EPT
Community Update - September 12 - Page 3
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Penev
28484 Posts
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MrWayne
219 Posts
They should try out a lot of different things for protoss early game because it´s the only way to find out what feels best. I'm not a Protoss player so i don't have a real opinion wish one of the three suggestions was the best so far but it will be interesting to see how the shield battery will turn out. previously they overdid it a little bit with the infestor and made him to complicated so i'm glad they turned this down but I still don't like the idea that the main antiair unit for zerg is the infested terran.( the anti air attack is so unintuitive, spitting in the air when they have a machine gun is really dumb) I was against the Idea to introduce the socurge to SC2 in previous threads(SC2 and BW are very different games and if a unit worked in BW doesn't mean the same unit will work in SC2, i look at you Battlecruser and Lurker) and a one-to-one implementation is still bad. My idea is a much slower but massive scourge that deals splash damage and only hits air. faster air units like Vikings, Corruptor or Void Rays should be able to kite them but need to focus fire to kill them. they should be available at hive tech and should either cost 2 supply or come from the Swarm host (after an upgrade) so they can´t be spamed easy | ||
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_Mahi
1 Post
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BigRedDog
461 Posts
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bela.mervado
Hungary396 Posts
On September 15 2017 05:48 washikie wrote: .. also..... buffing ultras i guess some people enjoyed the meta where Terran had to kill zerg in 12 minutes or lose. but I did not. If you do that though i want .. otherwise changing ultras would be like removing terran from the game. a bio army with at least 1 marauders/ghost + a group of marines would kill ultra faster, but nvm. | ||
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
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Myrddraal
Australia937 Posts
On September 15 2017 02:35 Hider wrote: Specifically when it comes to designing (damage) abilities, TLO has no idea what he is doing. Seems a bit presumptive to make that claim, I never knew there were so many expert game designers on TL. Did you think about the implications of increasing the damage, specifically the impact on Ravager rushes against Terran? On the topic of the shield battery, what if it was redesigned to be able to move very slowly? I imagine a lumbering robotic turtle that can't fit through small gaps and requires power to move/regen shield. | ||
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papaz
Sweden4149 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9402 Posts
Did you think about the implications of increasing the damage, specifically the impact on Ravager rushes against Terran? I am talking about balancing the Ravager around lower delay + higher AOE and perhaps higher damage. This implies worse core stats. If early game rushes for whatever reason becomes too strong you could reduce CB damage against structures. That's a potential balance issue and is a numbers issue. Doesn't have anything to do with game design. | ||
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Insidioussc2
Germany96 Posts
What I think, could be an interesting change is reducing the supply cost of mines to one. Bio compositions are not very supply efficient and with change the mines would be somewhat like banelings. Not necessarily cost effective in large numbers, but a decent number mixed in strengthens you army composition a lot. | ||
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StarscreamG1
Portugal1653 Posts
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Starchon
1 Post
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mostevil
United Kingdom611 Posts
On September 15 2017 21:10 Starchon wrote: You could potentially give the nexus the ability to recharge shields, as an upgrade of course. The issues they're trying to address are how they take early expo's and block early allins, if it's an upgrade its probably too late or potentially too costly to the early game. With warp-in and you don't have a defenders advantage based on travel time, so again the units have to be a bit crappy to balance this offensively. (proxy rushes are an issue too obviously) So you have to have some other solution to give defenders advantage. Cannons require (and have to require) a different opening early game. So you need something that's going to be good vs small rushes but get worse as the game goes on. But requiring more effort than clicking on a pylon... Throw in the (imho bad) initial design choice for all the base units to be slow but have a powerful mobility abilities. blink/charge makes everything naturally becomes very defend into timing oriented. (too slow to move out before that) Maybe there's room for something like units firing faster or adding damage in the powerfield. That mirrors stim and creep move speed buffs to Z and T. Fits with the chrono lore to I guess. But again it'll be hard to balance against being too weak or so strong pylons get built all over the map for every attack.. Maybe shield batteries are the answer, they were at least part of protoss lore from back when their parents were actual snarling badasses ("we cannot hold"... really... Protoss Da F up Mr Shiny Armour.) I don't envy them this task. I think they're trying good ideas though. The apparent change in philosophy of the balance team is very encouraging. | ||
