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Northern Ireland23745 Posts
On April 01 2021 07:41 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2021 06:27 [Phantom] wrote:On April 01 2021 05:49 deacon.frost wrote:On April 01 2021 05:19 [Phantom] wrote:
Surprised to see how many zergs are complaining here since PvZ is incredibly Zerg favored and the only valid strategy protoss has can be countered with...queens.
I wish we could at least get a rotation of all the old maps this game has had. There were some really good maps that we'll never get to play again and we're stuck with this incredibly zerg favored map pool. Well, you see, it's funny. Because technically you may be right. Technically communism works. In reality most of us are plebs who have shitty micro, shitty macro and have issues to not get supply blocked too often. So, technically PvZ may be favored. In reality most of the people are not going queen walking as they don't read the game too well. Most of the people wanna play longer games. And most of the people are shitty late game players. The issue is that for shitty late game players - the Protoss is the better ultimate army. And we're home. Also queen walking every game is pretty boring. I mean c'mon, I know roaches and queens are awesome, but can I build anything else?  It's the same issue as with the old Swarm host. It was balanced for the top 2 % of players. The rest was complaining. Why? Because for the plebs bellow master you just parked the SH and they did all the work for you. The defense was harder to control properly. It required multitasking(ha!). Most of the players don't play the strategy part of the game. They play who gets supply blocked the least and who can built better army which relies less on controlling errors. That's why playing ling bane is a bad choice, that's why playing bio is a bad choice. But fun choices, aren't they?  Haha I guess that's a good argument. I've been playing zerg a lot lately and I've found myself too eager to enageg a Protoss lategame army and suffer in consequence. I need to stop and be fcalm and just chip away at it with viper/corruptor/lurker. Though to be fair...before that the Lurker is the easiest thing to do similar to the swarmhost. You have a very fast unit that becomes invisible and you just burrow it there and stop all ground agression or you can do very strong timings, forcing the Protoss to go Air all games, just as you're complaining. Which I guess leads us to what you (I think it was you?) were saying a couple of pages earlier that PvZ would need a design change to make it less boring. But I guess it's not going to happen. ____ Yeah I might be too harsh with the map pool, it's ok, But I wish we could play older maps. For me, personally, the game is way too fast now. But that's not gonna change any time soon either I would personally add queens damage from walking off creep. If you wanna do that, do that for shorter times. Edit> Like I mean low damage. This way if you move from base to base it doesn't matter much, but if you move for longer times it matters way too much. Something like when buildings will bleed out. Removed one of the upgrades from lurkers. Personally I think the instaburrow is more wrong, especially since there's no upgrade for tanks. Removed anti-massive anti-ground attack from carrierstempests, obviously I am an idiot ,(left normal or none). IMmortals are can openers and all the ground massive units are armored anyway. I would changed the shield batteries that they need an energy investment to be turned on. Be it sentry, nexus, another already activated shield battery... costs 1 energy, shield battery autocasts this. Once turned on it doesn't consume any more energy outside energy. This way any offensive shield battery is a pylon until you get at least an oracle(in case of SG), which gives players a chance to react and removes robo/stalkers builds from the game. Sentry is a big investment and oracle is a delay, which means both should work fine. Or that NonY idea with lowered efficiency. I think ghosts need a late game buff since mass overseers make their usage against hive lurkers very hard, but I don't like giving longer range to them nor giving up the interrupt on the snipe, hmm. Don't know, may be stupid, doesn't care, won't be implemented anyway
Technically capitalism works too.
I do agree the game is too fast, both in the ramping up of eco/tech as well as in volatility. You do kind of borderline skip a meaningful early game and go straight into the mid game a lot of times given Legacy’s changes to the eco.
Since Wings a lot of units have been added that are extremely effective worker killers and considerably harder to defend than utilise.
Which I mean, ok go down that route I guess? I’m not sure if it was all intentional in terms of design intent but we’ve kind of ended up with kind of phases of the game where it’s not a huge amount of army vs army skirmishing, then throw the harassers in and try to kill as many workers and then another lull until the bigger pushes, where if a player had success with their harassment you’re boned.
