|
Disclaimer: I am not in possession of a beta key. My S][C knowledge is based on observations from streams and semi-religious watching of the Day[9] daily, so I may be off-base here. In which case, darn, should have done something more useful with the time. Until that's demonstrated - ONWARD!
Summary
My personal pet theory about the balance of SC:BW is that the ability to be balanced inheres most closely in the fact that each army is (basically) independently conceived and constructed on its own pattern. The army "feel" is therefore both fairly natural and complete - each army can deal with everything, because it is a complete army. The army is made up of "positive units": units designed to do something.
Introduction: Real-Life Analogy
Think for a minute about a real life armed force. We don't go up against an enemy and say, "Okay, what do we build to counter him?" Sometimes if a war goes on long enough, this starts happening; but at the start of a war, each army is taking its years of experience, which have resulted in the equipment they have, and trying to fit it into the (new) situations at hand. That is to say, a real life war (at least between even roughly equivalent powers) is conducted on a soft-counter model most of the time.
If we consider the armies of SC:BW, you see we have three societies which have, through experience and differing cultures, built their armies, to suit their needs, on different principles: flexibility and efficiency (Terran), strength and power (Protoss), and speed, numbers, and damage (Zerg).
But within that philosophy, the army is built as a self-contained force: each army has units which fill roles. The army needs grunts, somebody to actually hold the line: Marine, Zealot, Zergling, Hydralisk. (It may turn out that grunts fare poorly in actual combat against overwhelming force: thus the wise commander withholds his Marines against the Protoss.) The army needs to be able to support those troops in tricky spots: Tanks, Dragoons, Lurkers. The army needs to break defenses: Sieged Tanks, Reavers, Guardians. The army needs to attack from the air: Wraith, Scout, Mutalisk. The army therefore needs air dominance: Valkyrie, Corsair, Scourge, Devourer. The army needs to defend itself from air attacks: Goliath. The army needs scouts and raiders: Vultures, Dark Templar, Observers, Overlords. The army wants, when it comes down to it, something to just wipe stuff out: Battlecruiser, Carrier, Ultralisk, Nuke. Add in the "special talents" to round out the army by adding to its damage (storm, plague, irradiate), its defense (matrix, swarm, hallucination, heal) or just doing weird stuff (feedback, stasis, parasite, blind) and you get a well-rounded army. But it's still defined: The Terran army, with its focus on versatility, has "a unit for that" far more than the other armies. The Protoss army, with its focus on damage, has tons of "tanking" units: zealot, dragoon, archon. The Zerg units are virtually all damage machines, and there are lots of them.
The Key Part of My Argument: "Role"
What I am arguing is that Starcraft II units need to be defined - in our thinking and Blizzard's as they develop the game - first in terms of positive roles, just like Broodwar's seem to be. The question is not, "What does this kill?" but "What does this do?" A corsair does not "counter mutas" (although it does) - this is negative, this is bad, this is "counter logic". A corsair provides air superiority. This is positive. This is good. This is what a corsair does. A corsair counters mutalisks because it provides air superiority.
But you don't use corsairs in PvT because the Terran army is largely ground-based and the corsair only provides air superiority. You don't not use corsairs in PvT "because the Goliath provides ground-based air defense" (although it does, of course), but because the Terran army doesn't give a corsair targets. The Terran army composition removes the usefulness of the corsair's role.
Contrast and Problem: "Counter"
What I am concerned about, when it comes to Starcraft II, is that this mentality - the self-contained complete army - has been replaced by a "counter-based" design. I am not sure whether this is on the part of the game designers, the players and strategists, or both; or is completely accidental, but the mindset is proving, I think, detrimental to the game. This is especially demonstrated by the three units causing the most bitching: Marauder, Roach, and Immortal, which (I believe) are probably in concept all specifically "anti-something" units.
It's easy to see how we got to this kind of thinking: years of Starcraft:Broodwar gameplay have accustomed us to certain facts: zealots > tanks > dragoons > firebats > zerglings > goliaths > mutas > zealots or whatever circles you care to draw; when looking at the new game, it's therefore only natural to say, "What beats X?" But this is insufficient.
Look at the problems when you design a game with units based on counters: the Immortal (I almost called it the Immoral) is an obvious solution to the new problem the Protoss commanders faced, which was the siege tank.
Great. Siege Tank gone. Brilliant military logic on the part of the Judicators - but what is the Immortal's place in the game? The game is not just PvT, so the Immortal cannot exist merely to counter tanks; that's not a good unit design. "Anti-armor" is a little bit better, but only if there actually are other armor units in the game. And more to the point, the Immortal's uniqueness as a unit design lies not in its attack (which can be altered at will and still "fit") but in its damage resistance - which again is only useful if other units than tanks are dealing out massive damage. In short: it's a sweet idea for a unit - but what does it do? Eating tanks for breakfast is insufficient: it's not a role.
