No new War Chests or Co-op Commanders going forward - Oct…

On October 17 2020 10:15 Carminedust1 wrote:
On this day i shall leave my home and sell everything that i own and with that money that i get from it i shall buy a ticket to fly to the base of the tallest mountain that the money can take me too. I shall then ascended that mountain to the very very peak and on that peak i shall build a home not out of sand not of stone not of wood but from the very earth that my feet stand on and in the home i shall build a shrine and once that shrine is complete i shall step outside of the home once the sun arises and take the biggest breath that i can possible take and yell at the top of my lungs can support so that the very heavens can hear me say the most sacred words of the Starcraft fandom........ D3ad gaem

4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.

And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.

On October 18 2020 03:52 PabloSanchez wrote:


Don't think there's a better way to put it than that. Only time will tell, let's just see. Us fans just need to remember that we're a big part of why there's a scene to follow in the first place. If we stick around through this uncertain limbo then damn we'll stick around through just about anything.

On October 16 2020 15:50 col_jung wrote:
Open question to everyone.
With no more big overhauls or redesigns coming, what do you think of the current state of the game? We're probably now stuck with it forever. Fingers crossed this final design will have a lot of longevity.
Are there any previous annual iterations you preferred?
Did you prefer a previous of the Raven, Cyclone etc.?

On October 18 2020 04:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:


I think the current iteration is the best.
However there are some minor gripes/tweaks I would make, especially as a mech player. I wish that Tempests got a more interesting role/buff, instead of having an upgrade that ends up helping Protoss vs Mech more than it does PvZ. Corruptor vomit probably does more damage than it should. Viper Abduct is an archaic ability being used in ways other than its original intended purpose to discourage deathballs, and is not only anti-climactic and lame to watch as a spectator but design wise Abduct is hindering a lot of the progress SC2/LotV has made towards moving it to a "small skirmishes all over the map, more and longer lasting battles" game. Stuff like that.

The Raven is going to be my biggest complaint, with Viper being second I think.
Current Raven design is OK, but contrived and also hinders the design in ways similar to Viper/Abduct.

The old Raven with PDD, HSM, and longer lasting Turret was the best, especially for Mech. But even for standard compositions and standard meta, seeing mass Raven and mass Disables in TvT is kind of lame, it removes a lot of the positional advantage and strong defense needed to push the game towards a "strong defense but small skirmishes all over the map" game like BW. I think the fun of SC2 comes when it feels like both players are constantly trying to put out fires, rather than ending a game in 1 big battle. It is what SC2 has been pushing towards across its 10 years. (Of course, variety is good though.)

Blizzard got this weird aversion to the Raven and felt like Terran should not have a gas sink and that you should only make 1-2 Ravens. What unit is designed to have its effectiveness cap at 1-2? Only Mothership is like that. That is just dumb design. Terran not having a good powerful spellcaster / gas sink also makes the economy game for Terran much less fun. In BW, you can increase your army power by increasing income by spreading out workers across more bases to mine more efficiently per worker. In SC2, saturation works differently, but there is a similar equivalent; the more bases you have the more gas you can mine, and gas is the most powerful resource. Terran not having a powerful gas heavy unit takes the fun out of things a bit.

Ok about the Raven itself. Blizzard really overreacted to the old Raven. Yes, it was OP (TvZ in particular), as a mech player I totally understand that. But there were some good tweaks they could do to it to stop it from scaling so oppressively lategame, without scrapping the whole design. I believe they simply did not think of those tweaks and gave up and redesigned it.

First off, Ravens were not nearly as OP in LotV as they were in HotS, and this is because of the Viper having parabomb (and abduct) both of which were effective vs mass Ravens. Thus, mass Ravens could still be strong, but Zerg had an easy and clear solution to it. You can't just mass Ravens and be invincible like in HotS, as Parabomb is easy and does so much damage and heavily discourages a dense mass of Ravens.

What they really needed to tweak, is the fact that PDD can block an unlimited amount of projectiles instantly. This is what allowed Mech players going mass Raven lategame in TvZ to have a flock of 20 Ravens, 20 Vikings, and destroy an infinite number of Corruptors. They do this by throwing down PDD, forcing the Corruptors to move away, and the Terran continues to chase the Corruptors down by leapfrogging PDD until the Corruptors are cornered.

