First, congratulations to Zest for winning the beta tournament! Of course, this is just one result, but seeing all 3 races represented well towards the later stages of the tournament was still cool to see. Seeing how much we saw the games develop throughout this tournament in just a few days, we’re excited to see more players figuring out more new cool stuff soon.
Major Patch
The patch goes live starting early next week! We wanted to thank everyone in the community that helped out with the major patch because we know it takes honest intent to play with potential changes compared to the live game. We look forward to the number of constructive players out there increasing as we go forward. We also wanted to give a shoutout to JYP for helping with the pro matches during the beta testing, and we hope to see some more pro-level matches with the new changes during Homestory Cup this weekend!
Regarding the major patch, there were a few things that we wanted to tweak before the patch goes live next week:
Siege Tank health increased from 160 to 175
The loss of Medivac pick-up seems to have hurt the Siege Tank a bit more than we expected. Because Siege Tanks should be a core part of the Terran Mech army, we’d like to try increasing their survivability a little bit so that they perform better in head on engagements vs. various ground threats.
DT blink research cost reduction from 150/150 to 100/100
The time and tech-level barrier seems to be big enough that this could use a slight buff.
Cyclone range reduction + range upgrade
The Cyclone looks to be extremely flexible since its seeing wide usage regardless of whether a Terran is going for Bio or Mech play. Also, the early all-in using Cyclones looks to be quite strong. In order to push the Cyclone more in the direction of being a core unit for Mech specifically, and also to tone down the-all in a little bit, Cyclone attack range will be reduced by 2 and a cheap upgrade will be added bring back their range.
There are also some other topics that we are discussing based on community and pro feedback.
From the community, discussions regarding early game mass Reapers was happening a lot this week. We expect more people are using and discussing this strategy due to how well ByuN used it in the WCS finals, and how good his micro was. As with other tactics that have become rapidly popular, finding the right defense against them often takes more time than learning to simply use them (such as boosted Medivacs or Stephano’s mass Roaches). Still, we will definitely keep a close eye on how both the tournament and ladder meta evolves around this strategy, and make adjustments to either the Reapers or the Reaper grenades accordingly.
From the pro side, while it’s pretty clear that players aren’t close to figuring out the details of the changes yet, there is some feedback regarding the Tempest’s new ability. One suggestion that we felt could be solid is removing the ability, increasing the anti-ground weapon range to 10, and upping the base damage of the anti-ground weapon slightly. For this one, we would like to have the new Tempest go to the live game as is, test it fully in the live game, and we can keep this type of a suggestion in our back pockets in case the ability doesn’t turn out to be a great add.
Overall, we wanted to stress once more that we really need to use the remaining time this year to focus on balance tuning since many of the changes going in are massive. Let’s continue working together to make sure we locate and fix problems that most likely will come up after the patch goes live.
If they really want to play around with tank health they should at least put it above 180 so it survives 3 corrosive biles. Or tone down bile damage to 55 or something.
It's not that I think this patch is bad per say, I just think it's still business as usual, making everything hit faster, harder, more research upgrades, not gonna lie I'm amazed to see a durability buff instead of just making the tanks move faster as Mr. Kim's balance philosophy.
The DT changes seem ridiculous though, out of all the things that could be last minute tweaked for Protoss, Warp Prism pick up (would have been a way better nerf then the HP) Oracle changes, more meaningful Adept changes (yea the vision thing makes them slightly worse but it's a sloppy, inelegant change, surprise surprise) or some type of Disruptor redesign/buff.
I'll hold more severe judgements until I play it myself when it goes live and when the pros flush it out, but it looks like Siege Tank and Raven mech are going to be ludicrously powerful and I'm going to have DT's blinking in and out of my base. Not to sound noob, but literally the last thing this game (and especially Protoss) needed was gimmick abilities to compensate for a unit just being bad.
Adepts - bad except for their ability Immortals - ability based even if it's passive Void Rays - completely reliant on ability to not suck Disruptor - This things attack pretty much is an ability Dark Templar - Sucks outside of cheese but now has gimmick ability Stalker - terrible without their ability Oracle - ...3 abilities.... MSC - Crap designed hero unit that has meaningless attack but 3 gimmick abilities Phoenix - Ability based high Templar - Great unit but still ability based
I don't get it, did they say, "there is no way to buff the Dark Templars outside of giving them an ability" or something? I don't even play Protoss but the amount of activated abilities in this game is just crazy, it's made the game so....hectic and sloppy...
People have been complaining about reapers being broken in TvZ since at least June. And zergs haven't really found a solution aside from hoping the terran messes up and gets their reapers surrounded. Well, at least it's on Blizzard's radar now.
I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
On November 18 2016 04:12 blade55555 wrote: I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
That is EXACTLY what I am thinking after reading that.
They're talking about this like it's a new thing. Like people haven't been bitching for months and this hasn't been a lightning rod for everyone to say "HEY LOOK AT HOW STUPID THIS IS".
On November 18 2016 04:12 blade55555 wrote: I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
IIRC the first time the build was ever shown (ByuN was the first who did it in a casted game I think) was back in November like a week after the game came out. It's been around ever since then, it had like 1 or 2 good maps in every map pool since release.
It's just a joke that terran got a cheese that doesn't put them behind in the game even when they deal no damage, and it's been 1 year. If koreans haven't figured it out by now, it's because there's no counter.
And this adding to a matchup where zerg's only chance is getting hive, just totaly broken.
For 6 years protoss players have been allowed to cannon rush to masters, and now terran is just as retarded, guess this is the apex of Blizzard's vision of balance.
The fact that the best zerg in the world opens pool first says everything about this game.
On November 18 2016 04:59 xTJx wrote: It's just a joke that terran got a cheese that doesn't put them behind in the game even when they deal no damage, and it's been 1 year. If koreans haven't figured it out by now, it's because there's no counter.
And this adding to a matchup where zerg's only chance is getting hive, just totaly broken.
For 6 years protoss players have been allowed to cannon rush to masters, and now terran is just as retarded, guess this is the apex of Blizzard's vision of balance.
The fact that the best zerg in the world opens pool first says everything about this game.
Agree with this 100%, at this point it's obvious that David Kim's vision for the game is questionable to say the least.
On November 18 2016 04:12 blade55555 wrote: I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
That is EXACTLY what I am thinking after reading that.
They're talking about this like it's a new thing. Like people haven't been bitching for months and this hasn't been a lightning rod for everyone to say "HEY LOOK AT HOW STUPID THIS IS".
Goddamnit Blizzard.
got to just +++++ this, its insane for them to act like this is a new thing its one of the reason i have stopped playing its the dumbest thing in tvt and unplayable for shitty zerg players like me. they act like they are listing to the community but saying things like this makes me thing other wise.
On November 18 2016 04:12 blade55555 wrote: I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
That is EXACTLY what I am thinking after reading that.
They're talking about this like it's a new thing. Like people haven't been bitching for months and this hasn't been a lightning rod for everyone to say "HEY LOOK AT HOW STUPID THIS IS".
Goddamnit Blizzard.
got to just +++++ this, its insane for them to act like this is a new thing its one of the reason i have stopped playing its the dumbest thing in tvt and unplayable for shitty zerg players like me(prolly good zergs too not worth learning zvt). they act like they are listing to the community but saying things like this makes me thing other wise.
Very glad to see more changes, even if they are minor.
I say remove Combat healing from Reapers, up their HP and give them a late game upgrade which makes the Grenades do extra damage vs Structures, so we can finally have qxc Reapers again.
As for the Tempest, I see potential in the Stun ability, so I quite like it, instead of just being the good'ol boring Tempest.
Changes sound solid across the board. I really wanted the previous Tempest ability to go through though, even if massively tweaked. Skytoss will always suck vs Terran until there's some sort of AoE against Marines. It lacks the power to take straight up fights until supported by storm, and then we're talking about an army that's very late in the game.
Especially with a much reduced anti-ground attack range, Tempests need something to compensate. I think a static AoE damage spell would be good. It would be difficult to use correctly, but that's fine. It'd make Skytoss harder to control, which it really has never been, and it would give some much needed stability vs Hydras in PvZ and Marines in PvT (both midgame issues).
Also Voidrays probably need their speed buff to be an upgrade, but you could make them even faster with a lategame upgrade I think.
On November 18 2016 03:34 Musicus wrote: Overall, we wanted to stress once more that we really need to use the remaining time this year to focus on balance tuning since many of the changes going in are massive. Let’s continue working together to make sure we locate and fix problems that most likely will come up after the patch goes live.
I can't imagine anyone caring about balancing a game which they fundamentally dislike. Just sayin'.
On November 18 2016 04:12 blade55555 wrote: I kind of laugh at their comment on mass reapers, but mass reapers has literally been a thing since release (I think even in beta) and has only gotten more popular as time went on, even before Byun did it. I am surprised they are just now really acknowledging how dumb it is (I am not saying it's overpowered, but I am saying it's stupid).
Please no tempest range 10 or their current ability. give oracles a stasis field ability similar to brood wars ability on arbiters (remove oracles old stasis) :3 have they considered this yet?
I just want to say, if someone from blizzard reads this. I'm a master random player. I don't think reapers in tvz are a huge issues, players are figuring it out with ling counter attacks to buy time and earlier queens. The issue I have with the reaper is it makes tvt & team games really unenjoyable. It stifles diversity and nobody wants to play a game when they die in the first 3 minutes. Units like the reaper (read: oracle) really hurt the player base of sc2. Please listen
Kinda sad to have so many hate comments here. # Of course its not perfect, but they keep trying differnt stuff and changed approach a couple of times. They said right now they want to wait and see how it goes, so people can find a solution on their own, unless they feel like they really have to change it like the ultra. I'm happy with the changes. lots of fresh interesting things to try out.
Patch will be a indirect nerf for reaper builds, because the bio transition gets weaker, due to bane health buff. So i dont expect them to be too comon in the pro meta
On November 18 2016 08:08 XPA wrote: Patch will be a indirect nerf for reaper builds, because the bio transition gets weaker, due to bane health buff. So i dont expect them to be too comon in the pro meta
I wonder about that. In many TvZs the Zerg takes game ending damage way before baneling speed finishes.
So they finally are willing to mention reapers after you know what happened on the bnet forums.
Almost complete revert of tempest patch.
Infestor burrow cast/SH...hydras....
Random tank buff because they are realizing they didn't make mech viable - they literally buffed every anti-mech option in the game. Mech won't be much more viable after the patch because there's no counter to air units STILL on this test mod.
They claim they tested goliaths, but still haven't added a counter-option to carrier/tempest/brood/BCS/libs.
I honestly don't see mech becoming too much more viable after the patch. It started out well, but they've slowly but surely added so many anti-mech things that mech will end up being just as bad post-patch. Mark my words.
On November 18 2016 08:17 avilo wrote: So they finally are willing to mention reapers after you know what happened on the bnet forums.
Almost complete revert of tempest patch.
Infestor burrow cast/SH...hydras....
Random tank buff because they are realizing they didn't make mech viable - they literally buffed every anti-mech option in the game. Mech won't be much more viable after the patch because there's no counter to air units STILL on this test mod.
They claim they tested goliaths, but still haven't added a counter-option to carrier/tempest/brood/BCS/libs.
I honestly don't see mech becoming too much more viable after the patch. It started out well, but they've slowly but surely added so many anti-mech things that mech will end up being just as bad post-patch. Mark my words.
Well they want Thors to be the viable anti air option, that's why Broods, Tempests and Thors will all have 10 range and the splash from Thors was increased. When they see that the Thor does still not work they will buff it's anti air even more I think.
The real testing of this patch begins next week and we have until Season 1 next year, just show them if Thors work or not.
On November 18 2016 08:17 avilo wrote: So they finally are willing to mention reapers after you know what happened on the bnet forums.
Almost complete revert of tempest patch.
Infestor burrow cast/SH...hydras....
Random tank buff because they are realizing they didn't make mech viable - they literally buffed every anti-mech option in the game. Mech won't be much more viable after the patch because there's no counter to air units STILL on this test mod.
They claim they tested goliaths, but still haven't added a counter-option to carrier/tempest/brood/BCS/libs.
I honestly don't see mech becoming too much more viable after the patch. It started out well, but they've slowly but surely added so many anti-mech things that mech will end up being just as bad post-patch. Mark my words.
Well they want Thors to be the viable anti air option, that's why Broods, Tempests and Thors will all have 10 range and the splash from Thors was increased. When they see that the Thor does still not work they will buff it's anti air even more I think.
The real testing of this patch begins next week and we have until Season 1 next year, just show them if Thors work or not.
At the end of the day, thors are just boring to use, and to watch. Just like the tempest - boring to play with, boring to play against and boring to watch. A unit like the Goliath that is cheap enough with big range but mediocre damage is exactly what mech needs. It doesn't need a gigantic clunky Thor that is super strong. Please stop trying to make the Thor work
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
I think after watching starcraft for the last 5 months..
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
Well Byun is so good in general. I was actually one of the ones who didn't think his reaper micro is THAT great though you see him lose a few more than average but that's vs Dark so who knows
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
Well Byun is so good in general. I was actually one of the ones who didn't think his reaper micro is THAT great though you see him lose a few more than average but that's vs Dark so who knows
I mean he's the best player of 2016
.. but he's lost every TvZ since Blizzcon because people know he's good at two things and defend against two things.
soO's games show that. He prepared for byun by practicing against 3rax and preparing a counter build specifically for byuns mid game marine widow mine heavy style.
In that same vein, Scarlett did not put in enough effort training against 3rax. She proved that she was one of the best Zergs in the world and she's now out because she couldn't stop cheese.
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
Well Byun is so good in general. I was actually one of the ones who didn't think his reaper micro is THAT great though you see him lose a few more than average but that's vs Dark so who knows
I mean he's the best player of 2016
.. but he's lost every TvZ since Blizzcon because people know he's good at two things and defend against two things.
soO's games show that. He prepared for byun by practicing against 3rax and preparing a counter build specifically for byuns mid game marine widow mine heavy style.
In that same vein, Scarlett did not put in enough effort training against 3rax. She proved that she was one of the best Zergs in the world and she's now out because she couldn't stop cheese.
ByuN uncharacteristically messed up his micro pretty badly that game. I wouldn't use it as an example.
Just fix this 3Rax Reaper bullshit. Beside it beeing way too benefiting for the terran (easy to execute with minimal risk and high benefits for the terran) its just freaking horrible to watch Zerg players get rekt by it in tournaments.
Too many MOBA elements and lack of traditional RTS elements. ie. Too much auto-shoot high damage reliance and general abilities, instead of core unit interactions and positioning.
now remove nades from the game, or make it available after upgrade in rax techlab, tvt against reaper rush is literally worst experience i've had in sc2
On November 18 2016 09:50 EXRNaRa wrote: Just fix this 3Rax Reaper bullshit. Beside it beeing way too benefiting for the terran (easy to execute with minimal risk and high benefits for the terran) its just freaking horrible to watch Zerg players get rekt by it in tournaments.
It's not that easy to pull off IMO. And, Scarlett really should've gone Roaches.
On November 18 2016 09:56 Jj_82 wrote: Tanks armor should increase when sieged. Logical & practical.
Honestly i like the idea. That does not make them straight away too strong, if you engage while the terran is still unsieged, you get a small benefit. That allows more influence by the players on the power of the tank.
On November 18 2016 09:50 EXRNaRa wrote: Just fix this 3Rax Reaper bullshit. Beside it beeing way too benefiting for the terran (easy to execute with minimal risk and high benefits for the terran) its just freaking horrible to watch Zerg players get rekt by it in tournaments.
It's not that easy to pull off IMO. And, Scarlett really should've gone Roaches.
I main terran, currently high masters, was GM twice back in Hots and i can tell you its easy to pull off. I am not directly talking about mircoing the reaper. Its just, that Zerg has to do a shitload of stuff with a high risk to defend it, while the terran is building scvs, tech and expanding.
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
Well Byun is so good in general. I was actually one of the ones who didn't think his reaper micro is THAT great though you see him lose a few more than average but that's vs Dark so who knows
I mean he's the best player of 2016
.. but he's lost every TvZ since Blizzcon because people know he's good at two things and defend against two things.
soO's games show that. He prepared for byun by practicing against 3rax and preparing a counter build specifically for byuns mid game marine widow mine heavy style.
In that same vein, Scarlett did not put in enough effort training against 3rax. She proved that she was one of the best Zergs in the world and she's now out because she couldn't stop cheese.
ByuN uncharacteristically messed up his micro pretty badly that game. I wouldn't use it as an example.
Last night on olimoleague, we saw big resurgence on cyclone mech
I don't see why they should drastically change it to new cyclone. We were finally seeing some hints of tvp mech working with the live cyclone too. If they wanted to be easier to use, they could have modified lock on damage and the health of cyclones
Not only that, majority of patch cyclone strength comes in early game and loses a lot of effectiveness midgame. Do people really want to invest an upgrade in mediocre unit? Especially when upgrade is on tech lab for reactorable early game unit
On November 18 2016 08:56 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I think after watching uThermal vs Scarlett they need to do more than monitor reapers. It's not just ByuN
But after Blizzcon everyone said it was just because Byun was sooooo good. Maybe uThermal is too.
Well Byun is so good in general. I was actually one of the ones who didn't think his reaper micro is THAT great though you see him lose a few more than average but that's vs Dark so who knows
I mean he's the best player of 2016
.. but he's lost every TvZ since Blizzcon because people know he's good at two things and defend against two things.
soO's games show that. He prepared for byun by practicing against 3rax and preparing a counter build specifically for byuns mid game marine widow mine heavy style.
In that same vein, Scarlett did not put in enough effort training against 3rax. She proved that she was one of the best Zergs in the world and she's now out because she couldn't stop cheese.
ByuN uncharacteristically messed up his micro pretty badly that game. I wouldn't use it as an example.
In which one? He's lost 4 series.
The one where he lost with 3-rax reaper. Against soO on Frozen Temple in VSL. The fact that he lost series due to reasons entirely unrelated to 3-rax reaper isn't exactly relevant.
I like for once having a strong game ending early hitting Allin as Terran. The last time t had this was in wol. It's important for evrey race to have some viable allins to keep opponents honest. With that being said. It may be a bit to strong.
Oh god. Terran bio is gonna suck donkeyballs against mech after this patch. Honestly if mech becomes a regular thing in the TvT matchup I will strongly consider quiting this game all together. Mech just isn't fun to watch, play or play against -.- It's just a horrible boring thing that I don't even understand that they want to make a thing in the first place -.-
On November 18 2016 10:20 jinjin5000 wrote: Last night on olimoleague, we saw big resurgence on cyclone mech
I don't see why they should drastically change it to new cyclone. We were finally seeing some hints of tvp mech working with the live cyclone too. If they wanted to be easier to use, they could have modified lock on damage and the health of cyclones
Not only that, majority of patch cyclone strength comes in early game and loses a lot of effectiveness midgame. Do people really want to invest an upgrade in mediocre unit? Especially when upgrade is on tech lab for reactorable early game unit
It's been on the ladder a lot but pro scene wise that's just gumiho being gumiho. Bringing the based mech TvZ.
On November 18 2016 12:29 Frankenberry wrote: Oh god. Terran bio is gonna suck donkeyballs against mech after this patch. Honestly if mech becomes a regular thing in the TvT matchup I will strongly consider quiting this game all together. Mech just isn't fun to watch, play or play against -.- It's just a horrible boring thing that I don't even understand that they want to make a thing in the first place -.-
You say that now but right now everyone says TvT is not good to play. I know how it is to watch. Boring.
On November 18 2016 12:29 Frankenberry wrote: Oh god. Terran bio is gonna suck donkeyballs against mech after this patch. Honestly if mech becomes a regular thing in the TvT matchup I will strongly consider quiting this game all together. Mech just isn't fun to watch, play or play against -.- It's just a horrible boring thing that I don't even understand that they want to make a thing in the first place -.-
Great. As it should have been a looong time ago. Going Mech or Bio is what makes the Terran race unique , just like the other races have unique Pros/cons too.. If people want to play only bio they should go and play Zerg. You are not suppossed to run head forward into Tanks. Mech´s weakness is and should be mobility not direct confrontations. If you think about A moving Marauders into a fortified Mech positionjust because they are good against armored Units you are not thinking about mobility, you are thinking about getting your Units killed (and should be punished for it). I rather have positional, strategic play than the stupid Mentality Bio i: Stim and Go (This is a bit exaggerating ofc there are drops and flanking).
I find it very ironic that they mentioned Stephanos Roach Max as something that took time to figure it out how to stop.
That very build changed the way maps had to be designed, because Protoss literally could not hold an open third versus that strategy. Blizzard did nothing effective to help prevent it, it was all map makers.
On November 18 2016 14:11 BronzeKnee wrote: I find it very ironic that they mentioned Stephanos Roach Max as something that took time to figure it out how to stop.
That very build changed the way maps had to be designed, because Protoss literally could not hold an open third versus that strategy. Blizzard did nothing effective to help prevent it, it was all map makers.
Well. Now you have keyed in on why I personally am so vocal for community maps.
Brood War has been balanced and rebalanced for 10 years without a single balance patch because map makers can alter how effective strategies are.
Blizz supporting map makers in 2017 gives me hope that we will have too many vetos for a change instead of not enough.
why are people so upset at dt blink seems useless. protoss isnt fun to play anymore thats why u barely see them on ladder. engaging vs libs and lurkers as well as disruptors is annoying. having to base trade everygame in pvt and pvz is tedious. the race design is so poor all this time and there is still no unit besides pheonix can deal with muta, protoss units have acceleration and deceleration and feel clunky and immobile, slow warpin mechanic is irritating, protoss has the hardest time expanding. protoss is also the least consistent race. ive noticed when zerg and terran Koreans play on na server they go like 50-0 because you can beat ur opponent trough sheer skill while toss has to take losses because they have to rely on gimmicky play. Also seems like protoss players dont stay at top of the scene for a long time for the same reason like i cant think of a protoss that had anything close to the kind of consitancy that say innovation or life had. Like i am a crappy masters player and i dont care much about the balance its just really depressing that the race is just not fun to play.
What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
What will we get? Blink DTs, photon overcharge remaining in the game, and adept shades being a gamble !
Meanwhile still no reliable low tech AA for factory. Every single TvX will be a turtle fest where moving out of turret cover is a death sentence. Nice.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
On November 18 2016 14:57 SwiftRH wrote: why are people so upset at dt blink seems useless. protoss isnt fun to play anymore thats why u barely see them on ladder. engaging vs libs and lurkers as well as disruptors is annoying. having to base trade everygame in pvt and pvz is tedious. the race design is so poor all this time and there is still no unit besides pheonix can deal with muta, protoss units have acceleration and deceleration and feel clunky and immobile, slow warpin mechanic is irritating, protoss has the hardest time expanding. protoss is also the least consistent race. ive noticed when zerg and terran Koreans play on na server they go like 50-0 because you can beat ur opponent trough sheer skill while toss has to take losses because they have to rely on gimmicky play. Also seems like protoss players dont stay at top of the scene for a long time for the same reason like i cant think of a protoss that had anything close to the kind of consitancy that say innovation or life had. Like i am a crappy masters player and i dont care much about the balance its just really depressing that the race is just not fun to play.
Yep same here, its not about winning Or losing, the design is just not fun.
I dont think these changes are gonna help in pvt and pvz like you said it would. Zerg and terran recieve midgame buffs (where are stronger than protoss), and protoss recieve lategame gimmicky hemos (where is almost imposible to reach atm). That is why i dont find the sense. If protoss needeed help, i dont know what they need now.. This is why are running away from their race or even the game. Peace
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
Gimmick has a meaning:
"a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or business."
It's something flashy which is used to distract from the lack of substance.
All of the things you described are gimmicky for various reasons:
PO
Bright, colorful, powerful sound. (flashy)
Distracts from the lack of powerful, mobile early-game units that Protoss can use to defend expansions.
Forcefield
Bright, *pop* sounds, distinctive look.
Distracts from the severe lack of mobility and straight-up (raw auto-attacks with any non-damage-ability micro allowed) fighting power in the mid-game.
Gateway units
All have abilities (blink must be individually microed to have best effect, adepts must shade to have any mobility, zealots are useless without charge), are tanky, and "control the battle-field" through specific use of those abilities.
All lack seriously in the DPS / supply department. If perfectly micro-ed in an open field, gateway units should always lose to equivalent supply of opposing mid-game units, since the opponent always has the edge on damage and can, thus, snipe whatever units he wants while kiting against the rest (adept shade vastly reduced this in LotV if you manage to land your once-in-a-blue-moon shade to prevent kiting -- the fundamental issue still remains, however).
So, these things are called gimmicks because they are. Worse, the majority of them have historically had little-to-no counter play and required very little investment (with no alternative for either the Protoss or their opponent).
Since this is a community feedback thread I must say that I feel really sad after watching yesterday's PVZ series between Scarlett and Stats at HSC because the games I saw on New Gettysburg, Frost, and Dasan Station made me realize how much the current state of the match-up is lacking any deeper strategical elements that should be part of a game belonging to the genre of RTS, and therefore how EXTREMELY broken it is and how even MORE broken it's going to be after the patch release.
I'll try to concentrate on three general concepts that I found in those games (applying to the PvZ match-up in general) and that I find absolutely unacceptable in a good RTS game.
1. Adept play and how it is to be nerfed. Regardless of any mistakes on the part of the players or any balance discussions, there was a game in which Stats had approx. 10 adepts with glaives in 3 mineral lines of Scarlett teleporting them randomly from one base to another. How is that strategy? How is even a zerg player supposed to react to it properly? How is as a caster supposed to explain logically to new viewers that what's going on actually takes skill? There is no way to do so. It's much easier to shade your adepts to a certain location than prevent it as zerg in any fashion. Now this strategy is going to be "nerfed" by shade vision reduction, which is going to detriment the strategical play even further. Actually the only thing I like about adept play in the current state is that it allows you to scout properly such things as protoss base, terran army location, your natural's perimiter, etc. so you can base your future decision on what you actually see. Now you're deprived of the only sensbile strategical element of an adept play, and my understanding thus far has been that the problem with the adept is that it can jump from one location to another doing sick damage and not how much vision it has...
