EPTAlso on a lesser but still relevant sense, Protoss’ racial identity makes no sense anymore. ‘Oh they’re the big scary psionic and technically advanced aliens I mentioned sir. Yeah their military doctrine revolves around trickery and gambling, despite their superior technology. Yeah me either.’
Semi-standard Protoss Crying Post - Page 14
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25081 Posts
Also on a lesser but still relevant sense, Protoss’ racial identity makes no sense anymore. ‘Oh they’re the big scary psionic and technically advanced aliens I mentioned sir. Yeah their military doctrine revolves around trickery and gambling, despite their superior technology. Yeah me either.’ | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 22 2024 08:53 WombaT wrote: Pretty reasonable suggestions IMO. And Yeah, and it’s not just a pure balance thing either. Plenty of us Protoss scum actually like playing macro games, managing macro and microing and all those good things. Also on a lesser but still relevant sense, Protoss’ racial identity makes no sense anymore. ‘Oh they’re the big scary psionic and technically advanced aliens I mentioned sir. Yeah their military doctrine revolves around trickery and gambling, despite their superior technology. Yeah me either.’ Oh the race flavor also plays into why I like this idea because I think it makes perfect sense that the "advanced" race would have an advanced upgrade level that the other races couldn't get to also. It fits their racial identity in a way that anything that buffs the book of Protoss bullshit wouldn't. | ||
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Nasigil
137 Posts
There were some great Protoss players emerging from time to time, but they never really reached the consistent and all-around dominance of the likes of Boxer, Savior, iloveoov, Nada, Flash, Jaedong, Mvp, Innovation, Rogue, Maru and Serral in their prime. And somehow, Protoss in both games are considered the easier and OP race for casual players. There's probably something in the core design of Protoss across two games that make them easier to learn but harder to reach the ceiling as high as other two races. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
On February 22 2024 10:33 Nasigil wrote: It's interesting that, although SC2 and BW are very different in terms of balance and design, but through out the decade long life span of both games, the races ended up behaving almost the same: it's a long history of Zerg and Terran bonjwas taking turns to dominate, and Protoss just plays a supporting role. There were some great Protoss players emerging from time to time, but they never really reached the consistent and all-around dominance of the likes of Boxer, Savior, iloveoov, Nada, Flash, Jaedong, Mvp, Innovation, Rogue, Maru and Serral in their prime. And somehow, Protoss in both games are considered the easier and OP race for casual players. There's probably something in the core design of Protoss across two games that make them easier to learn but harder to reach the ceiling as high as other two races. I might be wrong about this cause I don't know BW that much but it's my understanding that in BW protoss plays quite differently, and it's terran that is the most similar to SC2 protoss. I believe I remember conversations about this when Classic switched to toss and Flash didn't, people were saying that Flash would be better suited to play SC2 protoss (but it was a while ago I definitely could be misremembering). If it's true that also would go neatly with my theory, in that it shows to me that people will just like TvZ as a default, no matter what the gameplay is. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 22 2024 11:53 Nebuchad wrote: I might be wrong about this cause I don't know BW that much but it's my understanding that in BW protoss plays quite differently, and it's terran that is the most similar to SC2 protoss. I believe I remember conversations about this when Classic switched to toss and Flash didn't, people were saying that Flash would be better suited to play SC2 protoss (but it was a while ago I definitely could be misremembering). If it's true that also would go neatly with my theory, in that it shows to me that people will just like TvZ as a default, no matter what the gameplay is. I don't agree with this at all, except the part where Brood War Protoss plays differently, that part is true although there's a lot of similarities too. I don't know where this idea comes from that SC: Brood War Terran plays more similar to SC2 Protoss. That is totally bonkers. SC2 Terran plays more like Brood War Terran. I think the main difference is the PvT match up. In Brood War, the Protoss is in the one that is expected to outgrow, outmine and harass the Terran. Terran wants to go for a large push on a maxed out army and win with cost effectiveness. This is similar to how PvT USED to be back in like WoL only with the roles swapped, but that's not anything like how PvT is now. TvZ in Brood War actually looks a LOT like TvZ in SC2, especially in the current meta, what with Lurkers being the meta in Brood War with Mutalisks falling in and out of favor, just like SC2. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25081 Posts
