of SCVs ) a-move deathball shouldn't be rewarded. i watch other higher level players do the same thing (at a higher level) and claim the only thing stopping them from being the best player on planet earth is Blizzard refusing to buff the tank.
Read my other post.
By 'asian clicking sim' I meant LOTV's change towards more micro and multitasking, making that old meme come true.
Anyway, I believe that the better STRATEGIC player should always win in a STRATEGY game. This is something that was missing from the game. Right now, we got a game full of active abilities, where harassment is the most important thing in the world, where if you look away for a split second you lose the game, and a whole race that completely relies on outmultitasking the opponent to win. Is that really what we want SC2 to be?
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its more than 1 second... you are creating a strawman to provide evidence in favour of ur point.
part of skill is multi-tasking and fast battles have been part of SC2 since day 1... its intrinsic to the game. When i'm in the mood for a slower pace of battles i play CoH1.
fast, skillful, split-second micro on multiple fronts simultaneously is part of RTS skill for games like SC2, RA3, and many C&C games.
Strategy and out-of-the box thinking should be part of what makes a player good.. but this game is not chess. Pinpoint micro should also be rewarded.
for the record my favourite WoL Terran is Sjow. I'd say he employed some very unusual tactics, strategies and decision-making to win. He had unusual no scout builds and at the same time he could make a Banshee do everything except make you breakfast in the morning.
By no means was Sjow's success due to being an "asian click robot" or whatever term you used.
I recall Tasteless describing Sjow as "macgiver with Starcraft units" during his long run through an MLG where he was the last standing non-korean. The guy's compositions were fucking weird... and damn it .. they worked.
Sjow is the kind of player and play i want to see rewarded.
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On August 23 2016 14:36 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
its more than 1 second... you are creating a strawman to provide evidence in favour of ur point.
part of skill is multi-tasking and fast battles have been part of SC2 since day 1... its intrinsic to the game. When i'm in the mood for a slower pace of battles i play CoH1.
fast, skillful, split-second micro on multiple fronts simultaneously is part of RTS skill for games like SC2, RA3, and many C&C games.
Strategy and out-of-the box thinking should be part of what makes a player good.. but this game is not chess. Pinpoint micro should also be rewarded.
for the record my favourite WoL Terran is Sjow. I'd say he employed some very unusual tactics, strategies and decision-making to win. He had unusual no scout builds and at the same time he could make a Banshee do everything except make you breakfast in the morning.
By no means was Sjow's success due to being an "asian click robot" or whatever term you used.
I agree to an extent. I thought the game was striking a good balance between micro and multitasking and actual strategic depth. There were some issues in both expansions that could be easily fixed though.
Then LOTV came and it brought with it a huge emphasis on worker harassment and the balance shifted towards more micro and multitasking.
All I'm saying is that I want that balance back and that's the direction they seem to be going towards.
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On August 23 2016 04:35 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2016 23:12 Blackfeather wrote:
Ok then I'll adress your post. I still think that for Blizzard the topic is closed after the macro mechanics patch and that Blizzard wants boring macro units/mechanics in the game that just eat apm up.
Terran
I doubt blizz is gonna remove the mule for reasons listed above. And tbh I'd rather have the very limited strategic possibilities mule provides than having to spam supply drop at the speed I spam mules.
I think your techreactor is directed at countering Ullis with marauders? I don't see the big advantages of it anyways because most of your buildings are in place when you build an armory. And afterwards people would only build techreactors for their other buildings, because why not?
there is a tension between SCANS and Mineral Collection on the energy in your Orbital Command. THat is what makes the MULE interesting and not "boring". Devastate a Terrans SCV count and you know they can't scan as much... and u use that ur advantage in the game. the labelling of all macro-mechanics as boring is a vast oversimplification and does a gross injustice to the decision-making Terrans must navigate through as they decide between a MULE and a SCAN. Also, if you MULE all the time you will mine out your base much faster. More tension and another factor that's part of the MULE/SCAN decision.
Might be that that has changed since LotV. In WoL and Hots, there was no real decision making. There was maybe one pinpoint scan at the tech timing and holding energy if it wasn't clear whether or not dts are coming. Else it was spam those MULEs. But yeah from my viewing experience T scans a lot more nowadays.
On August 23 2016 12:57 ihatevideogames wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 12:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. i'd like the game to be a mix of both. and intelligently micro-ing marines is not an "asian clicking sim". i like SC2 because it has auto-mining, MBS ,etc.. SC2 has moved away from Brood War's "asian clicking sim". and i like it. CTRL-F1 to gather up idle workers.. etc. i just think stuff like my Thor, Tank, Medivac, Raven, Marauder, Bashee ( with a sprinkling of SCVs ) a-move deathball shouldn't be rewarded. i watch other higher level players do the same thing (at a higher level) and claim the only thing stopping them from being the best player on planet earth is Blizzard refusing to buff the tank. Read my other post. By 'asian clicking sim' I meant LOTV's change towards more micro and multitasking, making that old meme come true. Anyway, I believe that the better STRATEGIC player should always win in a STRATEGY game. This is something that was missing from the game. Right now, we got a game full of active abilities, where harassment is the most important thing in the world, where if you look away for a split second you lose the game, and a whole race that completely relies on outmultitasking the opponent to win. Is that really what we want SC2 to be?
compared to 1a deathballs definitely. Multitasking and harass still asks for some strategic thinking, scouting and space becomes very important, splitting units up becomes very important. Those are strategic elements. Harass was always the promise of splitting up the deathball and I'm happy that it came true to some extent in LotV.
Also the "look away for a second and you loose the game" has pretty much always been true, miss that FF and you are dead, look away for a second and miss those 2 banes who raced into your zerglings, don't have marines in your mineral line and watch how this oracle mows them down. The game has always punished mistakes brutally.
It's a result of Blizz "terrible terrible damage" mentality which imo always dealt terrible damage to the game, but it makes for fast and action packed viewing.
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Anyway, I believe that the better STRATEGIC player should always win in a STRATEGY game.
Well this is where the 99% of the masses dont get the key word(noun i believe) in this sentence. The above is a little bit silly when you are talking a real time strategy. It would be true if all was equal. We all know what happened in the last samurai(and now i use a anyonesgoddamn film to case my point . .sheesh) , you cant deny that the samurai had the strats and skill down to godtier level but in the end they were beat by numbers and advanced tech. This is a strategy game, the best in the world but its never anyones strategy to a-move an army by mistake, by this action, NO the better strategys dont win when there is another level of the game to be mastered
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Oh my goodness StatixEx, please use another analogy, any analogy. Yours is so bad and nonsensical that after reading it, I had to walk round my garden to reorientate my brain to something approximating sanity.
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On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose
Honestly, I think that what they are saying in public is always in some way meant to direct and manage the community discussion. Right now, they just don't want us to consider sweeping changes with this re-design patch. Not to mention that it's unclear if "sweeping changes to how the game functions" (what they don't want) and "big improvements within" (what they want) excludes economy changes and/or changes to key mechanisms.
I'm not sure if changes to the macro mechanics are off the table forever. They barely touched on that in the beta and it keeps coming up again and again in the community discussions. So at some point they might relent and give it a spin. Hopefully.