Disclaimer Part II: The Good
Now, people who have actually played the game are liable to take issue with my specific examples. I advance this theory very carefully, because I don't have actual playing time evidence for this, and can only spend so much time watching streams. And it's not all bad, of course: I really do think Blizzard stuck to sound design for most of the game and these few units are just throwing it off for the time being.
Most units still clearly have roles: Marines, Zealots, Zerglings are just the same grunts as always. Reapers provide harassment, Hellions scouting and support (and sometimes harass). Colossi, at least in theory, are there to mow down ground troops; that is, if corsairs were air superiority, the colossus is ground superiority. (Whether or not it does this successfully I leave as an exercise to the reader.) The Warp Ray is another example of a sweet new unit which seems to have a clear role: remove massive targets. Buildings? Gone. Other huge "kill-everything" units - okay, I haven't watched enough streams - but at least the Warp Ray clearly exists to do something, the possibility of doing that something is not confined to one unit, and that something is not "counter this". It may need balancing and tweaking, but the Warp Ray is a good unit concept, in my book.
Hypothesis: Based on the above discussion, what I think happened with certain units (Roach, Immortal, Marauder - did you see that coming?) is that they were conceived using the bad "counter" approach to design ("Let's make sure X race can counter Y units!"), and in order to make them actually useful in the whole game, they ended up very buffed and therefore at least slightly overpowered. (I use "overpowered" here to mean "way more useful all the time than other units available to the player", not "broken", which would involve the balance between races.)
|
Interesting theory, you restated fairly eloquently what I think a lot of people are feeling right. The key triad of the armored units and their counters is almost certainly the issue, and I feel like the game would open up significantly if they simply didn't exist. Can you imagine a game where your go-to unit/counter was not one of the three? They don't have to be totally removed, just toned down.
|
Excellent post, and i fully agree. The mentality seems to go down in a bad circle. Where as one unit X is like this, therefore unit Y and Z must be able to do this. Since Y and Z does this, unit S needs to do this and so on. That the units people are mostly having issues with now (Roach, Marauder, Immortal) can probably be traced back to the evil circle created by a first "badly" thought out role which needs to be answered to by inventing counter roles. This makes units usefulness based around each other, instead of a good role. Think this was mentioned in another post about roaches.
And dont worry about not being in the beta when youre are discussing the philosophical aspects of the game, in such a debate it only matters whether youre opinion is well reasoned 
|
Although I weakly agree with a few of the sentiments you're putting out there, it's not clear whether or not there is a functional difference when we speak in terms of "roles" instead of "counters". Those seem the same, just inverted.
I'd been trying to get people to think less in terms of counters and more in terms of timings and plans and what units can accomplish certain things given your opponent's possible choices... but that isn't quite as intuitive as "role" and "counter"-type language.
I do support some kinds of elaborated "counter" language, like "strategic" vs. "statistical" counters.
|
Good point. In BW units were designed to be interesting in and of themselves and then countered other units not because they artificially did 3x damage to that armor type but because of some feature of the unit. The unit lays mines, has longer range, does splash damage, can surround you easily, can fight well in a chokepoint, etc. Then you get even more interesting relationships where units win against others in certain situations, not just as an absolute. I.E. zerglings beat zealots in the open but not in a choke point. Vultures beat dragoons but only in small numbers and if they are microd well.
|
I was really sad when I first saw this on the SC2 website...
The remaining dragoons have become the immortals, refitted with twin phase disruptors and hardened energy shields that can shrug off the most powerful weapon strikes - though at the cost of leaving them more vulnerable to the pinprick attacks of lesser foes. The heavily armed and shielded immortals give critical fire support to the ferocious legions of zealots by eliminating enemy artillery and ranged attackers, allowing the zealots to close in and complete their work of destruction. Protoss Immortals' shields are very effective against Siege Tanks
Was there really a need for this Blizzard?
Protoss were already stronger against Siege Tanks for the following reasons...
- Charge
- Blink
- Smartcast + Storm
- Warp-in
- no more spider mines
But for some unknown reason they decided to create this unit so that breaking a push would be much more simple...
Are statistical counters more fun then tactical or strategical counters?
EDIT: funny thing about the picture... there's not a single zealot on it!!!
|
To the OP, I agree with most of what you've said.