On February 22 2024 12:46 Vindicare605 wrote: I don't agree with this at all, except the part where Brood War Protoss plays differently, that part is true. I don't know where this idea comes from that SC: Brood War Terran plays more similar to SC2 Protoss. That is totally bonkers. SC2 Terran plays more like Brood War Terran. I think the main difference is the PvT match up. In Brood War, the Protoss is in the one that is expected to outgrow, outmine and harass the Terran. Terran wants to go for a large push on a maxed out army and win with cost effectiveness. This is similar to how PvT USED to be back in like WoL only with the roles swapped, but that's not anything like how PvT is now. TvZ in Brood War actually looks a LOT like TvZ in SC2, especially in the current meta, what with Lurkers being the meta in Brood War with Mutalisks falling in and out of favor, just like SC2. Yeah that’s one I never got either. What about SC2 Protoss is meant to be similar to BW Terran? The mirrors and TvZ have similar vibes if not the same strats between the games, but PvZ and PvT are wildly different, especially these days. I remember distinctly people saying Flash would have been better with Protoss as it would suit his skillset better and I just never really saw that myself. Apart from a galaxy brain, itself not quite as developed in a new game as in BW, being a monster at macro and in general mechanically was pretty high up in his attributes, why play the race that scales the worst with it. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 22 2024 13:39 WombaT wrote: Yeah that’s one I never got either. What about SC2 Protoss is meant to be similar to BW Terran? The mirrors and TvZ have similar vibes if not the same strats between the games, but PvZ and PvT are wildly different, especially these days. I remember distinctly people saying Flash would have been better with Protoss as it would suit his skillset better and I just never really saw that myself. Apart from a galaxy brain, itself not quite as developed in a new game as in BW, being a monster at macro and in general mechanically was pretty high up in his attributes, why play the race that scales the worst with it. I think people are suggesting that Flash being so good at planning out tournament series and playing with a variety of openers including a lot that are very risky is what would make him a potent Protoss player in SC2. And I'd agree with that ,except Flash could play ANY race if he wanted to because Flash has a vast and varied skill set that he could apply to any of the races. Flash played fucking Random at the pro level in Brood War. It's absurd to think he couldn't play ANY of the races successfully in SC2 if he really went for it. | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3367 Posts
When you talk about WG mechanic being problematic, we are simply talking about the Warp Prism, right? We almost don't see proxy gates incorperated into macro play. But yes, Warp Prism is basically the Mothership Core, hero unit of today. It's the strongest unit in the game and if you play Protoss without it, you are simply missing out. You have Blink for all your units and fast Warp-in. But how many Warp-in allins do we really see where a gateway unit buff would destroy the meta?, we have 4Gate Blink, we have some Adept + Prism strong attacks vs. Zerg. There are more timings, but it becomes harder to think them up. I think a bigger reason why we cannot buff Gateway units, is because the economy is switched. In HotS Terran used to be up half a base and these days it is Protoss that is up bases. We have almost the same units, but the economy favours Protoss in the early+mid games. When we had the Marauder split attack, the issue was Protoss overwhelming Terrans with units, rather than Terrans dying to all-ins. Both Terran and Protoss cannot move out on the map vs. Zerg, because of the existence of Zerglings, but Terran make use of Medivacs, which makes it viable to harass all over. Protoss can do the same to an extend when they have Twilight Upgrades. Protoss mobility is actually stronger than ever and it even surpasses Terran, so it does also not hold up the theory that LotV economy makes it so Protoss cannot keep up. Protoss has a lot of issues, but I don't think it's the Warp Gate mechanic or that they lack mobility, though the race is fickle with almost no defenders advantage and a small amount of units. The current issues with Protoss imo. is defenders advantage, Shield Battery nerf (this also means that Protoss cannot be greedy and then capitalize on stronger eco in LotV), non-Warp Gate units are absolutely atrocious. Immortal cost the same as an Ultralisk and is a sitting duck that doesn't even serve its purpose of destroying Lurkers/Tanks, because those units also destroy the Immortal. The Colossus is single purposed, but is pretty strong at this function. The Disruptor is now just weak, it's a worse Siege Tank/Liberator that requires more effort to have work. Void Ray, Carrier doesn't win you games if the opponent is half way decent. When Z/T hits 3/3 then Protoss is also nerfed because Shields scale badly. EMP+Fungal delete Protoss units, while Storm just tickles Zerg/Terran units. And we also have the supply nerfs, making the maxed out Protoss army absolutely miniscule. So Toss needs to win before 3/3 for the opponents and with a strong eco that is hard to get because we don't have Battery Overcharge and units like Disruptor to actually deal with the spamming of low tier units that aren't Light (Colossus can deal with Light units). | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