On August 22 2016 20:43 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. I think that they could keep some mechanics in the game, but only if they make them not a must-have. I posted a suggestion a while ago that was approximately like this: Terran: - MULE removed. - Calldown supplies being more usable (upgrades also bunkers individually, but provides less supply buff and is more spammeable). - Terran gets a nerfed version of Techreactors, that can't research and can only produce one massive unit at a time, maybe at Armory tech level (or Armory + Shadow Ops). Or just an upgrade to reactor marauders. - Maybe another ability at Orbital. Terran has been given a ton of reactored units in LotV that intend to be core units, so a semi-Tech reactor makes relative sense. A semi-lategame Tech reactor makes bio less dependant on mules (Reactored Marauders) and is a big buff to mech, although several iterations need to be tested. With the removal of MULES, building Orbitals is noticeably optional, and once the supply limit is reached there's no reason to build more of them. Zerg: - Inject Larva removed, replaced with an ability that increases the morph speed of building hatcheries and zerg cocoons nearby. - Hatcheries can bank 4 larva (but produce them at the same speed), Lairs and Hives have slightly increased larva production speed and Larva limit. With baseline buffs to larva Production, an ability that enchances the building speed of Hatcheries would make a ton of sense, and it would have exactly the same feeling and micro than Injecting Larva. Increasing the building speed of Zerg units is not as broken as it is to other races, because Zerg is highly dependant on the production speed of Larva, not the morphing speed of them. THe morph speed buff to Zerg cocoons is just a buff in defensive situations, for example when you have a push knocking the door. Protoss: The easiest. - Chronboost requires energy again, but it has a high energy cost (75-100)and is oriented towards long-term rewards, for example with 60s-80s duration, 50% speed buff. Cannot target nexuses, pylons or cannons, only production and reasearch buildings. - Some defensive ability is given to nexus, like Pylon Overcharge (with balance adjustements) it costs energy too (50), and has limited cast range (2-3 bases long MAX) - Both abilities and maybe the energy regeneration of Nexus require CyberCore. - MSC reworked. This balances the small early game advantage that protoss has in terms of Workers, has an interesting strategic choice on energy usage of Nexuses, and Chronoboost is mostly tech oriented as it is in LotV. Removes the need of a unit to cast a core defensive ability
There are some good ideas in there, but I don't see how this changes macro APM requirements for Protoss and Terrans very much.
For comparison, the last time I thought about different macro mechanics, these were my ideas:
- Terran
M.U.L.E. replaced by a calldown on mineral patch which enriches the mineral patch (for example to give it gold mineral return value). Is attackable and destroys itself when the mineral patch has been mined out.
- Zerg
Spawn Larva replaced by Clone. Clone reproduces a friendly biological unit for health cost equivalent to unit HP.
- Protoss
Chrono Boost changed to area of effect unit buff. Target friendly units receive a timed buff to key stats (movement speed, attack/ mining rate, shield/ energy regeneration). Does not stack.
I think that those are some really unobtrusive mechanisms with largely the same effect as the existing macro mechanics for Terran and Zerg and a kind of catch-all solution for Protoss (replacing chrono'ing probe production is replaced by chrono'ing probe mining/ movement speed, Protoss gains a sort of shield battery, a sort of Khaydarin Amulet for all energy units, an inverse Time Warp, etc.).
On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that.
Yeah, exactly. Less macro-APM does not mean less APM overall. It just means more micro APM: less a-move big army clashes and more skirmishes and flanks.
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On August 23 2016 12:04 ihatevideogames wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP. How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out. The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that. And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win. You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much. Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What? Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map.
lol let me get this straight - you've expressed confusion about how what you said is racist - followed immediately by sourcing the original comment as being "truly racist"? I hope I'm not troll feeding here.
Moving on to relevancy - I may have missed the part of the buffs that eliminate the tremendous defenders advantage of mech? Less mobile siege tank with more damage? Stronger BC's that can't be produced in volume without a huge late game economy?
I can clarify further on the skill gap concern - imagine post design changes - 2 players both have pro level skill related to positioning their units and macro - who wins the game? Everything that I've seen playing this game at high master level for the last few years related to mech says that the player who decides he'd rather hang himself than continue sitting on his split map sensor towers and decides to attack loses. This leads to the turtle-fest which in my opinion will kill viewership and active players (just an opinion). Anyone who was around for wol and hots (pre PDD nerf) knows that horror-show that late game skyterran vs skyterran is (who is better at pdding / seekering and then running their ravens away?) Unless there is something I'm missing about the new mech comp that would allow for attacking on multiple fronts and some sort of harass that doesn't get completely shut down by turrets I don't see a way that one player separates himself from the other relative to his skill in the game - effectively lowering the skill cap. You won't get to see a player dominating the scene because of his insane mechanics - you'll see a much more level foreigner vs Korean playing field (same reason you see successful foreign zergs and protoss but not Terrans (outside of uthermal who is a beast - but has relied on gimmicky reaper builds to some extent). Z and P can position / macro / defend and still win the game late - T in the current meta really cannot (although TY might beg to disagree based on that ridiculous and incredible game vs. rogue in code S - inspiring shit right there if you haven't seen it - tho I will say this is the only game I can site in all of LOTV where a Terran won a super-late game vs. Z where the Z didn't make a blaring error).
Edit:
What I really think Blizzard needs to do is to create multiple modes that you can play the game on - one for pro level play and one that's more like game being shouted for by so many players (easier). This way everybody gets what they want? Blizz? Pls?
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So I'm curious, is bio dead in some TvX matchups, at the diamond level or higher with this update?
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@DomeGetta, have you seen LaLush's post(s) on economy asymmetry? It explains something about the design problems facing mech.
some links: 1 2 3
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On August 24 2016 03:57 Grumbels wrote:@DomeGetta, have you seen LaLush's post(s) on economy asymmetry? It explains something about the design problems facing mech. some links: 1 2 3
thx for posting sir.
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On August 24 2016 03:57 Grumbels wrote:@DomeGetta, have you seen LaLush's post(s) on economy asymmetry? It explains something about the design problems facing mech. some links: 1 2 3
Hadn't seen it - particularly liked the Morrow post.
