On October 29 2020 11:03 WombaT wrote: I don’t like WG as a mechanic full stop, I believe Protoss is actually miraculously balanced given it exists. ... I agree with you on how Protoss should be and feel, coming from BW, it can’t really have those characteristics if WG exists because allins would be absolutely ridiculous, and also imo because bio is too good.
I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I think WG as a mechanic was a great addition to the game. The problem I see is that the dev's intention with the mechanic and balance around were terrible. The thing is, WG doesn't have to be an allin mechanic, but the dev's as always wants to keep it as one for one reason or another. You could easily nerf the offensive potential of WG while maintaining it useful defensive potential. Simply make it not easy to have fast warp-in out of your base and/or make it more risky to warp near your opponent.
And to be frank, WG isn't even the worst offender for being an all-in enabler, mechanically speaking & not balance wise. Nydus Worm is a far worse offender of something like that, but failed to achieve that because it was usually too nerfed to do it reliability/consistently for its cost.
The problem isn't really the mechanic per-se, but the natural consequence that gateway units need to be very weak to compensate for the added mobility and potential positional advantages. Even with creep, nydus, proxies and turbovacs, gateway DPS still has to be abyssal for Z and T to have a chance.
The offensive potential has already nerfed heavily with the slow pylon warp-ins.
I really like Colossus from a lore and concept point of view, and there is some cool micro potential with warp prisms and enemy focus fire. The a-move/deathball nature of the unit is annoying, of course, but it has just become such an integral part of the game for now I don't even mind...
On October 29 2020 11:03 WombaT wrote: I don’t like WG as a mechanic full stop, I believe Protoss is actually miraculously balanced given it exists. ... I agree with you on how Protoss should be and feel, coming from BW, it can’t really have those characteristics if WG exists because allins would be absolutely ridiculous, and also imo because bio is too good.
I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I think WG as a mechanic was a great addition to the game. The problem I see is that the dev's intention with the mechanic and balance around were terrible. The thing is, WG doesn't have to be an allin mechanic, but the dev's as always wants to keep it as one for one reason or another. You could easily nerf the offensive potential of WG while maintaining it useful defensive potential. Simply make it not easy to have fast warp-in out of your base and/or make it more risky to warp near your opponent.
And to be frank, WG isn't even the worst offender for being an all-in enabler, mechanically speaking & not balance wise. Nydus Worm is a far worse offender of something like that, but failed to achieve that because it was usually too nerfed to do it reliability/consistently for its cost.
I agree with that, I like the idea of it just not how it was implemented.
If it was limited to a defensive thing and tethered to nexuses, or if it was slower producing vs gateways (so mobility vs output), or it was gated to a lategame/prism thing, you could have trade offs etc.
On October 29 2020 11:03 WombaT wrote: I don’t like WG as a mechanic full stop, I believe Protoss is actually miraculously balanced given it exists. ... I agree with you on how Protoss should be and feel, coming from BW, it can’t really have those characteristics if WG exists because allins would be absolutely ridiculous, and also imo because bio is too good.
I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I think WG as a mechanic was a great addition to the game. The problem I see is that the dev's intention with the mechanic and balance around were terrible. The thing is, WG doesn't have to be an allin mechanic, but the dev's as always wants to keep it as one for one reason or another. You could easily nerf the offensive potential of WG while maintaining it useful defensive potential. Simply make it not easy to have fast warp-in out of your base and/or make it more risky to warp near your opponent.
And to be frank, WG isn't even the worst offender for being an all-in enabler, mechanically speaking & not balance wise. Nydus Worm is a far worse offender of something like that, but failed to achieve that because it was usually too nerfed to do it reliability/consistently for its cost.
I agree with that, I like the idea of it just not how it was implemented.
If it was limited to a defensive thing and tethered to nexuses, or if it was slower producing vs gateways (so mobility vs output), or it was gated to a lategame/prism thing, you could have trade offs etc.
People have been complaining about warpgate since the game was released. I never agreed with this until I came back to the game several months ago after a few years off. I think the mechanic is really cool but gateway units just do not scale well as the game progresses. It seems like Protoss has to quickly get higher tech units to survive. So even defensive warp-ins often just do not cut it. I would be happy if gateway units were buffed and warpgate because an upgrade for later in the game.