Units should be designed to fill a role within an army, not necessarily to counter a specific unit in an opposing army. As a side effect of its design it may counter an enemy then so be it. But to create artificial counters (unit does +30 damage to armor and has a reinforced shield) leads to artificial, boring, and silly unit balance.
|
I've read the post and it's an excellent analysis.
But, what do you suggest Blizzard do with the "bad"? Can't just scratch'em at this stage.
What I think is quite the opposite of most people... I believe Blizzard should keep making the 'gimmicks', and fix it from there. Because that was kind of how BW was created. They do have quite a difficult job. Blizzard could neither create entirely from their imagination (gimmick) nor logic (counters). Because favoring either side will create an undesirable trend in the game play development.
In the end, I think the cheesy stuff actually makes the game... because they leave room for the players to explore, instead of pre-determined by the designers.
By the way I really don't think Zergling > Goliath, but again a lot of things in BW are situational.
|
My first responce to the current predicament is to change the damage to be more anti-armor specific and raise the gas cost on the unholy trinity (roach, marauder, immortal). At the same time I know this is a complicated problem and no one solution is perfect.
|
I'm not sure if the semantic distinction you're making is as important or meaningful as you think it is. However, you do make a point that is, I think, important, though it shouldn't be over-stated; that units should be designed to function and play a role within a larger army, rather than to function on its own as an unstoppable strike-force. But I think things are a bit fuzzier than you're making them out to be...
However, even so, I think the Immortal is fine in this regard; it actually has very well-defined role. This role is one that is somewhat new to SC, though; as you said, it is designed to fulfill the role of the "tank," a damage-soaker for weaker units and a destroyer of high-damage units that would pose a threat to these weaker units. It is designed to play a role in the army, to complement the weaknesses of other units, and is really only able to function effectively in all but certain situations with their assistance. The Marauder plays the same basic role as a damage-soaker and anti-armor. The Roach is a "tank" as well, though with key differences.
The problem with some of these units, specifically the Marauder, is not that it doesn't have a role and is merely designed to counter certain units; it's that it has multiple roles, both of which it is too good at. It was designed with two different roles in mind: on the one hand, the anti-armor, tank role, in which it is designed to deal with heavy-hitting armored units by absorbing damage and quickly destroying them (like the Immortal); and on the other hand, a Marine support role, designed to help Marines effectively deal with fast, light (mainly melee) units. Now, this dual role is great as it is, both since it makes units more interesting, and since the two roles overlap in many places; but as it stands now, this makes the Marauder too overall well-rounded, so that in many circumstances it really doesn't need other combat units to round it out and make it effective, as it was designed to.
Similar arguments could be made about the Roach, though I think that, with all the nerfs, the Roach is really fine in this regard in pretty much all matchups except ZvZ.
So yeah.
|
I would say that overall, roles and counters are in many ways the same...to me the complex gameplay is how you overcome those counters.
Take your corsair example. The corsair is a counter to mass air....regardless of whether you want to define it as air superiority or what have you. How the corsair does this is by hitting a critical mass of corsairs such that no economic feasible air force can stop it. But the corsair has a couple of vulnerabilities, being flanked on both sides, and being fairly weak in small numbers. This gave the zerg especially ways to counter the corsair. But make no mistake, once corsair numbers get to be so high air just isn't an option....until you get to units like the devourer....the hard counter to the corsair.
Now lets look at the immortal. The immortal is the hard counter to high damage/armored units. Its does this through its hardened shields. Hardened shields are weak to emp and pinprick attacks, but get enough of them and you have to move away from armoured units.
I will say however, that there is a fundamental difference between SCI and SCII that does make the counter system different....its the SPEED of high damage.
In SCI, high damage came with a big price. Guardians were slow and expensive, reavers were slow and expensive. Siege Tanks....killed their own guys and were vulnerable while sieging, also having to siege up in teh first place made them slow. Carriers were high tier, etc. Zerglings are high damage and fast....but also very weak to splash. In fact i'd say the only fast and durable high damage unit in SCI was the archon.
What this meant was that counters didn't have to be available right away in SCI. A field of high damage units were vulnerable and slow.
In SCII, high damage units are frequent, they are fast, and they durable (aka mauraders, roaches, and immortals/collossus). A ball of units is high damage, and its fast. You have to counters ready immediately or you may get rolled over. You don't have the same amount of game time to flank, switch units, apply tactics, etc.
So overall I think the types of counters/roles in both games is the same, but the fundamentals of how to counter those units is what has changed.
|
On April 07 2010 12:22 Spec wrote:
I've read the post and it's an excellent analysis.
But, what do you suggest Blizzard do with the "bad"? Can't just scratch'em at this stage...