2. Decreasing difference between tier 2 and tier 3 units in light of proposed changes in the new patch. Once the LOTV was released, we received "true" immortals whose dmg absorption barrier had to be nerfed by half because of how crazy it was, and now we're getting "truly feasible" void rays that are not fun to use or play against, but as of now it seems that a player will be better-off massing tier-2 units instead of tier-3 once again. This concept also applies to what I saw in a yesterday's game on Dasan Station. Stats made the "ultimate, capital protoss ship of mass destruction" that died within 1 second after being pulled by a viper so any logical conclusion that a new viewer after learning the unit's name could come to was that there was no point in making in the first instance. Back in 2010, MS was hyped so much as being capable of putting an entire fleet into a black hole or destroying an entire line of ground defenses by flyng over it. I don't want to divert into the topic of game balance here because I believe that there is a general consensus as to the proper in-game balance currently, or making MS super imba by increasing its production cost to 1000/1000 and a build time to 10 minutes (such an idea should have never been totally abandoned imho), but if a unit is supposed to be super cool, it should be super cool or entirely removed. The same principle applies to nerfing broodlords or removing the interceptor release ability from carriers that the positioning of both formed an extremely important strategical element of any significant battle. As compensation we will receive stuff like dt blink, which is making things even worse on so many levels, but first of all, it's killing the strategical spirit of the game. I guess that the majority of SC2 players decided to play the game because they wanted to play a strategy game and bother less about such things as blinking your dt's, which is basically idiotic from the standpoint of strategy knowing that they can be easily chased to death with fast lings with an overseer or die to a turret with a burrowed mine in a mineral field. There are so many other games around in which I can do things similar to blinking my dt's and I believe that I don't need it in an RTS game...
3. Current mid-game in PvZ (in all match-ups?) in reference to proposed changes in the new patch. Now for the game on Frost. Scarlett spawned in the upper-left corner with Stats in the upper-right. PvZ games in such spawns is what hate most. PvZ top-level games for what I've seen recently end with protoss allining after cutting corners (or just dies straightaway as Neeb or Stats did against Dark on Frozen Temple in the group stage or quarterfinals of Blizzcon) in some way because there is no chance for an action-packed middle game. Once zerg has secured full saturation on three bases its production output is exponential compared with protoss's linear. This concept is extremely bad because what if protoss wanted to play it totally differently, i.e. took an early 3rd and relied on his excellent blink micro and forcefields for defense? Now it's extremely difficult to execute and it will be impossible once a ton of new +2 hydras and +10 hp baneling is coming. An argument that Zest killed Byul in a GSL game is not valid due to objective reasons, and the swarm in the hands of someone like Dark will be a totally different story. So again, the potential for some extraordinary play is doomed to failure, and I don't wanna rely in every game on fully charged ht's or something like this to take my 3rd because... IT'S SO FUCKING BORING and I want to be left with some potential to play my own game without having to follow a one and only well trodden PvZ path...
You say you don't want gimmicks, but that's why you don't play Protoss. There's something great about having 3 distinct races, people who want fun gimmicky stuff can play Protoss, people who only want straight up games and rely on multitasking, can play Terran.
Personally I don't think there's much room for DT Blink, except for extreme late game scenarios, where players are so poor that they need 100% cost efficiency. I do however adore the idea behind FF's, Storms, Disruptors, Adept Shade, Blink, Hallucination, Tempest stun, DT's, Stasis Trap and the likes.
We don't have enough Protoss players standing up for their race, if Zerg and Terran players design the Protoss race, it will appeal to no one, it will just be whatever you guys like to play against. Protoss players should decide the future of the Protoss race, Protoss players unite!
On November 18 2016 14:57 SwiftRH wrote: why are people so upset at dt blink seems useless. protoss isnt fun to play anymore thats why u barely see them on ladder. engaging vs libs and lurkers as well as disruptors is annoying. having to base trade everygame in pvt and pvz is tedious. the race design is so poor all this time and there is still no unit besides pheonix can deal with muta, protoss units have acceleration and deceleration and feel clunky and immobile, slow warpin mechanic is irritating, protoss has the hardest time expanding. protoss is also the least consistent race. ive noticed when zerg and terran Koreans play on na server they go like 50-0 because you can beat ur opponent trough sheer skill while toss has to take losses because they have to rely on gimmicky play. Also seems like protoss players dont stay at top of the scene for a long time for the same reason like i cant think of a protoss that had anything close to the kind of consitancy that say innovation or life had. Like i am a crappy masters player and i dont care much about the balance its just really depressing that the race is just not fun to play.
Just a matter of prefference. I'm a crappy master myself and i don't find my race boring at all. I play zerg on a masters level as well and i don't see much difference regarding "fun" elements if any. Can't agree with inconsistancy of protoss players. It applies as much to any race player. Look at snute/uthermal/nerchio etc etc. Some games they look almost invincible and then go on a 2-3 month periods of slump.
On November 18 2016 19:32 ejozl wrote: You say you don't want gimmicks, but that's why you don't play Protoss. There's something great about having 3 distinct races, people who want fun gimmicky stuff can play Protoss, people who only want straight up games and rely on multitasking, can play Terran.
This is a common misleading concept if you ask me. I'm a macro orientated player and pref protoss above all races and do not rely on any gimmick-plays. I can only guess that people don't want to play protoss cause you can be bearly make a come back after mistakes (1 mine blowing the entire mineral line, wasting crusial CD like PO=autoloss, heavy reliance on proper micro etc).
The loss of Medivac pick-up seems to have hurt the Siege Tank a bit more than we expected.
Oh has it ? Was it because of the 7 Second Psi-storm from the roach or from the "I take no damage because I jsut can shade" unit, or the I take no damage because I teleport, or the I take only one shot, but on 0-0 thats not enough to kill all of us, we are only 1/2 suply and 25 minerals units? That are all supposedly countered by the siege tank.
Sieged Drop must go, Siege pickup must stay. Add Weapon speed, not damage. If it should take advantage from its superior range, it should lay down fire in a fashion that is updated to the new pace of the game, wich tends to pump out mobile units faster and advertising dynamic and mobilit<, making an immobile Siege weapon a thing from yesteryear. There is no more fight for Vision with siege Tanks. just stim 20 marines, you replace them in 24 seconds....
zergs whine about reapers lol? last year only time ive seen terrans winning zergs are whit reapers. get rid of autowinninglisk, thenwe can talk. 1 armor less dont do that much imo
On November 18 2016 20:35 MiCroLiFe wrote: zergs whine about reapers lol? last year only time ive seen terrans winning zergs are whit reapers. get rid of autowinninglisk, thenwe can talk. 1 armor less dont do that much imo
So its ok if terran wins only with reapers and keep the win rate at %50? You must be a really fun person. Kelazhur 3-0 Lambo only with reapers, uthermal 3-0 Scarlett only with reapers. So basically we watched 1 series less in both groups. Its only byun guyzz
"Stop trying to make mech happen. It's not going to happen!"
On a more serious note, there seems to be a deficit of Protoss voices/perspective both in the discussions and the community feedback threads. It's discomfiting, and it seems like they're becoming the whipping boy for other race's frustrations.
I'd like to see a more holistic approach to game balance from all sides, particularly Blizzard's. This is just my own, personal observation, nothing scientific nor a comment on balance. Please dont hurt me Zerg/Terran users.
On November 18 2016 14:11 BronzeKnee wrote: I find it very ironic that they mentioned Stephanos Roach Max as something that took time to figure it out how to stop.
That very build changed the way maps had to be designed, because Protoss literally could not hold an open third versus that strategy. Blizzard did nothing effective to help prevent it, it was all map makers.
New maps were definitely a big factor, but at the same time, it also took players a long time to figure out how to hold it. In the end, players figured out that there were only 3-4 very specific non-all-in builds that could hold something like that.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
I'm tired to see such bullshit coming from a serious development team saying "we recently notice how reapers are bad ". I don't know if they actually read the forum or they ignore it on purpose. Anyway, i posted a thread on the forum with all the current broken/imbalanced stuff that need to be fixed asap : http://us.battle.net/forums/en/sc2/topic/20752275811
Please check it out and upvote so we can make it more visible & actually reach DK !
On November 18 2016 21:27 zyce wrote: "Stop trying to make mech happen. It's not going to happen!"
On a more serious note, there seems to be a deficit of Protoss voices/perspective both in the discussions and the community feedback threads. It's discomfiting, and it seems like they're becoming the whipping boy for other race's frustrations.
I'd like to see a more holistic approach to game balance from all sides, particularly Blizzard's. This is just my own, personal observation, nothing scientific nor a comment on balance. Please dont hurt me Zerg/Terran users.
m80 that's because there's a lack of Protoss players in general.
The problem with Protoss is a deep one though. It isn't "stalkers need 13.4% more hp". It's "turtling, timing attacks, or lose" isn't super fun to play.
guys guys guys, we are all here going about shit and the reason things are taking too long is because DK is only reading off the battlenet forums, we are wasting our breath you guys!
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
I get tired of reading comments like this.
First of all, what he likes has no bearing on his knowledge of game design. You are fabricating a causation that isn't there.
Second of all, your reasoning is based on opinion. Just because you don't like any of the things listed, doesn't mean they are not good game design. That is only your opinion. Not fact. If he likes the design, and he isn't alone (yes I like them also) than it must mean Blizzard did something right.
You are forcing your opinion on him, while being an condescending asshole. I understand you don't like any of the changes Blizzard has down the pipeline, but that doesn't mean you can dismiss those that do like it by stating 'you have no idea how good game design works'.
That's like me saying 'I like McDonalds' and you replying 'You have no idea how to cook good food'.
On a more serious note, there seems to be a deficit of Protoss voices/perspective both in the discussions and the community feedback threads. It's discomfiting, and it seems like they're becoming the whipping boy for other race's frustrations.
...
On November 18 2016 19:32 ejozl wrote: You say you don't want gimmicks, but that's why you don't play Protoss.
...
We don't have enough Protoss players standing up for their race, if Zerg and Terran players design the Protoss race, it will appeal to no one, it will just be whatever you guys like to play against. Protoss players should decide the future of the Protoss race, Protoss players unite!
You're both right. Protoss players aren't speaking up because they're just leaving the race. We've spoken up repeatedly and simply get told "don't play that race" or "that's how it is" ... so people stop playing Protoss.
You're quite literally telling us "don't provide that feedback, you should be playing a different race." and "We need more people to provide feedback for Protoss (but not that feedback)" at exactly the same time. With no other recourse (since you don't listen to our feedback), we stop playing Protoss -- and for most, the game.
Protoss just this season dropped to ~25% of the player-base for the first time ever. This isn't a result of people "not liking" Protoss' colors, or unit design. These drops happened throughout HotS, but are most apparent in LotV. Our feedback was constantly ignored while others' feedback was listened to (very few Protoss players wanted adepts or disruptors ... yet we got those units. T / Z had been whining about warp-gate forever and now we have warp-prism-only proxy pylons. The immortal was changed for mech. etc etc etc). Since random comprised ~1% of the players at that point, Protoss should have been, ideally at 33%.
Protoss is under-played by ~24% (25/33=75.7). That's a big deal.
Protoss' design needs work. We've been saying it forever, but apparently that's not valid feedback. So we leave. (Where's the gateway unit that scales well enough, is mobile enough, and is damaging enough that Protoss players no longer have to rely upon PO? Why is forcefield still defining the sentry, when Protoss have repeatedly asked for something different [like a healing sentry with time-warp instead]? Why is the carrier still on a stupidly-long production time so that it's never remotely safe to actually build them?)
I, personally, have followed the scene and been more and more dismayed by what's happened since HotS beta ... but I've not realistically played more than ~3 games a month (and fewer and fewer as time goes on. I've not played ladder in ... almost 2 years, I'd guess [ignoring LotV beta]) since HotS was released. I've been waiting a long time for Protoss' issues to be addressed (and talked about them a lot), but it seems like no one hears -- certainly nothing's been done to address our biggest concerns.
Anyway. Not to whine, but you can't seriously say "this feedback is invalid from this race -- play a different race" and "we need more of this race to give feedback" at the same time. It doesn't make sense.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
I get tired of reading comments like this.
First of all, what he likes has no bearing on his knowledge of game design. You are fabricating a causation that isn't there.
Second of all, your reasoning is based on opinion. Just because you don't like any of the things listed, doesn't mean they are not good game design. That is only your opinion. Not fact. If he likes the design, and he isn't alone (yes I like them also) than it must mean Blizzard did something right.
You are forcing your opinion on him, while being an condescending asshole. I understand you don't like any of the changes Blizzard has down the pipeline, but that doesn't mean you can dismiss those that do like it by stating 'you have no idea how good game design works'.
That's like me saying 'I like McDonalds' and you replying 'You have no idea how to cook good food'.
He is right on every point and its common sense not opinion. Its like putting sugar in hamburgers. Its just bad cooking and its a fact. It doesn't matter if you are one of the few people who likes sweet hamburgers.
It's too late for protoss complaining. Since the very beggining it's been a build order race and protoss players were happily taking their free wins, loudly saying that apm meant nothing even when they needed 1/3 of it compared to other races. Now that they have to deal with disruptor vs disruptor, can't blindly mass sentries against zerg, can't amove + spam storm against terran, and people figured how to play against 2 base adept all in, they're sad, and i say it's deserved.
Besides, they certanly don't lack representation in pro matches.
But a lot of people put a form of sugar on their hamburgers. Its known as "ketchup".
Likewise theres nothing inherently wrong from a game design perspective for blink dts and photon overcharge as long as they create interesting situations and arent too overpowered.
Also its okay for there to be "asymmetrical skill" situations such as it being harder to defend certain attacks than it is to execute them. This is needs to be true or else no one will use this attack. Especially for a game that encourages aggression. Also it allows us to better appreciate players who can defend well.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
I get tired of reading comments like this.
First of all, what he likes has no bearing on his knowledge of game design. You are fabricating a causation that isn't there.
Second of all, your reasoning is based on opinion. Just because you don't like any of the things listed, doesn't mean they are not good game design. That is only your opinion. Not fact. If he likes the design, and he isn't alone (yes I like them also) than it must mean Blizzard did something right.
You are forcing your opinion on him, while being an condescending asshole. I understand you don't like any of the changes Blizzard has down the pipeline, but that doesn't mean you can dismiss those that do like it by stating 'you have no idea how good game design works'.
That's like me saying 'I like McDonalds' and you replying 'You have no idea how to cook good food'.
He is right on every point and its common sense not opinion. Its like putting sugar in hamburgers. Its just bad cooking and its a fact. It doesn't matter if you are one of the few people who likes sweet hamburgers.
It isn't fact, nor is it common sense. Its just you and JackOneil have the same opinion or agree on something.
You are an asshole if you think your opinion is fact, while another's opinion is wrong. What makes your opinion more right than someone else?
It's ok to disagree with someone's opinion. It's not ok to say their opinion is wrong.
lol now they realized the early game reaper problem. Probably they were talking to themselves how "cool" reaper micro is the whole time till byun kind of overdone it on the stage of Blizzcon ><
Still looking forward to the balance change though. Can't wait to get rekt on ladder when the patch went live.
On November 18 2016 14:11 BronzeKnee wrote: I find it very ironic that they mentioned Stephanos Roach Max as something that took time to figure it out how to stop.
That very build changed the way maps had to be designed, because Protoss literally could not hold an open third versus that strategy. Blizzard did nothing effective to help prevent it, it was all map makers.
New maps were definitely a big factor, but at the same time, it also took players a long time to figure out how to hold it. In the end, players figured out that there were only 3-4 very specific non-all-in builds that could hold something like that.
Sure it took time for players to figure it out, but only maps like Daybreak where the third could be blocked off easily. And all the maps released after that had closed up thirds.
I don't seem to remember any strategy that could hold a wide open third, at all. That was during the time of the Soul Train, which work because it hit before the Roach Max. And the best way to open to try and take a third versus the Roach max was with a bunch of Immortals and Sentries (essentially Soul Train minus attacking) and the Roach max ran it over, easily.
On November 19 2016 00:31 stink123 wrote:
Likewise theres nothing inherently wrong from a game design perspective for blink dts and photon overcharge as long as they create interesting situations and arent too overpowered.
There is something absolutely inherently wrong from a game design perspective with Photon Overcharge. It is called power without gameplay, as Zileas, the VP of Game Design for League explains:
Power Without Gameplay This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice...
The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.
Photon Overcharge is a big benefit that isn't exactly satisfying to use. It is the definition of an overbuffed mechanic that has created a game balance problem so people can appreciate it. It is a skilless ability that has watered down the early game for matchups involving Protoss. It took real skill to hold early timings as a Protoss in WOL.
Photon Overcharge was developed well after Zileas wrote that blog, but it is a textbook example of power without gameplay, because there is no game play, you click on the MSC, press F and click on a Pylon and you've held the early timing.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
i think you equating the game design team's knowledge of their profession to that of this poster is way off base.
equating game quality with player base size is laughable. MsPacman is a far better designed game than Pacman. MsPacman's popularity was less than 25% of Pacman in the face of a growing over all marketplace. That's one very early example. i can name many more.
the RTS crowd left for MOBAs once 10+ player low latency games become viable for all consumers spending less than $50/month on internet. Once the MOBA become technically viable for the general public the RTS was done.
On November 18 2016 14:11 BronzeKnee wrote: I find it very ironic that they mentioned Stephanos Roach Max as something that took time to figure it out how to stop.
That very build changed the way maps had to be designed, because Protoss literally could not hold an open third versus that strategy. Blizzard did nothing effective to help prevent it, it was all map makers.
New maps were definitely a big factor, but at the same time, it also took players a long time to figure out how to hold it. In the end, players figured out that there were only 3-4 very specific non-all-in builds that could hold something like that.
Sure it took time for players to figure it out, but only maps like Daybreak where the third could be blocked off easily. And all the maps released after that had closed up thirds.
I don't seem to remember any strategy that could hold a wide open third, at all. That was during the time of the Soul Train, which work because it hit before the Roach Max. And the best way to open to try and take a third versus the Roach max was with a bunch of Immortals and Sentries (essentially Soul Train minus attacking) and the Roach max ran it over, easily.
Likewise theres nothing inherently wrong from a game design perspective for blink dts and photon overcharge as long as they create interesting situations and arent too overpowered.
There is something absolutely inherently wrong from a game design perspective with Photon Overcharge. It is called power without gameplay, as Zileas, the VP of Game Design for League explains:
Power Without Gameplay This is when we give a big benefit in a way that players don't find satisfying or don't notice...
The problem with using a "power without gameplay" mechanic is that you tend to have to 'over-buff' the mechanic and create a game balance problem before people appreciate it. As a result, we tend to keep Auras weak, and/or avoid them altogether, and/or pair them on an active/passive where the active is very strong and satisfying, so that the passive is more strategic around character choice. For example, Sona's auras are all quite weak -- because at weak values they ARE appreciated properly.
Photon Overcharge is a big benefit that isn't exactly satisfying to use. It is the definition of an overbuffed mechanic that has created a game balance problem so people can appreciate it. It is a skilless ability that has watered down the early game for matchups involving Protoss. It took real skill to hold early timings as a Protoss in WOL.
Photon Overcharge was developed well after Zileas wrote that blog, but it is a textbook example of power without gameplay, because there is no game play, you click on the MSC, press F and click on a Pylon and you've held the early timing.
I think you just dont understand what is gameplay for starcraft if u still posting this thing time and time again. using msc need proper positioning(both msc and pylons), proper use of cast because of drops. It is your gameplay too. WOL had way less threats that could bypass your natural ramp or passage( as on daybreak) and do game-ending damage so toss had no need to split units that much, he just need to have units
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
This is completely on the money, if anyone here tries to argue with you that the MSC is cool and that Photon Overcharge is a good game mechanic then don't even waste your breathe. Anyone that knows anything about this game knows that PO, gimmick harass options to win, and hero units in SC2 is just cancer.
In the Zileas quote he says he is referring to auras (and passives) which are not appreciated by players relative to their overall power.
If you read the quote carefully, you will see that Photon Overcharge is used very similar to Sonas ability. While Sona has an aura, she can also activate it for a larger more significant buff. Photon Overcharge works the same way, it must be activated and on top of the correct unit as well.
Also, that quote isn't that relevant to an RTS as much since even aura units can be fine since the player must build and position them. A good example would be the WoL era immortal, where it had hardened shields as a passive. That was clearly "Power without Gameplay", but its not clear it was that much worse for the game. Then again, Blizzard has now changed the mechanic to be an activated ability.
Also dont forget, Riot has said they are willing to violate design principles as long as it brings something special or unique that couldn't be accomplished otherwise.
Well there is'nt P feedback because there is a consistent player base who keep whining against overcharge since HotS beta, yet, and who blame every other things because they obviously can't play around more complex things like FF, for them true RTS is just spamming marine&inject, and A clicking all over the place (cuz ppl says Toss is A move race AND gimmick cause to many spell since WoL)
And losing MC &bad positionning still happens to really good players (even pros..) so no it's not just easy power. Pylon positionning is'nt evident also, because you don't place as much pylons as you would need for defence.
I liked disruptor & adept (the last could maybe use some tweaking) I would thought they would nerf adept &buff stalker as everyone, and i'm dissapointed they nerfed the strategical aspect of adept like everyone, still i think they have their reason and im happy they don't listen to Forums Ragetard all the time. I guess buffed blink stalkers would be too strong.
Protoss get nothing except blink DT, which is a cool feature since it's really situationnal i think, eventually we should plays carriers now it's more cost efficient and & the mineral could go to more efficient zealot..
But i did no more than a few game on test map because Queen &hydra killing my prism from the other side of earth when the funniest things to play to me is to try to have constanttly have a speed prism with disruptor is killing the fun And still the hydra range is a too big advantage in PvZ for me with no other bonus for toss, i see this match-up completely unbalanced for me on test map and it make me sad that there is'nt any good RTS alternative TO ME.
Even PvT with the micro i see in diamond, i'm not sure not having medivac will hurt tank users that much, so overall at my level the Tank changes might be a buff idk. (but huge nerf for TvZ sure)
MSC allow the protoss to do something else than stay at home, and it's nice . by the way it's key early but as the game goes on it's importance go down.. So stop acting like it ruins everything.
FF make the game intersting cause it axes the race on field control, which seems an interseting feature to me for an RTS.. Prism range allowed to protoss actually harass with other unit than Oracle. Oracle is less& less used as i know, on a good spot, only problems is that you can lose much if you are'nt prepared, but so are mines?
Also idk why im posting this, talking with people who things they got it true and everyone who disagree is plain stupid is useless.
On November 18 2016 10:20 jinjin5000 wrote: Last night on olimoleague, we saw big resurgence on cyclone mech
I don't see why they should drastically change it to new cyclone. We were finally seeing some hints of tvp mech working with the live cyclone too. If they wanted to be easier to use, they could have modified lock on damage and the health of cyclones
Not only that, majority of patch cyclone strength comes in early game and loses a lot of effectiveness midgame. Do people really want to invest an upgrade in mediocre unit? Especially when upgrade is on tech lab for reactorable early game unit
It's been on the ladder a lot but pro scene wise that's just gumiho being gumiho. Bringing the based mech TvZ.
On November 18 2016 12:29 Frankenberry wrote: Oh god. Terran bio is gonna suck donkeyballs against mech after this patch. Honestly if mech becomes a regular thing in the TvT matchup I will strongly consider quiting this game all together. Mech just isn't fun to watch, play or play against -.- It's just a horrible boring thing that I don't even understand that they want to make a thing in the first place -.-
You say that now but right now everyone says TvT is not good to play. I know how it is to watch. Boring.
Yea but innovation has been doing it a lot on stream and it's interesting
Now they are completely changing it to arguably worse unit
On November 18 2016 03:48 Beelzebub1 wrote: It's not that I think this patch is bad per say, I just think it's still business as usual, making everything hit faster, harder, more research upgrades, not gonna lie I'm amazed to see a durability buff instead of just making the tanks move faster as Mr. Kim's balance philosophy.
The DT changes seem ridiculous though, out of all the things that could be last minute tweaked for Protoss, Warp Prism pick up (would have been a way better nerf then the HP) Oracle changes, more meaningful Adept changes (yea the vision thing makes them slightly worse but it's a sloppy, inelegant change, surprise surprise) or some type of Disruptor redesign/buff.
I'll hold more severe judgements until I play it myself when it goes live and when the pros flush it out, but it looks like Siege Tank and Raven mech are going to be ludicrously powerful and I'm going to have DT's blinking in and out of my base. Not to sound noob, but literally the last thing this game (and especially Protoss) needed was gimmick abilities to compensate for a unit just being bad.
Adepts - bad except for their ability Immortals - ability based even if it's passive Void Rays - completely reliant on ability to not suck Disruptor - This things attack pretty much is an ability Dark Templar - Sucks outside of cheese but now has gimmick ability Stalker - terrible without their ability Oracle - ...3 abilities.... MSC - Crap designed hero unit that has meaningless attack but 3 gimmick abilities Phoenix - Ability based high Templar - Great unit but still ability based
I don't get it, did they say, "there is no way to buff the Dark Templars outside of giving them an ability" or something? I don't even play Protoss but the amount of activated abilities in this game is just crazy, it's made the game so....hectic and sloppy...
All that plus you need a warp prison or a pylon plus warp gate or a pylon plus nexus to warp in units before the late game... *sigh* ...are all reasons why I stopped playing toss in LoTV. It's like "Can you please stop your lings / marines from killing my stuff for a few minutes while I'm tabbing through my army... " Yes, I'm not very good at playing the game, and I don't think LoTV became a funnier game to play than HoTS or WoL was. Maybe as zerg, but for sure not as toss.
Not excited for the patch, mech isn't really fun. Would rather still just 2 rax stim every game and win by 10 mins. Honestly it just seems that having to mass up a well positioned army is not fun at all, there's nothing engaging and no real skill-based multitasking. Hope this patch doesn't make bio unplayable. Haven't yet played the test map so I'm nervous. Will probably just switch back to toss just based on how much terran changed
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
I don't get why they announce the changes, and then just don't implement them in the balance test map right away... Who really wanna play a test map that it's not even current anymore? How much time does it take to update 3 new changes... smh
On November 18 2016 20:35 MiCroLiFe wrote: zergs whine about reapers lol? last year only time ive seen terrans winning zergs are whit reapers. get rid of autowinninglisk, thenwe can talk. 1 armor less dont do that much imo
So its ok if terran wins only with reapers and keep the win rate at %50? You must be a really fun person. Kelazhur 3-0 Lambo only with reapers, uthermal 3-0 Scarlett only with reapers. So basically we watched 1 series less in both groups. Its only byun guyzz
On November 18 2016 20:35 MiCroLiFe wrote: zergs whine about reapers lol? last year only time ive seen terrans winning zergs are whit reapers. get rid of autowinninglisk, thenwe can talk. 1 armor less dont do that much imo
So its ok if terran wins only with reapers and keep the win rate at %50? You must be a really fun person. Kelazhur 3-0 Lambo only with reapers, uthermal 3-0 Scarlett only with reapers. So basically we watched 1 series less in both groups. Its only byun guyzz
well is it better if zerg have 100%winrate then?
if zerg had %100 winrate they would immediately buff terran or nerf zerg, so yes, it would be way better than watching jumping queens
It's kind of funny to see terran players complaining about how hard it is to counter ultra, but then they find totaly reasonable that terran can open with a cheese that has no counter and puts zerg behind even when it fails.