I'm hoping that Blizz puts some real thought into how they are going to keep the skill cap high and create a way that a better player "mechanically" can still create tiny advantages though the game - the eco scaling would definitely help create more fights earlier on - but it still seems like it would come down literally to who got their army there first (relative to expanding). Meta would evolve that creates cookie-cutter builds for taking your expansions at exact timings while still being safe etc...meta plays like being greedier / safer would still exist but imo there needs to be a way that one mech player can reach a higher skill than the other - and not have it just be "took bases sooner / positioned his armies smarter" because again - I love chess - but sc2's not a turn based game - I really don't for-see mech hit squads or mech harass because the strength of the unit comp is massing in numbers - if you decided to split ur army up for attacking on multiple fronts your opponent can just steamroll ur smaller army and hold his production with defenders advantage.. everything just points towards a meta evolving that is split map max skyterran vs max skyterran which is atrocious to watch and play (imo)
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On August 24 2016 00:19 DomeGetta wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 12:04 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP. How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out. The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that. And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win. You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much. Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What? Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map. lol let me get this straight - you've expressed confusion about how what you said is racist - followed immediately by sourcing the original comment as being "truly racist"? I hope I'm not troll feeding here. Moving on to relevancy - I may have missed the part of the buffs that eliminate the tremendous defenders advantage of mech? Less mobile siege tank with more damage? Stronger BC's that can't be produced in volume without a huge late game economy? I can clarify further on the skill gap concern - imagine post design changes - 2 players both have pro level skill related to positioning their units and macro - who wins the game? Everything that I've seen playing this game at high master level for the last few years related to mech says that the player who decides he'd rather hang himself than continue sitting on his split map sensor towers and decides to attack loses. This leads to the turtle-fest which in my opinion will kill viewership and active players (just an opinion). Anyone who was around for wol and hots (pre PDD nerf) knows that horror-show that late game skyterran vs skyterran is (who is better at pdding / seekering and then running their ravens away?) Unless there is something I'm missing about the new mech comp that would allow for attacking on multiple fronts and some sort of harass that doesn't get completely shut down by turrets I don't see a way that one player separates himself from the other relative to his skill in the game - effectively lowering the skill cap. You won't get to see a player dominating the scene because of his insane mechanics - you'll see a much more level foreigner vs Korean playing field (same reason you see successful foreign zergs and protoss but not Terrans (outside of uthermal who is a beast - but has relied on gimmicky reaper builds to some extent). Z and P can position / macro / defend and still win the game late - T in the current meta really cannot (although TY might beg to disagree based on that ridiculous and incredible game vs. rogue in code S - inspiring shit right there if you haven't seen it - tho I will say this is the only game I can site in all of LOTV where a Terran won a super-late game vs. Z where the Z didn't make a blaring error). Edit: What I really think Blizzard needs to do is to create multiple modes that you can play the game on - one for pro level play and one that's more like game being shouted for by so many players (easier). This way everybody gets what they want? Blizz? Pls?
+ Show Spoiler +
+ Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3FzRclqLc
+ Show Spoiler +
Yes, that low-apm sitting turtling to lategame no skill fest, I saw so many foreigners playing like that because it was so easy.
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Prediction: Mech becomes OP, but not because things can't beat it head on, but rather because powerful harassment at the same time as powerful defense and space control breaks so many backs. In such a case, they should nerf harassment (remove afterburners, and more, hopefully nerf all harassment options by all races across the board. Game ending harassment is not fun) and not mech.
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Prediction: you're correct lol
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I tried to come back to this game. These changes all sound awesome, but this game is still crap compared to wc3.
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i dont care about most of these changes, but i hope that tankivac pickup is safe to be gone. and also the siege tank buff im really looking forward to. finally the siege tank buff that the community asked for like 5 years...
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On August 24 2016 22:50 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +Prediction: Mech becomes OP, but not because things can't beat it head on, but rather because powerful harassment at the same time as powerful defense and space control breaks so many backs. What does "breaks so many backs" even mean?
That it breaks your opponent. Nice that you are asking the hard hitting questions 
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On August 24 2016 08:41 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2016 00:19 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 12:04 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP. How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out. The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that. And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win. You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much. Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What? Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map. lol let me get this straight - you've expressed confusion about how what you said is racist - followed immediately by sourcing the original comment as being "truly racist"? I hope I'm not troll feeding here. Moving on to relevancy - I may have missed the part of the buffs that eliminate the tremendous defenders advantage of mech? Less mobile siege tank with more damage? Stronger BC's that can't be produced in volume without a huge late game economy? I can clarify further on the skill gap concern - imagine post design changes - 2 players both have pro level skill related to positioning their units and macro - who wins the game? Everything that I've seen playing this game at high master level for the last few years related to mech says that the player who decides he'd rather hang himself than continue sitting on his split map sensor towers and decides to attack loses. This leads to the turtle-fest which in my opinion will kill viewership and active players (just an opinion). Anyone who was around for wol and hots (pre PDD nerf) knows that horror-show that late game skyterran vs skyterran is (who is better at pdding / seekering and then running their ravens away?) Unless there is something I'm missing about the new mech comp that would allow for attacking on multiple fronts and some sort of harass that doesn't get completely shut down by turrets I don't see a way that one player separates himself from the other relative to his skill in the game - effectively lowering the skill cap. You won't get to see a player dominating the scene because of his insane mechanics - you'll see a much more level foreigner vs Korean playing field (same reason you see successful foreign zergs and protoss but not Terrans (outside of uthermal who is a beast - but has relied on gimmicky reaper builds to some extent). Z and P can position / macro / defend and still win the game late - T in the current meta really cannot (although TY might beg to disagree based on that ridiculous and incredible game vs. rogue in code S - inspiring shit right there if you haven't seen it - tho I will say this is the only game I can site in all of LOTV where a Terran won a super-late game vs. Z where the Z didn't make a blaring error). Edit: What I really think Blizzard needs to do is to create multiple modes that you can play the game on - one for pro level play and one that's more like game being shouted for by so many players (easier). This way everybody gets what they want? Blizz? Pls? + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR18zkO4ijU#t=55m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3FzRclqLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PinAQK599M#t=32m0s Yes, that low-apm sitting turtling to lategame no skill fest, I saw so many foreigners playing like that because it was so easy.
lol ok hold on - so your retort here is to site 1 mech vs bio game (which was awesome) and 2 tvz mech games?
Mech vs. Bio won't be a thing anymore.. so not really sure how that's relevant (mech vs bio is exciting, mech vs mech is not).
I'm not really sure what you were trying to convey with the 2 TvZ's though.
Are you actually trying to say that what evolved at the end of HOTS in TvZ was a good thing for viewership and fun to play? Sure initially there were some OK games to watch like the one's you sited - but the final meta of that matchup was disgusting.. yeah there was helion banshee harass early game OK.. but the majority of the games still ended in a max vs max split map situation waiting for one player to get impatient - one big fight after 45 minutes or worse a couple of those until the map was mined out and the terran took air control flew his buildings to the corners of the maps and protected them rofl.
This is why I'm saying there needs to be multiple versions of the game.. you are more than entitled to your opinion - if you actually enjoyed the end of HOTS and look forward to all mech vs mech TvT's I'm not saying you shouldn't get to live your dream..but none of the bullshit you linked actually addresses any of the concerns that were raised in previous posts - nice attempt at sarcasm though - but you might want to try counter-arguments or providing solutions to the seemingly impending issues vs. linking a few games from the end of hots rofl- makes for more constructive discussion imo.
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Maybe off topic, but I must mention that Archon`s graphic sucks; that crappy lightning..
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On August 24 2016 22:50 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +Prediction: Mech becomes OP, but not because things can't beat it head on, but rather because powerful harassment at the same time as powerful defense and space control breaks so many backs. What does "breaks so many backs" even mean?
Je! What RaFox said.
I mean, the natural / organic counter to mech / heavy positional space control play is out-expanding an opponent. If harassment is too powerful, it becomes non-viable and mech will rule over all.
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On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that.
You need to completely redesign the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch.
By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta.
It isn't a major game design patch you know.
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On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:You need you completely redisgn the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch.
By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta.
It isn't a major game design patch you know.