On October 29 2020 11:03 WombaT wrote: I don’t like WG as a mechanic full stop, I believe Protoss is actually miraculously balanced given it exists. ... I agree with you on how Protoss should be and feel, coming from BW, it can’t really have those characteristics if WG exists because allins would be absolutely ridiculous, and also imo because bio is too good.
I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I think WG as a mechanic was a great addition to the game. The problem I see is that the dev's intention with the mechanic and balance around were terrible. The thing is, WG doesn't have to be an allin mechanic, but the dev's as always wants to keep it as one for one reason or another. You could easily nerf the offensive potential of WG while maintaining it useful defensive potential. Simply make it not easy to have fast warp-in out of your base and/or make it more risky to warp near your opponent.
And to be frank, WG isn't even the worst offender for being an all-in enabler, mechanically speaking & not balance wise. Nydus Worm is a far worse offender of something like that, but failed to achieve that because it was usually too nerfed to do it reliability/consistently for its cost.
I agree with that, I like the idea of it just not how it was implemented.
If it was limited to a defensive thing and tethered to nexuses, or if it was slower producing vs gateways (so mobility vs output), or it was gated to a lategame/prism thing, you could have trade offs etc.
People have been complaining about warpgate since the game was released. I never agreed with this until I came back to the game several months ago after a few years off. I think the mechanic is really cool but gateway units just do not scale well as the game progresses. It seems like Protoss has to quickly get higher tech units to survive. So even defensive warp-ins often just do not cut it. I would be happy if gateway units were buffed and warpgate because an upgrade for later in the game.
I’ve been saying variants of this for 10 years. You can’t have beefy, potent gateway options early doors because you can warp them in at someone’s front door.
Although gateway units aren’t that bad stats wise, they just don’t scale at all against bio, which as I said early in the thread is as much with bio being too good as anything else.
You could easily nerf the offensive potential of WG while maintaining it useful defensive potential. Simply make it not easy to have fast warp-in out of your base and/or make it more risky to warp near your opponent.
There could be interesting mechanics like warp-in time increasing nonlinearly with distance from the main nexus spawn position, then divided by a factor based on the amount of nexii that you have.
Example:
1 nexus: warping at nexus instant 20% of the way across the map takes 3 seconds --- still similar/faster than we have now 40% takes 12 seconds --- slow warps 80% takes 48 seconds --- warpgate all-in impossible, past a certain point it could even be slower to warp-in the unit directly than it would be to warp mid-map and run there yourself.
The shape of the distance-vs-warptime curve should be tweaked to make this work well, it's also possible to do things like add a floor and ceiling to the warp-in time.
6 nexus: warping at main instant 20% across the map takes 1.5 seconds 40% takes 6 seconds --- defending expansions later in the game is still practical 80% takes 24 seconds --- warping directly into enemy main even in the lategame is not reasonable
This kind of scaling is pretty much perfect for favoring defenders advantage rather than all-in's and the nexus scaling factor would compensate for the difficulty in warping out to expansion locations as the area of space that you must defend grows larger and larger over the game.
It can't be gamed like building a proxy warpgate in the current system to empower proxy warp-in's as spending 400 minerals for 1 nexus, anywhere on the map, will have only an incremental improvement - and spending money for multiple nexii is too expensive to do simply to expand the range in which you can effectively warp-in units. Even a full compliment of nexii would struggle to project power to the enemy half of the map and especially onto their bases. With this kind of scale factor it only makes sense to build a nexus if you want to use the nexus to mine minerals/gas or use the nexus abilities which are already in the game.
There could be a cap in place like after you have 5 nexii on the map, the warp speed multiplier based on the nexus count no longer improves any more and that would prevent ultra-late-game abuse.
There are many ways to tweak or change such a formula to create the desired behaviors and it could be done while the system still behaves quite highly intuitively, understandable without requiring excessive study just to play the game at a high level.
