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Warp Gate is one of the primary glaring holes in Protoss design that unless radically changed will always make Gateway units not be core units (or if they are core they are usually overpowered).
I mean how hard is it to understand for the team? In an RTS reinforcement times are a critical feature, it's what dictates where you attack, how much you commit, and how much damage you can do. It's what keep units balanced, would marines be balanced if they could be drop podded onto the battle field? Would Zerglings be if you could summon 10 larvae worth of them from any Overlord?
Of course not, that's why Gateway has always been imbalanced one way or another, because summoning 10 Zealots right outside your opponents base and completely negating reinforcement times is just...well...
Bad design :/
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reinforcement hinges upon keeping a lone pylon or warp prism hovering in mid air. Neither of these things can defend themselves and when they are destroyed the attack is over. sure you can build pylons all over the place. that makes ur strategy more transparent.
Warp in is a unique aspect of Protoss and increases racial diversity. i don't like losing to it, but i sure like winning with it. funny how that works eh? Warp-in is the Brad Marchand of RTS mechanics.
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On October 11 2016 16:16 Turb0Sw4g wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2016 05:57 BronzeKnee wrote:On October 07 2016 07:26 Turb0Sw4g wrote:In my opinion, there are a lot of problems with Protoss design - Stalkers and Zealots are too weak, Adepts are too strong
- Phoenix more or less mandatory in PvZ (to guard against heavy Muta play)
- Oracle harassment is too strong
- Mothership Core exists and is actually necessary for early game defense (and enables offensive pylon rushes)
- Void Ray only has a niche role
- Overlapping splash (Colossus, Disruptor, Psi Storm)
- Too many spells and abilities
So, just to name the change with the most potential for a positive impact: please try changing the Stalkers damage to flat 14 damage and in turn increase its cost. For example This was hard to me to read, because save the parts about units released in LOTV, all of that has been true in WOL and HOTS too. With one exception: You could stop Mutalisks in WOL by whittling away at them with Blink Stalkers and Storm. The Regeneration bonus given in HOTS made that impractical, and the game became less strategically diverse as a result. Sorry, bro. But yeah, most of this has been true since WOL. They never fixed the Gateway dilemma: if Gateway units are being buffed Warpgate tech becomes too powerful; less powerful Gateway units implies reliance on gimmicks (Photon Overcharge), one-sidedly overpowered units (Oracle, Disruptor) and impossible to balance spells (Force Field). The best suggestion to fix this imo is to - buff gateway units a little (to make them more all-round)
- redesign warpgate tech (by flipping Warpgate and Gateway production rate)
I think this change alone would make it possible to remove the Mothership Core. The stalker change is a good starting point. Let's hope they'll actually go through with it and let us test it.
I'd have to agree its the only simple solution. And blizzard for some reason likes simple.
They've historically had some obsession with warpgate being how they want things to work that I wish they'd get over it as it's made protoss the bullshit race.
If gateways made stuff fast and warp gate could warp in but was super slow to recharge, things could be a lot more protossy again.
However buffing the units has a stack of issues. Stronger zealots makes proxy gate too strong, maybe they need an extra upgrade to man up those zealots. Stalkers have to be made of glass because blink happens to them, dragoons with blink would be too powerful..
This thing of giving powerful abilities to core units is a recurring theme and causes buckets full of issues. Adepts as tank, damage dealer, harassment and magical fairy warp scout seems like too many tricks for one unit. It lets protoss get out on the map sure but it produces a tonne of bullshit allins and 1 mistake auto-losses. Honestly I don't think you can buff what we have now without opening many cans of worms.
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On October 12 2016 03:03 mostevil wrote:Show nested quote +On October 11 2016 16:16 Turb0Sw4g wrote:On October 11 2016 05:57 BronzeKnee wrote:On October 07 2016 07:26 Turb0Sw4g wrote:In my opinion, there are a lot of problems with Protoss design - Stalkers and Zealots are too weak, Adepts are too strong
- Phoenix more or less mandatory in PvZ (to guard against heavy Muta play)
- Oracle harassment is too strong
- Mothership Core exists and is actually necessary for early game defense (and enables offensive pylon rushes)
- Void Ray only has a niche role
- Overlapping splash (Colossus, Disruptor, Psi Storm)
- Too many spells and abilities
So, just to name the change with the most potential for a positive impact: please try changing the Stalkers damage to flat 14 damage and in turn increase its cost. For example This was hard to me to read, because save the parts about units released in LOTV, all of that has been true in WOL and HOTS too. With one exception: You could stop Mutalisks in WOL by whittling away at them with Blink Stalkers and Storm. The Regeneration bonus given in HOTS made that impractical, and the game became less strategically diverse as a result. Sorry, bro. But yeah, most of this has been true since WOL. They never fixed the Gateway dilemma: if Gateway units are being buffed Warpgate tech becomes too powerful; less powerful Gateway units implies reliance on gimmicks (Photon Overcharge), one-sidedly overpowered units (Oracle, Disruptor) and impossible to balance spells (Force Field). The best suggestion to fix this imo is to - buff gateway units a little (to make them more all-round)
- redesign warpgate tech (by flipping Warpgate and Gateway production rate)
I think this change alone would make it possible to remove the Mothership Core. The stalker change is a good starting point. Let's hope they'll actually go through with it and let us test it. I'd have to agree its the only simple solution. And blizzard for some reason likes simple. They've historically had some obsession with warpgate being how they want things to work that I wish they'd get over it as it's made protoss the bullshit race. If gateways made stuff fast and warp gate could warp in but was super slow to recharge, things could be a lot more protossy again. However buffing the units has a stack of issues. Stronger zealots makes proxy gate too strong, maybe they need an extra upgrade to man up those zealots. Stalkers have to be made of glass because blink happens to them, dragoons with blink would be too powerful.. This thing of giving powerful abilities to core units is a recurring theme and causes buckets full of issues. Adepts as tank, damage dealer, harassment and magical fairy warp scout seems like too many tricks for one unit. It lets protoss get out on the map sure but it produces a tonne of bullshit allins and 1 mistake auto-losses. Honestly I don't think you can buff what we have now without opening many cans of worms.