I disagree. We cannot tell the degree to which the game would need re-balancing (though, I admit we did get a hint during the beta) once macro BOOSTERS (they are not mechanics when properly distinguished, lest we wish to say that harvesting in general should be removed or not) would be removed. I also think you mistake balance with design, when they're properly distinguished. I personally don't think that the game would have to have much more re-balancing if those deplorable boosters were removed. And, even if so, it would be well worth the cost as the result would be a game of superior design.
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On August 25 2016 00:16 DomeGetta wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2016 08:41 Lexender wrote:On August 24 2016 00:19 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 12:04 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 07:48 ihatevideogames wrote:
Mech simply takes a different kind of skill than bio. While bio is arguably pure APM, mech is about positioning, composition and timing. It's so easy to die with mech, you get caught out of position and you're dead. It's also pretty hard to defend bases and expand. The wrong composition can also cost you the game.
In my opinion, a player who can defend his bases properly with the slow mech units, not get caught out unsieged and have the right composition to fight the lategame P/Z armies is not less skillfull than someone who shift-clicks medivacs all over the map.
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range. Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time". Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player. I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch. Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech. How much weaker? Dunno. To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP. How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out. The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that. And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win. You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much. Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What? Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map. lol let me get this straight - you've expressed confusion about how what you said is racist - followed immediately by sourcing the original comment as being "truly racist"? I hope I'm not troll feeding here. Moving on to relevancy - I may have missed the part of the buffs that eliminate the tremendous defenders advantage of mech? Less mobile siege tank with more damage? Stronger BC's that can't be produced in volume without a huge late game economy? I can clarify further on the skill gap concern - imagine post design changes - 2 players both have pro level skill related to positioning their units and macro - who wins the game? Everything that I've seen playing this game at high master level for the last few years related to mech says that the player who decides he'd rather hang himself than continue sitting on his split map sensor towers and decides to attack loses. This leads to the turtle-fest which in my opinion will kill viewership and active players (just an opinion). Anyone who was around for wol and hots (pre PDD nerf) knows that horror-show that late game skyterran vs skyterran is (who is better at pdding / seekering and then running their ravens away?) Unless there is something I'm missing about the new mech comp that would allow for attacking on multiple fronts and some sort of harass that doesn't get completely shut down by turrets I don't see a way that one player separates himself from the other relative to his skill in the game - effectively lowering the skill cap. You won't get to see a player dominating the scene because of his insane mechanics - you'll see a much more level foreigner vs Korean playing field (same reason you see successful foreign zergs and protoss but not Terrans (outside of uthermal who is a beast - but has relied on gimmicky reaper builds to some extent). Z and P can position / macro / defend and still win the game late - T in the current meta really cannot (although TY might beg to disagree based on that ridiculous and incredible game vs. rogue in code S - inspiring shit right there if you haven't seen it - tho I will say this is the only game I can site in all of LOTV where a Terran won a super-late game vs. Z where the Z didn't make a blaring error). Edit: What I really think Blizzard needs to do is to create multiple modes that you can play the game on - one for pro level play and one that's more like game being shouted for by so many players (easier). This way everybody gets what they want? Blizz? Pls? + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR18zkO4ijU#t=55m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3FzRclqLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PinAQK599M#t=32m0s Yes, that low-apm sitting turtling to lategame no skill fest, I saw so many foreigners playing like that because it was so easy. lol ok hold on - so your retort here is to site 1 mech vs bio game (which was awesome) and 2 tvz mech games? Mech vs. Bio won't be a thing anymore.. so not really sure how that's relevant (mech vs bio is exciting, mech vs mech is not). I'm not really sure what you were trying to convey with the 2 TvZ's though. Are you actually trying to say that what evolved at the end of HOTS in TvZ was a good thing for viewership and fun to play? Sure initially there were some OK games to watch like the one's you sited - but the final meta of that matchup was disgusting.. yeah there was helion banshee harass early game OK.. but the majority of the games still ended in a max vs max split map situation waiting for one player to get impatient - one big fight after 45 minutes or worse a couple of those until the map was mined out and the terran took air control flew his buildings to the corners of the maps and protected them rofl. This is why I'm saying there needs to be multiple versions of the game.. you are more than entitled to your opinion - if you actually enjoyed the end of HOTS and look forward to all mech vs mech TvT's I'm not saying you shouldn't get to live your dream..but none of the bullshit you linked actually addresses any of the concerns that were raised in previous posts - nice attempt at sarcasm though - but you might want to try counter-arguments or providing solutions to the seemingly impending issues vs. linking a few games from the end of hots rofl- makes for more constructive discussion imo.
Maybe be so, but neither anything you listed is as you say in the test map (and thats considering we can expect quite a few changes to it before it goes live).
And they do answer your question:
Can mech games be fun? Yes, answered with the videos.
Do they take skill to play at higher levels? Totally, same answer.
Will all games be like that? Maybe, maybe not, thats why need to test and do changes instead of going "OMG MECH SO BORING PEOPLE WHO PLAY MECH ARE ASSHOLES"
If so, how? Thats what games like this are important, what made those game fun and what make those games boring, take the first and enhanced, take the second and dimish it. Going forward with open mind instead of calling the end of the world.
You say most make mech games where boring and took no skill
I say the opposite.
Why should your opinion be more important or relevant than mine? Its not like you can objetively quantify it.
Thats what I and people who like mech like me ask is to give it a chance, see it evolve, try it, test it.
What you are saying is (with only 1 week with live patch, no match making que yet and very little high level material to watch) that NO MATTER WHAT, MECH WILL NEVER BE VIABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE TESTED!!
Tell me how is THAT more constructive discusion.
PS: I have way more mech games, great makes games, meh mech games, good mech games, mediocre mech games. Pretty much like anyother comp in the game.
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On August 25 2016 07:20 Jaedrik wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:You need you completely redisgn the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch.
By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta.
It isn't a major game design patch you know. I disagree. We cannot tell the degree to which the game would need re-balancing (though, I admit we did get a hint during the beta) once macro BOOSTERS (they are not mechanics when properly distinguished, lest we wish to say that harvesting in general should be removed or not) would be removed. I also think you mistake balance with design, when they're properly distinguished. I personally don't think that the game would have to have much more re-balancing if those deplorable boosters were removed. And, even if so, it would be well worth the cost as the result would be a game of superior design.
uh, the game from ground up is kinda based on the macro mechanic. To remove something as integral as macro mechanics, you would need to heavily resign the game, and I don't agree with your points despite your condescending comment about my inability to understand between design and balance.
Lets look at bio for example: Bio is very heavy on mineral and is a playstyle heavily boosted by fact that command centers and mules boost the mineral income to beyond the current base count of terran to facilitate heavy aggression and swarm of micro-heavy, cost effective bio units with some factory support. If you remove mules, theres a LOT less bio units coming out and would no longer be able to pump out units to support the army making and trading.
You also have to remind yourself that fundemental reason of M.U.L.E. existing in sc2 is to make up for time scvs take to build their buildings. All races workers gather equal amount of minerals and terran naturally fall behind due to their worker being tied up to building (zergs offset it somewhat w/ reduced structure cost/hatchery cost/inject/ect) and mules were method to offset such thing, and thats how terran has been balanced around since the start of starcraft 2. To remove it whole isnt as simple as you think.
