On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials and surprise surprise Celestials are a balance headache in that game too. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
You do see the irony in attesting the devs an ego problem, while simultanousely being 100% convinced that Warpgate is a core-issue and you've always known it, right? I mean, you say it is a problem since ten years ago...a year in which Protoss dominated GSL. So if I look back now into news about the GSLs in 2014, I will find comments there from you saying "yes, it's cool that Zest won, but Warpgate is broken and needs to be removed asap"?
Also...sorry, but the fact that we don't get Warpgate removed now has nothing to do with ego or the community not wanting it, the task is simply too big to do it for the devs we have. That topic is done. Otherwise, if we had a realistic chance to revamp things, I would already partition to revamp the entire terran race, so that they finally get something to do that is not completly rage-inducing to me...
On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
You do see the irony in attesting the devs an ego problem, while simultanousely being 100% convinced that Warpgate is a core-issue and you've always known it, right? I mean, you say it is a problem since ten years ago...a year in which Protoss dominated GSL. So if I look back now into news about the GSLs in 2014, I will find comments there from you saying "yes, it's cool that Zest won, but Warpgate is broken and needs to be removed asap"?
Also...sorry, but the fact that we don't get Warpgate removed now has nothing to do with ego or the community not wanting it, the task is simply too big to do it for the devs we have. That topic is done. Otherwise, if we had a realistic chance to revamp things, I would already partition to revamp the entire terran race, so that they finally get something to do that is not completly rage-inducing to me...
If you go back to 2014, there were conversations about Warp Gate because 2014 was the height of the Blink All In Meta.
There were also lots of conversations happening about the maps, and especially about the Mothership Core, but the core problem with Warp Gate was also front and center, it was just at that time Protoss was winning and not losing.
But that right there is exactly my point. You can't balance the mechanic, the race is either the overpowered timing attack race that no one likes to play against, or watch, or its in the state it's in now. It's impossible to get it exactly right.
Just hilarious you chose that specific example of that specific year when it fits into my argument perfectly.
On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
You do see the irony in attesting the devs an ego problem, while simultanousely being 100% convinced that Warpgate is a core-issue and you've always known it, right? I mean, you say it is a problem since ten years ago...a year in which Protoss dominated GSL. So if I look back now into news about the GSLs in 2014, I will find comments there from you saying "yes, it's cool that Zest won, but Warpgate is broken and needs to be removed asap"?
Also...sorry, but the fact that we don't get Warpgate removed now has nothing to do with ego or the community not wanting it, the task is simply too big to do it for the devs we have. That topic is done. Otherwise, if we had a realistic chance to revamp things, I would already partition to revamp the entire terran race, so that they finally get something to do that is not completly rage-inducing to me...
If you go back to 2014, there were conversations about Warp Gate because 2014 was the height of the Blink All In Meta.
There were also lots of conversations happening about the maps, and especially about the Mothership Core, but the core problem with Warp Gate was also front and center, it was just at that time Protoss was winning and not losing.
But that right there is exactly my point. You can't balance the mechanic, the race is either the overpowered timing attack race that no one likes to play against, or watch, or its in the state it's in now. It's impossible to get it exactly right.
Just hilarious you chose that specific example of that specific year when it fits into my argument perfectly.
Actually you did chose it when you said "since ten years ago"
On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
You do see the irony in attesting the devs an ego problem, while simultanousely being 100% convinced that Warpgate is a core-issue and you've always known it, right? I mean, you say it is a problem since ten years ago...a year in which Protoss dominated GSL. So if I look back now into news about the GSLs in 2014, I will find comments there from you saying "yes, it's cool that Zest won, but Warpgate is broken and needs to be removed asap"?
Also...sorry, but the fact that we don't get Warpgate removed now has nothing to do with ego or the community not wanting it, the task is simply too big to do it for the devs we have. That topic is done. Otherwise, if we had a realistic chance to revamp things, I would already partition to revamp the entire terran race, so that they finally get something to do that is not completly rage-inducing to me...
When HoTS or Legacy came out there was the budget to remove and rework it, they chose not to.
Protoss’ early Legacy success were very dependent on a broken adept, since that got (rightly) tooled back they’ve never been close to where they were.
If you’re hell bent on keeping warpgate in the game, you make it a tradeoff, or make it a late game tech.
Warpgate gives you mobility and reinforcement, gateway pumps out units faster, that kinda thing. Then you can experiment with giving Protoss better stock units. Do I want more stuff, that has to travel and rally, or less stuff, but can warp right in my opponent’s face?