The entirety of this patch is complete and utter random garbage, except for the tankivac removal.
Adepts are just gonna be even more frustrating for both sides since they're now a complete gamble. "oh he shaded there without knowing it wasn't defended, well played i guess" "oh i shaded there without any way to know whether there were units positionned, but since i'm forced to guess"
The tempest stun has to be the most moba-like gimmicky BS ability i've ever seen in a RTS. No look at the reaper grenade making early game TvT and TvZ a chore. No look at the photon overcharge, DK is apparently very satisfied with shooting supply buildings as a defense mechanism.
And DT blink and banshee speed buff while everyone has been pointing out that there is too much worker harass in LOTV is proof of how the dev team has no idea since HOTS how to make units interesting without "buffing mobility in some way". VR buff is another exemple by the way.
Garbage patch, nail in SC2's coffin. More gimmicks, more binary frustrating stuff, therefore probably even less players.
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
I don't get why they announce the changes, and then just don't implement them in the balance test map right away... Who really wanna play a test map that it's not even current anymore? How much time does it take to update 3 new changes... smh
I have no idea why it takes them so long to release changes. Most of the time the changes are so simple they could be done in ~15 minutes in the editor. I guess QE takes forever or something.
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
I don't get why they announce the changes, and then just don't implement them in the balance test map right away... Who really wanna play a test map that it's not even current anymore? How much time does it take to update 3 new changes... smh
First i won the first 4~ games, then I lost every game to EJKs protoss once he figured out making guardian shield and chargelots with a single earlygame voidray beats 6 dmg cyclones.
new 5 dmg one has not been tested and now hes decreasing their range from 6 to 4, and he isnt even going to pretend hes balancing it as he wont put it into the testmap and give it a reasonable time to be tested first
So the lesson is protosses that know how to beat 6 dmg cyclones every time who laugh at people trying to go mech are going to have a much easier time beating mech on top of how easy it is from before
I also faced a fast dt blink style where the protoss just blinked on top of my cyclones and in three seconds killed my entire army, using blink like a charge is very easy here is how you do it: click in the direction a unit is fleeing, and the dt will always swipe that unit as they pass eachother, this is crazy powerful i got destroyed by some isimba gm protoss and i am calling it here, that will be game ruining with a 100/100 cost, and why is this test also not going via the testmap first
meanwhile david kim says he is receiving feedback, what feedback this is i do not know but the testmap clearly shows mech losing every game to air transitions due to its imobility, and on big maps like frost or maps with an exposed third like apotheosis or galactic process you get starved every single time if you are masters or above
avilo could explain it to him, but essentially mech has always worked by the enemy not knowing how to respond, and the map preferences and when to expand/all in is predicated on this
so fixing bad maps and hardcounters is necessary for it to be viable.
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
I don't get why they announce the changes, and then just don't implement them in the balance test map right away... Who really wanna play a test map that it's not even current anymore? How much time does it take to update 3 new changes... smh
First i won the first 4~ games, then I lost every game to EJKs protoss once he figured out making guardian shield and chargelots with a single earlygame voidray beats 6 dmg cyclones.
new 5 dmg one has not been tested and now hes decreasing their range from 6 to 4, and he isnt even going to pretend hes balancing it as he wont put it into the testmap and give it a reasonable time to be tested first
So the lesson is protosses that know how to beat 6 dmg cyclones every time who laugh at people trying to go mech are going to have a much easier time beating mech on top of how easy it is from before
I also faced a fast dt blink style where the protoss just blinked on top of my cyclones and in three seconds killed my entire army, using blink like a charge is very easy here is how you do it: click in the direction a unit is fleeing, and the dt will always swipe that unit as they pass eachother, this is crazy powerful i got destroyed by some isimba gm protoss and i am calling it here, that will be game ruining with a 100/100 cost, and why is this test also not going via the testmap first
meanwhile david kim says he is receiving feedback, what feedback this is i do not know but the testmap clearly shows mech losing every game to air transitions due to its imobility, and on big maps like frost or maps with an exposed third like apotheosis or galactic process you get starved every single time if you are masters or above
avilo could explain it to him, but essentially mech has always worked by the enemy not knowing how to respond, and the map preferences and when to expand/all in is predicated on this
so fixing bad maps and hardcounters is necessary for it to be viable.
This is the biggest dafuq
"We're aiming to have a new patch released in one week. Oh, wait, lets change shit at the last minute". Blizzard has this amazing ability to both act like professionals and like college undergrads working on their first project.
The range nerf is exactly what we need to see, because it reduces the stupidly high cheese strength of the unit, and when no one builds it after the patch, Blizzard will throw up their hands and revert to the live version (with maybe a small buff) , which is a better outcome anyway.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
This is completely on the money, if anyone here tries to argue with you that the MSC is cool and that Photon Overcharge is a good game mechanic then don't even waste your breathe. Anyone that knows anything about this game knows that PO, gimmick harass options to win, and hero units in SC2 is just cancer.
Well it's ok PF can shoot and can be repaired while receiving dmg ? Really realistic lol. Do take a hammer and repair a building while someone shoot it...
But that a race that master the void and can teleport units on energy field : completly gimmick that they can have a protection system...
But if you really want to remove MSC and PO are you really ready for the implications ?
Drop will be too strong, aswell some units. Expanding too hard for protoss. So it will mean : probably medivac boost remove, every T/Z early timing nerf. Probably add an upgrade before liberator can siege or blink faster/even without upgrade maybe. Well drop ovie will go lair for sure.
Probably an adept buff too, faster warp in, etc...
But usually your guys don't think of that and are like : nerf this race, i don't play it, don't nerf mine.
Then they cry because the other receive buff to compensate. Ex TvZ : larva nerf + liberator : mutas useless on ZvT. Terran ? "Good, i hate mutas"
well zerg can't deal with medivac so we buff queens. Terran ? " OMG SO IMBA NERF THEM"
On November 19 2016 07:29 petro1987 wrote: Did they already put the siege tank hp buff (and the other changes mentioned in this update) in the balance test mod?
I don't get why they announce the changes, and then just don't implement them in the balance test map right away... Who really wanna play a test map that it's not even current anymore? How much time does it take to update 3 new changes... smh
First i won the first 4~ games, then I lost every game to EJKs protoss once he figured out making guardian shield and chargelots with a single earlygame voidray beats 6 dmg cyclones.
new 5 dmg one has not been tested and now hes decreasing their range from 6 to 4, and he isnt even going to pretend hes balancing it as he wont put it into the testmap and give it a reasonable time to be tested first
So the lesson is protosses that know how to beat 6 dmg cyclones every time who laugh at people trying to go mech are going to have a much easier time beating mech on top of how easy it is from before
I also faced a fast dt blink style where the protoss just blinked on top of my cyclones and in three seconds killed my entire army, using blink like a charge is very easy here is how you do it: click in the direction a unit is fleeing, and the dt will always swipe that unit as they pass eachother, this is crazy powerful i got destroyed by some isimba gm protoss and i am calling it here, that will be game ruining with a 100/100 cost, and why is this test also not going via the testmap first
meanwhile david kim says he is receiving feedback, what feedback this is i do not know but the testmap clearly shows mech losing every game to air transitions due to its imobility, and on big maps like frost or maps with an exposed third like apotheosis or galactic process you get starved every single time if you are masters or above
avilo could explain it to him, but essentially mech has always worked by the enemy not knowing how to respond, and the map preferences and when to expand/all in is predicated on this
so fixing bad maps and hardcounters is necessary for it to be viable.
If you're massing cyclones & don't have any ravens or use scans while your P opponent has blink dts, the onus is on you, nothing else.
On November 18 2016 15:30 JackONeill wrote: What do we want? A less harass and gimmick dependant protoss race !
I am so tired of reading meaningless words like gimmick.
I like photon overcharge. I like my darks to have blink. I like to forcefield ramp and blink up. I dont think gateway units are bad. Why should all of it be called gimmick and claimed to be bad, when its not.
If you like shooting supply buildings (that can be used offensively), you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a harass unit that already has escape mechanisms (cloack + high movespeed) gets another one, you have no idea how good game design works. If you like that a race that (had) such a weak core army needs to bend the map's features to survive, you have no idea how good game design works.
Unfortunately, it seems that the dev team shares your uninformed and archaric vision for the game. I suppose that's why people actually playing the game is the lowest it's ever been.
This is completely on the money, if anyone here tries to argue with you that the MSC is cool and that Photon Overcharge is a good game mechanic then don't even waste your breathe. Anyone that knows anything about this game knows that PO, gimmick harass options to win, and hero units in SC2 is just cancer.
Well it's ok PF can shoot and can be repaired while receiving dmg ? Really realistic lol. Do take a hammer and repair a building while someone shoot it...
But that a race that master the void and can teleport units on energy field : completly gimmick that they can have a protection system...
But if you really want to remove MSC and PO are you really ready for the implications ?
Drop will be too strong, aswell some units. Expanding too hard for protoss. So it will mean : probably medivac boost remove, every T/Z early timing nerf. Probably add an upgrade before liberator can siege or blink faster/even without upgrade maybe. Well drop ovie will go lair for sure.
Probably an adept buff too, faster warp in, etc...
But usually your guys don't think of that and are like : nerf this race, i don't play it, don't nerf mine.
Then they cry because the other receive buff to compensate. Ex TvZ : larva nerf + liberator : mutas useless on ZvT. Terran ? "Good, i hate mutas"
well zerg can't deal with medivac so we buff queens. Terran ? " OMG SO IMBA NERF THEM"
Just double standard.
You're right but removing/reworking the PO could be a start, so other types of early game buffs can be discussed. Lots of this problems started with medivac boost and removing it would be a progress as well but unfortunately they are too stubborn with their weird additions to the game and they almost never take them back.
As protoss player, I am really annoyed by the continuous posts complaining about "gimmick" and "cancer" .... these two words are enough to make me skip a post: P, T and Z are different races, if you don't like how P works maybe you don't like this game. I like how my race works, I don't want to see it redesigned because T players want to have all races play the same. I like PO, I think it's a cool solution, I don't think it's "gimmick" (I don't even know what this word means anymore, it's almost the same as "protoss" now..). I like adepts, I like warping in units and not producing them the same as T or Z. I like the idea of an "hero" unit like the MSC, and I think it's cool and fun to use. I don't think that the MSC is a "one-click" denfense vs drops: in fact, I loose to drops all the times, as well as proplayers do.
Deal with the fact that this game may not be what you want, if you only want to play TvT with slightly different races.
1 terran in the bracket at HSC. thats to much, blizzard says, therefor a nerf to tank and lib, and buff to banelings so its 100% sure no terrans in the future top8's
On November 21 2016 11:10 StarscreamG1 wrote: How will Protoss survive the PvZ meta without archons 1 shooting banelings after upgrades? Lol. This balance team is so good.
On November 21 2016 10:55 MiCroLiFe wrote: 1 terran in the bracket at HSC. thats to much, blizzard says, therefor a nerf to tank and lib, and buff to banelings so its 100% sure no terrans in the future top8's
Perhaps they should practice more than 3rax? For real though since the GSL finals Terran has won 4 out of the 6 tournaments and Protoss has won one. Zerg has won one.
On November 21 2016 10:55 MiCroLiFe wrote: 1 terran in the bracket at HSC. thats to much, blizzard says, therefor a nerf to tank and lib, and buff to banelings so its 100% sure no terrans in the future top8's
Perhaps they should practice more than 3rax? For real though since the GSL finals Terran has won 4 out of the 6 tournaments and Protoss has won one. Zerg has won one.
Which tournaments are those? Terrans have won one premiere tournament since GSL S2, and two major tournaments.
On November 21 2016 10:55 MiCroLiFe wrote: 1 terran in the bracket at HSC. thats to much, blizzard says, therefor a nerf to tank and lib, and buff to banelings so its 100% sure no terrans in the future top8's
Perhaps they should practice more than 3rax? For real though since the GSL finals Terran has won 4 out of the 6 tournaments and Protoss has won one. Zerg has won one.
Which tournaments are those? Terrans have won one premiere tournament since GSL S2, and two major tournaments.
The last 6 on liquipedias recent tournaments.
I'm really hesitant to argue about what qualifies as premier or not though. It has HSC listed as premier and that isn't exactly right is it?
On November 21 2016 10:55 MiCroLiFe wrote: 1 terran in the bracket at HSC. thats to much, blizzard says, therefor a nerf to tank and lib, and buff to banelings so its 100% sure no terrans in the future top8's
Perhaps they should practice more than 3rax? For real though since the GSL finals Terran has won 4 out of the 6 tournaments and Protoss has won one. Zerg has won one.
Which tournaments are those? Terrans have won one premiere tournament since GSL S2, and two major tournaments.
The last 6 on liquipedias recent tournaments.
I'm really hesitant to argue about what qualifies as premier or not though. It has HSC listed as premier and that isn't exactly right is it?
I don't recall the criteria for being a premiere tournament, I'm just assuming that the liquipedia page is correct.
Anyway, the recent results page hasn't been updated in a year, and the completed sidebar on the liquipedia front page has way more than six tournaments, so I don't know know which list you're referring to.
The problem is that they didn't adress Mass Reaper and with the map pool they proposed it's gonna be 2-3 racks reaper festival. There's only one 4 player map and the rest of them are small enough to make proxy mass reapers imba as hell. So mass reaper into siegetank/cyclone/hellion and gg Zerg.
On November 18 2016 04:59 xTJx wrote: It's just a joke that terran got a cheese that doesn't put them behind in the game even when they deal no damage, and it's been 1 year. If koreans haven't figured it out by now, it's because there's no counter.
And this adding to a matchup where zerg's only chance is getting hive, just totaly broken.
For 6 years protoss players have been allowed to cannon rush to masters, and now terran is just as retarded, guess this is the apex of Blizzard's vision of balance.
The fact that the best zerg in the world opens pool first says everything about this game.
But predictably you had no problem with 20 armor ultras and overpowered ravagers. Lets stop this whining. If anything Zerg needs a nerf on invincible nydus worms.
On November 21 2016 07:48 VHbb wrote: As protoss player, I am really annoyed by the continuous posts complaining about "gimmick" and "cancer" .... these two words are enough to make me skip a post: P, T and Z are different races, if you don't like how P works maybe you don't like this game. I like how my race works, I don't want to see it redesigned because T players want to have all races play the same. I like PO, I think it's a cool solution, I don't think it's "gimmick" (I don't even know what this word means anymore, it's almost the same as "protoss" now..). I like adepts, I like warping in units and not producing them the same as T or Z. I like the idea of an "hero" unit like the MSC, and I think it's cool and fun to use. I don't think that the MSC is a "one-click" denfense vs drops: in fact, I loose to drops all the times, as well as proplayers do.
Deal with the fact that this game may not be what you want, if you only want to play TvT with slightly different races.
This is a fallacy. Just because Protoss arguably has a lot of gimmicks because mean people who point this out want all races to be the same.
On November 22 2016 14:56 hiroshOne wrote: Ravagers don't get the armour flag. Blizzard dropped this and he's right.
According to the link in the Battle.net launcher it says they got it... except you're right, that link leads to old information.
I don't know I why I trusted that source... my mistake.
They made so many changes since introducing balance test ladder that it can get confusing. They dismissed Ravager armoured flag as Ravagers were trashed by Stalkers, tanks, cyclones and more. That unit would be dead with that flag and totally useless.
Going to comment, i'd like people that read/respond to keep in mind i'd already played and seen 50+ games of the "test mod" which is basically the same as the live patch is now:
Mech is the same if not worse on this patch. Infestor burrow, but mainly invincible nydus and swarmhost in particular are broken as hell. Needs to be hotfixed. I mentioned that swarmhosts needed to be hotfixed months ago when the test mod came out and for some reason other people did and it was ignored. The patch is going to kill the game if swarmhosts are not fixed within the next few days.
Next is, this patch did absolutely nothing to address mech anti-air issues vs all capital ships/broods. Protoss can make pure carrier, and then add in high templar / archon underneath and your anti-air is actually even WORSE because cyclones are suck against air. Not like they worked before, but now they're 10x worse.
As for Protoss...Protoss is basically in the same boat as mech Terran. I think most Protoss players will quit the game after they realize every game is about to turn into infestor/swarmhost type of non-sense, as well as baneling buff ruining both ZvT and PvZ. Banelings were already strong vs both races, now it's a problem.
This patch really did not address issues or increase mech viability because blizzard does the same mistake they do every time when it comes to mech viability. Buff 1 thing of mech while buffing 20 of the anti-mech things (such as hydralisks, the buff was unnecessary). It's terrible.
I honestly think they missed a lot of huge issues too like:
-adept is not balanced properly still -invincible nydus worm still in the game (shouldn't be) -mass reaper is still in the game (shouldn't be) -swarmhost on test map needed a hotfix, still does
Disappointing patch. Disappointing wait for the patch. Disappointing they listened to absolutely no feedback about mech anti-air, and just overall disappointed that they have no clue what they are doing.
On November 22 2016 17:48 avilo wrote: Going to comment, i'd like people that read/respond to keep in mind i'd already played and seen 50+ games of the "test mod" which is basically the same as the live patch is now:
Mech is the same if not worse on this patch. Infestor burrow, but mainly invincible nydus and swarmhost in particular are broken as hell. Needs to be hotfixed. I mentioned that swarmhosts needed to be hotfixed months ago when the test mod came out and for some reason other people did and it was ignored. The patch is going to kill the game if swarmhosts are not fixed within the next few days.
Next is, this patch did absolutely nothing to address mech anti-air issues vs all capital ships/broods. Protoss can make pure carrier, and then add in high templar / archon underneath and your anti-air is actually even WORSE because cyclones are suck against air. Not like they worked before, but now they're 10x worse.
As for Protoss...Protoss is basically in the same boat as mech Terran. I think most Protoss players will quit the game after they realize every game is about to turn into infestor/swarmhost type of non-sense, as well as baneling buff ruining both ZvT and PvZ. Banelings were already strong vs both races, now it's a problem.
This patch really did not address issues or increase mech viability because blizzard does the same mistake they do every time when it comes to mech viability. Buff 1 thing of mech while buffing 20 of the anti-mech things (such as hydralisks, the buff was unnecessary). It's terrible.
I honestly think they missed a lot of huge issues too like:
-adept is not balanced properly still -invincible nydus worm still in the game (shouldn't be) -mass reaper is still in the game (shouldn't be) -swarmhost on test map needed a hotfix, still does
Disappointing patch. Disappointing wait for the patch. Disappointing they listened to absolutely no feedback about mech anti-air, and just overall disappointed that they have no clue what they are doing.
I agree. Especially about Swarmhosts, they single handily hard counter mech worse then what even the HOTS immortal did. They basically make the game unplayable if you play mech.
I really hope Blizzard hotfix this. The rest of the issues can be fixed within a month or so but Swarmhosts are absurd right now.
On November 18 2016 03:41 Elentos wrote: If they really want to play around with tank health they should at least put it above 180 so it survives 3 corrosive biles. Or tone down bile damage to 55 or something.
ya sometimes i feel math isnt a thing in blizzards base...
On November 18 2016 03:41 Elentos wrote: If they really want to play around with tank health they should at least put it above 180 so it survives 3 corrosive biles. Or tone down bile damage to 55 or something.
ya sometimes i feel math isnt a thing in blizzards base...
Actually I'm pretty sure the decision to let tanks die to 3 biles is a very conscious one and I would agree with it. The real testing begins now, if it doesn't work out a number like that can easily be adjusted.
and by the way people saying blizzard can't do math and should set the tank hp @ 180 in order to let them survive 3 corrosive biles are probably at odds with math themselves because corrosive bile is most likely a spell and ignores armor =p
On November 22 2016 21:17 Ganseng wrote: and by the way people saying blizzard can't do math and should set the tank hp @ 180 in order to let them survive 3 corrosive biles are probably at odds with math themselves because corrosive bile is most likely a spell and ignores armor =p
3x60 = 180 = dead tank anyways
My post said above 180 so 181 minimum. But nice try.
On November 18 2016 03:41 Elentos wrote: If they really want to play around with tank health they should at least put it above 180 so it survives 3 corrosive biles. Or tone down bile damage to 55 or something.
ya sometimes i feel math isnt a thing in blizzards base...
Actually I'm pretty sure the decision to let tanks die to 3 biles is a very conscious one and I would agree with it. The real testing begins now, if it doesn't work out a number like that can easily be adjusted.
In macro games the sentiment is nice. But when you get roach/ravager all-in'd? You can't micro your tanks but they still die at the same rate. The damage is buffed but a continuously micro'd tankivac still has infinitely more value in that situation.
On November 22 2016 21:17 Ganseng wrote: and by the way people saying blizzard can't do math and should set the tank hp @ 180 in order to let them survive 3 corrosive biles are probably at odds with math themselves because corrosive bile is most likely a spell and ignores armor =p
3x60 = 180 = dead tank anyways
Zergs need some countering versus siege tanks. 3 corrosive biles is okay as zerg counter to siege tanks. They were buffed, but not overbuffed.
On November 22 2016 17:48 avilo wrote: Going to comment, i'd like people that read/respond to keep in mind i'd already played and seen 50+ games of the "test mod" which is basically the same as the live patch is now:
Mech is the same if not worse on this patch. Infestor burrow, but mainly invincible nydus and swarmhost in particular are broken as hell. Needs to be hotfixed. I mentioned that swarmhosts needed to be hotfixed months ago when the test mod came out and for some reason other people did and it was ignored. The patch is going to kill the game if swarmhosts are not fixed within the next few days.
Next is, this patch did absolutely nothing to address mech anti-air issues vs all capital ships/broods. Protoss can make pure carrier, and then add in high templar / archon underneath and your anti-air is actually even WORSE because cyclones are suck against air. Not like they worked before, but now they're 10x worse.
As for Protoss...Protoss is basically in the same boat as mech Terran. I think most Protoss players will quit the game after they realize every game is about to turn into infestor/swarmhost type of non-sense, as well as baneling buff ruining both ZvT and PvZ. Banelings were already strong vs both races, now it's a problem.
This patch really did not address issues or increase mech viability because blizzard does the same mistake they do every time when it comes to mech viability. Buff 1 thing of mech while buffing 20 of the anti-mech things (such as hydralisks, the buff was unnecessary). It's terrible.
I honestly think they missed a lot of huge issues too like:
-adept is not balanced properly still -invincible nydus worm still in the game (shouldn't be) -mass reaper is still in the game (shouldn't be) -swarmhost on test map needed a hotfix, still does
Disappointing patch. Disappointing wait for the patch. Disappointing they listened to absolutely no feedback about mech anti-air, and just overall disappointed that they have no clue what they are doing.
You will never be satisfied no matter what they do. You cried for years that they should buff Tank damage (or make big changes in general) , now they do it and you still whine. Just quit the game already if you are that disappointed by it. Btw, if you let Protoss get pure Carrier it´s YOUR fault. Not the other player´s or blizzard´s. Of course "don´t let them get there" should never be a valid statement, in this case it´s true. And since when are Hydras Anti-Mech wtf. They even buffed the HP of Tanks. And there was more than just one Unit buffed. Stop spreading misinformation.
While I don´t play the game itself (just because I can´t) , Mech has gotten a lot better/stronger on the ground. If there are any other problems they sure will look at it and adress it. One step at a time. Not to mention that the Test was on completely different maps. We will see a whole new Meta game with these changes coupled with the "new" maps. These changes and the redesign (hell even buffing Siege Tank damage alone) is a huge step for blizzard. Nobody (or only a small amount of people) thought they will ever do this.
I could go on but in your case its useless. Since I know you from streaming during the Swarm era i know you are not gonna learn. You refuse to watch replays and switch on Health bars, then ragequit your whole stream because your bunker dies to DT´s that you could have repaired if you know how much HP it had. You have openly accused several Pro´s (Koreans and foreigners) of cheating/maphacking and even insulted them (you called Violet autistic WTF dude). Still wonders me why TL has you featured. Just viewer count should not qualify someone for being featured if he is that toxic.You don´t deserve that attention at all.
Sorry for that little bit of rant but I needed to get this off my chest.
On November 22 2016 22:45 VonComet wrote: Tresher you are so clueless it hurts.
The best part is where he admits not playing the game (and therefore not having played the test map), yet, somehow, stating that hydras are not good vs mech. It seems the "mech is too strong" bandwagon is at full force. Then, when korean Terrans don't even bother playing mech (outside TvT), what will people say?
tbh the players I've seen use it like they are using bio. so I don't have a lot of sympathy for people engaging in bad positions because they inherently expect to be able to just pick up and leave without losing the game.
I specifically mean slow mech. Hellion cyclone is still your hyper aggressive funtime.
To be fair it's a bit unreasonable to expect mech to be viable if you let your protoss opponent to get carriers high templars archons
I mean, he is not playing alone, it's obvious that if you let him get the perfect anti-mech composition, you should loose.. can't you do something before the 30min mark?
It looks you expect to have an unbeatable composition, as mech, with which you can just move out against any P composition..
On November 22 2016 22:45 VonComet wrote: Tresher you are so clueless it hurts.
The best part is where he admits not playing the game (and therefore not having played the test map), yet, somehow, stating that hydras are not good vs mech. It seems the "mech is too strong" bandwagon is at full force. Then, when korean Terrans don't even bother playing mech (outside TvT), what will people say?
I knew someone was gonna jump on that -_- . I never said Hydras are not good, I said Hydras are not specifically Anti-Mech. Please read. Also you don´t need to play the game yourself necesarily. There are enough streamers/players that know what they are talking about (Hint: avilo does not count). Also I don´t know what the "Mech is too strong" comment is about. I never said that too. It has just become stronger. Like I said: The changes and the new Maps will evolve a whole new Meta. Not only for Mech/Terran but for all races. It´s too early to judge. If the changes would be useless they wouldn´t have implemented them and would have changed more. And to just say someone is clueless without ANY explanation just makes you look like the typical avilo supporter that takes everything he says to heart.
On November 22 2016 23:45 VHbb wrote: To be fair it's a bit unreasonable to expect mech to be viable if you let your protoss opponent to get carriers high templars archons
I mean, he is not playing alone, it's obvious that if you let him get the perfect anti-mech composition, you should loose.. can't you do something before the 30min mark?
It looks you expect to have an unbeatable composition, as mech, with which you can just move out against any P composition..
On November 22 2016 22:45 VonComet wrote: Tresher you are so clueless it hurts.