Yes, changing resource cost is part of the balance but you have to remember this would make terran army absurdly cost efficient if you were to do so and be even more cost efficient with their resource pool.
Since all the "macro mechanics" are not equal since the do different things (protoss boosting production/terran giving extra worker/zerg getting more production) you cannot balance it by taking it out since they are no tall equal in power. This is no simple task and the change came out too late in beta to even test it. Seemed like it was half-hearted change from blizzard to me since it came so late and they attempted 0 way to balance it.
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please, no more macro suggestions, they aren't changing macro mechanics players have been using for years now
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On August 25 2016 08:21 Lexender wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2016 00:16 DomeGetta wrote:On August 24 2016 08:41 Lexender wrote:On August 24 2016 00:19 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 12:04 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 11:49 DomeGetta wrote:On August 23 2016 11:14 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 10:23 JimmyJRaynor wrote:On August 23 2016 09:30 ihatevideogames wrote:On August 23 2016 08:55 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
[quote]
due to the fog of war and watching my replays of my own Mech Games i'd say not getting caught unsieged has a significant component of luck to it. like more than 10% luck but less than 50% luck. some place in that range.
Also, your "time to move out" decision can fubar your army whether or not its Mech if your luck is bad. At play levels below Masters there is no real "optimal move out time".
Disclaimer: 60% Random. 40% Terran Diamond player.
I'd like to see Mech and ground units get stronger with this big new off-season patch.
Even with Mech getting stronger...I think pure Mech should be weaker than Bio and weaker than Bio/Mech.
How much weaker? Dunno.
To take it to an extreme .. it takes a lot more skill to manage 80 Marines than 12 Thors... and that skill should be rewarded. It takes more skill to manage 80 marines than to amove 12 Ultras. See how much of a fallacy that statement is? There's a certain amount of skill involved to getting to those 12 ultras, thors, whatever. I made it to Diamond on NA and EU playing mech in 80% of my games and I have to say not getting caught unsieged has nothing to do with luck, it's carelessness. This is the different kind of skill I was talking about, a good mech player will always spread out cheaper units to scout ahead for his army so he has time to siege, use smart scans, and always keep half of hits tanks sieged when his army is stopped, etc etc. And to be honest, playing bio feels easier to me. It's especially infuriating when I play a 50 min turtle mech game on New Gettys because I can never attack with mech in TvZ and the next game I win in 5 minutes because my stim 16 marine drop killed 12 drones and then the next I get another easy win by shift-clicking medivacs all over the map. If anything, I feel like bio is much more luck based than mech. yep , it takes skill to play Mech. it takes more skill to play Bio and Bio/Mech. and i'm not talking about A-moving.. which is only 1 thing out of 5,000 things you can do with 80 marines. you could place 8 marines in 10 different places on the map. and have them all having different responsibilities. Managing that process is more difficult than managing 12 Thors. You missed my point completely. I wasn't talking about amoving 80 marines, I was talking about managing them, vs managing 12 ultras. There are only a few things you can do with 12 ultras, 90% of the time you amove them. But that's fine and skillfull, but 12 thors is not apparently. You also completely ignored the whole point of getting to 12 3/3 thors or 12 8 armor ultras etc etc. What I'm trying to say is, microing bio and shitft-clicking drops are not the only indicators of skill in this game. But they've been the ones on the spotlight for terran for far too long. You know, there are certain communities that were making fun of SC2 for being a 'asian clicking simulator'. It's like alot of people really want it to be just that, instead of having more strategic options. LOL @ the racist and ignorant comment above. You are totally missing his point. What he's saying is that bio has a higher skill cap - which is what separates the Korean Terrans from the rest of the world. There's a reason that Korean Terrans in the history of SC2 have mostly chosen bio - and it's because it allows them to use their mechanics to gain an advantage that they wouldn't have otherwise (multitask and micro). If they go through with this patch - they are taking that away - which in my opinion is a shame. They say they want the Terran to have "options" but everything in this patch makes it pretty clear that mech will be the only viable option in all 3 match-ups. Foreign Terrans have always shown a much higher percentage of mech because it allows you to rely more on your positioning and macro than on your ability to out-maneuver your opponent and defeat them with constant pressure through multi-tasking. This will definitely level the playing field - but in my opinion lowering the skill cap of the game is moving in the wrong direction - I would really like to hear someone from Blizzard address this concern - please do not set the meta so that the correct way to play is to turtle to super late game tech every game - you have already made it that way for zerg in ZvT and it's bad enough with 1 race - if you go through with all of these patches every TvT is going to be a split map mech bore-fest and we're going to see this same thing in TvZ and more than likely TvP. How the heck is that racist, get some thicker skin. I was just saying how certain communities called the game (they used a trully racist word btw, i changed it) and how I find it funny that it sort of became true. Or are you denying the fact that LOTV shifted the game towards more micro and multitasking and less strategy and tactics? That's what I was trying to point out. The fact that mech is bad and bio is the only viable terran comp is a testament to that. And I don't think bio will be as weak as you say. Baneling buff aside, it will make it how it's supossed to be, the bio terran won't be able to just a-move into a tank line and win. You need to realise that turtle mech became a thing because you can NEVER attack with mech. If these changes go through, attacking with mech will be much, much more viable. I might be a scrub, but I can understand that much. Also, relying more on positioning, macro and unit composition instead of pure multitasking and APM is somehow reducing the skill cap of the game? What? Do you understand my 'racist' comment now? Everyone goes nuts over APM and multitasking, there's more to this game than how many medivacs you can shift-click across the map. lol let me get this straight - you've expressed confusion about how what you said is racist - followed immediately by sourcing the original comment as being "truly racist"? I hope I'm not troll feeding here. Moving on to relevancy - I may have missed the part of the buffs that eliminate the tremendous defenders advantage of mech? Less mobile siege tank with more damage? Stronger BC's that can't be produced in volume without a huge late game economy? I can clarify further on the skill gap concern - imagine post design changes - 2 players both have pro level skill related to positioning their units and macro - who wins the game? Everything that I've seen playing this game at high master level for the last few years related to mech says that the player who decides he'd rather hang himself than continue sitting on his split map sensor towers and decides to attack loses. This leads to the turtle-fest which in my opinion will kill viewership and active players (just an opinion). Anyone who was around for wol and hots (pre PDD nerf) knows that horror-show that late game skyterran vs skyterran is (who is better at pdding / seekering and then running their ravens away?) Unless there is something I'm missing about the new mech comp that would allow for attacking on multiple fronts and some sort of harass that doesn't get completely shut down by turrets I don't see a way that one player separates himself from the other relative to his skill in the game - effectively lowering the skill cap. You won't get to see a player dominating the scene because of his insane