I’m honestly not moaning about balance, just it seems Blizzard’s answer to not enough back and forth action were a ton of harassing units that are only particularly useful in that phase of the game, rather than managing to force more regular engagements all over the maps.
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Can't stand playing vs turtling air-toss. It's so easy to execute and so hard to control against. Kind of silly.
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I do think that focusing the game design so much on worker harass, they made sure that only a small amount of gamers could stand playing this game extensively.
It is called harass for a reason. Noone enjoys getting harassed. I understand why they did it, because its to make more exciting moments for pro play, instead of turtle deathball.
Sc1 didnt have nearly as much focus on worker harass, but the limitations in army control and economy design made it so there was multiple fights happening anyways. The focus for skill in sc1 was alot more in macro though, and it doesnt really show or WOW viewers in tournaments.
I do feel like in the end, focusing so much on making the game exciting to watch at the pro level happened at the detriment of average ladder players, and might have been one of the main cause of the game's downfall.
I hope future RTS design teams can learn from this. and realize that if a lot of ppl play the game, a lot of ppl will watch tournaments, regardless if there is many exciting flashy moments or not.
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Northern Ireland23745 Posts
On April 01 2021 12:47 Snakestyle11 wrote:
I do think that focusing the game design so much on worker harass, they made sure that only a small amount of gamers could stand playing this game extensively.
It is called harass for a reason. Noone enjoys getting harassed. I understand why they did it, because its to make more exciting moments for pro play, instead of turtle deathball.
Sc1 didnt have nearly as much focus on worker harass, but the limitations in army control and economy design made it so there was multiple fights happening anyways. The focus for skill in sc1 was alot more in macro though, and it doesnt really show or WOW viewers in tournaments.
I do feel like in the end, focusing so much on making the game exciting to watch at the pro level happened at the detriment of average ladder players, and might have been one of the main cause of the game's downfall.
I hope future RTS design teams can learn from this. and realize that if a lot of ppl play the game, a lot of ppl will watch tournaments, regardless if there is many exciting flashy moments or not.
I mean by and large I still think SC2 has done more right than wrong and it's lasted a pretty damn long time, but yeah there is plenty to learn from it.
I don't think the frustration is from difficulty either, it's not a matter of 'oh this bloke/blokette outplayed me there with that harass' as 'I happened to be looking somewhere else, oh noes', or alternatively just deflecting stuff if you do happen to be in position.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On April 01 2021 08:03 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2021 05:49 deacon.frost wrote:On April 01 2021 05:19 [Phantom] wrote:
Surprised to see how many zergs are complaining here since PvZ is incredibly Zerg favored and the only valid strategy protoss has can be countered with...queens.
I wish we could at least get a rotation of all the old maps this game has had. There were some really good maps that we'll never get to play again and we're stuck with this incredibly zerg favored map pool. Well, you see, it's funny. Because technically you may be right. Technically communism works. In reality most of us are plebs who have shitty micro, shitty macro and have issues to not get supply blocked too often. So, technically PvZ may be favored. In reality most of the people are not going queen walking as they don't read the game too well. Most of the people wanna play longer games. And most of the people are shitty late game players. The issue is that for shitty late game players - the Protoss is the better ultimate army. And we're home. I have 30 APM and I like making Battlecruisers, please balance the game around me, people are attacking me way too fast and have units that beat my units 
I mean I am just Dia 1, so I am a protoss pleb and zergs cry rivers against my cancer turtling into air, so what do I know
Edit> wrong units though. carriers, mate, carriers. As a Terran I go the dark turtling path of the mech, no BCs.
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im gonna queue up later hope i run into some cannons, shield batteries and void rays
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Northern Ireland23745 Posts
On April 02 2021 19:11 Comedy wrote:
im gonna queue up later hope i run into some cannons, shield batteries and void rays
Best of luck, I heard they’re super rare these days
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8748 Posts
On April 01 2021 12:47 Snakestyle11 wrote:
I do think that focusing the game design so much on worker harass, they made sure that only a small amount of gamers could stand playing this game extensively.