-> Immortal: this - as the first of the unholy trinity which saw the light of day - I am inclined to pinpoint as the origin of the problem. The mechanic is really cool, it's just that its mechanic only really helps against 1 other unit in the game. (And maybe the Thor? idk) Honestly I don't know what to do: my impulse is to relegate it to the campaign, let the metagame develop, and see whether it could be worked back in as one of the (almost certain) expansion units.
If that's completely unfeasible, then I would want to alter the shield mechanic: my concept would be to make it a shield vs. a certain damage type. This is actually what I thought it was at the first release of beta videos. I was thinking tank does explosive damage -> immortal is shielded -> shield deflects/reduces explosive damage. In SC:BW, this would mean tank, goon, hydra damage (and a couple others, I think) would be reduced/eliminated vs immortals; of course, damage and armor types have been changed, but we're still limited to three or four of each (I think) so this sort of concept would make it useful: it would be a "tanking" unit, similar to ultras in late-game ZvT. That's my fix.
-> Roach: I don't believe the roach is actually a problem, except that it's redundant, so to be useful it has to be OP compared to other options. Zerg already had ling and hydra as foundation units; the roach is unnecessary conceptually. My ideal solution would be to get rid of it; it's a little late for that but enough people hate it that this might actually be feasible.
If not, I would move it way down the tech tree. I can see a couple options: I think the best would be to make it a mutation form from another unit. Here's what I want to do with it - I haven't thought about this before, this is off the top of my head - make it a Drone mutation, researchable at Lair level or so: if you get in trouble you'd be able to quickly morph a ranged, fast regenerating unit - of course the trade-off is that you're losing miners. It's "role" would be base defense, with possibilities of course for use in beefing up a timing attack. It would have to be fairly slow and low HP. You might have to nerf Queens a little to balance this, although P and T do have the longer range siege units.
-> Marauder: I really like this unit, just because it's infantry with a punch. I don't like its current state, of course, when people are going all marauder all the time. I also haven't watched nearly as much T play as the other two races, so I don't have as good a feel for what I would like to do with it. This may sound utterly crazy, but at the moment what strikes me as the best idea would be to make the following changes: remove anti-air from the marine (this never made logical sense anyway, although m&m vs muta is awesome in-game) and make the marauder a tier 1.5 anti-air infantry unit. Give it some vs ground of course but basically make it a marine with a SAM. Okay, wild idea, but I don't have anything better atm.
|
Great theory, it makes perfect sense to me. However, it should be easy enough to fix the big three with a slight adjustment to their roles.
The immortal should be a unit that provides staying power- it allows a protoss army to move forward in the face of fire by drawing fire and staying alive for a long time. This in no way requires hardened shields, although that ability is cool. Instead, Immortals could simply be beefy- give them massive shields and health that allows them to stay alive, without discriminating against certain types of units. In this circumstance, the immortal fits its role, a hard to kill unit that provides staying power for protoss without forcing other races out of certain tech choices just because certain units would be overly ineffective.
In similar fashion, the marauder appears to be a unit that is designed to provide some heavy firepower to a bio army. It allows a ground army to take down large targets that marines would be incapable of bringing down on their own. As such, I would make the marauder more expensive, but at the same time boost their ability to take down armored units, at the expense of their ability to clear away smaller units. Think the thor. They would excel at downing tanks, the new immortal, colossi, and ultras. They wouldnt be massable on the scale of marines, instead they would function as the opposite of firebats, a unit thrown in to deal with certain threats.
The roach should feature a sort of hybrid of the above two changes. Zerg already has lings, a massable unit designed to give ground control and, in high enough numbers, deal massive amounts of damage to anything on 2 (or whatever number) legs, but are extremely fragile. Hydras provide a solid g to a and g to g defense, but also are fragile. Therefore roaches have a similar job to the immortal: provide staying power and allow smaller units to get into battle without being torn to bits. The best way to change the current roach to better slot that role without requiring counters would be to make it into an immortal type unit: give it a slightly longer range, keep the health and armor the same, but up the food to 2 or 3. This also might require switching the tech placement of hydras and roaches. People should have a few of them to keep lings and hydras alive before the battle starts, but they shouldn't be massable on their own.
The result of these three unit changes doesnt change the roles of the units too much, but instead solidifies their roles and the way they go about filling them. immortals would no longer require marauders to be killed, instead enough tanks could take them down, but at the expense of not firing at the little units swarming to kill them. similarly, roaches cannot be massed, forcing more diverse zerg unit composition, and eliminating the need to get marauders or immortals at their very sight. Finally, the changes to marauders make them a complimentary unit, rather than anything massable, and with the changes to the other units, the terran player has no need to reach for them at every opportunity, freeing the entire tech tree for play.
|
I think the main reason blizzard decided to make units have some "harder" counters in this sequal is because in BW there were frequent situations where there would only a low number of different types of units in an armies composition, and that army could still be effective.