mechanics - you'll see a much more level foreigner vs Korean playing field (same reason you see successful foreign zergs and protoss but not Terrans (outside of uthermal who is a beast - but has relied on gimmicky reaper builds to some extent). Z and P can position / macro / defend and still win the game late - T in the current meta really cannot (although TY might beg to disagree based on that ridiculous and incredible game vs. rogue in code S - inspiring shit right there if you haven't seen it - tho I will say this is the only game I can site in all of LOTV where a Terran won a super-late game vs. Z where the Z didn't make a blaring error). Edit: What I really think Blizzard needs to do is to create multiple modes that you can play the game on - one for pro level play and one that's more like game being shouted for by so many players (easier). This way everybody gets what they want? Blizz? Pls? + Show Spoiler +https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR18zkO4ijU#t=55m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq3FzRclqLc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PinAQK599M#t=32m0s Yes, that low-apm sitting turtling to lategame no skill fest, I saw so many foreigners playing like that because it was so easy. lol ok hold on - so your retort here is to site 1 mech vs bio game (which was awesome) and 2 tvz mech games? Mech vs. Bio won't be a thing anymore.. so not really sure how that's relevant (mech vs bio is exciting, mech vs mech is not). I'm not really sure what you were trying to convey with the 2 TvZ's though. Are you actually trying to say that what evolved at the end of HOTS in TvZ was a good thing for viewership and fun to play? Sure initially there were some OK games to watch like the one's you sited - but the final meta of that matchup was disgusting.. yeah there was helion banshee harass early game OK.. but the majority of the games still ended in a max vs max split map situation waiting for one player to get impatient - one big fight after 45 minutes or worse a couple of those until the map was mined out and the terran took air control flew his buildings to the corners of the maps and protected them rofl. This is why I'm saying there needs to be multiple versions of the game.. you are more than entitled to your opinion - if you actually enjoyed the end of HOTS and look forward to all mech vs mech TvT's I'm not saying you shouldn't get to live your dream..but none of the bullshit you linked actually addresses any of the concerns that were raised in previous posts - nice attempt at sarcasm though - but you might want to try counter-arguments or providing solutions to the seemingly impending issues vs. linking a few games from the end of hots rofl- makes for more constructive discussion imo. Maybe be so, but neither anything you listed is as you say in the test map (and thats considering we can expect quite a few changes to it before it goes live). And they do answer your question: Can mech games be fun? Yes, answered with the videos. Do they take skill to play at higher levels? Totally, same answer. Will all games be like that? Maybe, maybe not, thats why need to test and do changes instead of going "OMG MECH SO BORING PEOPLE WHO PLAY MECH ARE ASSHOLES" If so, how? Thats what games like this are important, what made those game fun and what make those games boring, take the first and enhanced, take the second and dimish it. Going forward with open mind instead of calling the end of the world. You say most make mech games where boring and took no skill I say the opposite. Why should your opinion be more important or relevant than mine? Its not like you can objetively quantify it. Thats what I and people who like mech like me ask is to give it a chance, see it evolve, try it, test it. What you are saying is (with only 1 week with live patch, no match making que yet and very little high level material to watch) that NO MATTER WHAT, MECH WILL NEVER BE VIABLE AND SHOULD NOT BE TESTED!! Tell me how is THAT more constructive discusion. PS: I have way more mech games, great makes games, meh mech games, good mech games, mediocre mech games. Pretty much like anyother comp in the game.
First off - I haven't said one time that I don't want mech to work or that I dislike mech units or am a mech racist or whatever you are insinuating.
I also haven't said that your opinion of enjoying mech is worth less than my opinion.
What I've done is raised concerns about what they currently proposing creating a turtle-fest.
You haven't said anything in any of your replies to say why that won't be - or how that can be prevented.
All you've done is post 3 games (none of which are mech vs mech btw) and said "look these were fun!"
Fact is that end of hots TVZ was MOSTLY a turtle-fest and it wasn't fun to watch or play (for me - this is an opinion with equal worth to your own - so no feelings hurt).
TvT mech into sky terran was MOSTLY a turtle-fest.
Posting 1 or 2 games (which you haven't even done regarding mech v mech) isn't constructive because
1 - it's not relevant - that doesn't have the buffed siege tanks or any of the other buffs they are talking about.
2 - highlighting an exception to what most of the games looked like is misleading.
If you can answer any of my questions about what is going to separate 1 mecher from another in mech tvt that isnt who is better at turtling to split map and what is going to separate the mech terran vs the zerg turtle-fest to hive tech regarding how well they play the game mechanically - then you've said something constructive to the conversation.
I understand the test map isn't out - but if it comes out the way they have shown it will - I'll eat my words if both of these things don't happen - I don't even have an idea how TvP is going to look but I really doubt it will be much different - again some how they have to figure out a way where turtling is NOT the best way to play (which with mech how it is now - and even more so with how it is proposed - is the best way to play).
I never said it's impossible to make a mech game fun - I said that the way they've loaded these balance changes is not going to create the desired effect of providing a diverse style of play (if mech stays how they have it - it will be so much better that it will be the only style) and that making the siege tank less mobile with more damage only intensifies the turtle effect.
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On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that. You need to completely redesign the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch. By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta. It isn't a major game design patch you know.
Except for the fact that they could just build them in...
I mean how hard is it to double larvae production once you have a spawning pool, reduce protoss build times and either give orbitals an aoe that increases mining or just increase mining rates of terran workers nonconditionally?
I know that that wouldn't be exactly the same, but their current proposals aren't 100% linear either. Hell the worst approximation is chronoboost, which they could just leave in in it's current form since it doesn't take a lot of apm anyways.
Again I don't believe a second that Blizz is gonna do that, but seriously, it's half an hour of numbers crunching if they want it.
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On August 25 2016 19:26 Blackfeather wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that. You need to completely redesign the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch. By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta. It isn't a major game design patch you know. Except for the fact that they could just build them in... I mean how hard is it to double larvae production once you have a spawning pool, reduce protoss build times and either give orbitals an aoe that increases mining or just increase mining rates of terran workers nonconditionally? I know that that wouldn't be exactly the same, but their current proposals aren't 100% linear either. Hell the worst approximation is chronoboost, which they could just leave in in it's current form since it doesn't take a lot of apm anyways. Again I don't believe a second that Blizz is gonna do that, but seriously, it's half an hour of numbers crunching if they want it.
Tell me what that adds? Autocasted macro mechanics do nothing for the state of game but ensure that the said macro mechanics are automated and easier on newer players and it affects some race more than others (protoss would still need to cast).
