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Bad design. Healthy play is many options and interactions, this blocks it all.
First of, maurauder openings were never viable in the first place. Wasn't good late WOL and would be dead against oracles/adepts here anyway.
Secondly, pylon overcharge does not even prevent a Maurauder opening on most maps since you will not be able to cover a whole expansion without one pylon.
The only types of attacks it blocks is those that have a high percentage of being game ending.
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On December 24 2016 06:19 JimmyJRaynor wrote: if DK worked for Relic for 2 weeks his ability to influence DoW is almost zero. so if you do not know how long he worked for Relic just say so. Without knowing how long he worked for Relic criticizing him about DoW40K with incomplete information is off base.
1991's Super Tecmo Bowl outlasted its many, many sequels. Fire Pro Wrestling 6 man Scramble.. same thing. NHL '94 ... same. it happens all the time and will continue to happen. BL2 outlasted BL:TPS. The debate over "regular Tecmo Bowl" and "SUper Tecmo Bowl" still rages on... 25 years later. Same shit.. different decade.
in watching Pardo and Kim over the years i'd say Pardo > Kim. However, the entire RTS genre's combined revenue does not generate sufficient revenue and profit to buy Pardo's interest. I will be shocked if Pardo's new studio ever goes anywhere near the RTS genre.
He worked there for about a year or so, I do know, essentially he was involved in balance with the final incarnation of the game which is Soul Storm which is probably one of the most disliked of the entire series multiplayer wise and unit design wise, he also worked on balance and design on Company of Heroes but I know nothing about that.
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On December 24 2016 09:43 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Bad design. Healthy play is many options and interactions, this blocks it all. First of, maurauder openings were never viable in the first place. Wasn't good late WOL and would be dead against oracles/adepts here anyway. Secondly, pylon overcharge does not even prevent a Maurauder opening on most maps since you will not be able to cover a whole expansion without one pylon. The only types of attacks it blocks is those that have a high percentage of being game ending. Ofcourse it blocks deadlyattack that would be game ending. Thats the whole point, instead of tweaking that, they get mothership core. Feels lazy and uninspiring.
Marauder openings might not have worked either, but thats the point again, instead of tweaking that they made it 100% lose if you open marauders.
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How is the interaction between: marine-marauders vs cannons
better than marine-marauders vs MSC+pylons?
I really don't think you 100% loose if you open marauders because of photon overcharge.. I've seen so many games (from ByuN to my ladder) where the terran gets the protoss unprepared and just stim 16 marines, snipe 2-3 pylons (overcharged) in a matter of seconds, and deal significant damage..
What it prevents is you dropping 2 medivacs in my main and ending the game (where is the interaction here, I'm not sure)
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On December 24 2016 09:53 VHbb wrote: How is the interaction between: marine-marauders vs cannons
better than marine-marauders vs MSC+pylons?
I really don't think you 100% loose if you open marauders because of photon overcharge.. I've seen so many games (from ByuN to my ladder) where the terran gets the protoss unprepared and just stim 16 marines, snipe 2-3 pylons (overcharged) in a matter of seconds, and deal significant damage..
What it prevents is you dropping 2 medivacs in my main and ending the game (where is the interaction here, I'm not sure) The only thing better with cannons that i can think of on top of my head is that they cost more resources for the protoss, requires more strategy for the protoss. Other than that, the interaction is bad, i dont see why you ask that tho? I never implied it were better or anything.
You might not lose 100%, you are right i should probably take that back vs the mothership core. My point still stands, mothership core DOES NOT contribute in a good way to the game. Yes you can look at the game and say "but mothership core lets protoss be able to survive and be even vs two medivac drop" and so on.
But thats the point, instead of the mothership core blizzard should have TWEAKED AND DESIGNED STUFF so the openings were more dynamic and protoss could defend well vs all kind of stuff while maybe at the same time BE THE AGRESSOR themself without being all-in.
REAL time strategy, keyword here is REAL. You should interact with your opponent. Period.
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Well we agree to disagree  I play protoss and I feel I can be aggressive, without all-ining, and defending at home with a few units and the MSC+pylons... so yes, I can interact in a better designed way (since the word "design" is very fashionable now), thanks to a solid defense from the MSC. If I have to defend with cannons+warp gate units, I probably either turtle until I get super strong units (carriers, collossus) and go for a deathball push, or simply all-in without caring to much about your counter-attacks..