I find that continual scaling over factors like distance - even nonlinearly - can work better than splitting into binary yes or no capabilities. There's room for people to use these capabilities a little suboptimally without slapping them down too hard for slightly violating the laws. The terrible use-cases (like building a pylon in the enemy main and warping to it) quickly become apparent to even novice users and watchers.
On October 30 2020 07:34 Slydie wrote: The problem isn't really the mechanic per-se, but the natural consequence that gateway units need to be very weak to compensate for the added mobility and potential positional advantages. Even with creep, nydus, proxies and turbovacs, gateway DPS still has to be abyssal for Z and T to have a chance.
The offensive potential has already nerfed heavily with the slow pylon warp-ins.
You don't change playstyles if you create easy work arounds to play the same style. The offensive potential was not nerfed, because they made a really easy work around through the Warp Prism fast-warp in.
@Cryo, I find your example to be an overly complicated method and also, ridiculously map restricting (particular for less competitive maps or non 1v1 settings). There are far more practical & more understandable options.
You don't change playstyles if you create easy work arounds to play the same style. The offensive potential was not nerfed, because they made a really easy work around through the Warp Prism fast-warp in.
No, it was nerfed, and very heavily so. Most old warpgate all-in attacks do not exist anymore, most notably standard 4gate and the soul train. Being forced to get a robo and WP makes a huge difference, and the timings were very sharp. The old builds which did include robos would much rather have an extra immortal.
Now, Protoss offense relies very heavily on not losing the WP.
Some of those units and mainly their abilities can be redesigned quite easy.
Nukes: Cheaper, smaller, faster and more visible Yamato: Skillshot, like Storm but in a line and maybe with some sort of directional marker to counterplay Stealth: More visible, but not autoattackable
Suggestion. What about Zergling 2.0 and Muta 2.0? If you don't get it: + Show Spoiler +
Zealot, Voidray, both got extreme speed buffs i LotV
I don't think the super speed is appropriate. I like that there is a Race who has super fast but weak units: Zerg with stuff like Zerglings and Mutalisks, and maybe very few exceptions so called special units for T and P: Banshee and Phoenix and the Hellions. Other than that it, No. It feel less like a good strategy game anymore when Everything moves at lightning speed. By the way, quite funny what I found - here is a pro gamer vs a speedy diamond player: (edited timer for exact game, at 1:15:19)
There are unlimited other ways to balance than speed. Many streams confirm this - I looked at some recently...
Honestly I think sc2 has a lot of good unit designs a lot of the units feel fun and rewarding to use. I love the way that it feels to micro stimed marines or control blink stalkers or get perfect engagements with lings. The fast responsive units in explosive fights is one of the things sc2 does really well.
I also generally like the “micro enabling units. That create a situation where the other player can skillfully respond to reduce their effectiveness, for instance banelings in ZVT have a really fun design because they encourage splitting micro out of Terran players. Widow mines on the Terran side force Zerg to control their army skillfully as well.
Generally units that don’t work well imo are ones where either the interactions tend to be so binary that they are anti micro units that prevent or punish players who want to use a high skill army, or units where the micro requirement to mitigate the effect is just beyond what’s possible.
Brood lord investor fell into the first category. The broodlings prevented many units from controlling properly, combine this with the ensnaring effect of fungal, the mind control effect of neural parasite and the ability to outrage everything in the game(pre nerf) and... to neutralize counters like air units with infested Terran+fungal and you get what I see as an anti fun unit comp. The answer to infestor bl is not to out control it but to build your own uninteresting death ball of air and casters and then turtle and try not to engage it on the Zerg players terms. A unit composition that denies any type of interaction with it should not exist.
Compare this to the pre nerf ultra meta. 8 armor ultras were surely strong but they had way better interactions with Terran. Instead of never engaging Terran could kite this army, they could split off drops and micro in multiple places, they could use snipes to pick offf ultras. This was a lot healthier since ther is counterpkay and opportunity to interact with the other player and show skill from both sides.
A lot of the worst offenders in terms of balance have all had this anti micro feel to them, that you can’t really do much to engage with or combat the composition directly. Swarm hosts had this problem, Soul train had this problem, Raven turtle mech had this problem, skytoss when it’s been strong has had this problem. When the answer to a unit composition is, under no circumstances engage them or let them get to that point it tends to make the game less fun Because the game can’t evolve into a dynamic late game.