The best part is where he admits not playing the game (and therefore not having played the test map), yet, somehow, stating that hydras are not good vs mech. It seems the "mech is too strong" bandwagon is at full force. Then, when korean Terrans don't even bother playing mech (outside TvT), what will people say?
I knew someone was gonna jump on that -_- . I never said Hydras are not good, I said Hydras are not specifically Anti-Mech. Please read. Also you don´t need to play the game yourself necesarily. There are enough streamers/players that know what they are talking about (Hint: avilo does not count). Also I don´t know what the "Mech is too strong" comment is about. I never said that too. It has just become stronger. Like I said: The changes and the new Maps will evolve a whole new Meta. Not only for Mech/Terran but for all races. It´s too early to judge. If the changes would be useless they wouldn´t have implemented them and would have changed more. And to just say someone is clueless without ANY explanation just makes you look like the typical avilo supporter that takes everything he says to heart.
On November 22 2016 23:45 VHbb wrote: To be fair it's a bit unreasonable to expect mech to be viable if you let your protoss opponent to get carriers high templars archons
I mean, he is not playing alone, it's obvious that if you let him get the perfect anti-mech composition, you should loose.. can't you do something before the 30min mark?
It looks you expect to have an unbeatable composition, as mech, with which you can just move out against any P composition..
Thank you.
Buffed hydras are very good vs mech. I don't know what exactly what you mean by "anti-mech"... Does it need to do plus dmg vs mechanical to be considered "anti-mech"? I saw plenty of games of Vibe and other streamers doing very well vs mech with hydras/vipers.
Btw, I'm not even defending Avilo, I'm just stating that saying hydras aren't very good vs mech is wrong.
About the carriers. I don't think anyone will be able to just go carriers from the start as they would probably be very vulnerable to a myriad of timings. But it's definitely possible to transition to air Toss vs mech and reach an "unbeatable" composition. The irony here is that you think it's ok that Toss can reach a composition that just stomp mech, but the other way around would be a blasphemy. I don't want a mech composition that can just stomp anything, but being able to trade efficiently sure would be good, if mech is to be viable ofc.
I'm not saying that "'it's ok that Toss can reach a composition that just stomp mech" I'm saying that the fact that this composition exists, is not a reason for mech not to be viable: you can play mech and punish the toss before it reaches it, so I don't think carriers are a good reason not to play mech
On November 22 2016 22:45 VonComet wrote: Tresher you are so clueless it hurts.
The best part is where he admits not playing the game (and therefore not having played the test map), yet, somehow, stating that hydras are not good vs mech. It seems the "mech is too strong" bandwagon is at full force. Then, when korean Terrans don't even bother playing mech (outside TvT), what will people say?
I knew someone was gonna jump on that -_- . I never said Hydras are not good, I said Hydras are not specifically Anti-Mech. Please read. Also you don´t need to play the game yourself necesarily. There are enough streamers/players that know what they are talking about (Hint: avilo does not count). Also I don´t know what the "Mech is too strong" comment is about. I never said that too. It has just become stronger. Like I said: The changes and the new Maps will evolve a whole new Meta. Not only for Mech/Terran but for all races. It´s too early to judge. If the changes would be useless they wouldn´t have implemented them and would have changed more. And to just say someone is clueless without ANY explanation just makes you look like the typical avilo supporter that takes everything he says to heart.
On November 22 2016 23:45 VHbb wrote: To be fair it's a bit unreasonable to expect mech to be viable if you let your protoss opponent to get carriers high templars archons
I mean, he is not playing alone, it's obvious that if you let him get the perfect anti-mech composition, you should loose.. can't you do something before the 30min mark?
It looks you expect to have an unbeatable composition, as mech, with which you can just move out against any P composition..
Thank you.
Buffed hydras are very good vs mech. I don't know what exactly what you mean by "anti-mech"... Does it need to do plus dmg vs mechanical to be considered "anti-mech"? I saw plenty of games of Vibe and other streamers doing very well vs mech with hydras/vipers.
Btw, I'm not even defending Avilo, I'm just stating that saying hydras aren't very good vs mech is wrong.
About the carriers. I don't think anyone will be able to just go carriers from the start as they would probably be very vulnerable to a myriad of timings. But it's definitely possible to transition to air Toss vs mech and reach an "unbeatable" composition. The irony here is that you think it's ok that Toss can reach a composition that just stomp mech, but the other way around would be a blasphemy. I don't want a mech composition that can just stomp anything, but being able to trade efficiently sure would be good, if mech is to be viable ofc.
Oh huge misunderstanding here. It was avilo that stated Protoss can just go mass carriers (as if he wouldn´t have a way to stop it) and Hydras are Anti Mech, not me. Im sure Hydras are good but they are NOT an Anti Mech Unit like avilo said. He said that like 20 Mech counters were buffed while only 1 Mech Unit was buffed which is just not true. Sure a few counters were buffed like Zealots, but if your Tanks die to Zealots you are doing it wrong or put Hellions in Battleform in front of them for example. Im sure Mech is a lot more viable than before (at least it should be stronger on ground). And the new Tanks should be good vs Hydras too, without Armor upgrades they get 2-shotted.
I just wouldn´t write off Mech completely, especially since the new Maps are quite good Mech maps and the changes are fresh. I wound´t even have said anything if the Mech rant would have come from a different person. But since it´s coming from a person that is constantly whining, even if the person´s wishes (more tank damage) are fulfilled I was getting a bit angry.
If mech is supposed to be viable then Swarm host cannot remain with their current price.
One can argue about different things being too strong or too weak in the patch, but Swarm hosts are just broken.
For example I just played a game on SEA just to try to out the live version of the patch. I have never played on SEA before but it put me against an opponent with a macro that was at least 2-3 leagues lower than me. I am Diamond on EU and it felt like I was playing against a silver level player.
A Zerg player that had 10-15 fewer workers then me until late game without me having killed a single of his workers! That was how bad his macro was.
So I attack him with tanks/thors and hellbats in the midgame. Even though I kill one of his expansion, crush his army and kill lots of workers he insta build 25 dirt cheap swarmhosts and I have to run for my life with my entire army. The rest of the game was him spamming swarmhosts with some ling and muta support and me throwing away all my tanks, every thought of playing positional mech and trying to fight him with hellion/banshee/viking/thor. He was bad at using Swarmhost but I still had to fight for my life. I shudder to think what would happen against an equal opponent that knows how to use the swarm hosts.
The game was insanely close and even though I eventually won it should not have been this close. If a silver level player can get a close game against a Diamond level player just by abusing swarm hosts I can not see mech being playable against Zerg at all.
I urge Blizzard to increase the cost of swarm hosts fast, they are just broken right now.
The rest of the adjustments can come later but there is not much point of playing mech until the swarm host is fixed.
I'd like to remind everyone that +50 games is not sufficient enough data to make any decisions yet. It could provide insight, but it definitely is not an indication of mech's viability.
I'm not saying this patch is on the money or way off mark, but I would like to ask everyone to keep an open mind first. Let Blizzard implement this patch, and than let's get more data. No one, not even Blizzard, can know the full extent of this patch and how it impacts the matchup. It might create a new meta that will be just as stale as the Winfestor/BL during the last months of WoL, or a diverse and deep meta with multiple units and varying compositions.
We need more than anecdotal experience before any definitive statements can be made, and we won't have that until everyone (from pros to plebs) can get a chance to dive in.
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
On November 22 2016 17:48 avilo wrote: Going to comment, i'd like people that read/respond to keep in mind i'd already played and seen 50+ games of the "test mod" which is basically the same as the live patch is now:
Mech is the same if not worse on this patch. Infestor burrow, but mainly invincible nydus and swarmhost in particular are broken as hell. Needs to be hotfixed. I mentioned that swarmhosts needed to be hotfixed months ago when the test mod came out and for some reason other people did and it was ignored. The patch is going to kill the game if swarmhosts are not fixed within the next few days.
Next is, this patch did absolutely nothing to address mech anti-air issues vs all capital ships/broods. Protoss can make pure carrier, and then add in high templar / archon underneath and your anti-air is actually even WORSE because cyclones are suck against air. Not like they worked before, but now they're 10x worse.
As for Protoss...Protoss is basically in the same boat as mech Terran. I think most Protoss players will quit the game after they realize every game is about to turn into infestor/swarmhost type of non-sense, as well as baneling buff ruining both ZvT and PvZ. Banelings were already strong vs both races, now it's a problem.
This patch really did not address issues or increase mech viability because blizzard does the same mistake they do every time when it comes to mech viability. Buff 1 thing of mech while buffing 20 of the anti-mech things (such as hydralisks, the buff was unnecessary). It's terrible.
I honestly think they missed a lot of huge issues too like:
-adept is not balanced properly still -invincible nydus worm still in the game (shouldn't be) -mass reaper is still in the game (shouldn't be) -swarmhost on test map needed a hotfix, still does
Disappointing patch. Disappointing wait for the patch. Disappointing they listened to absolutely no feedback about mech anti-air, and just overall disappointed that they have no clue what they are doing.
My god, whole year you were whining about Vipers being OP, imba and shit and now it's hydra. swarmhost, infesors...Even freaking banelings which nobody makes vs mech. So let me get this straight? Vipers are no longer imba right?
Almost every proposal you give is making particular race unplayable vs your own style of play. You demand only buffs for mech- especially for turtle mech. It's as if i would demand from Blizzard that mutalisks must counter everything in the game because i like them. Please stop and make your own gameplay more complex than only one route which is camping on mass tanks and turrets till max.
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
Definitely not a good patch. Unit roles are still hopelessly defined.
And think about this: Is there any situation where a zerg player would want to adjust his Hydra count against mech terran?
Is there any way a mech'ing terran can adjust his mech composition to be better/worse against Hydras?
Or is Hydras just a unit you can blindly mass when you see mech?
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
Definitely not a good patch. Unit roles are still hopelessly defined.
And think about this: Is there any situation where a zerg player would want to adjust his Hydra count against mech terran?
Is there any way a mech'ing terran can adjust his mech composition to be better/worse against Hydras?
Or is Hydras just a unit you can blindly mass when you see mech?
Are you saying that Zerg players just make hydras and a move?
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
Definitely not a good patch. Unit roles are still hopelessly defined.
And think about this: Is there any situation where a zerg player would want to adjust his Hydra count against mech terran?
Is there any way a mech'ing terran can adjust his mech composition to be better/worse against Hydras?
Or is Hydras just a unit you can blindly mass when you see mech?
Are you saying that Zerg players just make hydras and a move?
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
Definitely not a good patch. Unit roles are still hopelessly defined.
And think about this: Is there any situation where a zerg player would want to adjust his Hydra count against mech terran?
Is there any way a mech'ing terran can adjust his mech composition to be better/worse against Hydras?
Or is Hydras just a unit you can blindly mass when you see mech?
Stop theorycrafting and let people test it out properly, it's out for literally hours only. What do you mean by "unit roles are still hopelessly defined"?
so who here is going to make cyclones over tanks as an anti armored counter past 10 minutes?
NOBODY
who here is going to make new thor over vikings to engage brood/carrier/tempest?
NOBODY
conclusion is this is a failpatch, redesign cyclone to act as a goliath aka long range single target anti armored, and make thor do more splash ffs
its a 1.88 speed commitment that dies and costs you the game if you lose ANY engagements, its idioticly risky, and with abduct and blinding cloud the speed makes the unit both predictable and EZ to chase down
THE THOR IS MECHS VIABILITY, IF IT DOES NOT DO ITS JOB MECH WILL NOT WORK!
SOLUTION:
either you should make thors immune to neural/abduct/blindingcloud/fungal or you need to look at those abilities and actually balance the game, having many small units is always going to be better then a few slow big units as long as you have massively overpowered abilities that work a hundred times as well against fewer stronger units than many weak ones
Definitely not a good patch. Unit roles are still hopelessly defined.
And think about this: Is there any situation where a zerg player would want to adjust his Hydra count against mech terran?
Is there any way a mech'ing terran can adjust his mech composition to be better/worse against Hydras?
Or is Hydras just a unit you can blindly mass when you see mech?
Stop theorycrafting and let actual people test it out properly, it's out for literally hours only. What do you mean by "unit roles are still hopelessly defined"?
I gave an example of that in my post. (proper weakness's and strenghts that forces players to adjust their compositions throughout the game in relation to what the opponent is doing).
Stop theorycrafting and let actual people test it out properly, it's out for literally hours only.
Take your own advice and never post on this forum again because everything you write will be theorycrafting. If there isn't a theoretical reason for why Hydras aren't viable against all forms of mech throughout the entire game chances are that no amount of testing will change that.
Hey! Let's buff Marine damage to 100. Oh and we should not be allowed to make any guesses or have any discussions on how that will impact the game dynamic before people gets time to test it.
Well, you guessed that Hydras will counter mech solely by themselves and massing them will be viable, now we'll actually play and see if it's going to be the case
We (people that play the game) have been testing it pretty intensively for the last week so we're not scrambling to find the new meta on day 1 of the new patch.
Hydras counter tanks like lings counter marines. Sure, if you let your shit get surrounded by hydras its going to hurt. But that should not be happening to you and if it does then you got beat earlier in the game and need to look at your initial mistakes.
Hider you post the most toxic contributions in this forum.. I don't know why but in every discussion you participate with these super harsh and rude comments, it's very disturbing honestly
On November 23 2016 00:59 MockHamill wrote: If mech is supposed to be viable then Swarm host cannot remain with their current price.
One can argue about different things being too strong or too weak in the patch, but Swarm hosts are just broken.
For example I just played a game on SEA just to try to out the live version of the patch. I have never played on SEA before but it put me against an opponent with a macro that was at least 2-3 leagues lower than me. I am Diamond on EU and it felt like I was playing against a silver level player.
A Zerg player that had 10-15 fewer workers then me until late game without me having killed a single of his workers! That was how bad his macro was.
So I attack him with tanks/thors and hellbats in the midgame. Even though I kill one of his expansion, crush his army and kill lots of workers he insta build 25 dirt cheap swarmhosts and I have to run for my life with my entire army. The rest of the game was him spamming swarmhosts with some ling and muta support and me throwing away all my tanks, every thought of playing positional mech and trying to fight him with hellion/banshee/viking/thor. He was bad at using Swarmhost but I still had to fight for my life. I shudder to think what would happen against an equal opponent that knows how to use the swarm hosts.
The game was insanely close and even though I eventually won it should not have been this close. If a silver level player can get a close game against a Diamond level player just by abusing swarm hosts I can not see mech being playable against Zerg at all.
I urge Blizzard to increase the cost of swarm hosts fast, they are just broken right now.
The rest of the adjustments can come later but there is not much point of playing mech until the swarm host is fixed.
"I killed his one base with 25 workers...The game was insanely close and it shouldn't"
WOW that sounds almost exactly like every ZvT from Zergs perspective when Zeeg kills Terran economy and he just drops mules and plays further like nothing happened. Why should only Terran have come back mechanics? Seems to me that Zerg u played did pretty much good job with coming back.
Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
Sorry to break the Mech Debate, but i feel like Blizzard shitted on my face for PvZ...
New maps make B3 really difficult to take for P in PvZ, while the nerf adept make them getting rekt by lings .Z will always have econ advantage on those maps. Hydra are so powerfull they will be the answer to everything i pull out, owning Carriers, and destroy even more any reliance you could have on gateball. Their range make them really less vulnerable to Disruptor (Collosus A click unit back yeeaaah fun fun fun) and punish harder any drop harass you would try late game (who's already a bit nerfed)
The only solution to own big Roach Hydra will be heavy robo which will need intense scouting for not getting owned by any small Muta switch. Blink&glaives feel useless now, so the switch for countering muta will be even more harder. Getting Carriers will require insane turtle, i found turtling vs a Z can be fun, but you still need a big critical mass if you expect to beat hydra with them.
On the other side, you feel like Z just take eco advantage you can't deny, spam inject, Hydra (lurker if needed) & A click.
I said bye to the next season i guess.
edit : Oh i forgot the possible comeback of Swarmhost. I've read that they've got powerful again, idk how close to pre-patch HotS they are now, but back then i've NEVER won against them if it was'nt right away the moment i saw them. And same for Kor players,missed maybe some games, but i've NEVER saw a Kor win against them if it was'nt right away (i guess it's for that reason they did'nt waited for LotV to patch back then). This is the final touch that just make this patch unbearable. I won't try hard finding solutions against a so bad play style, neither will i All in most of time again in this match up.
I'm done and i'm sure i will not be the only P one. PvZ was a match up with relatively weak whine on both side i feel, this is the end. P will feel forced to all in & do nasty things all the time and Z will hate P again for throwing all kind of all in & strong harass& pression they can make. Salt level will increase, for sure.
On November 23 2016 13:05 Probe1 wrote: We (people that play the game) have been testing it pretty intensively for the last week so we're not scrambling to find the new meta on day 1 of the new patch.
Hydras counter tanks like lings counter marines. Sure, if you let your shit get surrounded by hydras its going to hurt. But that should not be happening to you and if it does then you got beat earlier in the game and need to look at your initial mistakes.
Let's be honest here, none of us is actually good at the game compared to high level player, and none of our build are refined or optimised to take into account the new timings introduced by the changes in units. How many "broken strategies" at the release of LoTV were truly broken in the end? Some of them, for sure, but a lot of the stuff were just the results of unoptimised builds. It's silly to give definitive and absolute opinion at the moment, although it's natural to discuss with skepticism some choices (looking at you, SwarmHost).
Let's be honest here, none of us is actually good at the game compared to high level player, and none of our build are refined or optimised to take into account the new timings introduced by the changes in units. How many "broken strategies" at the release of LoTV were truly broken in the end? Some of them, for sure, but a lot of the stuff were just the results of unoptimised builds. It's silly to give definitive and absolute opinion at the moment, although it's natural to discuss with skepticism some choices (looking at you, SwarmHost).
Sure, but stats are already speaking from themselves
On November 23 2016 18:05 Kiwan wrote: Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
I don't see how you feel the new patch is fun. TvZ mech is back to raven vs SH/viper dynamic (free energy based damage vs free energy based damage + free units), that's extremely boring.
On November 23 2016 18:05 Kiwan wrote: Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
I don't see how you feel the new patch is fun. TvZ mech is back to raven vs SH/viper dynamic (free energy based damage vs free energy based damage + free units), that's extremely boring.
I never thought that TvZ Mech could be anything but that in SC2 so that's not surprising for me, but on the other hand mech could kinda work in TvP no?
On November 23 2016 18:05 Kiwan wrote: Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
I don't see how you feel the new patch is fun. TvZ mech is back to raven vs SH/viper dynamic (free energy based damage vs free energy based damage + free units), that's extremely boring.
I never thought that TvZ Mech could be anything but that in SC2 so that's not surprising for me, but on the other hand mech could kinda work in TvP no?
Nah mech still won't work against protoss. You can die to so many things that any composition you build has a very clear counter from protoss.
Warp prism's ranged pickup + how terrible the cyclone's AA is means you're forced into turreting up. Cyclones are good vs stalkers and immortals, but their DPS is horrible against zealots and adepts (which are the frontliners). Thors are supposed to counter air, but they suck so hard against immortals (4 immortals 2 shot a thor). Disruptors still outrange tanks.
And most of all : phenixes openers deny any attempt to push out until you have a healthy viking count or few thors. But if you go for such a AA units investment to move out and be agressive, you're simply gonna die on the ground to the chargelot/immortals transition. Overall either toss forces you to counter air and then trashes you on the ground, either toss streches out your defenses with ground units to the point where you can't ever move out, which allows him to go for the "unbeatable stuff" (10+ disruptors, 8+ carriers, tradebase, etc).
Mech is still terrible against protoss. Maybe less terrible, but making it work without gimmicks (cloack BS, killing an insane amount of workers very early on, liberator range cheeses, etc.) is still impossible.
On November 23 2016 18:05 Kiwan wrote: Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
I don't see how you feel the new patch is fun. TvZ mech is back to raven vs SH/viper dynamic (free energy based damage vs free energy based damage + free units), that's extremely boring.
I never thought that TvZ Mech could be anything but that in SC2 so that's not surprising for me, but on the other hand mech could kinda work in TvP no?
Nah mech still won't work against protoss. You can die to so many things that any composition you build has a very clear counter from protoss.
Warp prism's ranged pickup + how terrible the cyclone's AA is means you're forced into turreting up. Cyclones are good vs stalkers and immortals, but their DPS is horrible against zealots and adepts (which are the frontliners). Thors are supposed to counter air, but they suck so hard against immortals (4 immortals 2 shot a thor). Disruptors still outrange tanks.
And most of all : phenixes openers deny any attempt to push out until you have a healthy viking count or few thors. But if you go for such a AA units investment to move out and be agressive, you're simply gonna die on the ground to the chargelot/immortals transition. Overall either toss forces you to counter air and then trashes you on the ground, either toss streches out your defenses with ground units to the point where you can't ever move out, which allows him to go for the "unbeatable stuff" (10+ disruptors, 8+ carriers, tradebase, etc).
Mech is still terrible against protoss. Maybe less terrible, but making it work without gimmicks (cloack BS, killing an insane amount of workers very early on, liberator range cheeses, etc.) is still impossible.
I'm doing horrible on ladder, but I think it's quite fun so far. Gotta get used to the old maps again and find a crisp build.
Hydras are strong, but somehow with the upgrades being split they only get really strong when it feels a bit late. Not sure if I should try double hydra den.
"Play mech !" -> in TvT you better go tank hellion, cyclone sucks and takes to much time. "Play Mech! "- > in TvZ every Mech unit is countered by the Hydra. Tanks do less DPS thanks to attack speed nerf, with hellions its a numbers game, but with the new range you die. Oh and cyclones not even get near the Hydras. "Play Mech !" -> in TvP Making MMM seems to still be the best way, Protoss should just outmacro those who try to get tanks.
On November 23 2016 13:05 Probe1 wrote: We (people that play the game) have been testing it pretty intensively for the last week so we're not scrambling to find the new meta on day 1 of the new patch.
Hydras counter tanks like lings counter marines. Sure, if you let your shit get surrounded by hydras its going to hurt. But that should not be happening to you and if it does then you got beat earlier in the game and need to look at your initial mistakes.
Let's be honest here, none of us is actually good at the game compared to high level player, and none of our build are refined or optimised to take into account the new timings introduced by the changes in units. How many "broken strategies" at the release of LoTV were truly broken in the end? Some of them, for sure, but a lot of the stuff were just the results of unoptimised builds. It's silly to give definitive and absolute opinion at the moment, although it's natural to discuss with skepticism some choices (looking at you, SwarmHost).
Very good post Vanadiel.
It's ok to discuss strategies/compositions/units that might be "broken" but let's not make absolute statements until the pros start refining and perfecting the builds.
Blizzard already stated they are designing the game to be the hardest game to play, so that implies it's being designed around the pros. Let the pros truly show us what is imbalanced/broken/poorly designed.
Let's be honest here, none of us is actually good at the game compared to high level player, and none of our build are refined or optimised to take into account the new timings introduced by the changes in units. How many "broken strategies" at the release of LoTV were truly broken in the end? Some of them, for sure, but a lot of the stuff were just the results of unoptimised builds. It's silly to give definitive and absolute opinion at the moment, although it's natural to discuss with skepticism some choices (looking at you, SwarmHost).
Sure, but stats are already speaking from themselves
Z is already more played then it was, putting the numbers of T players behind.
Protoss Surprisingly goes downward. guess winners always go to the top as the losers goes on the ground.
The season is less than 24 hours old you cannot start extrapolating meaningful things from such an incomplete data set.
On November 24 2016 00:08 Musicus wrote: I'm doing horrible on ladder, but I think it's quite fun so far. Gotta get used to the old maps again and find a crisp build.
Hydras are strong, but somehow with the upgrades being split they only get really strong when it feels a bit late. Not sure if I should try double hydra den.
in vP you need the gas and it doesn't matter to get them quick. vT I feel like there's this beautiful timing around 9 minutes for all hydra upgrades and 2/2 to be finished with an infestation pit on the way and hive next. Waves of lings to hold em and hydras to scold em. It's wonderful. Seeing all those medivacs die is amazing.
Getting around 6-8 mutas seems to be great as well. Your armies decent. Your harass is decent. And for once you can actually deal with Terrans harass instead of shooing it away for a minute only to have it come back. This is a great time to play.
On November 24 2016 00:18 KT_Elwood wrote: This patch has me made unistall SC2.
"Play mech !" -> in TvT you better go tank hellion, cyclone sucks and takes to much time. "Play Mech! "- > in TvZ every Mech unit is countered by the Hydra. Tanks do less DPS thanks to attack speed nerf, with hellions its a numbers game, but with the new range you die. Oh and cyclones not even get near the Hydras. "Play Mech !" -> in TvP Making MMM seems to still be the best way, Protoss should just outmacro those who try to get tanks.
This is why I can´t rely on all these "Mech still sucks" comments if people use Units against Units they shouldn´t be good against in the first place. Thats like using Marauders against Zealots and then go "Bio sucks" .
Put something between your Tanks and the opponents Hydras. Aren´t Hydras weak against splash? Last time I checked they were. I watched some games and players were doing quite okay. Even against Protoss. I think you are not supposed to tech to Tanks immediately against P. That´s why I think they redesigned the Cyclone so you can move out earlier and harass with more than just Hellions.
And please don´t forget that the Patch is just out for one day. Players are still experimenting.
On November 23 2016 13:55 VHbb wrote: Hider you post the most toxic contributions in this forum.. I don't know why but in every discussion you participate with these super harsh and rude comments, it's very disturbing honestly
Because I don't see any reason to speak pleasantly to ignorant people (as in the combination of arrogant and unknowledable/refusing to learn). I don't give a whole lot about the feelings of those people who influence the community with completely wrong ideas.
And I am especially not fond of people who doesn't spend reading my posts and/or doesn't reflect upon what I wrote before responding to my post in a negative fashion. If one is honestly not sure what my point is after reading it, then that's a different matter, however that's not the vibe I am getting.
On November 23 2016 12:29 aQuaSC wrote: Well, you guessed that Hydras will counter mech solely by themselves and massing them will be viable, now we'll actually play and see if it's going to be the case
Nope, what I said that if you make Hydras in the first place against mech why ever stop producing them. Mech has no realistic transition possible to reward the zerg player to stop producing Hydras.
When I talk about "unit roles" how did you come to the conclusion that I was talking about balance as in Hydra > Mech. I never once said Hydras' were OP/should be nerfed.
I don't have a clue about balance, however what I know alot about is game-designed related to Starcraft, and once you get the hang of it, it's very easy to see how the meta-game (roughly) will plan out and whether the consequences are positive/negative.
For instance, LOTV - general metagame/unit redesigns and introductions - were relatively predictable. I could see what would work and what definitely wouldn't and what would be meh'ish from blizzcon 2014 already.