A very simple solution would be to give Sentries a Shield Restoration ability—single target and channeled like in the LotV campaign—instead of Guardian Shield. This would buff Gateway units indirectly (i.e. by giving them more HP if they have Sentry suppport) and wouldn't make proxy Gate strategies stronger (unless you commit to a couple of Sentries which would however weaken the push).
I agree that a direct buff would be hard to balance out, though.
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The idea that they want 3 different ways to make the races unique with units is silly.
Because you still produce a majority of units the traditional way(terran and protoss the same, a unit from a building). It is just this one niche thing that happens to be the core of the design and backbone of the army AND your early game units.
Why not make this a late game feature of a DT specifically, that it can warp in at a pylon, or that air units are warped in etc. I'm not saying that would be balanced, but my point is that it seems silly to not let warpgates go, which ruin the game, just to say "see its different!" What is even dumber is when you are warping in units, while your other units are trying to walk their way across the map. We should believe they have figured out how to warp in only have their army? The whole thing is just a disaster. And if you wanted this warp in feature, there are other ways it could have been done.
But I think my idea on the previous page would keep the unique aspects of warpgate in the game in some form, but allow for the game to correct itself otherwise. I really think the design and decision to go with Warpgate has hurt this game more than any other decision because of the domino effect it has had on the entire game. Even as far as map composition etc.
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The whine is powerful in this thread...
I love the warp gate mechanic, it is fun and iconic and represents protoss for me... I would hate to see it gone (come in it is even in the lotv trailer..)
A lot of your arguments are "it's bad design"
Maybe it's designed exactly how it was intended, there isnt a single and unique way of designing stuff..
Lately it seems that with the argument of "bad design" people ask for nerfs to tone down what they don't like (the game is balanced so the balance argument doesn't hold.. and now the "design")
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We're discussing about warp gate? really? Yawn.
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On October 12 2016 02:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
reinforcement hinges upon keeping a lone pylon or warp prism hovering in mid air. Neither of these things can defend themselves and when they are destroyed the attack is over. sure you can build pylons all over the place. that makes ur strategy more transparent.
Warp in is a unique aspect of Protoss and increases racial diversity. i don't like losing to it, but i sure like winning with it. funny how that works eh? Warp-in is the Brad Marchand of RTS mechanics.
It is a give an take, would you like to lose wg but have many of the fundamental problems of protoss be fixed or keep wg and have the design of the race be of a gimmick.
And by gimmick I don't mean "is a gimmick because I don't like it" but "is a gimmick because results aren't consistent through out a game"
Many of the fundamental problem of protoss, as many many people has said, was this give and take, and this can be observed in the game with how vastly different a unit/composition/strat can performd only due to warpgate.
Stalkers-> Generally good units but they scale pretty baddly so they aren't specially strong.
Add some thing a little abusable (MsC giving vision and maps with a big main)-> Suddenly stalkers are super imba.
Adepts-> Really good units but they are pretty counterable with standard comps.
One single wp gets in the base undetected-> Suddenly 12 adepts are in your base and you have no workers left.
And thats only gateway units, this whole design issue goes to all protoss units (colossus-viking interaction being a "do I have enough vikings and win, or not have enough and lose", immortal/sentry vs bl/infestor dont let them get there with an all in) were support units become supper important but also super fragile because they HAVE to deal the damage the gateway units don't deal BECAUSE if they DID deal that damage gateway all ins would be too strong.
Same thing with everything (MsC, chrono boost to a degree, overcharge in all its forms, the nature of "deal game ending damage or no damage and lose the game" of units like DTs, disruptors and oracle, etc etc)
I think you get the geist of it now, you can't ate the cake and have it too.