It adds absolutely nothing to the argument and original points about slowing game down/ect. It's the current version without any macro mechanic that at least serves to differentiate people who use it correctly
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On August 26 2016 03:36 Barrin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 24 2016 22:58 RaFox17 wrote:On August 24 2016 22:50 Barrin wrote:Prediction: Mech becomes OP, but not because things can't beat it head on, but rather because powerful harassment at the same time as powerful defense and space control breaks so many backs. What does "breaks so many backs" even mean? That it breaks your opponent. Nice that you are asking the hard hitting questions Oh. I was thinking it was some sort of appeal to emotion. I see now. I think one major misconception is that Terran Mech is the only way to have space controlling units. Yes, Terran's (Mech in particular) major strength is space-controlling units (the loading screen in one of the LotV epilogue campaigns, where you're playing Terran defending a siege basically says as much), but they are not the only race with space-controlling units. Protoss: - Photon Cannon- Mothership/ Core's Photon Overcharge on a Pylon- Mothership/ Core's Time Warp- Sentry's Force Field- Collosus- Oracle's Stasis Ward- Tempest and its new ability. - High hitpoint units like Archons and Immortals are good at holding the line. Zerg: - Creep from Creep Tumors, etc. - Spine Crawler- Spore Crawler- Queen squads with Tranfusion- (Burrowed) Baneling- Lurker- Brood Lord and especially their Broodlings help cause friendly-fire. - Again, high hitpoint units like Roaches and Ultralisks are good at holding the line. And the other race's strengths? Protoss in particular has the best tools for breaking positions that are already controlled by space-controlling units (as the loading screen indicates in the LotV mission where immortals are unlocked). Note that all of the non-stationary units/abilities listed above (most of them) can be used for this. Here are some more of these "siege-breaking" units and instant-cast abilities not listed above (some of the better ones are only listed above): Protoss - Zealots in particular can be used to cause friendly-fire against sieged tanks. - Adept with Psionic Transfer to mitigate siege range and help cause friendly-fire against sieged tanks. - Stalker with Blink to snipe liberators. - High Templar's Psionic Storm- Disruptor- Phoenix Graviton Beam- Void Ray to snipe sieged tanks and thors. - Carrier with their new highly efficient Interceptors used in conjunction with your own well space-controlled area for baiting can be used to break down a sieged position. Zerg - Zerglings in particular can be used to cause friendly-fire against sieged tanks. - Roaches with Tunneling Claws to get up next to sieged tanks for initiating a fight. - Ravager's Corrosive Bile- Swarm Host with Flying Locusts should be good at this now that I think about it. - Infestor's Neural Parasite (note that Infestors will be able to cast while burrowed) - Infestor's Fungal Growth if there are clumped up units, or Infested Terran if not. - Viper's Abduct- Viper's Blinding CloudKey concept: AoE can be used to force enemy units to spread out allowing a greater concentration of force to overcome. This is a double-edged sword for sieged tanks, which generally need support. I haven't found it written anywhere what Zerg's strength is supposed to be, but it's basically: controlling most areas most of the time. This allows them to take the extra bases that they need for extra income and production because their units are generally the least efficient. The extra base(s) also help them survive semi-base-trades, as economic counter-attacks are often an ideal choice with their highly mobile units (particularly Zerglings & Mutalisks). Splitting a Zerg's production is often a useful tactic, but it can also backfire if the Zerg can manage to do multiple flanks. Completely containing a Zerg and preventing flanks from happening, if you manage to do it, can indeed be game-ending. Which I guess is partially why Zerg has the best tools for moving an entire army around with their cheap transports and Nydus Network (which allows even their slower units to counter-attack and retreat before fatal damage). The thing about space-controlling units is that they generally take a moment to set up. Which is easier to do when you're defending and not attacking. Blizzard is being smart here and will look at increasing siege-up time on siege tanks before nerfing anything else about them. I should commend you on recognizing that space-controlling units can be offensive as well as defensive (related: Is High Ground Only Defensive?, but it is really not quite so simple. Disclaimer: Almost all of the units listed above have more uses/roles then mentioned.
It is the first time I see someone mentioning campaign loading screens as a proof for anything... quite funny! Nice post anyway ;-)
I agree that map control is supposed to be Zerg's strength, initially with speedlings and later on with creep, mutalisks and/or lurkers. Roaches just do not feel right for Zerg... but that's another story.
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On August 26 2016 05:22 jinjin5000 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 25 2016 19:26 Blackfeather wrote:On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I'm just going to throw some shit out there. I don't know what my icon says, but I've only been playing random on those rare occasions that I've played SC2 in the past 5 years or so. I started out as a Zerg player in WoL when I borderlined as a low-level master player (I've been in and out of masters during the first season).
Personally, I'm still upset that they didn't remove the macro mechanics. I just feel like it's detrimental to my enjoyment of the game. I never played as much SC2 as I did in that short time period where they reduced the need for macro mechanics. In addition to that, I feel like units such as the Queen and MSC detract from my freedom to pick and choose my strategies, both in offence (playing against those units) and defence (where they are basically 100% necessary to be built). Add to that the economic "defence" of the MULE (which allows Terran to sustain worker damage and recover from it), and we've covered all three races somewhat in this respect, I think.
Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise. From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that. On August 20 2016 19:50 a_flayer wrote:
I would like to see a SC2 where these units just aren't absolutely necessary in order to play the game and at the same time deal with my dislike for the macro mechanics.
Maybe increase the natural larvae spawn of hatcheries to the point where queens aren't necessary, or at least not quite as prolific. Remove the spawn larvae ability of queens or reduce it to 1 larva per inject to make it an optional boost if you want more zerglings for your strategy of choice and increase the cost of the queen (maybe 200/50?) and her abilities (50 energy?) so that maybe you'll just have one or two if you really want to spread creep fast or something.
Change the MULE into something where it can provide a boost to the Terran economy without making it necessary to be dropped constantly. Perhaps allow it to be dropped and convert into a building at a faster rate than normal SCVs build them instead of the harvest-resources-at-an-increased-rate ability.
I'm not sure how to handle the MSC at all. It just seems like such an incredible mess of a unit, as you absolutely 100% cannot go around this unit in any shape way or form when you are playing Protoss. I basically hated sentries throughout WoL and HotS for the same reason. Stuff like that just disgusts me as someone who likes to get a choice in where I invest my resources.
It's bad enough that we have to make all these workers all the time (joke!).
Ah well, it's never gonna happen, I guess. I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise. While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that. You need to completely redesign the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch. By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta. It isn't a major game design patch you know. Except for the fact that they could just build them in... I mean how hard is it to double larvae production once you have a spawning pool, reduce protoss build times and either give orbitals an aoe that increases mining or just increase mining rates of terran workers nonconditionally? I know that that wouldn't be exactly the same, but their current proposals aren't 100% linear either. Hell the worst approximation is chronoboost, which they could just leave in in it's current form since it doesn't take a lot of apm anyways. Again I don't believe a second that Blizz is gonna do that, but seriously, it's half an hour of numbers crunching if they want it. Tell me what that adds? Autocasted macro mechanics do nothing for the state of game but ensure that the said macro mechanics are automated and easier on newer players and it affects some race more than others (protoss would still need to cast). It adds absolutely nothing to the argument and original points about slowing game down/ect. It's the current version without any macro mechanic that at least serves to differentiate people who use it correctly
You're missing the point, buddy. The argument is not about slowing the game down. It's about shifting APM from macro to micro.
What that would add to the game is pretty obvious, right? More focus on battles, less focus on producing.
Just my personal opinion, but I rather watch great unit control than flawless macro. Not to take away from great macro players, but macro skill is largely invisible to the viewer and even where it's visible (bases and army) it's not nearly as exciting as great unit control.
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I believe that the type of match shown above (Canata vs FanTaSy) displays an option that should be available to Terran players. That is, the ability to build mostly factory units and win games up to the GM level, without having that feeling that you are playing the race with the most disadvantages and less options available to it. This is of course under the assumption that the units are balanced and that you are winning your GM level games based on the player's skill level being higher.
Let's face it - most spectated GM Terran streamers are frustrated at the current state of SC2, and this new redesign has the potential to make things right. It is necessary.