Point being that if you have the skillset and knowledge of a certain area, go ahead and make a prediction, and then let's have a discussion over that prediction.
I've never drawn any kind of conclusion about that unit roles thing. It just wasn't clear to me what you meant by that and I still don't since you didn't answer.
I'm not fond of people calling me a 'bullshitter' and if you are that amazing at analyzing game I guess you should be more vocal in the community and make the game better. Don't bother to respond, I don't want to discuss it anymore
On November 24 2016 01:09 aQuaSC wrote: I've never drawn any kind of conclusion about that unit roles thing. It just wasn't clear to me what you meant by that and I still don't since you didn't answer.
I'm not fond of people calling me a 'bullshitter' and if you are that amazing at analyzing game I guess you should be more vocal in the community and make the game better. Don't bother to respond, I don't want to discuss it anymore
I apologize if you genuinly didn't understand my comment after properly reading it and was asking an honest question.
However, I get triggered when someone wants to prevent a discussion from taking place because we can't know everything with 100% certainty. I don't think that mentality provides healthy discussions.
and if you are that amazing at analyzing game I guess you should be more vocal in the community and make the game better.
Been doing that way way too long and its a huge waste of time. I no longer have the same patience as I did years ago.
However, I asked the question, what could make a Zerg player stop producing Hydralisks once he sees he is facing mech? Unless there is a very strong answer to that, my point stands (unit roles aren't well defined with clear weaknes's and strenghts).
On November 23 2016 13:55 VHbb wrote: Hider you post the most toxic contributions in this forum.. I don't know why but in every discussion you participate with these super harsh and rude comments, it's very disturbing honestly
Because I don't see any reason to speak pleasantly to ignorant people (as in the combination of arrogant and unknowledable/refusing to learn). I don't give a whole lot about the feelings of those people who influence the community with completely wrong ideas.
And I am especially not fond of people who doesn't spend reading my posts and/or doesn't reflect upon what I wrote before responding to my post in a negative fashion. If one is honestly not sure what my point is after reading it, then that's a different matter, however that's not the vibe I am getting.
This makes your post very toxic for the discussion. To be honest I tend to just skip them because I don't want to read this kind of negativity in a videogame forum: maybe it's also a problem from your side, since this happens in almost every discussion I read where you participate (not only about balance / sc2). More than making a point, it seems you try to get a negative response from the people you are talking to, by being very rude.
I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
On November 24 2016 01:57 MockHamill wrote: I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
Swarm Hosts are dead supply for whole minute. Stop whine.
On November 24 2016 01:57 MockHamill wrote: I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
I don't understand your post. Are you trying to say that swarm hosts makes mech completely nonviable?
If that is true, exactly how many swarm hosts does a zerg need to completely negate any and all mech compositions? If they only need 1-3 swarm host, than I would completely agree that Blizzard needs to address it. But if a zerg player needs 6-8 swarm hosts, than swarm hosts might not need to be nerfed.
Here are some questions I want you to ask yourself. Can I reliably scout a zerg going swarm hosts? If I do scout it, do I have time to field out the necessary units to counter it? Can I disrupt the zerg if he went swarm hosts? Will my disruption significantly delay his ability to get a sufficient number of swarm hosts?
Remember, this game is designed around the pros. None of us are pros though, and even they struggle with the game.
Let's not jump to conclusions about any unit until there is sufficient data.
Hider, your questions about hydra are very good, but you pose them almost rhetorically. This doesn't encourage a discussion. And I agree with Vhbb. Your comments are toxic. You have an arrogant attitude that dilutes and confuses your message.
Existor, no need to be rude and say Mock is whining. He is encountering a problem with swarm hosts. Now his approach to solving it may not be optimal, but that doesn't mean he is whining.
On November 24 2016 01:57 MockHamill wrote: I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
Honestly, at this point, I gotta recognize you guys have a lot of faith. How many times did Blizzard say they would make mech viable? Has that ever happened? I've been hearing this since HoTS was announced. Tbh, I don't think they ever had that intention. I guess they just keep talking about it to keep the interest (hope) going on.
Btw, I know someone will come up with the point: "but in the end of HoTS, mech was viable!". I don't consider massing ravens mech.
On November 24 2016 01:57 MockHamill wrote: I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
Swarm Hosts are dead supply for whole minute. Stop whine.
Banshees are drops of new mech.
It is not whining. It is not some weakness in my play style that makes Swarm Hosts broken.
They simply are broken against mech. It is a fact. If you believe otherwise it simple means you are not a Terran mech player, or you have simply not played enough games.
I have played extensively on the test map, I warned Blizzard repeatable for releasing Swarm Hosts in their current state but here we are.
In most cases wait and see may be a better approach. But in this case anything but a hotfix is mistake that waste valuable testing time since we can not investigate the rest of the game until this is fixed.
I know it may be fun to abuse a feature for ladder points. But please think about what is actually good for the game.
Just did my placements. Former Gold 1 Protoss now sat in Silver 3 :/
I've only played one PvT so far but those new tanks are insane, I couldn't push into the Terran at all (this game took place on cross spawns Whirlwind too so pretty long rush distance) even with Immortals it seemed hard, might be because I was prepare for Bio, but even then, I'm not sure Archon/Immortal will cut it. I'm hoping to get a few more PvTs just to see if I can figure something out.
PvZ I've been shit at since LotV release and my woes are getting worse in this match-up with these new hydras. I've had most luck with chargelots so far if it's small groups of them but a roach hydra army feels really difficult to beat straight up. The one game I did win in PvZ was my opponent playing super greedy so I found a window where I could get adepts in to do some great eco damage and not die to a counter attack.
However if the Zerg manages to stall my own expansions/eco enough I feel even more helpless than I did before :/
Let's be honest here, none of us is actually good at the game compared to high level player, and none of our build are refined or optimised to take into account the new timings introduced by the changes in units. How many "broken strategies" at the release of LoTV were truly broken in the end? Some of them, for sure, but a lot of the stuff were just the results of unoptimised builds. It's silly to give definitive and absolute opinion at the moment, although it's natural to discuss with skepticism some choices (looking at you, SwarmHost).
Sure, but stats are already speaking from themselves
On November 24 2016 00:08 Musicus wrote: I'm doing horrible on ladder, but I think it's quite fun so far. Gotta get used to the old maps again and find a crisp build.
Hydras are strong, but somehow with the upgrades being split they only get really strong when it feels a bit late. Not sure if I should try double hydra den.
in vP you need the gas and it doesn't matter to get them quick. vT I feel like there's this beautiful timing around 9 minutes for all hydra upgrades and 2/2 to be finished with an infestation pit on the way and hive next. Waves of lings to hold em and hydras to scold em. It's wonderful. Seeing all those medivacs die is amazing.
Getting around 6-8 mutas seems to be great as well. Your armies decent. Your harass is decent. And for once you can actually deal with Terrans harass instead of shooing it away for a minute only to have it come back. This is a great time to play.
Those stats are saying toss just don't want to play toss for now just by seeing the patch, while Z does & T maintain. It speak already for me. Someone earlier says we need to wait for pro for balance, things is , i think blizzard always tried to maintain at decent Balance from plat level, which for me seems totally unachieved here.
And yeah sure, for Z from what i've experienced PvZ and what i'm reading from TvZ it's a WONDERFUL time to play , everything is "decent" ( lol! at least yes ) sure, i agree with you here. Enjoy your ZvZ , cause it will be most of your game for quite some time.
You can blame me for being toxic, but having a lot of fun on SC2 lately, i can tell you you would'nt like to wake up to a game like this. I've thinked about this f* up patch a lot this day, i never was so mad on a patch. I'm pretty sure SC2 lost players more than in a temporary way in this patch.
On November 24 2016 01:57 MockHamill wrote: I am not sure there is even any point of playing TvZ right now.
Blizzard for the love of all that is good please nerf Swarm hosts as fast as you can!
Everything else in the game will need further testing but it is not even possible to test the game right now due to Swarm hosts. We have no idea if mech is viable in TvZ or if Hydra is too strong, because Swarm hosts prevent us from experiencing the rest of the game.
Only if Swarm host are nerfed will it be possible to figure out if mech is viable in TvZ, if there are certain areas or timings that are too strong, if Raven buff is OP in late game TvZ etc. But right now we can not even test this due to Swarm Hosts.
There is only one counter to Swarm host right now and that is to play bio. But one of the primary reasons for the patch was to make mech viable, please fix this issue so that we can continue testing the game.
Swarm Hosts are dead supply for whole minute. Stop whine.
Banshees are drops of new mech.
It is not whining. It is not some weakness in my play style that makes Swarm Hosts broken.
They simply are broken against mech. It is a fact. If you believe otherwise it simple means you are not a Terran mech player, or you have simply not played enough games.
I have played extensively on the test map, I warned Blizzard repeatable for releasing Swarm Hosts in their current state but here we are.
In most cases wait and see may be a better approach. But in this case anything but a hotfix is mistake that waste valuable testing time since we can not investigate the rest of the game until this is fixed.
I know it may be fun to abuse a feature for ladder points. But please think about what is actually good for the game.
So you are playing absolutely perfectly? Your play style has no room for improvement that might help you deal with swarm hosts?
Those are rhetorical questions, but your arrogance is showing.
How extensive have you played the test map? Did you have a partner to test your statement about swarm hosts? Did you do several hundred games that showed the same outcome?
You may very well be right, but its still too soon to tell.
On November 23 2016 18:05 Kiwan wrote: Just wanted to say enjoying the new patch! Too early to say what needs tweaking but it's definitely at least fun with all the new dynamics and working things out.
I don't see how you feel the new patch is fun. TvZ mech is back to raven vs SH/viper dynamic (free energy based damage vs free energy based damage + free units), that's extremely boring.
I never thought that TvZ Mech could be anything but that in SC2 so that's not surprising for me, but on the other hand mech could kinda work in TvP no?
Nah mech still won't work against protoss. You can die to so many things that any composition you build has a very clear counter from protoss.
Warp prism's ranged pickup + how terrible the cyclone's AA is means you're forced into turreting up. Cyclones are good vs stalkers and immortals, but their DPS is horrible against zealots and adepts (which are the frontliners). Thors are supposed to counter air, but they suck so hard against immortals (4 immortals 2 shot a thor). Disruptors still outrange tanks.
And most of all : phenixes openers deny any attempt to push out until you have a healthy viking count or few thors. But if you go for such a AA units investment to move out and be agressive, you're simply gonna die on the ground to the chargelot/immortals transition. Overall either toss forces you to counter air and then trashes you on the ground, either toss streches out your defenses with ground units to the point where you can't ever move out, which allows him to go for the "unbeatable stuff" (10+ disruptors, 8+ carriers, tradebase, etc).
Mech is still terrible against protoss. Maybe less terrible, but making it work without gimmicks (cloack BS, killing an insane amount of workers very early on, liberator range cheeses, etc.) is still impossible.
good that you have figured out the game already.
Good that you have no point whatsoever. If you disagree, explain why. I suppose that's how a forum works (but i might be wrong hey)
On November 24 2016 03:01 Kenny_mk wrote: So players need hundred of games to counter playstyle that are proven by their non-pro players the days the patch is out? good to know
Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
Just for the sake of discussion, how would you conclude that a unit needs to be adressed then? After hundreds of thousands of games showing the unit is strong? But how can you conclude that? There were hundreds of other circunstancies involved in the games - player's mistakes, other units, etc.
What do you think about the broodlord/infestor era? Was it OK that they took months to nerf it? Was that enough time? Btw, many people back then claimed the same thing you are claiming now: "it's not conclusive/players will find a way to overcome this/player X defeated this". Do you think that waiting that long was healthy for the game?
Oh, and just to give an example of how this "wait a thousand games" approach is not always used. DK just nerfed cyclone range before the patch went live based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament. Btw, Byun didn't even won the tournament. Why wasn't the "wait a thousand games" approach used then?
Wrong. Tank has 13 range. Disruptor max flight 11+1.5 radius =12.5
Wrong, disruptors outrange tanks. If you're gonna be a fact-checker, at least check facts correctly. http://imgur.com/a/kQKBE
[
checked - yep I am wrong. But its 0.5 range difference that you will waste too much time to achieve in real game. one wrong move and disruptor dies(3 tank shots now
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
Just for the sake of discussion, how would you conclude that a unit needs to be adressed then? After hundreds of thousands of games showing the unit is strong? But how can you conclude that? There were hundreds of other circunstancies involved in the games - player's mistakes, other units, etc.
What do you think about the broodlord/infestor era? Was it OK that they took months to nerf it? Was that enough time? Btw, many people back then claimed the same thing you are claiming now: "it's not conclusive/players will find a way to overcome this/player X defeated this". Do you think that waiting that long was healthy for the game?
Oh, and just to give an example of how this "wait a thousand games" approach is not always used. DK just nerfed cyclone range before the patch went live based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament. Btw, Byun didn't even won the tournament. Why wasn't the "wait a thousand games" approach used then?
Here would be an example of the data indicating a unit might need a nerf.
Let's take the TvZ matchup, and after thousands of games across all skill levels, we look at games where the Zerg went swarm hosts and terran went mech.
In those games, lets say that %75 of the time the zerg was able to get X swarmhosts before Z minutes. Of those games where the Zerg player managed to get the specificed number of swarmhosts at a specific time, they won 90% of the time. This indicates that the swarmhost is a strong unit that might need a nerf.
However, what if we segment the data and look at players in the grand master level. If the GM level players managed to get the specified number of swarmhosts at a specific time, but only won 50% of the time, that indicates the swarmhost is still a strong unit, but much harder for lower skilled players to handle. It still might need a nerf, but not as extreme.
Here might be another example. Let's look at the TvZ matchup again, and the numbers tells us that 80% of zerg players are going swarmhosts. Of these games where zerg are using swarmhosts, they are winning %60 of the time. That's another indication that the swarmhosts might need a nerf.
Oh and about the winfestor/bl era, Blizzard already stated they know there is a problem with the matchup. That problem wasn't an issue of balance though, it was the games were getting incredibly stale. However, they also stated they won't be changing anything because its getting really close to HotS, and HotS was going to change everything anyways.
Regarding Byun, the patch wasn't out yet so they have the luxury of making more frequent changes.Second, I already stated the pros are already playing the game thousands of times. As well they are playing at such a high level that Blizzard can make confident changes based on pro games. And third, where did Blizzard make a statement 'We nerfed cyclone "based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament" '? Perhaps there was more data that they didn't release? Maybe they had an indication it might need a nerf, but Byun's game proved it did?
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
Just for the sake of discussion, how would you conclude that a unit needs to be adressed then? After hundreds of thousands of games showing the unit is strong? But how can you conclude that? There were hundreds of other circunstancies involved in the games - player's mistakes, other units, etc.
What do you think about the broodlord/infestor era? Was it OK that they took months to nerf it? Was that enough time? Btw, many people back then claimed the same thing you are claiming now: "it's not conclusive/players will find a way to overcome this/player X defeated this". Do you think that waiting that long was healthy for the game?
Oh, and just to give an example of how this "wait a thousand games" approach is not always used. DK just nerfed cyclone range before the patch went live based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament. Btw, Byun didn't even won the tournament. Why wasn't the "wait a thousand games" approach used then?
...
Regarding Byun, the patch wasn't out yet so they have the luxury of making more frequent changes.Second, I already stated the pros are already playing the game thousands of times. As well they are playing at such a high level that Blizzard can make confident changes based on pro games. And third, where did Blizzard make a statement 'We nerfed cyclone "based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament" '? Perhaps there was more data that they didn't release? Maybe they had an indication it might need a nerf, but Byun's game proved it did?
Well, how many public pro games had happened at that point with that particular scenario? They mentioned in this very community update "Also, the early all-in using Cyclones looks to be quite strong.". Your approach to this is just an example of how everything can be justified by using "hidden data" that already hinted that something was OP. It's essentially the same "we have tested it internally, and concluded that ..." or "our internal data shows that ...". In the end, Blizzard does whatever the hell they want, but don't try to sell me that they do it based on a scientific basis, when it's clearly not true.
On November 23 2016 13:55 VHbb wrote: Hider you post the most toxic contributions in this forum.. I don't know why but in every discussion you participate with these super harsh and rude comments, it's very disturbing honestly
Because I don't see any reason to speak pleasantly to ignorant people (as in the combination of arrogant and unknowledable/refusing to learn). I don't give a whole lot about the feelings of those people who influence the community with completely wrong ideas.
And I am especially not fond of people who doesn't spend reading my posts and/or doesn't reflect upon what I wrote before responding to my post in a negative fashion. If one is honestly not sure what my point is after reading it, then that's a different matter, however that's not the vibe I am getting.
This makes your post very toxic for the discussion. To be honest I tend to just skip them because I don't want to read this kind of negativity in a videogame forum: maybe it's also a problem from your side, since this happens in almost every discussion I read where you participate (not only about balance / sc2). More than making a point, it seems you try to get a negative response from the people you are talking to, by being very rude.
Yes I am very rude to ignorant people, so why are you telling what I already wrote previously. Do you think I care about how people like you who only want "positivity" think? What new information do you think your post add that I wasn't already aware of previously
And FYI my motivation is to dispromote bullshitters from posting in the future, and being respectful to people who don't deserve it, certainly isn't promoting that.
More than making a point, it seems you try to get a negative response from the people you are talking to, by being very rude
I don't care about their responses, I want them to make smarter posts going forward. And surely my current writing style wouldn't be optimal if I had an in interest in actually influencing blizzard indirectly by convincing the community that a certain change is good/bad. But I don't have that any longer.
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
Just for the sake of discussion, how would you conclude that a unit needs to be adressed then? After hundreds of thousands of games showing the unit is strong? But how can you conclude that? There were hundreds of other circunstancies involved in the games - player's mistakes, other units, etc.
What do you think about the broodlord/infestor era? Was it OK that they took months to nerf it? Was that enough time? Btw, many people back then claimed the same thing you are claiming now: "it's not conclusive/players will find a way to overcome this/player X defeated this". Do you think that waiting that long was healthy for the game?
Oh, and just to give an example of how this "wait a thousand games" approach is not always used. DK just nerfed cyclone range before the patch went live based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament. Btw, Byun didn't even won the tournament. Why wasn't the "wait a thousand games" approach used then?
...
Regarding Byun, the patch wasn't out yet so they have the luxury of making more frequent changes.Second, I already stated the pros are already playing the game thousands of times. As well they are playing at such a high level that Blizzard can make confident changes based on pro games. And third, where did Blizzard make a statement 'We nerfed cyclone "based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament" '? Perhaps there was more data that they didn't release? Maybe they had an indication it might need a nerf, but Byun's game proved it did?
Well, how many public pro games had happened at that point with that particular scenario? They mentioned in this very community update "Also, the early all-in using Cyclones looks to be quite strong.". Your approach to this is just an example of how everything can be justified by using "hidden data" that already hinted that something was OP. It's essentially the same "we have tested it internally, and concluded that ..." or "our internal data shows that ...". In the end, Blizzard does whatever the hell they want, but don't try to sell me that they do it based on a scientific basis, when it's clearly not true.
Yes Blizzard will do whatever they want, but I didn't say they are using a scientific basis. Statistics and scientific aren't the same.
Blizzard doesn't have to release any data they have, so it will all be hidden. However, knowing where to look into the data is the challenge. That is where we come in. All the numbers in the world will mean nothing, but the players are the ones that tell Blizzard where to look.
If after several months, Blizzard notices that a large number of players are complaining about swarm hosts, than they can take the time to sift through the data to look at all the games where swarm hosts are used.
I honestly encourage everyone to discuss units they have trouble dealing with, because that could be an indication that Blizzard should look at the data surrounding that unit.
However, the problem right now is that everything is still too soon to tell. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm trying to get people here to just play the game. Play the game until you can't play anymore. Don't go to TL/bnet/reddit and demand nerfs/buffs or make innane statements about the competency of Blizzard/DK/developers. Just play it, win or lose. Your games will contribute to the numbers that Blizzard needs to make better decisions about the game.
Will these decisions align with yours? Probably not, but that isn't the point. The point is that Blizzard makes changes they deem better for their game. At the end of it, if you do have trouble with a specific unit or composition, than discuss it. Don't make absolute statements, because those don't encourage discussion. If a large number of people have the same problem, than its an indication to look at the data and determine if the data lines up with their concerns.
And if you really want to lobby for a change to a unit, you better do all your homework. Making vague statements like "I've played and watched +50 games so I know what I'm talking about" will get you no where. Look at the early changes to reaper in WoL. It was changed because two pro players (I can't remember who) proved through many practice games that Terran is nearly unbeatable with mass reapers because they can keep a zerg on one base for a very long time.
The proof is in the pudding, but the problem is everyone's pudding tastes like confirmation bias.
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
Just for the sake of discussion, how would you conclude that a unit needs to be adressed then? After hundreds of thousands of games showing the unit is strong? But how can you conclude that? There were hundreds of other circunstancies involved in the games - player's mistakes, other units, etc.
What do you think about the broodlord/infestor era? Was it OK that they took months to nerf it? Was that enough time? Btw, many people back then claimed the same thing you are claiming now: "it's not conclusive/players will find a way to overcome this/player X defeated this". Do you think that waiting that long was healthy for the game?
Oh, and just to give an example of how this "wait a thousand games" approach is not always used. DK just nerfed cyclone range before the patch went live based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament. Btw, Byun didn't even won the tournament. Why wasn't the "wait a thousand games" approach used then?
...
Regarding Byun, the patch wasn't out yet so they have the luxury of making more frequent changes.Second, I already stated the pros are already playing the game thousands of times. As well they are playing at such a high level that Blizzard can make confident changes based on pro games. And third, where did Blizzard make a statement 'We nerfed cyclone "based on a couple games where byun proxied a factory to make a 1-base all in on that GSL test tournament" '? Perhaps there was more data that they didn't release? Maybe they had an indication it might need a nerf, but Byun's game proved it did?
Well, how many public pro games had happened at that point with that particular scenario? They mentioned in this very community update "Also, the early all-in using Cyclones looks to be quite strong.". Your approach to this is just an example of how everything can be justified by using "hidden data" that already hinted that something was OP. It's essentially the same "we have tested it internally, and concluded that ..." or "our internal data shows that ...". In the end, Blizzard does whatever the hell they want, but don't try to sell me that they do it based on a scientific basis, when it's clearly not true.
Yes Blizzard will do whatever they want, but I didn't say they are using a scientific basis. Statistics and scientific aren't the same.
...
You do realize that statistics is a science, right? So if they were using statistics in a well defined way to derive conclusions that were used to make balance changes to the game, they would be using a scientific basis. The problem is exactly that, they are not doing this.
They claim this "hidden data" just for PR. They do whatever they want. Sometimes they make changes based on a small sample, and sometimes they don't change anything at all for months. That "lack of consistency" is what many people complain about, btw.
On November 23 2016 13:55 VHbb wrote: Hider you post the most toxic contributions in this forum.. I don't know why but in every discussion you participate with these super harsh and rude comments, it's very disturbing honestly
Because I don't see any reason to speak pleasantly to ignorant people (as in the combination of arrogant and unknowledable/refusing to learn). I don't give a whole lot about the feelings of those people who influence the community with completely wrong ideas.
And I am especially not fond of people who doesn't spend reading my posts and/or doesn't reflect upon what I wrote before responding to my post in a negative fashion. If one is honestly not sure what my point is after reading it, then that's a different matter, however that's not the vibe I am getting.
This makes your post very toxic for the discussion. To be honest I tend to just skip them because I don't want to read this kind of negativity in a videogame forum: maybe it's also a problem from your side, since this happens in almost every discussion I read where you participate (not only about balance / sc2). More than making a point, it seems you try to get a negative response from the people you are talking to, by being very rude.
Yes I am very rude to ignorant people, so why are you telling what I already wrote previously. Do you think I care about how people like you who only want "positivity" think? What new information do you think your post add that I wasn't already aware of previously
And FYI my motivation is to dispromote bullshitters from posting in the future, and being respectful to people who don't deserve it, certainly isn't promoting that.
More than making a point, it seems you try to get a negative response from the people you are talking to, by being very rude
I don't care about their responses, I want them to make smarter posts going forward. And surely my current writing style wouldn't be optimal if I had an in interest in actually influencing blizzard indirectly by convincing the community that a certain change is good/bad. But I don't have that any longer.
You must be so fun in real life.. Never mind anyway, if there was an "ignore" function (maybe there is and I'm not aware) I would be happier: this kind of language / post is not what I like to read in my free time, so I'm a bit sad to find it here on TL. Your "writing style" is only effective in pissing people off, so it's not really optimal for anything, other than degrade the forum for everyone. With this I close, since it's by far OT
You are right, statstics is a science, but that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that we provide Blizzard with the data they need.
So you're saying that because they don't release the numbers, you can't trust they are using scientific basis? Aren't you moving into the realm of conspiracy theories? So you think Blizzard secretly wants Zerg to be OP, and mech to be nonviable, and protoss to be... I don't know. And they do this because?
And another thing, I don't want the numbers. The amount of data they get would be so incomprehensible to me. I wouldn't know where to start, how to interpret it, or what it all means. And neither would you or anyone else here, aside from a few TL mathematicians like Sholip.
Here is the bottom line, you can trust Blizzard is making the right changes or you can call them incompetent. But they have all the data and the right people to interpret it. It isn't our job to do that, so there is no reason we should have it or even need it. It's our job to play the game. And play the fuck out of it as much as we can, then we tell Blizzard how we feel. If enough people feel the same, Blizzard will look at the numbers and see if it corroborates with some players.
On November 24 2016 05:22 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: You are right, statstics is a science, but that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that we provide Blizzard with the data they need.
So you're saying that because they don't release the numbers, you can't trust they are using scientific basis? Aren't you moving into the realm of conspiracy theories? So you think Blizzard secretly wants Zerg to be OP, and mech to be nonviable, and protoss to be... I don't know. And they do this because?
And another thing, I don't want the numbers. The amount of data they get would be so incomprehensible to me. I wouldn't know where to start, how to interpret it, or what it all means. And neither would you or anyone else here, aside from a few TL mathematicians like Sholip.
Here is the bottom line, you can trust Blizzard is making the right changes or you can call them incompetent. But they have all the data and the right people to interpret it. It isn't our job to do that, so there is no reason we should have it or even need it. It's our job to play the game. And play the fuck out of it as much as we can, then we tell Blizzard how we feel. If enough people feel the same, Blizzard will look at the numbers and see if it corroborates with some players.
Well, if they don't release the numbers to the community, am I supposed to blindly believe it? Do you think this is how it works in the academic community for instance?