It could have been an interesting trade off, look myself and a thousand other people have suggested things over a decade+
Warpgate is just the default, it’s just better than gateways. The fact it even needs upgraded feels a bit silly because it’s never not upgraded. There’s literally no reason not to outside of hyper-optimised builds.
If we’re even talking identity, well Protoss’ BW identity was beefy, scary basic units and tech units augmented it.
In SC2 their base units aren’t nearly as scary. They don’t really fit the niche they did in that game at all,
Ok Warpgate is at this stage enshrined, but you’re lost a lot of identity in the process.
In BW the high technology, advanced race was beefy. Better comparatively in lower numbers than its equivalents. That absolutely thematically fits.
If we were to design an RTS from complete scratch, and consider which faction should be expensive but supply efficient, the faction that should be that is the hyper advanced one
But in SC2 you can’t do that with Toss because gateway units have to relatively suck and scale badly to accommodate warpgate
On August 20 2024 08:16 Balnazza wrote: The thing is...you can't just "remove Warpgate". This would need a massive revamp for the Protoss race, including a full year filled with patches to balance it out again. It would be the same like removing creep from the game or medivacs. You also remove a big chunk of the identity the race has...meaning you need to give it a new one. If Protoss is just the "boring normal one", while Terran and Zerg get cool stuff...that just sucks.
And there is no guarantee that "new Protoss" will in the end be a good fit for the current Protoss-players. Maybe in the process you lose some things that players like herO or MaxPax enjoy and need to play their game...and suddenly, the top-Protosses are forced to either learn an entirely new race or just switch to Terran/Zerg
Does Protoss in Brood War not have a racial identity? This argument has always been irrational and unfounded. The race LOST its racial identity from Brood War when its core units had to be nerfed down to the point where being able to warp them in wasn't totally overpowered.
Also keep this in mind. When we talk about removing Warp Gate, we mean removing it from the early game, and changing it into a late game mechanic rather than a core production mechanic that the entire race is balanced around.
Late game is when Terran has access to all of their multi pronged drops, Zerg has access to Nydus Worms and has tons of Creep Spread. The mechanics of those races scale UP as the game goes later and later. Warp Gate is the only mobility mechanic that actually scales backwards. It's at its most powerful in the early game when it allows you to reinforce timing attacks without accounting for terrain and distance and gets weaker and weaker as the mobility tools for the other two races come online and the Protoss army gets more and more relegated into being a deathball.
It has always worked this way. The race's core units fall off in the late game because they have to be balanced around this early game mechanic. This has always been how the race has worked. You have to rely on immobile support units to support those weaker core units and as the game gets spread out more and more those units become a bigger and bigger liability.
If you moved Warp Gate to a late game mechanic, you could rebalance the race's core unit stats and rework their support units so they can serve different uses that are more valuable in the late game the way that Terran and Zerg late game units do.
You just need to get it out of the early game. As long as it's there the entire army roster of Protoss has to be built around it.
Okay, putting the Tech into the Lategame is a different story...but still one full of problems.
First of all, you remove Protoss Timing Attacks from the board. Or atleast heavily influence them. If you can't warp-in your units at the front, considering how slow they are, you need something else to buff the ability to hit timing-attacks, otherwise Protoss is forced to play a standard game every time, which can't be good. Then you would need to revamp the Warp Prism, because if you can't warp in units with it, for what is it good for? It just becomes the worst Dropship in the game by a landslide. Protoss also can't really harass without it. So you would need to increase its capacity to 6 or even 8. Which then opens the problem...isn't dropping in 8 Zealots with a single dropship dangerously heavy? There is also the question about defense: If Protoss can't just warp-in units to defend their outer bases, do you need to strengthen Shield Batteries? Cannons? Is Protoss forced to always defend all bases with standing army, effectively forcing them to play defensive the entire game? Return of the MSC? Another new ability to protect your bases?
Don't get me wrong: It is possible. But it takes time, I'm sure such a major re-design can't be done with one patch. And all the Protoss players need to learn their race kind of "new", since all of their timings and strategies are suddenly off. So while this might lead to better Protoss results in the end, it could also result in a very underpowered race for a few weeks until more patches hit the ground. Or of course they would over-do it and Protoss suddenly becomes extremly OP because of overcorrection.
It's an operation on an open heart. If this was to succeed, in my opinion, it would need to come with an entirely new expansion, to really have the time to figure this stuff out. And we all know that won't happen.