On February 22 2024 13:39 WombaT wrote: Yeah that’s one I never got either. What about SC2 Protoss is meant to be similar to BW Terran? The mirrors and TvZ have similar vibes if not the same strats between the games, but PvZ and PvT are wildly different, especially these days. I remember distinctly people saying Flash would have been better with Protoss as it would suit his skillset better and I just never really saw that myself. Apart from a galaxy brain, itself not quite as developed in a new game as in BW, being a monster at macro and in general mechanically was pretty high up in his attributes, why play the race that scales the worst with it. Okay I see, people were saying that but the idea is a bit dubious. Well, it's better than me misremembering, I'll take it  | ||
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Nasigil
137 Posts
On February 22 2024 11:53 Nebuchad wrote: I might be wrong about this cause I don't know BW that much but it's my understanding that in BW protoss plays quite differently, and it's terran that is the most similar to SC2 protoss. I believe I remember conversations about this when Classic switched to toss and Flash didn't, people were saying that Flash would be better suited to play SC2 protoss (but it was a while ago I definitely could be misremembering). If it's true that also would go neatly with my theory, in that it shows to me that people will just like TvZ as a default, no matter what the gameplay is. No, the saying of "Flash should play Protoss" was nonsense. It only stems from a time when PvT is all about Protoss getting to that 200 supply high tech army and move out, which was kinda like BW TvP Terran was all about getting 200 supply high upgrade mech army move out. There was some resemblance but that's where it ends. Everything else between BW Terran and SC2 Protoss is vastly different. about "people just like TvZ as a default": In BW all three non-mirror matchup are very entertaining to watch, if you make a list of Top 100 BW games you will have a healthy mix of TvZ, PvT and PvZ (and some mirror matchups), I wouldn't say TvZ is better than the other two non-mirror, it probably only gets the edge because as I said, Terran and Zerg has most of the legendary players, so naturally TvZ tends to produce more iconic matches. But in SC2, for most of its life span TvZ is just by far the best matchup from viewer's perspective, it's entertaining and engaging from early to late game, constant actions around the map, lots of multi-prong skirmishes and epic large engagements. Also T and Z has the best players. On the other hand, PvT and PvZ had quite a long period of time of being just not very interesting to watch, you either get some kind of timing all in or it's turtling to late game. It could produce some nice games but no where near the level of TvZ. It has a lot to do with Protoss design that just encourages turtling and deathball, and it was a subject of heavy criticism. For me it's really when LotV came around that most Protoss games started to get as entertaining to watch as TvZ. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
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Moonerz
United States444 Posts
Remember we used to have double the minerals on each patch so holding 3 bases forever was a pretty good strategy lol. So the idea was flash should play the race that he could just build up the perfect army, the ultimate weapon, if you will  Not to mention the bio micro requirements have always been insanely high, which did not necessarily suit flash either. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 23 2024 00:22 Nebuchad wrote: Yes, this whole mindset of "the viewer likes TvZ" is probably responsible for a lot of the latency that we got with solving protoss issues. If it's a common understanding that people want to watch TvZ anyway, there's no real urgency to making protoss competitive. And now you're finally speaking to where I'm at because this is exactly how I feel. If Protoss' shit design is what makes Protoss not as fun to watch as Terran and Zerg, and people, especially Blizzard, are resistant to changing Protoss' shit design because they think Warp Gate is too cool of an idea to get rid of; then I don't care if Protoss doesn't win as much as the other races. At the level that 99.9% of the players playing the game are playing at, Protoss IS balanced, in fact it's doing quite well. It's only at the top level of the pro scene where Protoss isn't balanced, and at that level how fun the race is to watch, matters because at that level Starcraft needs to be fun to watch if its going to be successful and self-sustaining as an esport. So to make it clear. I'd love to see Protoss competitive and winning tournaments. But if we're just to keep repeating: On February 22 2024 23:38 Nasigil wrote: On the other hand, PvT and PvZ had quite a long period of time of being just not very interesting to watch, you either get some kind of timing all in or it's turtling to late game. It could produce some nice games but no where near the level of TvZ. It has a lot to do with Protoss design that just encourages turtling and deathball, and it was a subject of heavy criticism. For me it's really when LotV came around that most Protoss games started to get as entertaining to watch as TvZ. this cycle over and over again, then I'm far less motivated to see yet another attempt to bring parity to the winrates at the top level when we have 13 years of evidence that you CAN'T balance this design at this level. I'm tired of seeing us spinning around in a circle to come back to this same conclusion over and over again. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 23 2024 05:07 Nebuchad wrote: Has it occurred to you that maybe the fact that you dislike protoss so much makes it so that you might not the best person to ask when it comes to how to change protoss in this game? Here's where that little argument falls apart. I love Protoss in Brood War. On a thematic and lore side of things, I adore Protoss. When I think back to the first time I played Protoss in middle school and the first time I heard the iconic warping in of a building with the Protoss music playing in the background I still get chills of nostalgia. I don't hate Protoss. I hate what Blizzard DID to Protoss in Starcraft 2. There is a huge difference. I want the race to be better than it is currently along with everybody else in this thread. But I honestly don't see any other way to do this and do it right long term without fixing what has always been a mistake with SC2's design for Protoss. We've tried every other option and it hasn't worked. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
On February 23 2024 05:30 Vindicare605 wrote: Here's where that little argument falls apart. I love Protoss in Brood War. On a thematic and lore side of things, I adore Protoss. When I think back to the first time I played Protoss in middle school and the first time I heard the iconic warping in of a building with the Protoss music playing in the background I still get chills of nostalgia. I don't hate Protoss. I hate what Blizzard DID to Protoss in Starcraft 2. There is a huge difference. I want the race to be better than it is currently along with everybody else in this thread. But I honestly don't see any other way to do this and do it right long term without fixing what has always been a mistake with SC2's design for Protoss. We've tried every other option and it hasn't worked. That doesn't make the argument fall apart, you're not participating in discussions about protoss lore or BW protoss, you're specifically talking about the things that you dislike. A race whose design is ruined by warpgate, whose players are less deserving and should make way to the more deserving TvZ match-up, which can only obtain balanced results if it's massively overpowered... I think there's a common stem to all of these opinions, it's your desire to be watching something else. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 23 2024 05:45 Nebuchad wrote: That doesn't make the argument fall apart, you're not participating in discussions about protoss lore or BW protoss, you're specifically talking about the things that you dislike. A race whose design is ruined by warpgate, whose players are less deserving and should make way to the more deserving TvZ match-up, which can only obtain balanced results if it's massively overpowered... I think there's a common stem to all of these opinions, it's your desire to be watching something else. If my options are watching Protoss flounder out of tournaments because all of their best players are either retired or in the military or buffing Protoss so much so that I have to watch the best players I've ever seen play this game lose to some bullshit overpowered timing that was intentionally made bullshit and overpowered JUST to appease people like you that want to see Protoss win tournaments and don't care how they do it, then you're damn straight I'd rather be watching the former. Also you keep trying to use the word "deserving." It is totally irrelevant to this conversation and it has always been. Every player in the pro scene is deserving, and never have I once said that any player doesn't DESERVE to win. But the reality is that not every player is going to be ABLE to win, because not every player is good enough to win. I watch many kinds of professional sports, and guys work their asses off every single year in every single sport across every single country in the civilized world, there are always ALWAYS ALWAYS going to be way more losers than winners. That's the nature of the beast. Don't try and twist my saying that player A is not as good of a player as player B into me saying that player A is less deserving as player B. Sports isn't about watching every deserving player get their moment to stand with the gold medal in their teeth. Sports is about watching the struggle and seeing who prevails anyway and the pure competition that goes along with it. You fuck with that competition for the sake of parity, and you destroy any reason to give those victories any sort of respect. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