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On December 24 2016 09:45 Beelzebub1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2016 06:19 JimmyJRaynor wrote: if DK worked for Relic for 2 weeks his ability to influence DoW is almost zero. so if you do not know how long he worked for Relic just say so. Without knowing how long he worked for Relic criticizing him about DoW40K with incomplete information is off base.
1991's Super Tecmo Bowl outlasted its many, many sequels. Fire Pro Wrestling 6 man Scramble.. same thing. NHL '94 ... same. it happens all the time and will continue to happen. BL2 outlasted BL:TPS. The debate over "regular Tecmo Bowl" and "SUper Tecmo Bowl" still rages on... 25 years later. Same shit.. different decade.
in watching Pardo and Kim over the years i'd say Pardo > Kim. However, the entire RTS genre's combined revenue does not generate sufficient revenue and profit to buy Pardo's interest. I will be shocked if Pardo's new studio ever goes anywhere near the RTS genre.
He worked there for about a year or so, I do know, essentially he was involved in balance with the final incarnation of the game which is Soul Storm which is probably one of the most disliked of the entire series multiplayer wise and unit design wise, he also worked on balance and design on Company of Heroes but I know nothing about that. "a year or so" - was it 7 months or 17 months? any source on DK's time at Relic? So we've established DK was involved at the end of its development cycle when the publisher was demanding new races get added to keep the money coming in.
if you can list all the RTS games with 6 or more races that are well balanced so we can compare them we have a discussion point. The vast majority of RTS game developers are never given the resources by the publisher to continue to support of the game long after its release date. As a result, most RTS games are imbalanced because it takes more than a year to balance an RTS game after its released.
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On December 24 2016 10:27 VHbb wrote:Well we agree to disagree  I play protoss and I feel I can be aggressive, without all-ining, and defending at home with a few units and the MSC+pylons... so yes, I can interact in a better designed way (since the word "design" is very fashionable now), thanks to a solid defense from the MSC. If I have to defend with cannons+warp gate units, I probably either turtle until I get super strong units (carriers, collossus) and go for a deathball push, or simply all-in without caring to much about your counter-attacks..
MSC was, is, and always will be a silly band aid to the fact that protoss gateway units are produced via warp, and have extremely abusive abilities. The combinaison of both makes it impossible to buff protoss "defense" without making agressive warps (therefore offense/allin) imba.
Imagine a stalker that can't be warped and doesn't have the (extremely gamebreaking on paper) ability to fucking teleport : it'd need like 200 hp and 20 damage per hit to allow protoss to survive. And suddently you have a dragoon.
So the only way to remove the MSC defense and make protoss rely on something else than gimmicks to survive without having even more imba allins would be to have a gateway unit that's only strong against units, and doesn't have an abusive ability (while being strong enough to be warped where protoss is underdefended). Which was supposed to be the adept. A strong, bulky but not-so-mobile unit that could give protoss room to remove the photon overcharge.
But nah, of course DK turned it into a harass unit. Arguably the best in the game too. Because why defend your base when you can spamm a silly spell from a hero unit and spamm a silly ability in opponent's mineral lines?
If the adept retained its stats while having 40 more HPs but loosing the shade, protoss could do with a redesign of the photon overcharge. If the MSC turned a pylon into a shield battery while extremely bulky adepts were warped, base defense would rely on units much more than shooting pylons.
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The way the game is now photon overcharge is needed. I think its just that some of us would prefer the game to be such that it is not. It violates alot of the traditional ways rts game mechanics work. It feals like a sloppy fix because blizzard could find no other way to fix the early game interactions between protoss and other races. will this ever change, its unlikely. Will we occasionally whine about it because its a dumb non interactive solution, yes.
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Well someone asked why people say bad design about stuff, and the question was specifically targeted the mothership core so i wrote down why i call it that way and to proof its not something people just say for the sake of it.