A small problem, but still an annoying one, would also be the disconnection of the "Multiplayer"-Race from the "Singleplayer"-Race. Protoss suddenly would play very differently compared to its campaign- and CoOp-Counterparts. As I said, a small problem today, but imagine a new player is super-excited about Protoss through the Singleplayer-Content, jumps into multiplayer....aaaand is presented with an entirely different race, build around completly different core-mechanics.
Yea it would be a lot of work. But it's work that Protoss desperately needs and has needed from the start. Blizzard should have been working on this problem fucking 10 years ago but instead we kept getting band aid after band aid because they'd rather go with what's easy than address the core problem in their shitty design.
And those same developers haven't learned their lesson because everything that's bad about Protoss design in Starcraft 2 is present again in Stormgate's Celestials and surprise surprise Celestials are a balance headache in that game too. It's an ego thing for them, they think the mechanic is cool and want desperately to make it work even though it's just a bad mechanic to have in an RTS game.
So we have a choice in Starcraft 2. We can keep doing this same tired dance over and over again, trying to dance around these core problems that Protoss has, that were never good ideas to begin with like Warp Gate and to a lesser extent like the Mothership, because they're "cool." Or we could do what should have been done a long time ago.
Like I said. I don't have any hope that we will since it's clear by now that there's an irrational attachment towards the mechanic that is just ingrained deeper now that it's been a part of the game for so long. But if that's the way the community wants to play it, then I just don't see a need to take Protoss performance concerns in tournaments seriously.
It’s just a bad mechanic, we’ve seen enough years of evidence. Or at least it’s a bad CORE mechanic, it being gated up the tech tree is another thing
They decided to implement something similar with Celestials and quel surprise people are finding it really frustrating to play against at times. As you say.
I’m not some arch-traditionalist, experiment by all means. But warpgate or similar teleporting mechanics has been shown to create a fuckload of wider problems. And tbh isn’t ‘cool’ enough to merit that trade off
Its a one hour long video i have only found in recent weeks. It is very very interesting. He talks about warpgate on multiple occasions. But if any of you only want to listen to about what he says about warpgate and don't care about the rest, go to 23:27 and 51:35. But still, the whole video is very interesting and i really enjoyed it. Even though he played only in the WoL and HotS era,still quite a lots of things are absolutely viable nowadays.
Its a one hour long video i have only found in recent weeks. It is very very interesting. He talks about warpgate on multiple occasions. But if any of you only want to listen to about what he says about warpgate and don't care about the rest, go to 23:27 and 51:35. But still, the whole video is very interesting and i really enjoyed it. Even though he played only in the WoL and HotS era,still quite a lots of things are absolutely viable nowadays.
If this is the video that I remember watching, he brings up very good points about the Sentry also. Which is a related issue, since the Sentry is a unit that requires all of the Protoss units to stay grouped together in tight balls in order to be effective.
The Sentry doesn't get talked about much anymore since the Ravager all but made it irrelevant in LOTV, but for a long time, the Sentry was basically THE unit that made the Protoss deathball possible.
When we look around at all the problems that Protoss has in LOTV especially in the late game, the same issues come up. Protoss units are terrible in small groups, Protoss armies are immobile, and if caught out of position even slightly, Protoss armies get punished much worse than Zerg or Terran armies do.
The Sentry checks all of those same boxes. It was just that before the introduction of the Ravager, it was so effective at what it did, that it allowed the Protoss deathball to win in the early game in ways that it really can't anymore.
If this is the video that I remember watching, he brings up very good points about the Sentry also. ...
Possibly, he talks about the sentry aswell. But in a bad way (like how op blocking ramps in enemy bases was before Ravagers were introduced)
Yea the Sentry is a mess of a unit I'm not defending it in any way. I'm merely pointing out how the Sentry is another unit that clearly identifies the problems in Protoss design, and it's also objectively true that ever since the Ravager made the Sentry all but irrelevant that Protoss has had a much harder time winning than it used to.
Which goes back to the bigger overall issue. Even when Protoss was winning, it was winning in a way that hardly anyone liked, which is why they ended up getting nerfed in the first place.
It's a design problem first and a balance problem second.
Even though the main story here is "Protoss can't be balanced around warp gate, and does not win major tournaments because of it", there are more things going on as well:
-Protoss was hit very hard by retirements. There is a limited pool of top players now, and SoS, Rain, Zest and others leaving hurts.
-Protoss does have tools with a very high skill cap, most notably blink and warp prisms.
-The race has great opportunities for strategic trickery, and attacking in unusual ways.