Here is the bottomline, I don't trust Blizzard in making the right changes based on the experience we had so far. They have been saying, for instance, that mech will be viable for at least 4 years and is mech viable? It's a rethoric question, in case you didn't notice.
This isn't an academic community, so that's irrelevant. You can believe what you want and trust who you want. That's your prerogative. We have very different views about Blizzard and SC2, that is clear. I will continue to trust them and the direction they are taking with SC2. You obviously won't. Was that the reason you replied to my comments?
All I'm asking is for everyone to just play the game. If this patch doesn't align with what you like, and Blizzard doesn't change it the way you want, than move on to greener pastures. No need to make rhetorical questions and have a useless conversation with someone you never met before.
On November 24 2016 05:53 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: This isn't an academic community, so that's irrelevant. You can believe what you want and trust who you want. That's your prerogative. We have very different views about Blizzard and SC2, that is clear. I will continue to trust them and the direction they are taking with SC2. You obviously won't. Was that the reason you replied to my comments?
...
"I will continue to trust them and the direction they are taking with SC2." This is why I replied to your comments. We are here in a forum to discuss possible issues with the game. You are here to defend whatever Blizzard does to the game. So, when MockHamill tries to raise a potential issue, you charge in to defend Blizzard, saying that he doesn't have proofs about what he is claiming, that his experience is anecdotal, and doesn't even try to debate the point that he was trying to make. Your stance in this undermines every discussion about the game itself, because any point anybody here brings can be considered anecdotal, isn't that right? Then why are we discussing anything at all, right? Let's just don't say anything and rest assured that Blizzard is making every decision right! =D
Until SH are hotfixed, i do not think mech will ever be playable/see the light of day.
SH/hydra most likely need a hotfix asap. Cyclone needs a revert/stat adjustment asap. Protoss in general needs the adept to be heavily nerfed and a bit of a re-design on some things. Bane/infestor burrow are also a problem because they are just arbitrary buffs.
I cannot understand or fathom why arbitrary changes were put into the game like the baneling buff or the infestor burrow. These things objectively just simply make Zerg better than the other two races. They are essentially pure stat improvements on core units that were overpowered in the past (infestors) or already were hugely impacting the game (banelings).
On November 24 2016 07:20 aQuaSC wrote: More nerfs to Protoss you say
We've found that there are still some players who are accidentally picking Protoss and we need to encourage them to fix that mistake. Please bear with us!
On November 24 2016 05:22 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: You are right, statstics is a science, but that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is that we provide Blizzard with the data they need.
So you're saying that because they don't release the numbers, you can't trust they are using scientific basis? Aren't you moving into the realm of conspiracy theories? So you think Blizzard secretly wants Zerg to be OP, and mech to be nonviable, and protoss to be... I don't know. And they do this because?
And another thing, I don't want the numbers. The amount of data they get would be so incomprehensible to me. I wouldn't know where to start, how to interpret it, or what it all means. And neither would you or anyone else here, aside from a few TL mathematicians like Sholip.
Here is the bottom line, you can trust Blizzard is making the right changes or you can call them incompetent. But they have all the data and the right people to interpret it. It isn't our job to do that, so there is no reason we should have it or even need it. It's our job to play the game. And play the fuck out of it as much as we can, then we tell Blizzard how we feel. If enough people feel the same, Blizzard will look at the numbers and see if it corroborates with some players.
I agree he is bordering on conspiracy theories but your view is on the opposite end, a very perfect world/utopian view. I imagine the reality lies somewhere inbetween.
After playing a bunch of games on the testmap I have to say I'm having a blast so far. mech seems to be strong in all matchups, tvt is fun again, ultras are fixed, tempests are fixed, tankivacs are gone... Initially I was worried the baneling buff would make bio unusable but in practice it really doesn't make that much of a difference.
Still I have a couple of concerns. -burrow-fungal: fortunately I haven't played against it yet but it seems like an extremely frustrasting mechanic. -Hydra: I think in zvt they are fine but I'm not sure how protoss is supposed to deal with them. Swarmhost: don't know if they are to strong but they are frustrating to play against because they don't really have counterplay.
But the most awesome thing about playing ladder currently are the maps. They are so good. they are so good THEY ARE SO GOOD. First season I can remember where I don't have to use a single veto.
On November 24 2016 11:52 Charoisaur wrote: After playing a bunch of games on the testmap I have to say I'm having a blast so far. mech seems to be strong in all matchups, tvt is fun again, ultras are fixed, tempests are fixed, tankivacs are gone... Initially I was worried the baneling buff would make bio unusable but in practice it really doesn't make that much of a difference.
Still I have a couple of concerns. -burrow-fungal: fortunately I haven't played against it yet but it seems like an extremely frustrasting mechanic. -Hydra: I think in zvt they are fine but I'm not sure how protoss is supposed to deal with them. Swarmhost: don't know if they are to strong but they are frustrating to play against because they don't really have counterplay.
But the most awesome thing about playing ladder currently are the maps. They are so good. they are so good THEY ARE SO GOOD. First season I can remember where I don't have to use a single veto.
How do you guys fight against Carriers with mech? Before i used to use Libs to kill interceptors, but now i'm at a loss. Thors are garbage IMO as they both loose in direct fights and are much less mobile, Vikings loose and are super vulnerable to storm, libs are 9348x worse at killing interceptors and the Cyclone has shit AA. I found BC to be effective in testing, but it's not realistic to have them as THE counter IMO.
Another thing i found is that the Tempests stun ability can not be dodged by sieged up Tanks, they don't have time to unsiege and move, but maybe that's the point?
At this point i'm thinking the Thor needs it AA single target buffed considerably if it's to be AA for mech. For the cost and mobility, it's really shit right now.
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
How do you feel about someone, who sees something before the unit is even test, even released, calls its terrible and it turns out terrible? Just lucky?
Sometimes I just know a bad idea when I see it, it is about understanding the ins and outs of game design.
Because what you are saying, is like drawing up a boneheaded play in American Football, and demanding the coaches run it hundreds of thousands of times because only then can you know it doesn't work.
That isn't how the world works. You design something that works well theoretically, and then test to see if works well in the game. When the ideas coming out of Blizzard aren't designed well theoretically, don't follow basic game design tenets, then it is easy to call them out as dumb even before they are tested one time.
With hydras being so strong now, mech countering armored units so hard and a disruptor outranging colossi would it be that much of an issue to buff colossi so that they can deal effectively with the new hydras? What do you guys think? If there is any way you know of to play against the new hydras currently as protoss, please make sure that you make a post about that because currently I'm clueless! I'm no Zest, you know
Actually it will be sad to me that collosus is the way to go most of time again.. I found playing Disruptor much more fun & rewarding. No actually to me they need to found another way to make Mech v Z viable for Z than buffing an unit that was a already a nightmare for protoss. (not meaning hydra were already op, but in HoTs when you were all ining or in most of your game, a ball of hydra out means you better have aoe out, which is normal ofc, but still hydra was already key unit before)
Wrong. Tank has 13 range. Disruptor max flight 11+1.5 radius =12.5
Wrong, disruptors outrange tanks. If you're gonna be a fact-checker, at least check facts correctly. http://imgur.com/a/kQKBE
[
checked - yep I am wrong. But its 0.5 range difference that you will waste too much time to achieve in real game. one wrong move and disruptor dies(3 tank shots now
It's part of why mech isn't good against protoss past early agression/cheeses. When you play disruptor against bio, if you mess up and don't have any spheres left, terran can just stim and amove. However againt mech, you can just go away. With disurptors you can kite a mech army all the way across the map.
As he said, that 0,5 range difference is so hard to achieve i doubt protoss can take an advantage until high level (top master, you can argue that's what it is all about) , and still, even at this level mistake happens quite often, and i'm sure a protoss under pression will have hard time exploiting this difference.
And if the mech player is getting kited across the map, he is doing something wrong. If all he have is siege tanks, sure there might be some problems, but just a libe with range upg should make the range difference much more difficult to exploit,forcing air (which might be actually the biggest problem MvP) or blinking stalkers under them for killing those libs, but they will then get shooted by tanks..
Killing lurkers with disruptor for instance, is'nt as easy as it sounds (ofc there is visibility problem) And unless you want the match up to be decided by the P going skytoss in time or not for countering mech, P still need a way to fighting sieged position without shading on tanks.
So far i think the main problems of mech are rather skytoss late game or the pressure,harass & good fight the P can take early with an upgraded gateball.
On November 24 2016 03:47 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote: Proof? What proof was given? Hundreds of games aren't necessary. Hundreds of thousands of games played by tens of thousands of players from all skill levels are necessary for proof.
This is why I insist on waiting until the pros play the game before anything can be definitive. The pros are willing to play those thousands of games, hour after hour, but they don't do it to prove swarm hosts make mech nonviable. They do it to find a weakness in swarm hosts that might get them to win.
In other words, they play to try to win, not to try and get a unit nerfed/buffed.
The problem with so many players is that they immediately try to put the blame on balance/design, instead of trying to just play the game.
Once a player already decides X unit is over powered, they have made up their mind to not try to improve. They blame the system.
Again, I'm not trying to dissuade a discussion, or state the patch is fine L2P.
I'm trying to get everyone to stop with the absolute statements "X unit needs to be buffed" "This patch is horrible" "Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing".
They don't help, nor do they encourage discussion.
How do you feel about someone, who sees something before the unit is even test, even released, calls its terrible and it turns out terrible? Just lucky?
Sometimes I just know a bad idea when I see it, it is about understanding the ins and outs of game design.
Because what you are saying, is like drawing up a boneheaded play in American Football, and demanding the coaches run it hundreds of thousands of times because only then can you know it doesn't work.
That isn't how the world works. You design something that works well theoretically, and then test to see if works well in the game. When the ideas coming out of Blizzard aren't designed well theoretically, don't follow basic game design tenets, then it is easy to call them out as dumb even before they are tested one time.
BronzeKnee, I know you are a game designer, so I respect your opinion on the unit design of SC2. However, unless you're a genius designer being sought by all the big name publishers, than your opinion really doesn't carry that much weight.
I know you've posted a game you designed, and its had reviews, but have you designed an RTS as elaborate and intricate as SC2 or BW? Were you part of the team that created the most successful online rpg game ever? Did you create a FPS that garnered +20 million players within the first year? I'd guess the answer to these questions is no.
When it comes to desgin, I will trust Blizzard way more than I trust you.
That doesn't mean you're opinion doesn't carry some merit. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the things you say do come true. However, your opinion is just that.
And you've spouted 'basic game design tenets' several times, but I haven't found any research that indicates Blizzard broke these tenets. Is there a '10 commandments of game design' that Blizzard broke? Because, respectfully, these tenets are biased. They broke your 'basic game design tenets', not some theoretical set of rules that all publishers must adhere to make a successful game.
I did a google search on that specific search term, and I found this link:
And no where did it seem Blizzard broke those principles.
Again this doesn't mean I think Blizzard is infallible. After all, they are seeking feedback from us, the community, so they know things could be a mistake. But until we play the game and provide the feedback necessary, they won't know what is a mistake yet.
Enough Raven PDD, engage with Hellions in right position, the line damage with blue flame will destroy bunches of Hydras, to me its clear that with enough PDD in the right place Mech should have favorable engagement everytime.
There more I play the more convinced I am on how broken Swarm Hosts are vs mech. There is simply no counter for Swarm Host with some Hydra protection. Mech cannot fight against mass Locust raining down from the sky. Even if you have multiple Thors you cannot shot down the Locust. If you go mass Blueflame Hellbats you can kill the Locust to some degree but none of your tanks can be in siege mode during this. If Zerg runs in with Hydras and banelings during the locust attack you are dead.
And even if Zerg just uses the Swarm Hosts for harass you have no unit that can chase down and kill the Swarm Hosts fast enough. A couple of banshees do nothing when the Swarm Hosts run back to their Hydra support. Hellions are fast enough but takes forever to kill the Swarm Hosts and dies to the support units.
The problem is so not much the Swarm Host as a unit but the absurd price. If Swarm Host were 175/125 instead you could still build 4-5 to harass bases or snipe a tank or 2. But with the absurd price of 125/75 you can wipe out entire mech armies without losing a single unit. All the mech player can do is to run away, but when the locusts have finally died there is not enough time to run back and attack the swarm hosts before the next locus wave comes.
This needs to be fixed so that we can continue testing mech viability in TvZ. It is a waste of time putting so much effort into a patch and then letting a single mistake block all the good things about the patch.
How do you feel about someone, who sees something before the unit is even test, even released, calls its terrible and it turns out terrible? Just lucky?
What would you say are you best predictions when it comes to Sc2?
Blizzard has done a great job with lotv, coop, archon, mission packs, i love them. But the 1v1 ladder isnt fun, its torture especially with the new patch. The old cyclone gave the option for "speedmech" , now its just turtle like in hots, but with less resources and more counters. Guess im getting too old for this game.
And you've spouted 'basic game design tenets' several times, but I haven't found any research that indicates Blizzard broke these tenets. Is there a '10 commandments of game design' that Blizzard broke? Because, respectfully, these tenets are biased. They broke your 'basic game design tenets', not some theoretical set of rules that all publishers must adhere to make a successful game.
I know, I'm spending far too much time repeating that to an audience that doesn't understand it. That is the problem.
The good thing is, they aren't my game design tenets, they are the ones that other successful games in the industry use right now to succeed.
And rather than rehash the same tired few basic statements over and over, I'm going to create a series of threads to educate and enlighten rather than have to listen to these fallacious arguments of authority that you and others have made over and over: "Blizzard is the authority on SC2, and you are not, therefore Blizzard must be right..." I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is. I get it though, we are in the middle of a world wide anti-intellectual movement, where the experts are wrong and out to get everyone... someway enriching themselves in the process, the shocking irony being is that some experts are exempt from this and put on a pedestal as our saviors...
I need to begin formulating stronger arguments, the kind that put a hook through you nose and drag you along the logical path of understanding, and where you see how fruitless it is to disagree and where the conclusions seem as incredibly obvious as they are. The difficulty is always writing something that isn't too long, so people read it, yet still makes an ironclad argument, all while being readable enough for everyone to understand it. If everyone just read all the League Dev Blogs relating to game design, it would be a huge start, but that would be a lot of reading and would require people to associate game design in League to the different game design mechanics in SC2.
Modern game design focuses on removing frustration and increasing fun and is done through a variety of means. Modern games are successful in the sense they a lot of people like to play them, because they are fun. I understand Blizzard has openly said they don't care how many people play SC2 or not, and that itself a problematic view because the simple fact is, people play games for fun, and games that are fun. Regardless of how many people play SC2, it should be fun, not frustrating.
League is a textbook example of a well designed game for a variety of reasons, and their game design dev blogs are enlightening and I will be quoting them frequently in my threads, mainly because the arguments they make are obvious.
I know, I'm spending far too much time repeating that to an audience that doesn't understand it. That is the problem.
The good thing is, they aren't my game design tenets, they are the ones that other successful games in the industry use right now to succeed.
And rather than rehash the same tired few basic statements over and over, I'm going to create a series of threads to educate and enlighten rather than have to listen to these fallacious arguments of authority that you and others have made over and over ("Blizzard is the authority on SC2, and you are not, therefore Blizzard must be right..." I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is).
I need to begin formulating stronger arguments, the kind that put a hook through you nose and drag you along the logical path of understanding, and where you see how fruitless it is to disagree and where the conclusions seem as incredibly obvious as they are. The difficulty is always writing something that isn't too long, so people read it, yet still makes an ironclad argument, all while being readable enough for everyone to understand it. If everyone just read all the League Dev Blogs relating to game design, it would be a huge start, but that would be a lot of reading and would require people to associate game design in League to the different game design mechanics in SC2.
Modern game design focuses on removing frustration and increasing fun and is done through a variety of means. Modern games are successful in the sense they a lot of people like to play them, because they are fun. I understand Blizzard has openly said they don't care how many people play SC2 or not, and that itself a problematic view because the simple fact is, people play games for fun, and games that are fun. Regardless of how many people play SC2, it should be fun, not frustrating.
League is a textbook example of a well designed game for a variety of reasons, and their game design dev blogs are enlightening and I will be quoting them frequently in my threads, mainly because the arguments they make are obvious.
I've read all your arguments, and that's why I've decided to reply now. I totally understand everything you've stated about the design of SC2. And I disagree with most of it.
I agree games should be fun. I think SC2 is fun. It's also frustrating, but a game can be both. There is no reason why a game shouldn't be frustrating. Frustration is a challenge that many want to overcome. That feeling of accomplishment when you realize the solution to the frustration is the greatest feeling in the world. It makes me feel like I can do anything. And i've experienced that with SC2. That's where the fun comes in.
When a game is just purely fun, with no challenge/frustration, it will become boring. If a game has the right balance of fun and frustration, it will become a good game. I feel SC2 has reached that balance. Sure sometimes it feels more frustating than fun, but that is the beauty of it.
If a game is designed to remove frustration and increase fun, than it's audience are children. Because its children that can't handle the frustration of losing. A game that focus on only fun panders to players that can't take frustration.
The fact of the matter is that SC2 is an incredibly hard game. No one here can dispute it. It's so hard that many don't find it fun to play. That is something Blizzard intentionally designed. You don't agree with them. I get it. No need to try to hook anyone by the nose and guide them around, because that's just being asinine.
And isn't Blizzard the authority on SC2? They made it. Are they the authority on RTS games? I'm not prepared to answer that question with facts or proof, but judging from the success of their RTS portfolio, I am inclined to believe so. But as I stated before, they are not infallible. They've made mistakes on buffs/nerfs and had to revert them in following patches.
Sure LoL is a fun game, and of course that's the appeal. And their devs are great at what they do, but that doesn't mean everything they do and say is the bible. But to state that if Riot does it, Blizzard should too is a fallacious argument. Game design isn't some hard and fast rule that publishers have to adhere to. Riot will make their decisions, and Blizzard will make theirs.
As I mentioned before, I understand your argument. I read it. You've stated it time and time in many previous threads. You've mentioned League/Riot plenty of times. No need to write down your ironclad argument. Instead, I hope you would take the time to just play the game. But I doubt you would, because you've already made up your mind.
edit:
I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is
I've never said anything about who is right or wrong, I just said I disagree. I never said you should agree with me just because I have more trust in Blizzard. You have your opinion, and I'm not trying to persuade you otherwise.
MockHamil, I'm inclined to believe you about swarm hosts. They do seem to stop mech cold. I'm not sure though if this is intentional, but it might be situational/map dependent.
Here's the thing, swarm hosts are quite easy to use as harass. They are extremely good at hit and run tactics, and mech style is very prone to hit and run. No one in their right mind would attack into a fortified mech base. That is suicide.
So zerg's only resort is to use guerrilla tactics to eek out small advantages, until they have a sufficient force to take on the mech army. I've seen some use mutas to hit and run, but with a few well placed turrets, muta harass effectively is stopped. So zergs needs another option to harass.
But remember, if zerg is going fast swarm hosts, there is no way they can get enough units to stop a banshee harass. And it shouldn't be too hard to make a few banshees if you scout swarmhosts. Banshees are harder to use than swarm hosts, but they are also much more effective, and way more versatile. As well, banshees easily handle swarmhosts if you manage to catch them.
However, if it goes to the late game and the zerg has enough to afford swarmhosts and hydras, than you are absolutely right. You have a window of opportunity to use the banshees effectively. If you don't, that window closes and you will lose.
By asking for swarmhosts to be more expensive, the only thing you are asking is for a larger window of opportunity. If that window is too small, than I would agree with you that swarmhosts needs to be nerfed. But I'm not sure yet if it is or isn't.
I know, I'm spending far too much time repeating that to an audience that doesn't understand it. That is the problem.
The good thing is, they aren't my game design tenets, they are the ones that other successful games in the industry use right now to succeed.
And rather than rehash the same tired few basic statements over and over, I'm going to create a series of threads to educate and enlighten rather than have to listen to these fallacious arguments of authority that you and others have made over and over ("Blizzard is the authority on SC2, and you are not, therefore Blizzard must be right..." I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is).
I need to begin formulating stronger arguments, the kind that put a hook through you nose and drag you along the logical path of understanding, and where you see how fruitless it is to disagree and where the conclusions seem as incredibly obvious as they are. The difficulty is always writing something that isn't too long, so people read it, yet still makes an ironclad argument, all while being readable enough for everyone to understand it. If everyone just read all the League Dev Blogs relating to game design, it would be a huge start, but that would be a lot of reading and would require people to associate game design in League to the different game design mechanics in SC2.
Modern game design focuses on removing frustration and increasing fun and is done through a variety of means. Modern games are successful in the sense they a lot of people like to play them, because they are fun. I understand Blizzard has openly said they don't care how many people play SC2 or not, and that itself a problematic view because the simple fact is, people play games for fun, and games that are fun. Regardless of how many people play SC2, it should be fun, not frustrating.
League is a textbook example of a well designed game for a variety of reasons, and their game design dev blogs are enlightening and I will be quoting them frequently in my threads, mainly because the arguments they make are obvious.
I've read all your arguments, and that's why I've decided to reply now. I totally understand everything you've stated about the design of SC2. And I disagree with most of it.
I agree games should be fun. I think SC2 is fun. It's also frustrating, but a game can be both. There is no reason why a game shouldn't be frustrating. Frustration is a challenge that many want to overcome. That feeling of accomplishment when you realize the solution to the frustration is the greatest feeling in the world. It makes me feel like I can do anything. And i've experienced that with SC2. That's where the fun comes in.
When a game is just purely fun, with no challenge/frustration, it will become boring. If a game has the right balance of fun and frustration, it will become a good game. I feel SC2 has reached that balance. Sure sometimes it feels more frustating than fun, but that is the beauty of it.
If a game is designed to remove frustration and increase fun, than it's audience are children. Because its children that can't handle the frustration of losing. A game that focus on only fun panders to players that can't take frustration.
The fact of the matter is that SC2 is an incredibly hard game. No one here can dispute it. It's so hard that many don't find it fun to play. That is something Blizzard intentionally designed. You don't agree with them. I get it. No need to try to hook anyone by the nose and guide them around, because that's just being asinine.
And isn't Blizzard the authority on SC2? They made it. Are they the authority on RTS games? I'm not prepared to answer that question with facts or proof, but judging from the success of their RTS portfolio, I am inclined to believe so. But as I stated before, they are not infallible. They've made mistakes on buffs/nerfs and had to revert them in following patches.
Sure LoL is a fun game, and of course that's the appeal. And their devs are great at what they do, but that doesn't mean everything they do and say is the bible. But to state that if Riot does it, Blizzard should too is a fallacious argument. Game design isn't some hard and fast rule that publishers have to adhere to. Riot will make their decisions, and Blizzard will make theirs.
As I mentioned before, I understand your argument. I read it. You've stated it time and time in many previous threads. You've mentioned League/Riot plenty of times. No need to write down your ironclad argument. Instead, I hope you would take the time to just play the game. But I doubt you would, because you've already made up your mind.
I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is
I've never said anything about who is right or wrong, I just said I disagree. I never said you should agree with me just because I have more trust in Blizzard. You have your opinion, and I'm not trying to persuade you otherwise.
I don't want to go into this too deeply, but this isn't really a matter of opinion. Good game design is a series of objective points that have been proven over and over. SC2 is in decline and is evidence of this.
Anyway, the argument of authority is a fallacious argument, supposing that because who someone is makes their point automatically valid. It has nothing to do with who you trust and who you don't and everything to do with the arguments I've made, none of which you brought up, but that doesn't matter, I will fully flesh them out in my threads and hopefully you will respond to those, and not me. Because I don't matter, the ideas matter and someone else could easily repeat them and then you've have to perform character assassination on them too. Simply stating that you trust Blizzard more without addressing the arguments I've made and Blizzard has made is exactly what an argument of authority is.
Briefly, the frustration piece. Frustration is necessary in good game design to achieve mastery (mastery being a good thing that is the ultimate goal, we want people to feel like they achieved something), but it should be minimized, and mastery should be the solution to frustration. For instance, as an LoL design blog points out, the Stone Award in Bayonetta, where you get laughed at by the game for barely making it through a level is a case that could be minimized, it is unnecessary and makes players frustrated. A case where there is frustration without mastery solving it is an ability that has a 95% chance of working. That 5% chance is really annoying and frustrating and serves no real purpose.
Another example is how disease works in RTW2, it is utterly random, but I'll let Dr. Sane explain with a great example:
Sadly SC2 is full of instances where you're put in situations you can do little about, and that has led SC2 down a bad path. It should feel good when you get past a certain point and master something and in many cases in SC2, it does. But SC2 can't be totally mastered, which is okay in itself, but when the top players are complaining the game is too hard to master, it might actually be too hard. And then mastery isn't the solution to frustration because it is too hard... so said frustration should be minimized. And it isn't being, and we know frustration like that pushes people away.
And it wasn't always that way... TheDwf was right in Razzia of the Blizzsters, the game was getting too fast during the LOTV Beta. Control and skill contract with speed (he used speed Chess as an example) and thus mastery is increasingly out of reach. And mastery is the goal of any game.
As for playing the game, I still actively play SC2, coop, 1vs1, and team games. You check my match history. I just used to play a lot more.
And it wasn't always that way... TheDwf was right in Razzia of the Blizzsters, the game was getting too fast during the LOTV Beta. Control and skill contract with speed (he used speed Chess as an example) and thus mastery is increasingly out of reach. And mastery is the goal of any game.
I don't agree that it makes sense to use speed as a general term that both includes movement and damage.
Further, one should make a distingushing between abilitiy-damage and auto-attack damage. And then also divide that up in skillshot-ability damage and damage with lack of counterplay. And for auto-attacks, we should seperate between harass units and battleoriented damage.
Point being that it doesn't make sense to say that all forms of speed is too fast. It must also be assessed on a case-by-case where the impact on micro interactions are assessed.
Sadly SC2 is full of instances where you're put in situations you can do little about, and that has led SC2 down a bad path. It should feel good when you get past a certain point and master something and in many cases in SC2, it does. But SC2 can't be totally mastered, which is okay in itself, but when the top players are complaining the game is too hard to master, it might actually be too hard.
I actually can't think of a single example here. Enlighten me.
Look I don't want to argue with a bunch of dudes especially when this is pretty directly about my race underpowered your race overpowered david kim pls buff.
On November 25 2016 16:50 BronzeKnee wrote: ... Sadly SC2 is full of instances where you're put in situations you can do little about, and that has led SC2 down a bad path. It should feel good when you get past a certain point and master something and in many cases in SC2, it does. But SC2 can't be totally mastered, which is okay in itself, but when the top players are complaining the game is too hard to master, it might actually be too hard. And then mastery isn't the solution to frustration because it is too hard... so said frustration should be minimized. And it isn't being, and we know frustration like that pushes people away. ...