It is called harass for a reason. Noone enjoys getting harassed. I understand why they did it, because its to make more exciting moments for pro play, instead of turtle deathball.
Sc1 didnt have nearly as much focus on worker harass, but the limitations in army control and economy design made it so there was multiple fights happening anyways. The focus for skill in sc1 was alot more in macro though, and it doesnt really show or WOW viewers in tournaments.
I do feel like in the end, focusing so much on making the game exciting to watch at the pro level happened at the detriment of average ladder players, and might have been one of the main cause of the game's downfall.
I hope future RTS design teams can learn from this. and realize that if a lot of ppl play the game, a lot of ppl will watch tournaments, regardless if there is many exciting flashy moments or not.
i think harass in sc2 is very similar gameplay to moba games, which are very popular. the micro and the map awareness are very similar. of course there will be some rts players who prefer to build up their army unmolested and then have big clashes of one army vs one army. but i think LotV picked up some of the traits from other very popular games and it improved the game overall
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harassement could be fun... The player could only have to bet on which mineral field his workers can access. More the mineral field is far from a base, the more you take risks and gain ressources (vespene, mineral whatever...)
It s how you can solve the harassement problem.
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On April 03 2021 01:30 NonY wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2021 12:47 Snakestyle11 wrote:
I do think that focusing the game design so much on worker harass, they made sure that only a small amount of gamers could stand playing this game extensively.
It is called harass for a reason. Noone enjoys getting harassed. I understand why they did it, because its to make more exciting moments for pro play, instead of turtle deathball.
Sc1 didnt have nearly as much focus on worker harass, but the limitations in army control and economy design made it so there was multiple fights happening anyways. The focus for skill in sc1 was alot more in macro though, and it doesnt really show or WOW viewers in tournaments.
I do feel like in the end, focusing so much on making the game exciting to watch at the pro level happened at the detriment of average ladder players, and might have been one of the main cause of the game's downfall.
I hope future RTS design teams can learn from this. and realize that if a lot of ppl play the game, a lot of ppl will watch tournaments, regardless if there is many exciting flashy moments or not. i think harass in sc2 is very similar gameplay to moba games, which are very popular. the micro and the map awareness are very similar. of course there will be some rts players who prefer to build up their army unmolested and then have big clashes of one army vs one army. but i think LotV picked up some of the traits from other very popular games and it improved the game overall
I agree on this. Brood Wars game-play was a more centered around having units out on the map and giving players tools to retreat.
Sc2 can't encourage that type of gameplay so they tried a different route to accomplish it, and I think it worked fine. Ideally both types of game-play is possible though.
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I don t see AOE4 doing better than sc2.
I would be surprised to know how many viewers would pay and come back to try different multiplayer rts pro mode
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Northern Ireland23745 Posts
On April 03 2021 03:08 Vision_ wrote:
I don t see AOE4 doing better than sc2.
I would be surprised to know how many viewers would pay and come back to try different multiplayer rts pro mode
It’ll do well but I don’t see it either. If AoE4 is across the board better than SC2 in all areas and marketed well I think it can manage it but that even if those boxes are ticked I’m not sure SC2’s success can be replicated by another RTS
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On April 03 2021 03:08 Vision_ wrote:
I don t see AOE4 doing better than sc2.
I would be surprised to know how many viewers would pay and come back to try different multiplayer rts pro mode
What exactly do you mean by that? Sale numbers or hurr durr e-sport, if it's not an e-sport RTS we don't care!?
Because I think AoE 4 can have pretty good sales number and I doubt they aim to be the best competetive RTS e-sport evah.
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Don't hope too much. Blizzard can't fix 1vs1 mmr in Europe, it's been weeks since masters 3 was much higher and now we're all bronze 3.
Edit: also random drops since December, while I have internet access to anything else. And timeouts during Christmas holidays for days. This has never happened before.
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I really doubt I will keep playing SC2 after AOE4 is out. Activision really destroyed Blizzard and what we are left with is a broken game where even simple bugs like the bronze MMR ladder is left alone for weeks.