Lurker+Ling. Muta+Ling. Medic+marine. There's countless examples and I'm sure even a few which just include 1 type of unit only.
Is this a bad thing? Maybe, maybe not. I think the goal, however, was to reward people for injecting more variety into their armies in SC2, and using several unit types. The reward of succeeding at this goal would hopefully be more varied and entertaining gameplay.
Now whether or not that goal is manifesting itself in the gameplay, is up for debate. However, I would argue that it is. There are some match-ups that need serious tweaking where only 1 type of unit or army is the optimum. But there are several match-ups where a multitude of units are used, far more than their BW counterparts. A few are broken, but hey. Beta.
|
On April 07 2010 13:07 Musoeun wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2010 12:22 Spec wrote:
I've read the post and it's an excellent analysis.
But, what do you suggest Blizzard do with the "bad"? Can't just scratch'em at this stage... -> Immortal: this - as the first of the unholy trinity which saw the light of day - I am inclined to pinpoint as the origin of the problem. The mechanic is really cool, it's just that its mechanic only really helps against 1 other unit in the game. (And maybe the Thor? idk) Honestly I don't know what to do: my impulse is to relegate it to the campaign, let the metagame develop, and see whether it could be worked back in as one of the (almost certain) expansion units. If that's completely unfeasible, then I would want to alter the shield mechanic: my concept would be to make it a shield vs. a certain damage type. This is actually what I thought it was at the first release of beta videos. I was thinking tank does explosive damage -> immortal is shielded -> shield deflects/reduces explosive damage. In SC:BW, this would mean tank, goon, hydra damage (and a couple others, I think) would be reduced/eliminated vs immortals; of course, damage and armor types have been changed, but we're still limited to three or four of each (I think) so this sort of concept would make it useful: it would be a "tanking" unit, similar to ultras in late-game ZvT. That's my fix.
I agree with this. I posted in the other thread about it. Honestly, it doesn't feel to me like the immortal has a place in the toss lineup except to counter Thor (assuming marauders get a serious re-work), and i think that's something we could work around with the rest of our units at the moment. I just don't see building a unit with "staying power" that isn't a serious threat to anything in front of it. Similarly, if the shield were to take a serious hit, immortals would be very hard to keep alive long enough to deliver their damage to thors. If the immortal is to loose a significant portion of it's shield or damage then it just needs to be taken out as a matter of redundancy.
I'd love to see some creative niche role designed for the unit, or it's replacement, but i just can't think of one that's really open with the threat of marauders gone.
|
I have previously posted a topic about 'supposed roles' for each unit in the game regardless of match-up. I think that Blizzard should design the units around these concepts.
Terran:
Marine - Bio DPS'r
Marauder - anti-melee unit (what's the slow for?)
Ghost - unit sniper and anti-shield
Reaper - harass
Hellion - Mech AoE DPS'r
Siege Tank - longranged Mech AoE nuker
Thor - unit sniper, anti-air
Viking - Anti-air, harass
Banshee - air dps'r, Harass
Medivac - Bio Army Support, Transport
Raven - All-around support unit
Battlecruiser - dps'r and unit sniper
Zerg:
Overlord - supply and transport
Overseer - scout and detection
Queen - macromanagement
Zergling - melee DPS'er
Baneling - AoE nuker
Roach - ranged tank, harass
Hydralisk - ranged DPS'er
Infestor - all-around support unit
Mutalisk - air dps'r, harass
Corruptor - anti-air
Ultralisk - melee tank and aoe dps'r
Brood Lord - long ranged DPS'r
Protoss:
Zealot - melee DPS'er
Stalker - ranged DPS'er
Sentry - support caster
High Templar - offensive caster
Dark Templar - melee nuker, ground harass unit
Archon - AoE nuker and tank
Observer - scout and detection
Warp Prism - transport
Immortal - ranged nuker and tank
Colossus - long ranged AoE Nuker, harass
Phoenix - anti-air, unit sniper
Void Ray - harass, anti-tank
Carrier - air DPS'er
Mothership - all around support unit
Source: My topic - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118548
|
I generally agree with the OP. In particular, I do feel that it's really important to reiterate that the focus of units should be roles rather than counters. For those questioning the significance of the terminology, it is less about the words and more about the method of thinking and the process of that thinking.
As noted, when we talk about counters, we only really look at that in Brood War Protoss players had all of these nice, rather expensive units but there was no one, good counter to Siege Tanks. Enter the Immortal.