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Allow me to say that however the argument of "bad design" and "gimmicks" (both words that are very very vague) are brought up by Terran players, I think that there is a little bit of bias here 
I'm not saying MSC is perfect, I'm saying that it's not the terrible pitfall of sc2 as you seem to describe it.. I also don't fully get the argument about warping in units and the strength of P warogate units: sure I agree that the warogate ability makes so that you cannot buff P units too much.. by I'd rather have the protoss race as it is, very different wet terrains, with the warp gate mechanics as its fundamental trait, rather than bulkier terrans.. if this means having the MSC to balance the early game, so be it, it doesn't mean it's badly designed only because it doesn't respect the canon of RTS or it doesn't look like a terrans unit..
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Ofcourse it blocks deadlyattack that would be game ending. Thats the whole point, instead of tweaking that, they get mothership core.
And if you as I want games to be more macrooriented w/ early game aggression being harass related then overcharge is an excellent mechanic.
Also never understood what's so fun about slow maurauders either. For me units with movement speed below 2.5 are just plain boring. Seeing medivac, air harass, hellion harass is alot more interesting imo.
But anyway as I point out, pylon overcharge has nothing to do with prevent maurauder openings from working. Any type of aggression where one pylon can't block of the entrance can still theoretically do damage.
It violates alot of the traditional ways rts game mechanics work.
What traditional ways are you talking about? Because having some type of strong defenders advantage is very normal in RTS games. Instead, relying on forcefields as the main defenders advantage is very unusual.
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On December 24 2016 14:08 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Ofcourse it blocks deadlyattack that would be game ending. Thats the whole point, instead of tweaking that, they get mothership core. And if you as I want games to be more macrooriented w/ early game aggression being harass related then overcharge is an excellent mechanic. Also never understood what's so fun about slow maurauders either. For me units with movement speed below 2.5 are just plain boring. Seeing medivac, air harass, hellion harass is alot more interesting imo. But anyway as I point out, pylon overcharge has nothing to do with prevent maurauder openings from working. Any type of aggression where one pylon can't block of the entrance can still theoretically do damage. What traditional ways are you talking about? Because having some type of strong defenders advantage is very normal in RTS games. Instead, relying on forcefields as the main defenders advantage is very unusual.
Ok I will clarify. There are a few reasons why I think the mother ship is poorly designed (NOTE not imbalanced p would suck without it in there current form)
1. Part of the skill of playing RTS is being able to scout your opponents plan and prepare accordingly. Since there is almost 0 reason to not get a mother ship p just always has a substantial defense no matter what they scout.
2. Generally defense should be an investment. In Brood war, RA3, AOE3 and Supreme Commander to defend an attack you have to invest significant resources, often less than your opponent because of defenders advantage but enough that you have to invest in defense. This allows players to show good decision making and scouting. A good player will deviate from there plan to adapt to enemy timings and a bad player wont do so effectively. The mother ship essentially makes it unnecessary to make any kind of adaptation. Since you built a mother ship core your pretty much covered vs most things.
3. you could claim, that p has to invest in the mother ship and that enough but i disagree, since 100% of the time you build a cyber core there is almost no incentive not to build the thing except to save 100 gas. If you look at terran or zerg a proper defense against protoss requires them to a)scout, b)build units/static d of the appropriate type c) execute defense correctly. p is completely spared this burden because the mother ship is always built, is good against everything, and requires a one button push as its only execution.
I think its bad design that protoss can build whatever tech they want freely without deviation because the defense the mothership provides is so powerful and cheep. I think its fair because of the other disadvantages protoss has buts its also not a great solution to protoss early game weakness because it does not require protoss to scout,prepare, and execute proper defenses in many situations. This leads to stale early games with few options for the other races and allows p to often mercelelsy rush/cheese there opponent with very little penalty if they dont do enough damage. It also kills many 1 base pressure and allin builds from terran and zerg while p still has this strategic option. Overall its not a great mechanic.
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On December 21 2016 04:24 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: This gives us the confidence that SC2 will continue to be improved next year, and we look forward to working closely together with you next year as well! Happy Holidays and here’s to a great New Year!!
Continue to improve? I'd be behind that 4 years ago. It's too late for that. Now is not the time to 'continually improve'.
Now is the time for SC3... or, dare i say it... WC3.
SC2 is stale. pros are leaving. time for something fresh Blizz. Show us the future of RTS.