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i experience playing Protoss as fun and unique. i appreciate playing the race and playing against the race. Some people talk like Protoss has had 6 lost years due to warp gate tech. i disagree.
Warp Gate mechanics were explored during teh LotV beta. i liked the process, i liked the results of the experiments and i like the Warp Gate mechanics for LotV.
the majority of players pushing the "SC2 is fundamentally flawed" narrative are bored of RTS games in general. Its not like they're rushing to play some other RTS that is way better. When i tire of all the economic-in-base babysitting that is fundamental to both SC1 and SC2 i just play RA3. I know Blizzard will never strip down any SC game to have the bare bones kind of economy of the RA series.
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On October 12 2016 09:16 Lexender wrote:
were support units become supper important but also super fragile because they HAVE to deal the damage the gateway units don't deal BECAUSE if they DID deal that damage gateway all ins would be too strong.
This is basically already shown to be false.
Adepts vastly out-damage any unit after +1 and glaives in the early game ... yet the only problem with them in the current iteration of the game is that the shade allows them to always choose favorable engagements.
Shadeless adepts would cause exactly 0 design problems (or balance problems) early-game, even with the massive damage they do versus light.
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Given that, all that we need now is to remove the gimmick (the shade) from the adept and standardize it so that it can be useful in many situations (flatten the damage to have no +light component). When removing the shade, we'd probably like to give them some movement speed to allow them to be microed slightly better than currently.
Do that, and all of the sudden Protoss doesn't need PO any more. Protoss doesn't cause issues with warp-gate because the units have one entry point and are counter-able with sufficient forces (just like medivac drops). Protoss doesn't suffer versus early-attacks because they have a unit with sufficient damage to actually kill incoming forces ... which scales well enough into the mid-game to be the basis of a composition.
Protoss' gateway units present balance problems because they're designed to have problems, not because of warp-gate.
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Stalkers are made to be retained. Early-game, with blink, they're the most mobile unit in the game and the tankiest. If nothing can deal sufficient damage to ward them off, then they're simply impossible to stop snow-balling.
Zealots are made to tank (but have very high DPS, as a threat). If they don't connect, they do practically nothing but force kiting ... if they do connect, they do massive damage.
Sentries are designed 100% around forcefields. If forcefields are good, they are worth their weight in gold ... if not, they're mostly useless (and slow to boot).
There's not much room for wiggling with balance numbers here ... it's an either-or situation: stalkers are retained or they're not, zealots connect with melee range or they don't, forcefields are excellent or they're not. This makes the units' balance extremely finely connected with their abilities and the counters available.
Protoss units simply don't work well in general situations. They're extreme specialists!
That's the problem. Marines, lings, marauders, roaches, and hydras are all generalists. They're good in most situations all game long ... and excellent in others. Protoss needs a "boring generalist" unit to stabilize their compositions and allow their extremes to be toned down.
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Russian Federation54 Posts
On October 13 2016 01:23 Edowyth wrote:
Protoss units simply don't work well in general situations. They're extreme specialists!
100% true.
Why not remove the shade, give adept glaves at start(maybe even not 10+12 damage but 12+10)(without shade they pose no threat) and give mid game move speed upgrade(in twilight) to make them microable.
there will be some problems with zerg all-ins but still its possible to balance.
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On October 12 2016 02:51 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
reinforcement hinges upon keeping a lone pylon or warp prism hovering in mid air. Neither of these things can defend themselves and when they are destroyed the attack is over. sure you can build pylons all over the place. that makes ur strategy more transparent.
Warp in is a unique aspect of Protoss and increases racial diversity. i don't like losing to it, but i sure like winning with it. funny how that works eh? Warp-in is the Brad Marchand of RTS mechanics.
This is a really good point. Protoss is unique with its warpgate ability which makes it the best "timing attack" race. However, with proper scouting, it is easy to figure out if they want to go for a gateway timing and if you can destroy their reinforcement point, the timing attack ends and the defender gains the advantage. Just like how Zerg is really good at tech switching, there is a huge vulnerability when a tech building is destroyed and has to be rebuilt. We shouldn't be getting rid of warpgate because it brings a diverse way of playing the game, which is what makes the game great.
The only problem is however, that when they buffed prisms to have ranged pickup AND added a unit that can shade itself base to base, they didn't come up with an appropriate way of balancing the warp prism adept all in strategy. I would propose that a warp prism cost gas as well as minerals to make it more of an investment. On top of that, they nerfed warp ins from pylons in that a pylon had to be next to a nexus or supporting a warpgate to have a fast warp in. But warp prisms get to keep their fast warp in rate, making proxy pylons pointless to have, especially when you consider it costs only 100 additional minerals, it can fly around/reposition, and carry units. If they decreased the warp in time for warp prisms, it would drastically change the effectiveness of timing attacks. Gateway timing attacks would still be viable but it would be much more difficult and risky to warp directly into an opponents base for instant damage.
And on top of that we wouldn't have to go through another design change which makes the game extremely vulnerable to balance issues.
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EPT