However, from a role point of view, we see that the issue is not so much that a counter is required specifically for the Siege Tank, because what if those pesky Terrans go and develop other units like the Siege Tank yet different in key aspects from it? Rather, we are identifying that we lack a unit that can absorb significant single-hit firepower. We need something to fill that role. So now we want a unit that can get within range of these high firepower units and not die. We want this unit to be just dangerous enough to draw firepower to it despite that would mean inefficient use of this firepower by our enemy. However, we don't want this unit to be so dangerous that we need to invest so many resources into it that it becomes so massive an investment such as a Carrier or Battlecruiser because we want this unit to be somewhat expendable.
So now let's take those specs and consider what this offers our army:
If we have this unit, then we can put pressure on enemy units with a lot of single-shot firepower without risking our other units. Because of this, we discourage our opponent from investing too much in these high firepower units and to instead invest more in other types of units. What these are we won't necessarily know, but we do know that they will not be the high firepower units that have been giving our other units so many problems. This, in turn, will allow us to make safer usage of our other units.
We may also wish to consider that in Brood War, Zealots did a fairly good job of dealing with Tanks but fell to Tanks' support units. By bringing this new unit into play, we are forcing the enemy to use their non-siege/lower single-shot firepower support units on our new unit rather than our Zealots, which may allow our Zealots to be more effective. Thus, our new unit is in fact not countering anything, but rather is taking on a role new to our army and our opponent now needs to respond to this role.
Finally, we also know that we had some issues with enemy casters, specifically Science Vessels, countering our own casters and even decreasing the effectiveness of our army whose effectiveness against the enemy set-up could already well be questioned. The enemy likely knows this was a serious issue for us and will likely maintain such capability. A direct counter might be nice, but that is beyond the scope of this unit. However, we may be able to refine the role of this unit by making its durability shield/energy-based and combined with its primary role, this secondary effect makes this unit a target of those enemy spellcasters, thereby meaning that other units in our arsenal may not be targeted/may be spared. Note rather interestingly though that the role of the unit has not really changed here with this added functionality- the unit is still intended to absorb damage, abilities, etc... that might otherwise decimate our army.
So, the difference that occurs when we approach the design of this unit from the role standpoint, is twofold- first, we find that significant damage output is not required from this unit, we just need enough so that we can kill high-firepower units reasonably fast once we close the distance to them. Second, we notice that this unit should "take hits for the team", that's it's job, to take the devastating blows that would slaughter other units and in turn keep those units from being slaughtered. When we consider the implications of that, we recognize that we can go beyond just leveraging this unit as a threat against high-firepower but long cooldown enemy units (generally, siege units) and that we can also try to absorb the "attacks" of spellcasters and their ilk. In doing so, we may sacrifice this unit but in doing so preserve our more fragile units that have greater firepower/utility.
So when we compare this role to the Immortal, we find that Blizzard actually did a fairly good job- except that the DPS against "Armored" units is rather sizable. It's overkill for dealing with most siege units since the Immortal can absorb at least ten of their slow-firing shots before beginning to take serious damage while we have other units to deal with the siege units' support (ie Stalkers, Sentries, Collossi, etc...) and it's quite possibly driving up the cost of our unit unnecessarily- and it's also pulling it towards fulfilling other, damage-centric roles but those aren't roles we really want this unit to fulfill.
Now, let's look at the Immortal versus Terran mech in Brood War. The ideal ground Terran counter to the Immortal would be the Goliath, because it doesn't overkill much on damage and has a pretty good firing rate while being decently massable and good at supporting Siege Tanks overall. To check that the Immortal still has our intended effect, we consider that in Brood War Terrans favor Vultures over Goliaths to support their Tanks in the early and early mid-game at a bare minimum until Arbiters or Carriers come out and even then Terrans tend to prefer skewing as heavily towards Vultures as they can get away with. Our Immortal would force the Terran to consider sacrificing either Vulture or Siege Tank production to bring out more Goliaths earlier (assuming the Immortal is lower than the Arbiter and Carrier in the tech tree). Also, Goliaths cost a fair bit of gas and even if the Terran cuts Vultures to produce Goliaths to support the Siege Tanks, this should still reduce the number of Siege Tanks we will face because it should reduce the gas income that the Terran can put towards Siege Tanks. If, later in the game Terran gets Science Vessels out and EMPs our Immortals to make them vulnerable to all of his mech units, then he uses those EMPs against our Immortals at the cost of defending against Arbiter Recall or Stasis as well as at the cost of preventing High Templar Storms or softening up the rest of our army. Nevertheless, this is all well and good, but we run into an issue with the Immortal. We would consider that the Goliath, being a mech unit, will take extra damage and because of this it will not actually prove an effective counter. In fact, no mech unit will and thus the Terran will need to turn to bio or a mix of bio and mech- but this plays completely into our hands as we have plenty of ways to deal with bio. Alternately the Terran needs to get a ton of Science Vessels out asap to constantly EMP our Immortals but this leaves his force completely open to Stasis. However, if we reduce the Immortal's damage output against armored targets, we retain its role and its effectiveness but make the Goliath feasible against it, which is fine because the Goliath is a unit we never intended the Immortal to counter or to play any role against.