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Majick
416 Posts
Infested Terrans... seriously? | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
This design team is excellent. I can't wait until this goes live. We really need the Viper and FF to get adjusted now. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On September 15 2017 00:05 Hider wrote: I don't think think we should think of abilities to be strong/weak per se. Rather they should feel rewarding to land a good ability, and it should have a proper counterplay. It reminds me of when TLO made his mod and reduced the damage of ravager skillshot - That change shows he had no idea what he was doing from a game-design perspective because the Ravager skillshot should - if anything - do more damage with increased CD. I do agree that casting abilties shouldn't be the main micro you do. I think movement of units should be the main micro you make in every fight, and casting abilities should reward more movement (from the opponent). Most abilities should therefore be skillshots and I also like when you have indicators of where an ability will land. Another change blizzard easily could make to make ability-spamming less with spellcasters is to set a lower maxmimum energy of each spellcaster while increasing its energy regeneration. This means an infestor can only cast 1 fungal per battle but will regenerate faster. When it comes to spamming infestors, you could increase its relative supply value (in relation to other units), hence make having 10 infestors a lot less attractive. You could also make Fungal last over 5-7 seconds making spamming it less valueable (with first 4 seconds being root and the last 3 seconds being damage only) I long forgot the specifics, but I used to have a talking point about how energy is archaic design, a relic from BW, and no longer belongs to any sort of streamlined, tactical RTS. An obvious example are all the energy upgrades which Blizzard arbitrarily adds or removes to the game. If energy design would fit well into the overall game then you should not be able to randomly shuffle around virtually the only upgrades related to it. I can't do a longer post on this on mobile, but basically, if you look at the history of ability resources in video games, it always tends towards reliability and availability. Spells are to be a reliable feature every battle, you should be able to cast a predictable amount at the start, and there should be no extreme variations on this. This prevents certain types of bad gameplay effects and it is less frustrating for players, but an argument can be made it is strategically more shallow (but that would be a confusing argument which is difficult to quantify or prove relevant, although it might be important). | ||
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washikie
United States752 Posts
On September 16 2017 06:00 Grumbels wrote: I long forgot the specifics, but I used to have a talking point about how energy is archaic design, a relic from BW, and no longer belongs to any sort of streamlined, tactical RTS. An obvious example are all the energy upgrades which Blizzard arbitrarily adds or removes to the game. If energy design would fit well into the overall game then you should not be able to randomly shuffle around virtually the only upgrades related to it. I can't do a longer post on this on mobile, but basically, if you look at the history of ability resources in video games, it always tends towards reliability and availability. Spells are to be a reliable feature every battle, you should be able to cast a predictable amount at the start, and there should be no extreme variations on this. This prevents certain types of bad gameplay effects and it is less frustrating for players, but an argument can be made it is strategically more shallow (but that would be a confusing argument which is difficult to quantify or prove relevant, although it might be important). I disagree, Although you can make fun ability using units without energy like in red alert 3, energy does have an important function in sc2. Energy makes spell casters an investment, spell casters are a unit that gains power over time due to there energy mechanic. Further energy provides another lever that allows for balancing of these units, being able to adjust the starting energy of a unit allows the designers to increase or decrease the time it takes for you to effectively transition to these units. It also creates a period of weakness where the units are not as powerful allowing wich creates timing windows for an opponent to abuse before the units are at maximum effectiveness. | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On September 15 2017 01:11 Hider wrote: Another topic, but I don't think Zerg should have two damage-based skillshots in Fungal and the Ravager, and I hate the whole "cast fungal to trap + Corrosive Bile on top of units". Synergy between different abilities belong in a moba - not in a game that wants movement based micro. As I see it, you should make Corrosive Bile an actual skillshot that has a decent chance to land on units (plus being less spamable) without enemy units being immobilized by Fungal. Hence there is no synergy between Infestors and Ravagers. And Fungal should then become something else (in my ideal game, you have a lot of reworks everywhere which opens up a specific unique role for fungal). Generally speaking, each battle should contain as few different spellcasters as possible making spellcaster casting more of a supportive-thing rather than having players spend their time tabbing through control groups casting abilities. I think synergy in general should be treated as a red flag, i.e. something which is not conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but which tends to correlate with it nevertheless. Here are some negative consequences of synergy I can come up with offhand: forced grouping, reduced self-reliance, slower-moving armies, unpredictable spikes in army strength based on missing or adding even one or two units, promotion of spellcasters and abilities, unclear counter relationships. An example I like is marine & medic, often cited favorably as a positive case of synergy, which nevertheless frequently leaves you with defenseless groups of medics. The synergy was broken and you are left with units that are sort of silly. Even if the design here ends up working well, because it was dependent on synergy there were still obvious pitfalls, and for SC2 Blizzard decided to eliminate it. (A decision which afaik can be traced back to when Rob Pardo was still lead designer) | ||
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Grumbels
Netherlands7031 Posts
On September 16 2017 06:06 washikie wrote: I disagree, Although you can make fun ability using units without energy like in red alert 3, energy does have an important function in sc2. Energy makes spell casters an investment, spell casters are a unit that gains power over time due to there energy mechanic. Further energy provides another lever that allows for balancing of these units, being able to adjust the starting energy of a unit allows the designers to increase or decrease the time it takes for you to effectively transition to these units. It also creates a period of weakness where the units are not as powerful allowing wich creates timing windows for an opponent to abuse before the units are at maximum effectiveness. But why do you want to have units that gain power over time or which are initially defenseless? A marine does not become more powerful if it lazies around and rests for a couple of moments. I think it is a totally arbitrary choice which complicates the game both strategically (and has some negative effects like turtling and ability spam) and from a casual perspective(reliable unit control), and also doesn't fit with Blizzard's obvious longterm direction of trying to create (mindless) "high-octane" gameplay. I have never seen anyone give a really solid argument (i.e. which is less vague than "creates timing windows and increases strategy") for why it should absolutely belong in the game. For instance, your argument that it makes balancing easier is really weak, because any alternative energy design could also have levers for balance. And Blizzard rarely messes with these values to begin with. I don't dislike energy, mind you, I just think it is underdiscussed and taken for granted. I also think it worked better in BW without smartcasting and with slower paced gameplay. | ||
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franzji
United States583 Posts
On September 15 2017 12:17 BigRedDog wrote: The only issue I have with shield batteries is that someone will figure out how to use it for a rush. Then it defeats the purpose of making more defensive play for toss. oh yeah, so stuff like proxy bunker shouldn't be in the game? maybe we should remove proxy hatches -> spines then too, because spines shouldn't be a offensive tool by your reasoning. Lets just remove the spine then to solve the problem you think exists. It's not like a shield battery nerf is going to be broken, I mean you have to wait for the pylon to finish building and a shield battery... but god forbid there be strategy and cheese in the game! On September 15 2017 23:20 Majick wrote: I feel like Zerg will never get proper anti-air if this continues this way... Infested Terrans... seriously? did you forget the huge viper buff? already If they want to give zerg an ability that isn't a gimmick they could just remove Caustic Spray (dear lord please) and return it to it's past ability re-balanced to help kill massive ships like carriers. I mean god forbid zerg players will have to target fire instead of using 1a the whole game. It's worrying reading really bad suggestions in these threads after reading that blizzard reads the forums too... Anyways I think the current changes with the shield battery will fail and blizzard should look at changes to core gateway units and medivac boost instead of what they are trying. Or give us the mothership core back please. | ||
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