-In SC2, Protoss lost some identity as the beefy race, but gained one as time/space manipulators. This was a very conscious choice from the game designers. That no-warpgate mods like Starbow never took off tells me they were not completely wrong.
-Clem's TvP is not representative for the MU as a whole. His TvP is simply amazing, and can't be copied. UThermal breaks some of it down here, and praised herO's PvT as well
If this is the video that I remember watching, he brings up very good points about the Sentry also. ...
Possibly, he talks about the sentry aswell. But in a bad way (like how op blocking ramps in enemy bases was before Ravagers were introduced)
Yea the Sentry is a mess of a unit I'm not defending it in any way. I'm merely pointing out how the Sentry is another unit that clearly identifies the problems in Protoss design, and it's also objectively true that ever since the Ravager made the Sentry all but irrelevant that Protoss has had a much harder time winning than it used to.
Which goes back to the bigger overall issue. Even when Protoss was winning, it was winning in a way that hardly anyone liked, which is why they ended up getting nerfed in the first place.
It's a design problem first and a balance problem second.
Design or balance goes hand by hand. Protoss gateway units have to be weak by default because imagine if they could warp in strong units anywhere on the map especially early game. Hence it makes a lot of sense to me to at least test out how Toss would work with Gateway only at the start, and only have warp in as a late game option when it won't be as game breaking. And the compensate lack of gateway in other ways. Production time, hp, damage whatever. The game has a balance test mod after all. But as i said earlier, i doubt this game will receive any meaningful patches or even a small one.
I'd just like to see some pretty sweeping changes, then sticking with them for a 'season' even if they're unpopular at reception. I usually just play Z now but watching herO's games kills any desire to grind out P when you can play like that and still have the majority of each game be an uphill battle.
With how Stormgate is floundering around in a similar manner you might as well use the opportunity to breathe some new life into the game.
You could still milk Starcraft II even to this day in a multitude of ways. Hell, Battle Aces is just a glorified sc2 custom map. You could slap matchmaking for something that and other customs and people would eat it up.
We could add an upgrade which give to stalkers +2 range bonus.and +20 shield bonus, but these bonus upgrade are temporaly lost during 15 seconds (let s say) after a blink.
Protoss defend their many bases through shield battery, warp gate and recall. If you remove warp gate, their needs compensation, as protoss is alrdy quite weak on defence.
I find it stupid to blame it all on warp gate, you can say the same about any mechanic. In rts you're supposed to be supply blocked, remove supply calldown. You're not supposed to have vision anywhere on the map, or to get instant detection, remove SCAN. You're supposed to get your inc through building workers, remove MULE. MULEs have received as many complaints as the WG, btw. The races get their identity through breaking RTS norms, just see larvae and creep. If it's just the warp prism you're against, i'm with you, but the wg is cool, feels protoss and allow awesome plays to happen. Stalker blink probably is a bigger reason for its weakness, than because of warp gate. But it's no different than roaches, lings need to be weak because of inject. Or any zerg unit needs to be slightly weaker because of creep movespeed bonus. We cannot balance the game because of creep, and WG, that's why conveniently z needs to be OP and p needs to lose, give me a break.
On August 21 2024 20:48 Vision_ wrote: We could add an upgrade which give to stalkers +2 range bonus.and +20 shield bonus, but these bonus upgrade are temporaly lost during 15 seconds (let s say) after a blink.
Good luck holding 3/4-gate blink opening against that. The only way it could work is to put this as a "lategame" upgrade where you need +3 ground weapon before researching it or something.
On August 21 2024 20:48 Vision_ wrote: We could add an upgrade which give to stalkers +2 range bonus.and +20 shield bonus, but these bonus upgrade are temporaly lost during 15 seconds (let s say) after a blink.
Good luck holding 3/4-gate blink opening against that. The only way it could work is to put this as a "lategame" upgrade where you need +3 ground weapon before researching it or something.
Yes it can be unlocked after blink research, no problem but as ejzol said, the problem comes mainly from stalkers than warpgate, even if blink ability is fun
Reading diagonally what you are saying about Warpgate make me think to question you if it s the problem is to completely remove warpgate or tweak ???
Because, with a compensation for base units (which i support), the warpgate could work with a cooldown, which means that Protoss won t be able to warp gate units during a longer period after use. With this tweak, people against warpgate are satisfy and people defending warpgate keep their favorite spell. Then you can merge +2 range (with desactivation after blink) and blink ability in order to not "add another step in the meta". Warprism will now be a little bit less interessant, so the arbiter ability "could be added".