Currently I think most matches are actual in a prity good state when it comes to these anti micro comps, lurker hydra viper has a lot more interactions than infestor bl did. TVZ is in a terrific state in terms of how the game flows. PVz although not perfect is significantly better now that feedback can combat abduct. I do think TvP is a little off still as it appears the late game is a bit degenerate with most Terran strategies revolving around not playing a long macro game vs Protoss. But it’s not terrible. My one complaint would be that large numbers of disrupters feel to strong but at least reasonable counter play and tactics exist for facing them, kind of like tvz mech.
SC2 has been at its best when interesting unit interactions lead to complex army movements and tactics and at its worst when armies Cannot be engaged or interacted with by the other player so the solution is for both sides to turtle with no other aim but to eventually force a favorable engagement.
On October 28 2020 03:23 dUTtrOACh wrote: I think phoenixes are too easy to use. Units that shoot as they move shouldn't also be able to move faster than everything else.
EDIT: Thankfully their range upgrade isn't completely broken, because if they outranged everything, they would be the most OP PoS unit.
Phoenixes are a pretty bad unit imo. They have niche uses here and there, but overall they are the most useless AA unit.
In PvP they are kind of annoying, but once you get archons they just inmediately stop working. The range upgrade was suppoused to help vs mutalisk, but by the time you get that you already died to mass mutas, and if you havent the zerg just insta tech-switches to literally anything else and stomps you. I actually wish they buffed phoenix indirectly by making the viper a light unit. Then alongside the range it would help against the BS abducts.
It's sort of what I mean. The phoenix is so dynamically good, that it's intentionally weakened in too many ways, making it a worthless core unit, but a great tool. It is almost irrelevant against armored air (with exceptions), due to range and damage-type restrictions. It can't lift massive (which is why archons can zone them out, but not kill them, if they are pulled back). It's limited to its maximum energy worth of lifts, or lacks lifts when it has no energy, and can't attack buildings, making it a paperweight or pure scout at times.
Therefore, I too disagree that it is the best designed.
EDIT: Can we really objectively say something is the best designed anything? I like the idea of smh making something in the air arsenal counter vipers, other than warp prism templars, or some madness.
Something that just came to mind. How come Terran Splash damage is the only splash damage that effects their own units without targeting? Yeah psi storms hurt zealots but thats because the player chooses to run into it. Seige tanks and widow mines crush marines with friendly fire, while banelings, lurks, colossi splash damage magically does not effect their friendly units.
On November 01 2020 02:56 MinesMakeWidows wrote: Interesting thread.
Something that just came to mind. How come Terran Splash damage is the only splash damage that effects their own units without targeting? Yeah psi storms hurt zealots but thats because the player chooses to run into it. Seige tanks and widow mines crush marines with friendly fire, while banelings, lurks, colossi splash damage magically does not effect their friendly units.
Is there any 'logical' reasoning behind this?
Terran don’t really have melee units, so I guess it’s because of that aspect of their historic design that Blizz put in friendly fire.
BW tanks are absolute monsters too, even more so than their SC2 counterparts.
I’m unsure why the decision was made outside of guesses. By comparison with real warfare you wouldn’t have your infantry sitting in artillery fire, so perhaps it’s to reflect that.
Other races actually rely on melee and closing the gaps. If they can do this the Terran should be getting punished in some way. Keep them at a distance and let the artillery or the minefields for the work, if they’re in your face you’re in trouble. That feels about right to me.
I like the mechanic, it introduces lots of counter-play like dropping on tanks to trigger a volley that kills one, dragging mines in BW or SC2 etc.
Collosus fire too quickly and in a line spread to make trying to control an army that includes Zealots that automatically charge into the front an absolute, absolute nightmare to control.
I suppose the logical reason is as simple as 2/3 race’s stock basic combat unit is a melee one and having friendly fire AoE would be a complete pain.
I’m not against more friendly fire, I think storm doing it makes tons of sense, arguably fungal growth in all its previous guises could have had friendly fire added too.
EPT