But this is excellent. This speaks to me. This is what I say to people, and what people outside of Starcraft forums say.
When I'm frustrated I'm quitting, playing Rocket League or Dota or a non competitive game, and enjoying myself. I've heard a decent number of people (both players and personalities in the scene) say a competitive game isn't supposed to be fun. That is bullshit.
This patch has done a lot to rectify the bad game design in ZvT. In 3.7 it went from the most iconic and engaging match up to the absolute worst. I'd take a day of ZvZs over playing a frustrat-athon defend defend defend get to tier 3 win. Didn't they learn in WoL (when I quit) that BL Infestor that no fun get to end game and win isn't enjoyable for either side?
I have a lot of faith in this patch and future patches since they're recognizing that the mid game is where the most fun is. A match up shouldn't by default be a race to the late game for one side and another side doing everything to end the game before then.
I know, I'm spending far too much time repeating that to an audience that doesn't understand it. That is the problem.
The good thing is, they aren't my game design tenets, they are the ones that other successful games in the industry use right now to succeed.
And rather than rehash the same tired few basic statements over and over, I'm going to create a series of threads to educate and enlighten rather than have to listen to these fallacious arguments of authority that you and others have made over and over ("Blizzard is the authority on SC2, and you are not, therefore Blizzard must be right..." I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is).
I need to begin formulating stronger arguments, the kind that put a hook through you nose and drag you along the logical path of understanding, and where you see how fruitless it is to disagree and where the conclusions seem as incredibly obvious as they are. The difficulty is always writing something that isn't too long, so people read it, yet still makes an ironclad argument, all while being readable enough for everyone to understand it. If everyone just read all the League Dev Blogs relating to game design, it would be a huge start, but that would be a lot of reading and would require people to associate game design in League to the different game design mechanics in SC2.
Modern game design focuses on removing frustration and increasing fun and is done through a variety of means. Modern games are successful in the sense they a lot of people like to play them, because they are fun. I understand Blizzard has openly said they don't care how many people play SC2 or not, and that itself a problematic view because the simple fact is, people play games for fun, and games that are fun. Regardless of how many people play SC2, it should be fun, not frustrating.
League is a textbook example of a well designed game for a variety of reasons, and their game design dev blogs are enlightening and I will be quoting them frequently in my threads, mainly because the arguments they make are obvious.
I've read all your arguments, and that's why I've decided to reply now. I totally understand everything you've stated about the design of SC2. And I disagree with most of it.
I agree games should be fun. I think SC2 is fun. It's also frustrating, but a game can be both. There is no reason why a game shouldn't be frustrating. Frustration is a challenge that many want to overcome. That feeling of accomplishment when you realize the solution to the frustration is the greatest feeling in the world. It makes me feel like I can do anything. And i've experienced that with SC2. That's where the fun comes in.
When a game is just purely fun, with no challenge/frustration, it will become boring. If a game has the right balance of fun and frustration, it will become a good game. I feel SC2 has reached that balance. Sure sometimes it feels more frustating than fun, but that is the beauty of it.
If a game is designed to remove frustration and increase fun, than it's audience are children. Because its children that can't handle the frustration of losing. A game that focus on only fun panders to players that can't take frustration.
The fact of the matter is that SC2 is an incredibly hard game. No one here can dispute it. It's so hard that many don't find it fun to play. That is something Blizzard intentionally designed. You don't agree with them. I get it. No need to try to hook anyone by the nose and guide them around, because that's just being asinine.
And isn't Blizzard the authority on SC2? They made it. Are they the authority on RTS games? I'm not prepared to answer that question with facts or proof, but judging from the success of their RTS portfolio, I am inclined to believe so. But as I stated before, they are not infallible. They've made mistakes on buffs/nerfs and had to revert them in following patches.
Sure LoL is a fun game, and of course that's the appeal. And their devs are great at what they do, but that doesn't mean everything they do and say is the bible. But to state that if Riot does it, Blizzard should too is a fallacious argument. Game design isn't some hard and fast rule that publishers have to adhere to. Riot will make their decisions, and Blizzard will make theirs.
As I mentioned before, I understand your argument. I read it. You've stated it time and time in many previous threads. You've mentioned League/Riot plenty of times. No need to write down your ironclad argument. Instead, I hope you would take the time to just play the game. But I doubt you would, because you've already made up your mind.
edit:
I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is
I've never said anything about who is right or wrong, I just said I disagree. I never said you should agree with me just because I have more trust in Blizzard. You have your opinion, and I'm not trying to persuade you otherwise.
I don't want to go into this too deeply, but this isn't really a matter of opinion. Good game design is a series of objective points that have been proven over and over. SC2 is in decline and is evidence of this.
Anyway, the argument of authority is a fallacious argument, supposing that because who someone is makes their point automatically valid. It has nothing to do with who you trust and who you don't and everything to do with the arguments I've made, none of which you brought up, but that doesn't matter, I will fully flesh them out in my threads and hopefully you will respond to those, and not me. Because I don't matter, the ideas matter and someone else could easily repeat them and then you've have to perform character assassination on them too. Simply stating that you trust Blizzard more without addressing the arguments I've made and Blizzard has made is exactly what an argument of authority is.
Briefly, the frustration piece. Frustration is necessary in good game design to achieve mastery (mastery being a good thing that is the ultimate goal, we want people to feel like they achieved something), but it should be minimized, and mastery should be the solution to frustration. For instance, as an LoL design blog points out, the Stone Award in Bayonetta, where you get laughed at by the game for barely making it through a level is a case that could be minimized, it is unnecessary and makes players frustrated. A case where there is frustration without mastery solving it is an ability that has a 95% chance of working. That 5% chance is really annoying and frustrating and serves no real purpose.
Another example is how disease works in RTW2, it is utterly random, but I'll let Dr. Sane explain with a great example:
Sadly SC2 is full of instances where you're put in situations you can do little about, and that has led SC2 down a bad path. It should feel good when you get past a certain point and master something and in many cases in SC2, it does. But SC2 can't be totally mastered, which is okay in itself, but when the top players are complaining the game is too hard to master, it might actually be too hard. And then mastery isn't the solution to frustration because it is too hard... so said frustration should be minimized. And it isn't being, and we know frustration like that pushes people away.
And it wasn't always that way... TheDwf was right in Razzia of the Blizzsters, the game was getting too fast during the LOTV Beta. Control and skill contract with speed (he used speed Chess as an example) and thus mastery is increasingly out of reach. And mastery is the goal of any game.
As for playing the game, I still actively play SC2, coop, 1vs1, and team games. You check my match history. I just used to play a lot more.
Oh but design is a matter of opinion. Sure there are some design aspects that many should adhere to, and in so doing a better product is the result. But at the end of the day, design isn't objective. It's subjective.
I don't design videogames, but I do design websites. In class we were taught basic web design principles that are used by nearly all the big companies. So I used those principles with much smaller clients. And they didn't like it. They asked for changes that totally broke basic web design principles.
I agree there are somethings a game should do to be successful, but as I said before its not a hard rule that developers and publishers must do. If they decide to break a principle, they do so knowingly. Blizzard is intentionally designing SC2 breaking certain aspects that you bring up. And I trust them for doing it. Will it be the immediate downfall of SC2? Perhaps, and if it is I will concede you were right. But I have confidence in Blizzard that they know what they are doing. I'm not appealing to authority here and I understand the points you've brought up in previous threads.
However, if a publisher/developer is breaking basic design principles unknowingly, than that's a massive faux pas that might end in failure. I honestly think Blizzard knowingly breaks these design principles, and if so than its ok.
About frustration, you bring up some excellent points. As I mentioned before, there should be a balance of frustration and fun. Too much frustration and people will quit because it feels futile to continue. Not enough frustration and people will quit because its too boring and easy to master. Our opinion here differs on the balance that SC2 strikes with frustration/fun. Many progamers have stated its too hard, and maybe it is too hard. However, as a spectator I like it hard (please don't take it out of context). In my opinion, this adds to the excitement of watching GSL or WCS.
Imagine if the NBA lowered the height of the net to 8 feet and shrink the 3-point line by a foot? Basketball would be much easier to play, but than it will be so boring to watch. Everyone will be dunking and landing the 3-point with ease. And the truly great players couldn't distinguish themselves from the good players, because everyone can play at the same level. There would be less contention and excitement.
You can find this example in so many sports. Take golf for instance. Every year golf course designers strive to make the greens harder and harder to get par, because players become better and better, especially in the Masters. However, they have to make sure a course doesn't delve into the realm of nearly impossible.
So questions remain, is SC2 too hard that mastering it becomes nearly impossible? Is there a solution for mech to play against swarm hosts (because it SH seems to stop mech cold)? Is protoss' solution to mech too easy or too hard? If its too easy, PvT mech will return to aoe vs bio and Blizzard will have failed with this patch. If its too hard mech will need adjustments. Perhaps its somewhere in the middle, which would mean Blizzard partially succeeded with this patch.
BronzeKnee, its more pleasant to discuss this with you when you aren't being a condescending asshole. I appeal to you to suppress your inner asshole.
And in no way did I try to 'perform character assassination'. I did not in anyway use ad hominen. I might have been a bit snide in my comments, but I always try to approach your argument, not your attittude. If I did attack you, and not address your argument, I truly apologize.
Lastly, I am happy you still play SC2. From your comments it seemed you've completely abandoned it already. I apologize for making that assumption.
edit: I've edited this comment a dozen times for clarity, but this edit is because I didn't address something. Finding the solution is paramount for any game to be successful. However, finding solutions in SC2 isn't as apparent compared to other games and genres. And that adds to the beauty of SC2. In other games, the solution is given in either the game content (e.g. an npc gives you a clue to find the solution) or game engine (e.g. timing the jump over a chasm just right). Sometimes though, a game requires experimentation to discover the solution. That is SC2.
Take MockHamil's problem with swarm hosts against his mech play. He is adamant that mech is stopped cold by SH. From my observations, he is right. If a zerg player uses swarm hosts to slow down a mech composition; weaken the fortification; and get a better economy, than the terran mech will be in a pickle that will likely end in a lot of broken tanks.
Is there a solution for a terran mech to play against SH? If there isn't a solution, than did Blizzard intend for it? Was it there intention to make SH a clear counter to mech play? Honestly, I don't know these answers, because I'm not qualified enough.
What if there is, it just takes the right decisions, but no one discovered the solutions. The thing about SC2 is that all the solutions aren't clearly defined, so it requires players to experiment to discover it. If Blizzard unknowingly created a situation with no solution, than a nerf/buff is required. If they knowingly created it, than it might be an indication that a player must change the situation (i.e. switch to bio if zerg goes SH). But we don't know any of these answers because we still need to experiment.
i'm not expecting this patch to be balanced. DK stated several times that they didn't get enough feedback on it.
right now, we're in the stage where Academies were $200 and larva generated too quickly.
hopefully, the balance will be much better when qualifying for WCS begins in 2017
On November 25 2016 16:50 BronzeKnee wrote: I'm going to create a series of threads to educate and enlighten rather than have to listen to these fallacious arguments of authority that you and others have made over and over ("Blizzard is the authority on SC2, and you are not, therefore Blizzard must be right..." I believe right is right and wrong is wrong, no matter who says or does it, and I think you should too, though it does require critical thinking instead of just defaulting to whoever you think the authority is).
Blizzard's long term financial success is objective proof of their quality products. However, their best team is not working on RTS. The genre never has generated enough profit for any company to justify Blizzard moving its best talent onto an RTS game.
in every forum of all 6 franchises is a group of experts claiming the Blizz franchise they are discussing is horribly designed and the other 5 franchises design quality ranges from average to great in quality.
And it wasn't always that way... TheDwf was right in Razzia of the Blizzsters, the game was getting too fast during the LOTV Beta. Control and skill contract with speed (he used speed Chess as an example) and thus mastery is increasingly out of reach. And mastery is the goal of any game.
I don't agree that it makes sense to use speed as a general term that both includes movement and damage.
Further, one should make a distingushing between abilitiy-damage and auto-attack damage. And then also divide that up in skillshot-ability damage and damage with lack of counterplay. And for auto-attacks, we should seperate between harass units and battleoriented damage.
Point being that it doesn't make sense to say that all forms of speed is too fast. It must also be assessed on a case-by-case where the impact on micro interactions are assessed.
Sadly SC2 is full of instances where you're put in situations you can do little about, and that has led SC2 down a bad path. It should feel good when you get past a certain point and master something and in many cases in SC2, it does. But SC2 can't be totally mastered, which is okay in itself, but when the top players are complaining the game is too hard to master, it might actually be too hard.
I actually can't think of a single example here. Enlighten me.
Hider, mate, don't be a dick to BronzeKnee, you know what he means, armies clumping increases Army DPS density, which also means that armies die faster than otherwise, and because units are more clumped a greater amount of them can easily be caught by a stray fungal or Disruptor shot increasing the game's volatility. All of that you know, don't be obtuse on purpose.
Game's too volatile, be it because lotv economy, pathing, unit design, unit balancing. Yeah, some people might enjoy the volatility, but volatility is stressing on multiplayer game, and most people don't enjoy that when they are thinking of "playing video games". Yet the SC2 E-Sport ecosystem kinda needs said people.
On November 26 2016 02:52 Uvantak wrote: Game's too volatile, be it because lotv economy, pathing, unit design, unit balancing. Yeah, some people might enjoy the volatility, but volatility is stressing on multiplayer game, and most people don't enjoy that when they are thinking of "playing video games". Yet the SC2 E-Sport ecosystem kinda needs said people.
baseball is extremely volatile and the solution to that is to play 7 days a week in a 162 game regular season. volatility can be mitigated by an alteration in the league design.
that said, i seem to see the same faces over and over again in the GSL.
On November 26 2016 02:52 Uvantak wrote: Game's too volatile, be it because lotv economy, pathing, unit design, unit balancing. Yeah, some people might enjoy the volatility, but volatility is stressing on multiplayer game, and most people don't enjoy that when they are thinking of "playing video games". Yet the SC2 E-Sport ecosystem kinda needs said people.
baseball is extremely volatile and the solution to that is to play 7 days a week in a 162 game regular season. volatility can be mitigated by an alteration in the league design.
that said, i seem to see the same faces over and over again in the GSL.
Isn't baseball recognized to be a more in the boring side sport? I can't really say anything about baseball tho, I'm not #Murrican and the game is only really played in the US and other "US colonized" countries
Also, the thing with baseball and other RL sports is that they have people being raised on them, SC2 and other more modern games haven't permeated deep enough into a country's culture as to generate such a big and stable following, the only example I can think of that happening is BW in Korea, but even so, that's still not on the same scale as baseball in the US or Japan
Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
On November 26 2016 04:23 Solar424 wrote: Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
Blizz also stated that they didn't get enough play-test feedback after the patch was released. this is a balance testing phase that we're in right now.
SC1, Brood War, WC3, and WoL were all badly out of balance upon the game's release. That is the stage we are in right now. This "big update patch" has the same scale of "massive problems" as these other releases listed.
Blizzard stated this is a once-a-year major update patch and not a standard mild balance tweak that occurs in the middle of a WCS season.
move along people ... stay away from the yellow police caution tape there is nothing to see here.
if you want to cherry pick Blizzard quotes you can of course make it appear that the sky is falling.
On November 26 2016 04:23 Solar424 wrote: Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
Blizz also stated that they didn't get enough play-test feedback after the patch was released. this is a balance testing phase that we're in right now.
SC1, Brood War, WC3, and WoL were all badly out of balance upon the game's release. That is the stage we are in right now. This "big update patch" has the same scale of "massive problems" as these other releases listed.
Blizzard stated this is a once-a-year major update patch and not a standard mild balance tweak that occurs in the middle of a WCS season.
move along people ... stay away from the yellow police caution tape there is nothing to see here.
if you want to cherry pick Blizzard quotes you can of course make it appear that the sky is falling.
So instead of breaking the balance of the game ever 2-3 years, they want to do it every year? Nice logic there.
On November 26 2016 04:23 Solar424 wrote: Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
Blizz also stated that they didn't get enough play-test feedback after the patch was released. this is a balance testing phase that we're in right now.
SC1, Brood War, WC3, and WoL were all badly out of balance upon the game's release. That is the stage we are in right now. This "big update patch" has the same scale of "massive problems" as these other releases listed.
Blizzard stated this is a once-a-year major update patch and not a standard mild balance tweak that occurs in the middle of a WCS season.
move along people ... stay away from the yellow police caution tape there is nothing to see here.
if you want to cherry pick Blizzard quotes you can of course make it appear that the sky is falling.
So instead of breaking the balance of the game ever 2-3 years, they want to do it every year? Nice logic there.
DK stated if the game is in a really good state at the end of 2017 it'll only be balance tweaked from then on. SO there is no guarantee of annualized major changes.
Blizzard's diverse race RTS games take a long time to balance. Most other diverse race RTS games never do get properly balanced.
i respect how tough a problem it is to balance diverse race RTS games. it would appear many posters in this thread do not share my sentiments.
Has any diverse race RTS game ever been released in a solid balanced state? If any one would like to list all the games that managed that difficult feat i'd be happy to read it.
i'm 100% on board with DK's publicly stated process for improving the SC2 1v1 experience. its a good process and makes sense.
On November 26 2016 04:23 Solar424 wrote: Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
Blizz also stated that they didn't get enough play-test feedback after the patch was released. this is a balance testing phase that we're in right now.
SC1, Brood War, WC3, and WoL were all badly out of balance upon the game's release. That is the stage we are in right now. This "big update patch" has the same scale of "massive problems" as these other releases listed.
Blizzard stated this is a once-a-year major update patch and not a standard mild balance tweak that occurs in the middle of a WCS season.
move along people ... stay away from the yellow police caution tape there is nothing to see here.
if you want to cherry pick Blizzard quotes you can of course make it appear that the sky is falling.
So instead of breaking the balance of the game ever 2-3 years, they want to do it every year? Nice logic there.
DK stated if the game is in a really good state at the end of 2017 it'll only be balance tweaked from then on. SO there is no guarantee of annualized major changes.
Blizzard's diverse race RTS games take a long time to balance. Most other diverse race RTS games never do get properly balanced.
i respect how tough a problem it is to balance diverse race RTS games. it would appear many posters in this thread do not share my sentiments.
Has any diverse race RTS game ever been released in a solid balanced state? If any one would like to list all the games that managed that difficult feat i'd be happy to read it.
i'm 100% on board with DK's publicly stated process for improving the SC2 1v1 experience. its a good process and makes sense.
Have you seen David Kim's attempt to balance the game so far? There's no way he gets the game to only need minor tweaking by the end of 2017, and if says he has than he's even more foolish than anyone thinks.
balancing a diverse race RTS game with 3 or more races is never easy... and i think that is why DK didn't guarantee anything about how he would approach game balance at the end of 2017.
On November 26 2016 04:23 Solar424 wrote: Remember 3 months ago when they announced these changes and people said "they won't put many of these in the game, they'll listen to community feedback and remove a lot of them"? Yeah, about that...
This patch really just confirms that Blizzard doesn't care about making a well-balanced game, or a well-designed game, they just care about making a game that is flashy to watch. The problem with that is that it makes being good less of a factor in winning and just doing some stupid shit that surprises your opponent, which has been one of SC2's main problems since day 1, which Blizzard doesn't seem to acknowledge. Now the playerbase is dried up and Blizzard is trying to squeeze every last penny they can out of the corpse of this game by adding microtransactions and features that have been in other games for years. Just shows what happens when you put making the game fun to play behind making it fun to watch.
Going to be interesting to see what the feedback update is for this week. I wonder how David Kim will skirt around the massive problems the new patch has.
I think you're being incredibly pessimistic and unreasonable. There's a lot of incredibly good stuff in the patch, even if there are questionable decisions.
Worst patch ive seen. It forces banshe and doom drop play in tvt. and 30 min mech games where the one that attack first, loses. Tvz is diffuclt. its stil bio vs ling muta ultra.. mech isnt good. 4 muta win vs 4 cyclones almost. banelings are so incredible strong now. whit no offencive play when the tanks nerfed.. its really really hard.. the great tvz era is over. TVP? toss is so bad atm that they all inn every game. no fun at all.
On November 26 2016 21:15 MiCroLiFe wrote: Worst patch ive seen. It forces banshe and doom drop play in tvt. and 30 min mech games where the one that attack first, loses. Tvz is diffuclt. its stil bio vs ling muta ultra.. mech isnt good. 4 muta win vs 4 cyclones almost. banelings are so incredible strong now. whit no offencive play when the tanks nerfed.. its really really hard.. the great tvz era is over. TVP? toss is so bad atm that they all inn every game. no fun at all.
"the great tvz era is over." What great TvZ, its been shit since the back end of WoL 5 years ago?
TvZ when the game was first released was the dream match up to watch, so dont know why you are bleating about it now
On November 26 2016 21:15 MiCroLiFe wrote: Worst patch ive seen. It forces banshe and doom drop play in tvt. and 30 min mech games where the one that attack first, loses. Tvz is diffuclt. its stil bio vs ling muta ultra.. mech isnt good. 4 muta win vs 4 cyclones almost. banelings are so incredible strong now. whit no offencive play when the tanks nerfed.. its really really hard.. the great tvz era is over. TVP? toss is so bad atm that they all inn every game. no fun at all.
"the great tvz era is over." What great TvZ, its been shit since the back end of WoL 5 years ago?
TvZ when the game was first released was the dream match up to watch, so dont know why you are bleating about it now
fungal and broodlord beein unbeatable wasn the good era.. good era was intense micro whole game.
I have done some games on the new patch now. For me not much has changed.
Buffs over nerfs. ZvT is still all about defending all the bullshit that terran throws at you. Any kind of offense that requires units to commit against T remains useless before the killing blow, even and especially to trade units off against terran eco (SCV/mule). So stuff that is rather immobile remains unappealing to play when you have to split up your army to defend all kind of combinations of multiple drops, drop + main attack or main attack only. It feels just stupid to have the defenders disadvantage. It is not really about imbalance, I just don't wanna experience that with the arsenal of units that zerg has and run behind boosted medivacs with roach/ravager or anything similar. It kills it for me. It would fit better to the terran arsenal where you can keep a single tank, 2 mines or 4 marines in a bunker back at some location and have some decent anti-harrassment defence with a defenders advantage, while as zerg it feels like you always need double investment to defend against what is inside a medivac.
From what I have seen, which isn't really that much yet, its still about 70%+ bio units but now coplemented more with tanks.
Protoss air feels too strong still, especially the mothership.
New banelings really feel op vs. protoss. Hydras are strong but still come in so late. I feel like the game required earlier option for hydras but not as strong/expensive as it is. Having no option against protoss air other than hydras which take forever to build and upgrade and then are extremely immobile e.g. against phoenixes makes games odd. It feels more appealing here as well to stay on mobility units like ling/bane and all-in/basetrade the protoss in alot of situations.
Not quite motivated to continue to play I am sorry to say. But lets see how the metagames develop over the upcoming weeks and months.
On November 26 2016 23:26 LSN wrote: I have done some games on the new patch now. For me not much has changed.
Buffs over nerfs. ZvT is still all about defending all the bullshit that terran throws at you. Any kind of offense that requires units to commit against T remains useless before the killing blow, even and especially to trade units off against terran eco (SCV/mule). So stuff that is rather immobile remains unappealing to play when you have to split up your army to defend all kind of combinations of multiple drops, drop + main attack or main attack only. It feels just stupid to have the defenders disadvantage. It is not really about imbalance, I just don't wanna experience that with the arsenal of units that zerg has and run behind boosted medivacs with roach/ravager or anything similar. It kills it for me. It would fit better to the terran arsenal where you can keep a single tank, 2 mines or 4 marines in a bunker back at some location and have some decent anti-harrassment defence with a defenders advantage, while as zerg it feels like you always need double investment to defend against what is inside a medivac.
From what I have seen, which isn't really that much yet, its still about 70%+ bio units but now coplemented more with tanks.
Protoss air feels too strong still, especially the mothership.
New banelings really feel op vs. protoss. Hydras are strong but still come in so late. I feel like the game required earlier option for hydras but not as strong/expensive as it is. Having no option against protoss air other than hydras which take forever to build and upgrade and then are extremely immobile e.g. against phoenixes makes games odd. It feels more appealing here as well to stay on mobility units like ling/bane and all-in/basetrade the protoss in alot of situations.
Not quite motivated to continue to play I am sorry to say. But lets see how the metagames develop over the upcoming weeks and months.
zerg is clearly much stronger than before. what are you complaining about? no terrans winning. check IEM
On November 26 2016 23:26 LSN wrote: I have done some games on the new patch now. For me not much has changed.
Buffs over nerfs. ZvT is still all about defending all the bullshit that terran throws at you. Any kind of offense that requires units to commit against T remains useless before the killing blow, even and especially to trade units off against terran eco (SCV/mule). So stuff that is rather immobile remains unappealing to play when you have to split up your army to defend all kind of combinations of multiple drops, drop + main attack or main attack only. It feels just stupid to have the defenders disadvantage. It is not really about imbalance, I just don't wanna experience that with the arsenal of units that zerg has and run behind boosted medivacs with roach/ravager or anything similar. It kills it for me. It would fit better to the terran arsenal where you can keep a single tank, 2 mines or 4 marines in a bunker back at some location and have some decent anti-harrassment defence with a defenders advantage, while as zerg it feels like you always need double investment to defend against what is inside a medivac.
From what I have seen, which isn't really that much yet, its still about 70%+ bio units but now coplemented more with tanks.
Protoss air feels too strong still, especially the mothership.
New banelings really feel op vs. protoss. Hydras are strong but still come in so late. I feel like the game required earlier option for hydras but not as strong/expensive as it is. Having no option against protoss air other than hydras which take forever to build and upgrade and then are extremely immobile e.g. against phoenixes makes games odd. It feels more appealing here as well to stay on mobility units like ling/bane and all-in/basetrade the protoss in alot of situations.
Not quite motivated to continue to play I am sorry to say. But lets see how the metagames develop over the upcoming weeks and months.
zerg is clearly much stronger than before. what are you complaining about? no terrans winning. check IEM
This post highlights pretty well the problem with this community and blizzard in general. All about balance which is mostly meta dependant anyway if nothing is way too strong. What about the design? What about the game being fun? What about the game being enjoyable even when you lose? The game might be perfectly balanced and people would still complain about units/strategies which they preceive as too strong. A good example was the forcefield for a lot of sc2's lifespan. In certain situations it simply felt overpowered even if it probably was not. Yes not everyone has the same opinions but i am fairly certain that you can appeal to a majority of people when you try to get rid of certain mechanics which simply feel bad and design the game with a few key elements in mind (like defenders advantage being incredibly important, sc2 violates this in a lot of ways) But yeah this was said a million times in countless posts, articles and videos already.
and we just went through the "radical big patch" with the Forcefield still in place. so you know for almost certain the forcefield remains in the game. i'm fine with the forcefield, however, for those who strongly dislike the mechanic i suggest they play a different game. i don't think the forcefield is going away and a mountain of evidence suggests i am right.