Going back to StarCraft 2, we see that among Terran mech units, the Viking in ground mode *SHOULD* fare well against the Immortal. It has a cooldown of only one second and deals 14 damage while remaining modestly massable. Increasing Viking production to deal with our Immortals will inflict some economic penalties on the Terran player (and will ensure fewer Hellions and fewer Siege Tanks relatively which opens other options for us). However, the Viking in ground mode currently is not amazingly viable because the Immortal counters it pretty easily despite it being completely outside the *role* of the Immortal to do so. And I think this is one of the key distinctions to make that because we're focusing on the role of the Immortal, we're wary not only of what the Immortal counters, but what counters the Immortal as well and the limits of what we want the Immortal to counter. Sure, we still arrive at soft and hard counters at some point down the road of our design process, but we come to that point with the ability to evaluate those counters at a higher level, specifically how they fit into our unit and our race and etc.
And again it's notable here that even if the Immortals' damage were modified so that the Viking could deal with the Immortal, the Viking would still, at best be a soft/situational counter and not nearly as ideal a counter as a horde of expendable yet high DPS Marines. We come back to the Zealot versus the Vulture or the Firebat- the Firebat may be more efficient but perhaps the Vulture is *situationally better*. And opening up the Viking as a viable option here allows for a similar effect- the Viking can take the role of being *situationally better* and relatively useful (they're not terrible against Chargelots although Stalkers should have no issue versus Vikings but that's the role our Siege Tanks fulfill- in this role our Vikings are just trying to keep enemy units off of our Siege Tanks because the Siege Tanks pack the real punch).
Considering the broader effects of this, a heavy burden would be lifted from the Ghost in TvP mech, but that does not necessarily mean the death of Ghostmech. Rather, Stalkers, particularly with Blink, are still a major issue and as well Vikings' range on the ground is not extraordinary nor is their durability so we may have issues preventing Immortals from taking potentially significant pot-shots at our Tanks before we are able to kill them thus EMPing Immortals so our Siege Tanks can deal with them may still be desirable. As well, Storms will be able to severely weaken our Vikings and Hellions thus EMPing or Sniping High Templar is still important. Furthermore, late-game EMPing of Motherships may prove significant to prevent Vortex and we'll want to consider the general usefulness of EMP v any Protoss unit. However, whereas currently it is precisely mandatory in Ghostmech builds to EMP Immortals as quickly and preemptively as possible, against an Immortal unit that we can deal with in other ways, the Ghost can re-assume its role as supporting caster rather than army linchpin.
I'm not going to bother applying this analysis to Marauders and Roaches because I feel this is already a long post and as well the Immortal is, of the three of these, closest to having a particular role whereas I think both the Marauder and Roach need to be rethought in the context of their races as they have both evolved into damage sponges and tanks (aka the analysis would be longer and multi-directional but I think that's a thought exercise you can all tackle individually).
However, it is worth bringing up PvZ and PvP for the Immortal quickly. In Brood War PvZ, the Immortal's role is only minimally good against the Zerg because their general intent is to have lots and lots of units deal lots and lots of damage, but with no specific unit dealing too much damage. However, Immortals would definitely be useful against Lurkers and some interesting micro tactics could leverage their damage sponge role against Ultralisks (since Ultralisks are melee, Immortals could prove effective at blocking Ultralisks; whether this is cost effective is another matter). In Brood War PvP, Immortals could tank Reaver hits (and imo that's pretty huge- Reavers basically fall into the same role as Siege Tanks so it makes logical sense that Immortals's role should play well against Reavers) and that could have serious implications for that match-up.