All of this being said, I believe that at the Pro (Korean/Kespa) level, Bio play should remain the most powerful strategy in all match-ups - at the very highest level. It takes an incredible investment and and the highest skill level in the game to master the multi-tasking, awareness, and unit micro levels needed to make bio work at the highest level, and it should continue to be rewarded as such. The highest level TvT in the world should definitely be won by the Bio player.
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On August 26 2016 21:19 PressureSC2 wrote:
I believe that the type of match shown above (Canata vs FanTaSy) displays an option that should be available to Terran players. That is, the ability to build mostly factory units and win games up to the GM level, without having that feeling that you are playing the race with the most disadvantages and less options available to it. This is of course under the assumption that the units are balanced and that you are winning your GM level games based on the player's skill level being higher.
Let's face it - most spectated GM Terran streamers are frustrated at the current state of SC2, and this new redesign has the potential to make things right. It is necessary.
All of this being said, I believe that at the Pro (Korean/Kespa) level, Bio play should remain the most powerful strategy in all match-ups - at the very highest level. It takes an incredible investment and and the highest skill level in the game to master the multi-tasking, awareness, and unit micro levels needed to make bio work at the highest level, and it should continue to be rewarded as such. The highest level TvT in the world should definitely be won by the Bio player.
Hard to say.
Mvp vs yellow and Flash vs jaedong games are similar.
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On August 26 2016 07:37 Turb0Sw4g wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2016 05:22 jinjin5000 wrote:On August 25 2016 19:26 Blackfeather wrote:On August 25 2016 04:08 jinjin5000 wrote:On August 23 2016 07:03 a_flayer wrote:On August 23 2016 00:12 Blackfeather wrote:On August 22 2016 23:22 a_flayer wrote:On August 22 2016 22:43 JCoto wrote:On August 22 2016 22:16 Blackfeather wrote:On August 21 2016 19:21 Turb0Sw4g wrote:
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Me too. I really hope they will at some point re-evaluate the macro mechanics removal. IMO, one of the major reasons of why they didn't keep this change was that it tipped balance against Terran. With the buffs to mech it may have played out otherwise.
From my experience, without macro mechanics your micro in battles became way more important if you played Protoss or Terran (inject was just toned down, so not much of a change for Zerg). I really enjoyed that.
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I agree with this completely. Why are there units (other than workers) you basically must build regardless of your strategy? Queens, MULEs and Chrono Boost just add a mechanical barrier but very little strategic-wise.
While I agree and always thought that sc2 had too many inflexible elements that take the focus away from actual strategy (yay, macro apm, so interesting...), blizzard made clear that they want the game to be mechanical taxing and they want to keep their dog trainer parts in the game. They reemphasized this again @fundamental changes. I doubt we are going to see any macro changes that aren't +/-costs. So I guess talking about it really serves no purpose I think that what I prosposed above is not a bad solution. I think I've read your proposed solutions before and I found them terribly vague and incomplete. And I still think that. Much like mine, except in different ways. I was really just venting with my original post because I can't be arsed to play the game in the way Blizzard seems to want the game to be played. I wasn't trying to start a discussion or even expecting people to agree with me, lel. Can totally relate to that, was a random plat/diamond player in wol and feel the same about macro mechanics (although I couldn't test it cause I got no beta key). One of the reasons I stopped playing was because Sc2 was for me too much RT and too little S. But the macro mechanics resolution made pretty clear that Blizz wants to keep it that way, or at least keep APM a major factor. I feel that, if you remove artificial macro mechanics, the excessive APM will simply be dedicated to more multi-pronged harassments & engaging the other player in combat instead of macroing. But maybe I'm crazy like that and people will still go for the 1a deathball while APM drops down to next to nothing cause its so easy in SC2 to do that. You need to completely redesign the game then. Macro mechanics balanced each races economy to roughly equal rates despite the differences between them and when blizzard just flat out half heartedly removed macro mechanic back in beta, it was a big imbalanced mess that was nowhere near remotely balanced. Terran w/o mule couldn't even 1/1/1 off one base without significant gaps and asking blizzard to modify every single units cost in relative to eco is too much for a major balance patch. By the way, zerg kept inject on autocast while other races got theirs flat out removed during that patch so other races were significantly nered that time in beta. It isn't a major game design patch you know. Except for the fact that they could just build them in... I mean how hard is it to double larvae production once you have a spawning pool, reduce protoss build times and either give orbitals an aoe that increases mining or just increase mining rates of terran workers nonconditionally? I know that that wouldn't be exactly the same, but their current proposals aren't 100% linear either. Hell the worst approximation is chronoboost, which they could just leave in in it's current form since it doesn't take a lot of apm anyways. Again I don't believe a second that Blizz is gonna do that, but seriously, it's half an hour of numbers crunching if they want it. Tell me what that adds? Autocasted macro mechanics do nothing for the state of game but ensure that the said macro mechanics are automated and easier on newer players and it affects some race more than others (protoss would still need to cast). It adds absolutely nothing to the argument and original points about slowing game down/ect. It's the current version without any macro mechanic that at least serves to differentiate people who use it correctly You're missing the point, buddy. The argument is not about slowing the game down. It's about shifting APM from macro to micro. What that would add to the game is pretty obvious, right? More focus on battles, less focus on producing. Just my personal opinion, but I rather watch great unit control than flawless macro. Not to take away from great macro players, but macro skill is largely invisible to the viewer and even where it's visible (bases and army) it's not nearly as exciting as great unit control.
Couldn't have said it better. A lot of the ingame time gets wasted on stuff with no conscious decision and strategy involved. It's also not very flashy. It's mainly running after a clock, especially inject. MULE and chrono have at least a little bit decision making involved.
If you want to slow the game down, you can just reduce mining speed. Slowing the game down a lot would take a major rebalancing anyways, even if production and mining speeds would stay at comparable ratios between the races. T1/t1.5 aren't equal in power (not that I want them to be) and making players spend more time with them means that they have more time to inflict damage before T2 comes out.
Again I doubt that Blizz is going to touch that topic in the near future.
On August 26 2016 21:19 PressureSC2 wrote:
I believe that the type of match shown above (Canata vs FanTaSy) displays an option that should be available to Terran players. That is, the ability to build mostly factory units and win games up to the GM level, without having that feeling that you are playing the race with the most disadvantages and less options available to it. This is of course under the assumption that the units are balanced and that you are winning your GM level games based on the player's skill level being higher.
Let's face it - most spectated GM Terran streamers are frustrated at the current state of SC2, and this new redesign has the potential to make things right. It is necessary.
All of this being said, I believe that at the Pro (Korean/Kespa) level, Bio play should remain the most powerful strategy in all match-ups - at the very highest level. It takes an incredible investment and and the highest skill level in the game to master the multi-tasking, awareness, and unit micro levels needed to make bio work at the highest level, and it should continue to be rewarded as such. The highest level TvT in the world should definitely be won by the Bio player.
Classic answer: take what makes something awesome and scaling with skill and apply it to other stuff. If mech had possibilities for a lot of multipronged harass with split micro while still keeping the space control factor I don't see why it shouldn't be possible for it to require equal skill. I think that's the main reason blizz tried so desperately to make mech-medivac work.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