On November 27 2016 03:24 JimmyJRaynor wrote: and we just went through the "radical big patch" with the Forcefield still in place. so you know for almost certain the forcefield remains in the game. i'm fine with the forcefield, however, for those who strongly dislike the mechanic i suggest they play a different game. i don't think the forcefield is going away and a mountain of evidence suggests i am right.
The point was that forcefields were regarded as a mechanic which doesn't belong in the game. While i personally think it's mainly a problem of smartcasting (every spell which felt too strong at one point in time was due to smartcasting imo) in general people didn't enjoy the mechanic at all. Neither watching nor playing against it. Why? There wasn't much counterplay and the spell itself limited mapmaking and unit balance greatly. Why would you want such a mechanic be part of your game? It is nice that you are always fine with everything blizzard is doing and yes people can simply play another game. That's hardly the point though. The point is to remove mechanics which feel bad for a large playerbase and add something more rewarding instead. It is a discussion about gamedesign. It is no list for blizzard because blizzard doesn't care, they shown this multiple times over the years. Blizzard cares for doing the least amount of work possible gameplay wise, give the community just enough to please it somewhat, but all this "we wanna create the best game possible" talk is bs. Is it extremely constructive to discuss the same things over and over again? No probably not, but you replying to it over and over again with your rhetoric isn't either. At least the discussion about design might be interesting, but apparently the community is more interested to read that the "balance" is 52:48 rather than 53:47, because it makes a big difference for most guys apparently, no matter how this balance is achieved.
i'm not fine with everything Blizzard does. They are mediocre at best when it comes to running competitive leagues and they need to grow some balls and write a cheque and hand WCS off to the new ATVI subsidiary that specializes in eSPorts.
the game itself has been great fun the last 6 years and now that we're in the early stages of a total revamp i expected the game would be as imbalanced as brood war was in 1999 with $200 academies and larva that spawns too fast. or as imba as WoL was in 2010... remember Marauder concussion shells didn't need an upgrade? this is the stage we are in right now.
As a bio player it has not affected me much but it's kind of sad that in the patch aimed at making mech work they buffed units that essentially make mech non viable. I don't see how Terran mech is supposed to deal with swarm hosts with there current cost.
On November 27 2016 07:38 washikie wrote: As a bio player it has not affected me much but it's kind of sad that in the patch aimed at making mech work they buffed units that essentially make mech non viable. I don't see how Terran mech is supposed to deal with swarm hosts with there current cost.
As a mech player im not happy for mech and bio. Tankivacs were (for me) a nightmare, positioning didnt matter, just drop more tanks and "yolo". A stronger tank was really needed and im glad they buffed it as it is in the current state. What bothers me is that without tankivacs the number of things terran can do to put some pressure on a toss or zerg is very limited and therefor easier to hardcounter. Thats okay if the queen/spores wasnt so incredible strong. Leaving a zerg uncontested means he/she can drone much harder and therefor gain a bigger lead. Also denying creepspread was nice with tankivacs.
The "amazing" mech did not came with the patch, tvt is doable but tvz and tvp still feels extreme turtle mode. The old cyclone had the option to be less turtle and boring. Now its HOTS again, but even worse. Since resources are more limited it encourage players to turtle even harder, because losing a gas heavy army is not something you want. The viper/hydra combo is a big problem, that was obvious during the test period. Yet they think its enough to delay the range upgrade for just 71 seconds and 100/100, thats it. Zerg got the most units, most versatile units and many many ways to scout/have vision. Too many roaches? ravagers, too many hydra's? (is that possible?) make lurkers, corruptors into broodlords, lings into banelings, queens great in all stages of the game. Viper can regen energy in a heartbeat etc etc There are almost no downsides to the race.
I applaud Blizzard for trying lots of radical changes. Unfortunately some of them did not work out but I do not think it will take much to transform the current situation into a much better one.
All Blizzard has to do is the following: 1. Increase the Swarm Host cost. 2. Decrease Hydra range upgrade by 1. 3. Make Abduct not work on massive units so that Thors and Battlecruicers can be used in TvZ late game. 4. Remove range increase on Raven seeker missile upgrade and revert auto turret damage.
If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
On November 27 2016 18:40 KT_Elwood wrote: If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
You should spend more time learning the game rather than whining and pretending you know it...
Ravager won't break any siege tank line unless you have 3 ravagers per tank.
On HOTS : If zergs were making 28 SH it's because all the other trade resulted with all zerg units dead 0 unit lost for T. You don't trade fight with 13 range units with some 4-6 range units... And do drop when T has 50 touretts... But you probably better than SoO and co...
I guess artosis was joking but you take it seriously and use it to whine... 15 range hydras means they would outrange tanks, not even comparable with these 7 range hydra...
On November 27 2016 18:40 KT_Elwood wrote: If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
You should spend more time learning the game rather than whining and pretending you know it...
Ravager won't break any siege tank line unless you have 3 ravagers per tank.
On HOTS : If zergs were making 28 SH it's because all the other trade resulted with all zerg units dead 0 unit lost for T. You don't trade fight with 13 range units with some 4-6 range units... And do drop when T has 50 touretts... But you probably better than SoO and co...
I guess artosis was joking but you take it seriously and use it to whine... 15 range hydras means they would outrange tanks, not even comparable with these 7 range hydra...
SH were also made vs bio later in Hots. The reasoning, that you really depend on them to win vs mech, is not true. They were good, but the reason was the preferred playstyle, being able to turtle as zerg, sit back and macro. No Zerg is going to tell you that SH was needed to play vs bio, still it was viable and ppl played it, just bcuz they liked it. So don't try to defend your race, instead try to be objective.
On November 27 2016 18:40 KT_Elwood wrote: If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
You should spend more time learning the game rather than whining and pretending you know it...
Ravager won't break any siege tank line unless you have 3 ravagers per tank.
On HOTS : If zergs were making 28 SH it's because all the other trade resulted with all zerg units dead 0 unit lost for T. You don't trade fight with 13 range units with some 4-6 range units... And do drop when T has 50 touretts... But you probably better than SoO and co...
I guess artosis was joking but you take it seriously and use it to whine... 15 range hydras means they would outrange tanks, not even comparable with these 7 range hydra...
SH were also made vs bio later in Hots. The reasoning, that you really depend on them to win vs mech, is not true. They were good, but the reason was the preferred playstyle, being able to turtle as zerg, sit back and macro. No Zerg is going to tell you that SH was needed to play vs bio, still it was viable and ppl played it, just bcuz they liked it. So don't try to defend your race, instead try to be objective.
Just rewatch mech after they kill the SH on HOTS : you could see best zerg of the world like Life being crushed by mech.
But yeah a no name terran says " just do drop and nyndus : would have beaten mech ez" he probably know better how to play than kespa players, and gsl-champion...
And you're the same : " stephano beats qxc with SH vs bio" : "proof SH was imba". If you were objective you would say :
The sh was balanced but get nerfed for design reasons, the games were long and boring, but yeah the unit was the only things zerg had to fight mech camp style and protoss deathball.
Now on lotv zerg they give zerg some new tools so we can expect to beat these composition with other units.
On November 27 2016 18:40 KT_Elwood wrote: If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
You should spend more time learning the game rather than whining and pretending you know it...
Ravager won't break any siege tank line unless you have 3 ravagers per tank.
On HOTS : If zergs were making 28 SH it's because all the other trade resulted with all zerg units dead 0 unit lost for T. You don't trade fight with 13 range units with some 4-6 range units... And do drop when T has 50 touretts... But you probably better than SoO and co...
I guess artosis was joking but you take it seriously and use it to whine... 15 range hydras means they would outrange tanks, not even comparable with these 7 range hydra...
SH were also made vs bio later in Hots. The reasoning, that you really depend on them to win vs mech, is not true. They were good, but the reason was the preferred playstyle, being able to turtle as zerg, sit back and macro. No Zerg is going to tell you that SH was needed to play vs bio, still it was viable and ppl played it, just bcuz they liked it. So don't try to defend your race, instead try to be objective.
Just rewatch mech after they kill the SH on HOTS : you could see best zerg of the world like Life being crushed by mech.
But yeah a no name terran says " just do drop and nyndus : would have beaten mech ez" he probably know better how to play than kespa players, and gsl-champion...
And you're the same : " stephano beats qxc with SH vs bio" : "proof SH was imba". If you were objective you would say :
The sh was balanced but get nerfed for design reasons, the games were long and boring, but yeah the unit was the only things zerg had to fight mech camp style and protoss deathball.
Now on lotv zerg they give zerg some new tools so we can expect to beat these composition with other units.
Where did I say that SH was imba? Seriously read my post b4 replying in a way, that only shows you don't wanna discuss, but complain no matter what I say. Then tell me sir, why did Zergs start to use SH vs bio? At least we agree that SH was bad design-wise.
SH was good, and was easier to play, so zerg played it. Confident players went Roach Hydra and just outplayed terran. 2h SH vs Mech games were an EU/NA thing, not so much KR. Bad Players went SH, complained that doing nothing for 40 Minutes did nothing. With the nerf on SH, SUDDENLY Zerg just Crushed turtle terran mech, because they did not sit back, doing nothing.
On November 18 2016 04:59 xTJx wrote: It's just a joke that terran got a cheese that doesn't put them behind in the game even when they deal no damage, and it's been 1 year. If koreans haven't figured it out by now, it's because there's no counter.
And this adding to a matchup where zerg's only chance is getting hive, just totaly broken.
For 6 years protoss players have been allowed to cannon rush to masters, and now terran is just as retarded, guess this is the apex of Blizzard's vision of balance.
The fact that the best zerg in the world opens pool first says everything about this game.
from a terran perspective the game is basically reverted back to HotS now. TvZ is bio mine vs ling bane muta again, tvp is collosus deathball again and with tankivac removal tvt is the same too. the only difference is that occasionally there are a few liberators sprinkled in. I'm fine with tvz and tvt since they were in an awesome state in HotS but I really really dislike that tvp has reverted back to static collosus play after all the fun we had with the gateway heavy comps. doesn't have much to do with this patch though. the collossus nerf was the one thing I was looking forward the most when LotV was announced but for some reason they reverted it in a previous patch...
i still cant believe how terrible the new cyclone is, the purpose of the unit when it had 6 range was to delay protosses 3rd while forcing him to hold back on warp prism harass which is absolutely necessary for mech to function
in the current game protoss just takes quick 3rd while denying you your natural with stalkers/adepts and by the time you take your 3rd he is saturated on 4 bases, now he can go disruptors which butcher every mech unit since they are too slow to catch the disruptors, or they can go mass carrier which got buffed in this patch, you can no longer kill the interceptors and have the protoss run out of money.
Disruptors have never been adressed, carriers have never been adressed.
In the current game zerg just techs up to roach hydra viper and the viper blinding clouds all the tanks so their damage does not actually improve, nothing changed in tvz mech.
and for terran, the new cyclone is completely useless, you must understand that if the units purpose is to counter armored the siege tank is simply a better option, not only is the dps insanely low vs armored and guardian shielded units but it is straightup LOW damage, i do not see cyclone armies defeating zerg or protoss armies of any composition including mass roach and stalkers cost for cost
and the anti air attack is pitiful, it should be automated if anything, but you must understand nobody is going to play the cyclones anti air dps when you can just make one marine and get the same, the cyclones purpose was to act as an earlygame aggression unit whilst the tank acted as a core army unit, because cyclones do not stack whatsoever.
I never thought i would say this, but i am quitting the game and the only reason i will come back is if they fix carriers, vipers and cyclones, what is the testmap even FOR when we tell david kim this over and over, and he literally pretends there is no issue.
Overall the patch evened out bio play (less overwhelming in mid game, but stronger in the earlier late game stages), while making mech garbage. Garbage in the sense that you have to turtle for the map's ressources exhaustion. In the later stages of HOTS, we all saw how the viper made mech's best (and only) strategy was to camp, because moving out of turret cover was suicide. With parasitic bomb, 7 range hydras, insanely cheap swarm hosts, the ravager, this is even more true. Stronger tanks won't change how vipers can bleed out your army for free and prevent you from moving out, while SHs can strech your defenses so hard and for free, and that 7 range hydra concave with blinding cloud will kill you if you want to move out.
To sum up : TvZ mech is back to the "free energy damage VS free units damage and free energy damage", with mass raven VS SHs and vipers.
The following changes HAVE to be made to even out the game :
TERRAN
- CYLONE : redesign the cyclone with godd AA, movespeed, and micro potential, because it serves no purpose. Maybe revert to the old cyclone, and modify it to be 3 supply, 20 more health (140), no upgrade for lock damage but 150/75 and reactorable. - RAVEN : revert the auto turret raven buff - REAPER : make the reaper grenade deal no damage (from 10), and give it a tech lab upgrade to have utility in the later stages of the game (giving it spider mines, for instance?) - BC : add 1 range to the BC to match the hydra - THOR : increase the thor's movespeed to unsieged tank movespeed - GHOSTS : make ghost snipe recast the animation with each instance of damage, instead of cancelling it. Each time a ghost takes a hit while sniping will make it recast the spell. Make the spell cost energy only if the shot is fired.
PROTOSS
- COLOSSUS : rebuff the colossus to its HOTS strength so it can deal with 7 range hydras - DT : remove blink DT - TEMPEST : redesign the tempest for it to TRADE well with positionnal units, while being suceptible to AA threats. - SENTRY : make the hallucination 75 energy (from 100) to help protoss scout, and increase the ticklebeam to 10 flat damage - WARP PRISM : nerf the warp prism pickup range to 3 - (MSC : redesign photon overcharge, no one likes this mechanic)
ZERG
- QUEEN : queen range buff, the tankivac cut make this change overwhelming in early game defense (but keep the spore change). Make transfusion 75 energy for mass queens strategies to be less overwhelming. - SH : redesign the SH, this unit will either be OP or terrible because of its horrible design - VIPER : make the abduct unable to target GROUND massive, so that thors can zone them out and prevent vipers from bleeding out mech armies that are not behind 20 turrets. Redesign parastic bomb or cut it, 7 range hydras are now very good and reliable anti air - INFESTOR : remove burrowed fungal. Keep burrowed neural parasite. Burrowed fungal is ridiculous against terran (because they lack constant detection), but the neural is underused enough to be casted stealthily. Give fungal a "silence", in the way that fungaled units can't cast spells. - BL : re buff the BL back to 11 range. 10 range makes it quite bad against any number of thors with SCVs repairing around it
In the later stages of HOTS, we all saw how the viper made mech's best (and only) strategy was to camp, because moving out of turret cover was suicide.
I remember thinking that as early as HOTS beta. The only way to beat Vipers was through a critical mass of Vikings.
In my opinion, Abduct should first be completely redesigned so its a strong singletarget ability but has counterplay.
This means that you now can kill Vipers without relying on a critical mass of Vikings that needs to oneshot Vipers before they get pulled away.
In the later stages of HOTS, we all saw how the viper made mech's best (and only) strategy was to camp, because moving out of turret cover was suicide.
I remember thinking that as early as HOTS beta. The only way to beat Vipers was through a critical mass of Vikings.
In my opinion, Abduct should first be completely redesigned so its a strong singletarget ability but has counterplay.
This means that you now can kill Vipers instead of relying on a critical mass of Vikings that needs to oneshot Vipers before they get pulled away.
And that was before they had parasitic bomb. Now, even with a critical mass of vikings, you must be very cautious not to die, because if your vikings clump, you are in for a very bad time. Viper is, since LotV, the complete package.
On November 28 2016 19:47 JackONeill wrote: TERRAN
- CYLONE : redesign the cyclone with godd AA, movespeed, and micro potential, because it serves no purpose. Maybe revert to the old cyclone, and modify it to be 3 supply, 20 more health (140), no upgrade for lock damage but 150/75 and reactorable. - THOR : increase the thor's movespeed to unsieged tank movespeed
DK stated part of the "mech fantasy" is its immobility. Blizzard will have to reverse course on this philosophy in order to consider these changes you've outlined.
On November 28 2016 18:34 FoxDog wrote: I never thought i would say this, but i am quitting the game and the only reason i will come back is if they fix carriers, vipers and cyclones, what is the testmap even FOR when we tell david kim this over and over, and he literally pretends there is no issue.
DK stated repeatedly that not enough games were being played on the test map leading up to the release of patch 3.8. It should be no surprise to any one that there are big balance issues right now. its not that he is "not listening" its that he does not have enough data to make a conclusion. small sample size. now that the game is in wide distribution on the main ladder there will be a large enough data set.
now that you are quitting i guess we won't see your multiple posts in every single thread about mech viability.
DK stated part of the "mech fantasy" is its immobility. Blizzard will have to reverse course on this philosophy in order to consider these changes you've outlined.
It's not because the core mech army functions well while being immobile that all the units have to. Hellions, banshees, old cyclones are better at taking fights where they can kite and be mobile.
DK stated that the core AA from mech comps should be the thor. And with the tempest range nerf, why not, they're already doing very well against BLs and BCs. But that doesn't mean that the cyclone can't fit early and mid game ground AA requirement.
And when i say requirement, i mean absolute necessity. For mech to work and for it not to be a turtlefest, there is a sore need for early, reliable ground AA in mech comp.
In the later stages of HOTS, we all saw how the viper made mech's best (and only) strategy was to camp, because moving out of turret cover was suicide.
I remember thinking that as early as HOTS beta. The only way to beat Vipers was through a critical mass of Vikings.
In my opinion, Abduct should first be completely redesigned so its a strong singletarget ability but has counterplay.
This means that you now can kill Vipers instead of relying on a critical mass of Vikings that needs to oneshot Vipers before they get pulled away.
And that was before they had parasitic bomb. Now, even with a critical mass of vikings, you must be very cautious not to die, because if your vikings clump, you are in for a very bad time. Viper is, since LotV, the complete package.
Yeh, and something I would like to see a lot is a redesign of anti-air for mech:
1. Make Thor anti-massive (vs air) 2. Make Cyclone anti-armored (vs air) 3. Make Viking/Liberator support vs light units (just merge them into one).
That would make mech in Sc2 an experience that more similarly matches that of BW mech and its for a variety of reasons alot more sound.
In this specific instance it would give the Cyclone a role to beat Vipers, however I have a ton more planned out in terms of how units (for all races) could have unique roles in various situations while creating a "healthy" gameplay dynamic.
In the later stages of HOTS, we all saw how the viper made mech's best (and only) strategy was to camp, because moving out of turret cover was suicide.
I remember thinking that as early as HOTS beta. The only way to beat Vipers was through a critical mass of Vikings.
In my opinion, Abduct should first be completely redesigned so its a strong singletarget ability but has counterplay.
This means that you now can kill Vipers instead of relying on a critical mass of Vikings that needs to oneshot Vipers before they get pulled away.
And that was before they had parasitic bomb. Now, even with a critical mass of vikings, you must be very cautious not to die, because if your vikings clump, you are in for a very bad time. Viper is, since LotV, the complete package.
Yeh, and something I would like to see a lot is a redesign of anti-air for mech:
1. Make Thor anti-massive. 2. Make Cyclone anti-armored. 3. Make Viking support vs light units.
That would make mech in Sc2 an experience that more similarly matches that of BW mech and its for a variety of reasons alot more sound.
In this specific instance it would give the Cyclone a role to beat Vipers, however I have a ton more planned out in terms of how units (for all races) could have unique roles in various situations while creating a "healthy" gameplay dynamic.
Tbh, I lean more on the simple solution side. I would just replace thor with goliath (and redesign cyclone to serve a different purpose). I like this approach more, because I don't really like a RTS game to be a pure composition battle. I like the execution part of the strategy to be more important than the composition side. That's why I'm also not very fond of hard counters.
Btw, the reasoning of not putting the goliath because it's a "mech marine" doesn't even make any sense to me. The unit has enough differences to not be considered a mech marine. It cannot be healed, has lower dps per cost, higher hp, etc. Is the hydralisk a zerg marine then? or is the stalker a protoss marine? It seems when they run out of reasonable arguments, they tend to use platitudes to make their points. It's just silly.
(and redesign cyclone to serve a different purpose
The million dollar question: What should the purpose be? Blizzard seems to not know this.
I would say that the simpler solution is to remove potentially overlapping units (like the Cyclone). But I do think there is more potential in keeping units and reworking the fundamentals of the game.
The major reason the Thor feels worse than the Goliath is twofold:
1. Slow movement speed. 2. High damage point (delay before attacking).
However, you can easily fix both these and with those changes to the Thor I belive most people will be satisfied with the Thor.
(and redesign cyclone to serve a different purpose
The million dollar question: What should the purpose be? Blizzard seems to not know this.
I would say that the simpler solution is to remove potentially overlapping units (like the Cyclone). But I do think there is more potential in keeping units and reworking the fundamentals of the game.
The major reason the Thor feels worse than the Goliath is twofold:
1. Slow movement speed. 2. High damage point (delay before attacking).
However, you can easily fix both these and with those changes to the Thor I belive most people will be satisfied with the Thor.
As far as I'm concerned, they could very well just scrap the cyclone. But I know it's kinda against their policies to scrap units that were sold as new content (the LotV expansion), so I'd say they could use the cyclone like their 3.7 version, where it can fend off early oracles/warp prisms/medivacs, or just be used as a support unit.
You are correct with your analysis about the thor. But, it goes beyond points 1 and 2. IMO, people also don't like the fact that thors are a "hero unit" in the sense that they cost too much and have big stats. In other words, I think people would prefer having 3 goliaths over 1 thor. The 3 goliaths can defend different positions, and they are also less vulnerable to spells like abduct.
When you factor in all these points, why would keep the thor anyway? What's good about it in comparison to the goliath? IMO, they just kept the thor because they are just too emotionally invested in it (collection edition thor).
IMO, people also don't like the fact that thors are a "hero unit" in the sense that they cost too much and have big stats
I think people just have difficulty specifying what their issue with the unit is and confuse different factors. If the Thor becomes microable I don't think people will care whether they are controlling a 6-supply unit or a 3-supply unit.
And the reason you keep it in the game is that it is easier to differentiate the Thor in "feeling" from that of the Cyclone (assuming you want two different untis vs armored and massive).
And the reason you want two different units is so terran doesn't get one single ground unit that both counters Vipers, Broodlords/Corrupters/Tempest/Carriers/Void Rays etc.
I think that with the amount of different air units/spellcasters we have in the game, we also need different type of counters - each with their own advantages and disadvantages.
On November 27 2016 18:40 KT_Elwood wrote: If Blizzard wanted Mech to happen, they could have looked at HotS.
PDD was good, Tanks killed light units, Hydra range was not OP.
But whatabaout da turteling?
Fun Fact: Minereals run low faster in Lotv, Turtle mech 3-4 Base won't work against Zerg that just explodes on the map + denies bases and forces Trades. Also on Maps with a "rather difficult" 3rd you can't turtle mech. And the Ravager also is kind of an "Siegebreaker" from the get go.
Zerg players never understood that vs Turtle Mech, the WORST thing you can do is plant 23 swarmhosts and wait, instead of FORCING trades via Drop, or Nydus, or techswitches.
Or do what Artosis said, Make a map where Hydras have 15 range and see if anyone spots the difference to 3.8.
You should spend more time learning the game rather than whining and pretending you know it...
Ravager won't break any siege tank line unless you have 3 ravagers per tank.
On HOTS : If zergs were making 28 SH it's because all the other trade resulted with all zerg units dead 0 unit lost for T. You don't trade fight with 13 range units with some 4-6 range units... And do drop when T has 50 touretts... But you probably better than SoO and co...
I guess artosis was joking but you take it seriously and use it to whine... 15 range hydras means they would outrange tanks, not even comparable with these 7 range hydra...
SH were also made vs bio later in Hots. The reasoning, that you really depend on them to win vs mech, is not true. They were good, but the reason was the preferred playstyle, being able to turtle as zerg, sit back and macro. No Zerg is going to tell you that SH was needed to play vs bio, still it was viable and ppl played it, just bcuz they liked it. So don't try to defend your race, instead try to be objective.
Just rewatch mech after they kill the SH on HOTS : you could see best zerg of the world like Life being crushed by mech.
But yeah a no name terran says " just do drop and nyndus : would have beaten mech ez" he probably know better how to play than kespa players, and gsl-champion...
And you're the same : " stephano beats qxc with SH vs bio" : "proof SH was imba". If you were objective you would say :
The sh was balanced but get nerfed for design reasons, the games were long and boring, but yeah the unit was the only things zerg had to fight mech camp style and protoss deathball.
Now on lotv zerg they give zerg some new tools so we can expect to beat these composition with other units.
Where did I say that SH was imba? Seriously read my post b4 replying in a way, that only shows you don't wanna discuss, but complain no matter what I say. Then tell me sir, why did Zergs start to use SH vs bio? At least we agree that SH was bad design-wise.
I don't get you i was talking about mech vs sh and you start bullying me : "don't try to defend your race, be objective" while talking about SH vs bio.
You're like "zerg love to turtle" just for three-four foreigners who play a few games SH vs Bio while it wasn't really a thing. But SH vs Mech was the gold standard played by every zerg even best kespa kor each time the terran decide to go mech.
ZvT is the MU where T dictates 100% of the game : If he goes mech zerg should adapt and play another composition, if T decides to turtle well zerg can't attack without losing and he need to wait for some viper/broodlords (and old SH) to start trading well vs defensive terran.
But T are amazing : they decided to go mech, forced the zerg to play a boring style then accused zerg that the game is long and boring...
The funny part is they get SH killed while asking for a stronger mech.
As zerg i want mech as dead as you wanted old sh dead because it's so boring to play vs mech, while LBM vs bio was much more fun, but if the T wants to play the boring style i'm forced to play roach/hydra vipers while i wanted to play LBM.
Honestly the few players that played sh vs bio are exactly the same that want to play mech at all cost except they play different races.
Things is , Mech is a playstyle (not my fav one, i agree), SH was just an unit that was massed with little support, just so Z player don't die right away..
And as a P, SH was killed upon sight or you lose.. I repeat myself but i've never beat an SH player back in HotS once he is a bit settled, and same for pro player as far as i saw..
Also with larva system Zerg is supposed to be the reactionnary race..
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
)
![[image loading]](http://img.bhs4.com/05/9/05989e22cda849409261831b100d53d4b74fe85c_large.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QXTSOPfGLaU/maxresdefault.jpg)