For example, if they added an additional constraint to the PDD: In addition to costing energy, you only have ~3 "charges" per second. Meaning 1 PDD can not shoot down more than 3 projectiles per second. This would make it still effective in early game engagements, like in TvT if you have 1 Raven and 4 Vikings, and throw a PDD down for some positioning and support. But if you wanted to create an invincible position lategame TvZ for your air army, you would need to throw down say 15 PDDs in order to completely block all shots from the Zerg's 45 Corruptor fleet. And all the Zerg would need to do is move outside of its range, and not fight inside the PDD range. If Terran wanted to chase the air army down, they can leapfrog PDDs, but since each one only blocks 3 a second, you would quickly burn out on energy.

The other thing to address is HSM scaling too hard lategame. Blizzard caused this issue themselves, by making HSM lock on much quicker than in the past. In the past, it was easy to move back and cause it to become a dud. While this may make the old HSM seem weak, using it on key units like Immortals or Colossus would still encourage such units to back off from a fight for 5-10 seconds, or continue fighting but eat the damage. It was an interesting zoning tool. What they did was eventually shorten the lockon time, and it became a very strong AOE nuke for a small cost. In lategame battles where you have many Ravens, you can keep throwing out HSMs to force them to back off or split, and eventually they need to fight and will eat some nukes. They only needed to nerf how hard HSM scaled lategame, by for example heavily reducing its AOE damage and making it more of a single target nuke/zoning tool, similar to what Disable is currently. You could still use it on Sieged Tanks or deployed WPs similar to Disable, but also be able to use it for zoning. Disable is anti-micro and there is not much interesting counterplay to it.

The old turret was really great too because while it had low DPS, it lasted a long time. Blizzard has an obsession with killing workers, and thinks it's like the only form of harassment possible. By making the turret have a very short 10 second duration with high DPS, it's like the Raven became a pseudo Banshee. It's also not interesting to have so many forms of Terran harass center on "the opponent didn't look quick enough so now they lose workers, but if they pull away then no damage is done". We already have the Liberator and even WMs to fulfill that niche of harass. If current iteration of turret must be kept, then at least increase the duration to say 12-15 seconds and nerf the damage slightly. That way, you have more of a decision whether to kill the turret to get back to mining, instead of right now where you almost always just want to wait it out since it is only 10 seconds.

The old turret was able to be used in later game situations such as planting a lot of them at an enemy expansion to slowly kill the base if nothing was done, or fortifying a position on the map (which helps slow the game down!). The new auto turrets can't be used in the same way because the total damage they do across its 10 seconds is much much lower than how much damage the old turret would do across its much longer lifespan. The old turret also combo'd really well with fortifying forward positions with a Mech (or even Bio/Tank/Lib) army. You could use the turrets as walls vs Zealots and such, but it is much harder now as they only last 10 seconds and only last for 1 engagement.

The old Raven gave such great synergy to not just Mech styles but Terran in general. The new Raven is 1 dimensional and contrived, with it being really useful (even oppressive) in TvT, while being OK in TvP (disabling carriers/archons/robo units is useful as a mech player), but being very useless in TvZ other than getting maybe 1-3 for detection and AA missile for Bio (or Libs/BCs for Mech).

If I were to fix the old Raven instead of gutting it, I would do this to summarize:
1) PDD is limited to 2-3 charges per second, instead of being able to use all its shots/energy instantly.
2) HSM AOE damage is reduced heavily, such as to ~10-20 damage. AOE is also reduced. Also, either the lockon time may slowed back down by 1 second to emphasize its role as a zoning tool rather than a reliable nuke. Alternatively, further push the HSM role to be more similar to what Disable is now, by buffing the damage to its primary target, but removing all AOE damage.
3) Auto Turret has the low dps as the original, and lasts ~60 seconds on the map.
4) Another option is to increase Raven supply from 2 to 3 to match the Viper, but I think simply nerfing its abilities would be enough, since again Vipers have parabomb now.


Oh yeah, BC jump is stupid. We need to stop having abilities that reduce the importance of positioning. Defender's advantage is weak enough in SC2. I would suggest giving the energy bar back and having Jump/Yamato both cost energy and have a cooldown. That way, it isn't a braindead unit where you just get a free Yamato and Jump back home every time it's off cooldown. Mass BCs is also toxic lategame when you can just keep jumping all over the map. BC Jump also allows mass BCs, which have always been the strongest endgame comp, to be even stronger. Because now you can just Jump onto Carrier/Tempest and instantly Yamato everything and win...