The only thing we can do is never buy an Activision game ever again. I know I never will.
Blizzard uses to stand for perfection. Activision somehow managed to destroy Blizzard completely. What is the point of buying a company and then completely destroy the brand that has been built for 20 years? They lost all the people and they destroyed the brand.
I feel nothing but pure hatred for Kotick. I hope he will end up in hell for what he has done.
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On April 03 2021 17:27 MockHamill wrote:
I really doubt I will keep playing SC2 after AOE4 is out. Activision really destroyed Blizzard and what we are left with is a broken game where even simple bugs like the bronze MMR ladder is left alone for weeks.
The only thing we can do is never buy an Activision game ever again. I know I never will.
Blizzard uses to stand for perfection. Activision somehow managed to destroy Blizzard completely. What is the point of buying a company and then completely destroy the brand that has been built for 20 years? The lost all the people and they destroyed the brand.
I feel nothing but pure hatred for Kotick. I hope he will end up in hell for what he has done.
Just to make sure, you do realize the activision merger happened in 2008?
While I don't like bobby kotick either (who does), this kind of post always comes off as if it happened somewhat recently, when it didn't, or as if it's all activision's fault, which it isn't.
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Mexico2170 Posts
On April 03 2021 19:25 Narcind wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2021 17:27 MockHamill wrote:
I really doubt I will keep playing SC2 after AOE4 is out. Activision really destroyed Blizzard and what we are left with is a broken game where even simple bugs like the bronze MMR ladder is left alone for weeks.
The only thing we can do is never buy an Activision game ever again. I know I never will.
Blizzard uses to stand for perfection. Activision somehow managed to destroy Blizzard completely. What is the point of buying a company and then completely destroy the brand that has been built for 20 years? The lost all the people and they destroyed the brand.
I feel nothing but pure hatred for Kotick. I hope he will end up in hell for what he has done. Just to make sure, you do realize the activision merger happened in 2008? While I don't like bobby kotick either (who does), this kind of post always comes off as if it happened somewhat recently, when it didn't, or as if it's all activision's fault, which it isn't.
This is true, but I would argue Activision influence on Blizzard has progressively increased in the recent years. And I got something to blame. Overwatch. Or More specifically: Titan. It seems Titan was such as colosal fuck-up by Blizzard that it made Activision start to be more hands on, taking a more active participation in which Blizzard projects were accepted and which weren't. You can hear it in interviews to Blizz devs talking about it and how Titan afected them, some even saying they don't feel ready to talk about it.
Since then it appears Activision started to meddle more and more with blizzard, which ultimately lead to cancelling of many projects (there was one or two confirmed StarCraft projects that Activision didn't accept), the departure of many major Blizz employees, and finally the departure of Mike Morhaime. Since that moment, I think Activision just took control.
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The question for SC2 solely is, if it is worth spending your time on or not.
I am inactive 1v1 since 2016. I would love to play actively for 2-3 months again once a year.
The thing is, it just doesn't feel worth my time. Whenever I start playing a few games, what I usually do each year, I recognize it is not.
For example look at Zerg vs. air: it doesn't make sense for me that Protoss can get carriers out before or at the same time Zerg can get their fist regular anti air unit other than queen no matter how the game evolves. This is not about balance or imbalance, it is about: "Do I want to spend my time with that kind of stuff?"
And that is only one example. You could name many.
Another one would be: Terran bio is so heavily overpowered, that it narrows down unit design for other races. So in order to deal with it, you can't just give them normal units as bio are, but must give them heavy splash damage options which in return are too strong against other things (baneling vs. protoss).
And the same can be said about Zerg economy design. It is too strong in getting ahead if not interrupted.
Let me name one more: ZvT(mech). Why do I want to play this from a Z point of view? You can never attack terran. You can never fight remotely efficient (lose Zerg's 100 vs. Terran's 30 army supply). You need +2 bases in lategame. There are not that many options. If you don't lose a base until lategame things look well, if you lose 1 base things get dark and terran is on equal bases. So the game more or less evolves around exactly that: Can you maintain enough army supply while keep being ahead of the mech terran or not?