Looking at the StarCraft 2 versions of these match-ups, PvZ lacks Lurkers, but of course currently Immortals are designed to be *THE* counter to Roaches. However, altering the Immortal would mandate an alteration to the Roach. If the Roach were redesigned to rely less on tanking but more on its ability to deal a lot of damage very quickly (atm it does 16 damage with a cooldown of 2- against many units this can be devastating, but this is a bit less devastating against Immortals) then Immortals could still prove effective there. Otherwise, again Ultralisks come to mind, although this overall really seems to limit the utility of the Immortal here. That could be ok because as mentioned the Zerg are not a race that the Immortal's role is really meant to deal with and like how Corsairs' role of air superiority rarely fits well into Brood War PvT that could well be fine. However, with the Immortal losing its (unnecessary) secondary role of dealing with armored units (a role that already overlaps with that of the the Stalker), a new secondary role, perhaps tailored for this match-up could be considered. Consider the Thor whose primary usefulness in TvT and TvP stems from its ground to ground capabilities, but in TvZ its ground to air capabilities are its defining feature and cement its role there. The Immortal could possibly be tweaked to support some kind of ground to air attack that is effective against light air to help Protoss deal with Mutalisks (although as has been mentioned the Archon or a retuned Storm are both more likely candidates for this role). For PvP, the Immortal can shrug off Collossus attacks and if its cost or food count could be reduced because of the removal of its unnecessary anti-armor role being removed then it could still be viable at keeping enemy Stalker counts in check as well.
EDIT: Worth noting that there are two expansions yet to come so that Immortals may not have the biggest of roles in PvP or PvZ currently if Roaches were altered, but subsequent expansions could add units (like the Lurker) that fall into the realm of what the Immortal's role proves useful against.
|
Looks like sm1 studied at the Starcraft-University! ^^'
No really - very good read, sm1 should send this to Blizzard!
It's really sad to see that in the eraly stages of the development of SC2, the Devs sounded exactly like what we've read in this very nicely written article. Stuff like "no rock-paper-scissors" and "no hard-counters" etc. was promised to the community, which wanted SC2 to exactly not be what it is right now considering the hard-counter-system, but somehow, things got messed up and we have one of the most ridiculous hard-counter-system in any RTS to date. I mean: More than double amounts of DMG against certain Units really are no exception with Marauders dealing double DMG and Immos 2.5 times the DMG against armored Units and stuff like Roaches, which absorb 33% of DMG from Marines and 25% DMG from Zealots. That's just not what SC2 is supposed to be like and I'm very disappointed by the fact it all panned out this way.
@heyitsme: Haha, I thought the same thing. I was like: WTF is that, why do we need a countering-tanks-for-newbs if there are A LOT of creative ways to counter Tanks. Look at Tanks in SC2 and how easily they could've been countered without the Immortals: Drops on the Tanks, Speedlots, Blink, Storm, DT's sneaking up on them, Air-Units sniping them, Warp-ins with Prism etc.
I absolutely hated Immortals, Roaches and Marauders from the start and couldn't understand at all why they are in the game...
|
I kinda agree to what Artosis said in one of his interviews - SC2 is close to be balanced - tough a lot of stuff is not yet figured out and people tend to have a short ranged view to things - I agree to that and even I often find myself seeing low-ranged solutions.
For instance - the role of the Immortal: Terran has a whole lot of heavy units, so it perfectly fits the role in pvt as an expensive(!) ground-only counter to that. Changing the Immortal and also the Marauder would lead to a leak of counters for protoss against not only roaches but also against thor and tanks. Zealots die a lot faster than in SC:BW and tough there are no mines, tanks are still hard to reach. In PvZ the Immortal gives Protoss the ability to deal with mass roaches and also having a "sunkenbreaker" or "spinebreaker" unit that can deal a lot of damage in one shot. Also it fits great into a counter-ultralisk strategy combined with forcefields.
What I'd like to see, coming back to the "roles" is a better mix for terrans like "bio+mech" or "mech+air" instead of mech only or bio only. There are still a few things that need to be tweaked to give that game a better drift - for instance
Thor got splash in patch 7 so they fullfill also their anti-air role, tough protoss is leaking anti-air options - sentries do not quite counter muta that well and phoenix are slightly to expensive regarding their "role".
Marauders need a slight change - they are to strong in the very early game stage since they counter all early units except propably speedlings. The most significant hole in the role-play is that marauders are strong vs almost any ground unit from early to late game - but thats another discussion.
Zerg's roach since the nerfs fits more and more into the "tank" role, I'm curious when they will discover the strength of ultra-combos as well.
We are heading towards a good balance if you ask me, tough I hope Blizzard takes its time instead of rushing for a summer-release to fill the whole little balance issues that come from cheese play - e.g. marine-all in, warpgate rush in pvp, massive roach-burrow action and now the proxy marauder push.
|
@ OP: This is exactly how it feels. excellent post. but it's gonna be really hard to change blizzards mind.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.starcraft2.com/features/protoss/images/immortal-thumb2.jpg)