As for Viper, Abduct needs more meaningful counterplay, or just remove Consume. Abduct being able to pull units instantly is anti-climactic and removes positional depth. Abduct was introduced in HotS at a time when Protoss deathballs were too strong and we needed a way to break deathballs up. We already have that in LotV in the form of you needing to expand and spread out more, and with new units that double up as both "strong defender" and "good harasser" like Liberator, Disruptor, Lurker, etc., which help discourage deathball play even more. Abduct being able to pull Massive Protoss units is especially problematic. What if Abduct could only pull Massive units half the distance, or not at all? Or what if Abduct was some kind of chanelling spell that drags the unit for a couple seconds, rather than an instant pull? It's not right that Abduct lets you punish players for moving out on the map. That's not fun. SC2 has always been trying to encourage armies to poke more often and have engagements be less committal.

On October 18 2020 04:24 [Phantom] wrote:
On second thought. I can't believe they are going to leave Zerg in the ridiculous state they are at now.

I know they said they will have balance updates "if needed" but that sounds to me like we won't get another balance patch unless something really broken (like 70%) winrate broken. It seems the 65% winrate of Zerg in premier tournaments isn't enough.

I think this will be the final state of the game guys. With the Z>P>T balance state.

On October 17 2020 03:15 whiterabbit wrote:
I just hope, really really really hope that current ActiBlizz doesn't touch SC IP in any shape or form. One day, in the future, when things may be better I'd die for SC3 or World of StarCraft type of a game but not now, not made by this shitty ActiBlizzard we have atm.

On October 18 2020 05:18 ytherik wrote:


I wouldn't say ZvT is Zerg favoured at all right now. Nice balance whine attempt though.

On October 17 2020 15:46 Whois wrote:
I played Starcraft when it originally came out, then Broodwar, and then Starcraft 2. So SC has been a part of my life for a very long time. Although I was never into the SC "scene" until SC2 came out in 2010. And while I do follow TL, I exclusively lurk, and have rarely ever posted. Today is kinda important so I thought I would post.

1) The first thing I want to say is that, being mindful of the mod note on the thread, it is important that you let people grief. Some have played SC for a large part of their lives, some only a few years, others have followed the eSports and watched, even as they stopped playing, so we are all invested in this game to varying degrees. I understand that websites like TL promote the game, and don't want to be negative, but in a momentous occasion like this, it is alright to let people grief. Tomorrow will be another day and life will go on. But for now, we should have a right to grief.

Obviously not to insult/flame/etc but we, the fans, should be afforded the opportunity to be sad, to lament. That is, those of us who feel that sentiment and wish to express it.

2) I would like to argue against the notion of some that, as Blizzard will keep the servers, and make balance updates, and since they don't play Coop Commanders, that this doesn't affect them. To be crystal clear: THIS IS A DEATH NOTICE. Nothing more (there is always a possibility the game can be resurrected), nothing less (this is bad news no matter how it is being spun).

It doesn't cost Blizzard much to make an occasional update to the game. The fact that they have decided not to spent even those few pennies (relatively speaking considering the size of the company) means they see little future in the game. There is no revenue stream in the pipeline. This trickles down to tournaments, and so casters and pro-gamers and other content creators are affected. And so it will affect you, the viewer.

So just because you don't play Coop Commanders or participate in War Chests doesn't mean you won't be affected by this announcement.

3) For over 20 years Starcraft has been alive, and in some development form. Whether it be expansions or sequels or ports or remaster or whatever. This announcement puts a nail through all that. So this is a death notice, and for those of us passionate about the game, we should be sad, and lament. Or hold a wake. Or something. It is not business as usual.

4) People keep talking about the community taking over. While that's nice, it won't be as "big". But there's an even larger problem. Unlike Brood War, Blizzard has locked down the IP for Starcraft2 content. I can't see companies investing in the game (tournaments and the like) when they can't control the legal environment and reap the rewards.

And I can't see Blizzard letting go of the IP. They would rather see the scene die than let someone else make it a success. As others have said, sometimes if you're a business and you can't make an IP work, you nevertheless keep it to kill it and stop anyone else making it work.

5) I know this post has been negative. But come on. It was a response to shitty news.

Just off the top of my head, so I will probably miss major moments.
Memories of Starcraft (includes BroodWar):
- BGH - remember that anyone?? lolz
- Lost Temple - how many games have you played on that map?
- Dire Straits - no, not the band, although they are awesome too!
Esports:
- Nestea - creator of the universe .... while Creator - the kid that just couldn't?
- MVP - the whale
- MVP vs Squirtle
- MC - Boss Toss
- Parting - Soul Train
- Life - He Whose Name Shall Not be Spoken
- Soo - eternal bridesmaid
- Serral 2018 - invincible
- shout out to InControl (I will forever call it the Artosis pylon) and TotalBiscuit, RIP