Ok one more: Phoenix vs. Mutalisk. Just bullshit to me. Mutalisk way too strong without fenix on the map. 20+ Mutalisk way too useless with 3 fenix on the map. Another game of extremes I wont accept for myself being worth my time. Mutalisk however right in balance with terran. Why? Cause terran bio is so strong, it needs mutalisks to be as strong as they are.
And so on, and so on.
Ok, ok one more: Zerg vs. Adept early game? Seriously, this cannot even called harass anymore, it is frequently game ending damage on I guess every level of play. Do I say it is imbalanced? I don't. I have no idea. I am inactive. I just know I don't want to spend my time defending against Adepts as Zerg in a video game as it is a not fulfilling activity in my point of view to run behind adapts which abuse behind mineral positioning with queens and lings and a few roaches if you got them.
A lot of people provide good thought process how to deal with things. All of them require major changes of the game. The timeframe for them to happen has passed (SC2 is in endgame now). LOTV and the year after was the last chance to do so. Small changes may allow tryhards to not shift away a bit longer but wont change the big picture of the things named above.
Hence I say lets keep it simple: Chess has only one race and it works well. Both protoss and zerg are majorly flawed in different ways. Terran is not so much and probably the best mirror even though the mirror matchups of all 3 races have improved a lot. So why not just keep things simple from now on and make a better game that evolves around a single race design?
Ofc that is a bit provocative and not really an option for SC. But in my point of view that is an honest assessment. SC2 was defeated (by Terran bio design) and has to write gg in the end to accept defeat. ;D
The whole risk-reward system of SC2 doesn't evolve around risk=reward anymore but around how to abuse a tactic for a short amount of time which involves zero risks while providing maximum benefit, like for example abusing mutalisks vs. a non fenix protoss. Another example drops: Terran can drop bio without risk of losing the units. As protoss struggled: Lets give them the same with warp prism pickup range. Drop archons, do damage, pick them up from half a screen distance so you can do damage without any natural risks. Yes there are risks of overdoing it but thats a misplay not a natural risk. There is risk of neglecting other important things, but thats again misplay and not a natural risk.
These are all interactions I don't want to spend my time with as a former Zerg player, no matter if it is balanced or not. They are flawed interactions.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On April 05 2021 15:54 LSN wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The question for SC2 solely is, if it is worth spending your time on or not.
I am inactive 1v1 since 2016. I would love to play actively for 2-3 months again once a year.
The thing is, it just doesn't feel worth my time. Whenever I start playing a few games, what I usually do each year, I recognize it is not.
For example look at Zerg vs. air: it doesn't make sense for me that Protoss can get carriers out before or at the same time Zerg can get their fist regular anti air unit other than queen no matter how the game evolves. This is not about balance or imbalance, it is about: "Do I want to spend my time with that kind of stuff?"
And that is only one example. You could name many.
Another one would be: Terran bio is so heavily overpowered, that it narrows down unit design for other races. So in order to deal with it, you can't just give them normal units as bio are, but must give them heavy splash damage options which in return are too strong against other things (baneling vs. protoss).
And the same can be said about Zerg economy design. It is too strong in getting ahead if not interrupted.
Let me name one more: ZvT(mech). Why do I want to play this from a Z point of view? You can never attack terran. You can never fight remotely efficient (lose Zerg's 100 vs. Terran's 30 army supply). You need +2 bases in lategame. There are not that many options. If you don't lose a base until lategame things look well, if you lose 1 base things get dark and terran is on equal bases. So the game more or less evolves around exactly that: Can you maintain enough army supply while keep being ahead of the mech terran or not?
Ok one more: Phoenix vs. Mutalisk. Just bullshit to me. Mutalisk way too strong without fenix on the map. 20+ Mutalisk way too useless with 3 fenix on the map. Another game of extremes I wont accept for myself being worth my time. Mutalisk however right in balance with terran. Why? Cause terran bio is so strong, it needs mutalisks to be as strong as they are.