On February 23 2024 06:04 Vindicare605 wrote: If my options are watching Protoss flounder out of tournaments because all of their best players are either retired or in the military or buffing Protoss so much so that I have to watch the best players I've ever seen play this game lose to some bullshit overpowered timing that was intentionally made bullshit and overpowered JUST to appease people like you that want to see Protoss win tournaments and don't care how they do it, then you're damn straight I'd rather be watching the former. Also you keep trying to use the word "deserving." It is totally irrelevant to this conversation and it has always been. Every player in the pro scene is deserving, and never have I once said that any player doesn't DESERVE to win. But the reality is that not every player is going to be ABLE to win, because not every player is good enough to win. I watch many kinds of professional sports, and guys work their asses off every single year in every single sport across every single country in the civilized world, there are always ALWAYS ALWAYS going to be way more losers than winners. That's the nature of the beast. Don't try and twist my saying that player A is not as good of a player as player B into me saying that player A is less deserving as player B. Sports isn't about watching every deserving player get their moment to stand with the gold medal in their teeth. Sports is about watching the struggle and seeing who prevails anyway and the pure competition that goes along with it. You fuck with that compeitition for the sake of parity, and you destroy any reason to give those victories any sort of respect. That's good, I'm glad we agree on what you think. The distinction that you made between deserving to win and being good enough to win is escaping me. What is someone who isn't deserving of winning, if not someone who isn't good enough to win? I agree with you that when parity is in question victories shouldn't be given a ton of respect, which is why I haven't been giving a ton of respect to tournament wins in the last five years. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16056 Posts
On February 23 2024 06:32 Nebuchad wrote: That's good, I'm glad we agree on what you think. The distinction that you made between deserving to win and being good enough to win is escaping me. What is someone who isn't deserving of winning, if not someone who isn't good enough to win? On the chance you're asking me this genuinely because you don't know, let me try to actually explain it. You must not watch a lot of sports because this is true of every sport. If you watch an event like the Olympics. At the Olympics, you have athletes gathering from all over the world just to compete at their one event as a representative of their country. Just BEING at the olympics is an accomplishment, because these athletes had to win out over every other athlete in their country just for the honor of competing at that one event. To even be in a position where you're trying to qualify for the Olympics, you have to be training and practicing every day. Your life needs to be that sport just to have a chance of making it to the Olympics, just once. There are people that work like this every single day and never even make it that far. Just like there are players right now playing SC2 with aspirations of one day competing at IEM that never will. So you work every single day, and you somehow qualify for the Olympics. This is your big chance to compete in front of the entire world for your country and you go out and compete, you try your hardest, you put every ounce of strength into your body that you have been carefully and with great discipline honing just for this moment and you go out there and something like this happens: Did you deserve to win? Did you pour every part of yourself into this one moment with the desire of winning? Yes. Did it matter? No, because how could you have expected to win, when this man who worked just as hard as you did, was clearly so much better than you were and no matter how hard you worked, you were never going to catch him. That is sports. That is competition.Multiply this same feeling hundreds, thousands and millions of times over and that's the struggle of what it means to compete in sports. The pure human spirit that's on display of watching people struggle every single day just for that chance to win is why they are thrilling to watch. But at the end of the day, only a very small group of what was already a very small group is going to be able to taste victory. It can't be any other way. I'll never be a professional athlete because I'm not good enough to be a professional athlete, I'll never compete at IEM because I'm not good enough of a Starcraft player to ever even have a hope of qualifying. The guys that are good enough to qualify, most of them will never be good enough to actually win. The ones that are good enough to actually have a chance of winning, an even smaller number of them will ever be good enough to win twice. I hope this explanation makes sense to you. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12161 Posts
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