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been saying it for years, they're super out of touch with what's actually happening in the games
every update feels like they pick out a couple of popular reddit opinions, or just what happens to be the flavor of the month, and then write some shit around that sometimes they pick the wrong flavor of the month and aren't aware that popular opinion has changed
the last times david actually played sc2 in a somewhat competitive manner was probably more than 5 years ago
looking at it from that perspective, you can't really even get mad at them for what seems to be a somewhat decent effort.. however, you simply cannot balance a game if you don't know the game
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On December 24 2016 16:41 MilkDud wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2016 04:24 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: This gives us the confidence that SC2 will continue to be improved next year, and we look forward to working closely together with you next year as well! Happy Holidays and here’s to a great New Year!! Continue to improve? I'd be behind that 4 years ago. It's too late for that. Now is not the time to 'continually improve'. Now is the time for SC3... or, dare i say it... WC3. SC2 is stale. pros are leaving. time for something fresh Blizz. Show us the future of RTS.
Well they pretty much confirmed the exact opposite :> more support for sc2 for at least 2 years. Or you gonna fund the new RTS development?
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On December 24 2016 10:27 VHbb wrote:Well we agree to disagree  I play protoss and I feel I can be aggressive, without all-ining, and defending at home with a few units and the MSC+pylons... so yes, I can interact in a better designed way (since the word "design" is very fashionable now), thanks to a solid defense from the MSC. If I have to defend with cannons+warp gate units, I probably either turtle until I get super strong units (carriers, collossus) and go for a deathball push, or simply all-in without caring to much about your counter-attacks..
You're basically saying "I like MSC because it is good". I understand that, but that argument is worthless. The same argument can be made about 7-range Hydras and other stuff that was just good.
Basically, the Mothership's Core main purpose is delaying attacks so you can reposition and have a better defensive position, so you can feel more comfortable about playing aggresively. This task was previously assigned to static defense aka cannons.
Wouldn't it be cool if your defense wouldn't depend on you activating an ability 2-3 times at the right moment? Imagine you could place cannons, that as I said already exist mainly for defensive purposes(with the potential for fun aggression), and actually have a worthwhile defensive structure that your opponent needed to tactically circumvent, either with micro or better units. You could still be aggressive, and even better, not need to babysit the area to activate the ability, just more macro-oriented planning.
The MSC is just Blizzard's way to easily solve a problem that existed for a long time within Protoss' defense capabilities, and it's certainly worth arguing whether or not it was a good solution. It works - but it also creates a lot of frustration for many players, something which SC2 certainly already has enough of.
I don't know whether or not making a better cannon or something along those lines is a better solution. But I would love for Blizzard to try. More clean solutions instead of relying on multiple units / abilities that, slapped together, get the job done is always a good thing imho.
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Just give me a button that I can press that turns all my CCs into long range PFs for a short while and I will be OK with your MSC. Then we can all skip defense, scouting and the other tenets of RTS games.
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And if you as I want games to be more macrooriented w/ early game aggression being harass related then overcharge is an excellent mechanic. The msc is not an excellent mechanic because of reasons said. If macrogames didnt occur before, then fix that by other means instead of the msc
Also never understood what's so fun about slow maurauders either. For me units with movement speed below 2.5 are just plain boring. Seeing medivac, air harass, hellion harass is alot more interesting imo They arent very interesting no, but the whole concept of marauder openings against protoss could be viable while making things for protoss viable as well, and then we have a little "war" in the opening marauders, marines vs zealots, stalkers and then perhaps add some ghosts for terran and idk, sentries or something else from gateway that interact well.
And nothing stopped blizzard to change the slow effect either. The medivac harass is imo lame, also hellions are lame aswell as harass unit imo.
But anyway as I point out, pylon overcharge has nothing to do with prevent maurauder openings from working. Any type of aggression where one pylon can't block of the entrance can still theoretically do damage. Dont understand this sentence. However, the msc do block marauder since it shoots from the air, and marauders cant do anything about it. Pretty unfun this concept here. Instead of this msc and other stuff we could have the early game alot more interesting.
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Also one thing that came to my mind, blizzard said that they will and have changed the economy for lotv, but as i see it, they didnt. They changed the mineral fields having lower minerals. Perhaps they changed the gas aswell with lower gas?
Feels so shallow to use the sentence "we changed the economy" in this sense. Blizzard are these days using words as "epic" "great" and other stuff which is just pure pr crap. "We have this EPIC new hero" "We have this EPIC new game" WTF. Let other people form their opinions please....
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