And so on, and so on.
Ok, ok one more: Zerg vs. Adept early game? Seriously, this cannot even called harass anymore, it is frequently game ending damage on I guess every level of play. Do I say it is imbalanced? I don't. I have no idea. I am inactive. I just know I don't want to spend my time defending against Adepts as Zerg in a video game as it is a not fulfilling activity in my point of view to run behind adapts which abuse behind mineral positioning with queens and lings and a few roaches if you got them.
A lot of people provide good thought process how to deal with things. All of them require major changes of the game. The timeframe for them to happen has passed (SC2 is in endgame now). LOTV and the year after was the last chance to do so. Small changes may allow tryhards to not shift away a bit longer but wont change the big picture of the things named above.
Hence I say lets keep it simple: Chess has only one race and it works well. Both protoss and zerg are majorly flawed in different ways. Terran is not so much and probably the best mirror even though the mirror matchups of all 3 races have improved a lot. So why not just keep things simple from now on and make a better game that evolves around a single race design?
Ofc that is a bit provocative and not really an option for SC. But in my point of view that is an honest assessment. SC2 was defeated (by Terran bio design) and has to write gg in the end to accept defeat. ;D
The whole risk-reward system of SC2 doesn't evolve around risk=reward anymore but around how to abuse a tactic for a short amount of time which involves zero risks while providing maximum benefit, like for example abusing mutalisks vs. a non fenix protoss. Another example drops: Terran can drop bio without risk of losing the units. As protoss struggled: Lets give them the same with warp prism pickup range. Drop archons, do damage, pick them up from half a screen distance so you can do damage without any natural risks. Yes there are risks of overdoing it but thats a misplay not a natural risk. There is risk of neglecting other important things, but thats again misplay and not a natural risk.
These are all interactions I don't want to spend my time with as a former Zerg player, no matter if it is balanced or not. They are flawed interactions .
It's kinda ironic that while LotV fixed some things in the end, it is still broken on so many places (and keeping just Terran wouldn't work because you would lose right from the batch Protoss and Zerg fans)
Adept ignoring body block.
Protoss ignoring the defender advantage and what's worse, bringing it with them in the form of shield batteries.
Queen ignoring the larvae mechanic.
Queen having all of the early game roles except attacker, which comes in the mid-game
Lategame air unit being a safe early game opener - BC - because it has a free teleport.
Air army being the best lategame army - ignores terrain. And rather easily reachable(basically every lategame fights have lategame air units in them and are about the lategame air units).
Protoss altering the map because they have to(we can talk which is worse, but either way it is a design flaw)
Protoss having bad retreat mechanic thus in need of the recall from the early game
Harass being too strong(as was already mentioned, only some folks like being harassed, no shaming though)
Detection being too strong part of the game. This is IMO the most frustrating mechanic, because it's literally binary - you either have detection or you don't and if you don't you just right out lose. And even if you have detection it doesn't mean you come on the top(especially in the lower leages)
DTs have blink - constantly cloaked unit which requires detection with insane dps gets blink. What can go wrong?
All of these appear to be balanced. All of these are bad design choices.
And especially lower league players can so many of these fight with a lazy approach but it doesn't change it's a shitty design. e.g. Adepts ignoring the body block. You can have 2 base economy with a zerg and just build a wall with a spine in it. BAM. Adeptsd are worthless. They may kill your third, but in reality in anything lower than masters this is fine. As long as you don't lose your drones (and thus larvae). Low leagues are fun
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On April 01 2021 12:47 Snakestyle11 wrote:
I do feel like in the end, focusing so much on making the game exciting to watch at the pro level happened at the detriment of average ladder players, and might have been one of the main cause of the game's downfall.
I totally agree with this. What's funny is that while it seems clear to me that this was the "focus", they still managed to fuck it up from the get go and have always been very unresponsive/slow to update the game and secretive about wtf they were working on. Would have been fine if they rolled out quality updates everytime but they clearly didn't.
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EPT