Then in the hub (shortcuts), warpgate units will be built like "advanced structure", the only thing protoss player will have to do is to bind a new key in gateway to access in the sub panel with warpgat-able units
It makes sense, because historically, warpgate units allow shorter building time compared to units built inside gateway while it s an advantage to create units far from their base.
On August 22 2024 14:38 ejozl wrote: Protoss defend their many bases through shield battery, warp gate and recall. If you remove warp gate, their needs compensation, as protoss is alrdy quite weak on defence.
I find it stupid to blame it all on warp gate, you can say the same about any mechanic. In rts you're supposed to be supply blocked, remove supply calldown. You're not supposed to have vision anywhere on the map, or to get instant detection, remove SCAN. You're supposed to get your inc through building workers, remove MULE. MULEs have received as many complaints as the WG, btw. The races get their identity through breaking RTS norms, just see larvae and creep. If it's just the warp prism you're against, i'm with you, but the wg is cool, feels protoss and allow awesome plays to happen. Stalker blink probably is a bigger reason for its weakness, than because of warp gate. But it's no different than roaches, lings need to be weak because of inject. Or any zerg unit needs to be slightly weaker because of creep movespeed bonus. We cannot balance the game because of creep, and WG, that's why conveniently z needs to be OP and p needs to lose, give me a break.
WG is just fundamentally a bad mechanic as a main production method. I think many are OK keeping it in some way, be it a late game upgrade or requiring prisms etc.
It’s cool-looking and fits the race thematically extremely well, but it’s really difficult to balance, and causes most of Toss’ issues.
I mean they are weak in defence and need things like battery and recall, but this is largely because of Warpgate. You can’t have gateway units as potent as their equivalents because they can show up outside the enemy’s base. As they’re weaker and scale worse, splitting armies becomes harder to do and leaves gaps defensively. Also makes it harder to roam the map and do things like clearing creep.
Hence Protoss tends to bounce between periods of being overpowered or frustrating to play against, or undertuned at the top levels.
Legacy also doesn’t exactly suit the race either, the other two’s macro mechanics scale much better the more bases and spread-out things are, and Legacy sees more bases obtained, faster. Also the risk/reward of those mechanics also starts skewing towards mostly reward due to the faster eco. Muling hard versus saving some energy for scans, there’s a trade-off that’s quite meaningful when you have 1/2 OCs, but you can just do both when you’re at 7/8+. To take one example.
It’s not just SC2 either, we’ve seen already in Stormgate with the Celestials having a version of it that it causes a whole bunch of problems.
Other races have mechanics that may or may not be too powerful at times, but I don’t think they’re fundamentally flawed in the same way Warpgate is. There needs to be a trade-off, if you make it the default mode of production for basic units, you have to weaken those units.
You could, for example strengthen gateway units, make gateways the default and say, make warping in a Nexus ability, that enables a warp-in but makes your next round of production slower. You can create some risk/reward between say chronoing your gates hardcore and pumping out lots of units, or reinforcing an attack or defence at the expense of slower production cycles.
Just one example, but as it is now there is no trade-off, you get Warpgate because it is better. Well, there is a trade-off, it’s weaker gateway units.
If Protoss had stronger, more robust gateway units, as well as having their macro mechanics scale better, they’d be more competitive at the top level. If gateways+chrono was a potent option to pump out extra units, top Protoss pros would have that APM sink to bludgeon opppnents with sheer macro in the late game.
It’s all academic now given WG is exceptionally unlikely to change, many of us advocating for a rethink have always done so under the rationale it’s extremely difficult to balance around, and if you retooled it you can make Protoss more potent in the hands of skilled players. Many of us have certain biases clearly shown by our TL icons :p
Way I see it you can have one or the other. A ‘cool’ mechanic that’s incredibly hard to balance around, and if push comes to shove often goes the side of Protoss being underpowered rather than overpowered, as when it’s OP it’s often due to very frustrating strats. Or rework that mechanic and make it easier to bring the faction into line with the other two.
It's not WG alone, 3 gate blink is abusing blink, wg and prism blink just to make a shitty unit powerful. If we had no WG and a strong dragoon, the unit would still need a power cap, because of guardian shield, recall (nexus and mship), because it fits well with the colossus, because zlots tank well, etc. and etc.. It's all of the factors together and WG is only one side of the story. We don't complain about how weak the roach needs to be and cannot be balanced, due to creep, inject, ravager morph, its synergy with hydras and ofc the zerg WG, the nydus worm. And then excusing that z can only be too powerful or too weak, and therefore it's better that zerg remain too weak, because it's frustrating the way you lose to it.
EPT
