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Intro
+ Show Spoiler +Hello. This is going to be a discussion on the design of Starcraft 2 as a game. Right now I believe Starcraft 2 is at a very important point right now. Starcraft is getting more attention than ever. People are so focused right now on balancing Starcraft, finding sponsors, bringing money into the game, etc. All this is extremely important, but I believe a equally important aspect of the game is being left behind. Something no one is talking about or seem to care about. I'm talking about design of the game.
Now I recognize this is a competitive game. People are going to be more concerned about balance. What do they care about design as long as everything is balanced? But you have to understand, the lifeblood of an e-sport aren't the competitive players. It's the people watching. It's the spectators. It's the casuals that might play a couple hours a week. While it is extremely important to keep the game balanced, it is even more important to keep the games exciting and fresh for the casual players, the watchers of the Starcraft tournaments. It is super important to keep the game varied for players of all levels.
This week I'm going to point out the pitfalls of on why making balance changes from the competitive community can hurt the game. It is fairly common knowledge that Blizzard takes input from the community, ladder results, in-house testing, and feedback from the competitive player’s community. They also analyze games and replays from the competitive community.
+ Show Spoiler +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMWw6W9IVdw
Now don't get me wrong, pros know the game better than anyone else. If I wanted to change a game with the intent of pure balance, I would do nothing but listen to the pro community. But this brings up several issues. Let's address the easiest and least interesting to understand first: bias. This is fairly simple. Players are biased in favor for their own race. The more of a certain race among the pros, the more biased feedback and analysis comes from the competitive community. If there are more Terran pros, you're going to get more feedback that is Terran biased from the overall community. A simple numbers argument.
The second bigger issue with taking feedback from the competitive community is that you only get data that affects the current metagame. Different pros and different pro replays may differ individually, but overall they create a general shape and feel of the current metagame. Blizzard will not get feedback on possible upcoming strategies and playstyles. As good as pros are, they arent good enough to predict all the specific strategies that appear in the future.
Why is this bad? Well let's use an example from Starcraft 1. Before 2007 in SC1 the PvZ matchup was considered Zerg favored. Zerg dominated Protoss for almost free, and generally considered the hardest to play competitively because of it. Then what happened? Bisu burst onto the scene and completely revolutionized the matchup. In a single season the game went from Zerg favored to balanced. Now imagine if the Starcraft 2 balance team worked on Starcraft 1 with their mindset of forcing it to be an esport. They would've taken feedback from the competitive community. They would've buffed the way pre2007 Protoss were playing so it was balanced. This means Bisu playstyle may never have been found, or if it was found could be proved to be overpowering because of previous buffs.
If a new strategy is never found, it’s bad for spectators because less strategies = worse viewer experience. If a new strategy is found and then it may be overpowering because of earlier buffs, it becomes bad for the players and thus bad for the spectators.
Let's use some specific examples from Starcraft 2. Let us take the SanZenith vs SCFou game
http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors2/vod/62509
SanZenith used defensive storms while expanding to slowly starve the Terran player to death. Is this strategy overpowering? Was the current Terran metagame of using a Bionic army a correct response? No one knows the answers to these questions. The strategy is WAY too new. Yet with the KA removal, we're never going to see this strategy again. The metagame will not shift. The status quo of the metagame will remain. If Blizzard tries to collect data on this series, they are only going to get the perspective from the competive community as bionic vs high templar. Why? Because that is the current metagame. It is standard to use bionic units against Protoss. They are never going to get another perspective. But why should Blizzard care? Protoss have a strategy that is so far proving to be balanced against Terran. Collosus vs Bio. Who cares if we never see High templar again, as long as the Collosus vs Bio + Vikings interaction remains balanced. Blizzard has its balance. Thats enough for the game to be an esport right?
If SC2 is to become a successful e-sport it must remain dynamic. I've seen firsthand how only taking input from the competitive community can destroy a game and a community. I was a competitive player for the Half-Life mod Natural Selection and used to believe that the only input the developers should take for balancing that game should come from the competitive community. And that's exactly what they did. Yet, I also saw that game stagnate and slowly lose popularity. The metagame never changed. Each game played very similiarly with the same strategies used over and over. All because balance changes came from the competitive community which only served to keep the status quo balanced. Slowly, the competitive scene died out and that was its end.
The point of this post is not to say that Blizzard getting feedback from the competitive community is bad. It is necessary to balance this game. However, the only information Blizzard is going to get is the status of the current metagame. You have to check to see if the metagame shifts. Blizzard has to be patient, and has to trust the players to find a metagame shift first. This takes time. It took a full 2 years for Protoss to catch up to Zerg in SC1. Essentially, Blizzard needs to slow down the amount of patches they are releasing. Imbalances need to be seen across multiple seasons of Starcraft 2 before any patching should be done. Any new strategies should be left alone completely until a sufficient time has passed to prove it is imbalanced or not. 1 season is not sufficient time.
This has been some thoughts on design. Please keep it in mind.
If you like to read more about other thoughts on design:
+ Show Spoiler +
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Good read, I think Blizzard is taking this mythical view of balance way too far. Balance isn't a case of "and God saw that it was good", it's an equilibrium that develops over time. With the fast rate at which Blizzard is patching the game, we never get to settle on certain standards. They're continuously stirring up the water and wondering why it won't smooth down.
Broodwar wasn't balanced, even back then you had Artosis and Idra complaining about imbalance, they just played Terran back then and Protoss was the disgustingly OP race. In fact, I'd say that units and abilites were far more "overpowered" in Starcraft 1.
Tanks did disgusting amounts of damage, Vultures were cheap, fast, 2 shotted workers and could be upgraded to lay invisible mines that could, on their own, blow up entire armies. Carriers could be microed to victory from a practically lost position, Reavers were basically mineshooting caterpillars that would be happily dropped around the map by shuttles and capable of blowing up entire mineral lines at once, High templar were storming shit up too and morphed Archons were actually damn good. Defilers with Dark Swarm, ranged damage? Nope. Mutalisks that are as mobile as now, but are extremely microable and can actually engage armies one on one, yep.
Part of the charm of BW is that it's balanced on imbalances; instead of complaining about other races' overpowered stuff, players just went to the extreme to (ab)use their own overpowered units. If Blizzard took out Reavers, mines, neutered siege tanks, neutered mutalisks, removed Dark Swarm, removed Plague, neutered Carriers ... so it would all be a tame "fair" game, TeamLiquid might not even have existed until this day because no-one would give a shit about watching that game.
Right now Blizzard is busy taking away all units and abilities that could be construed as "OP", but although the game might become more "fair" that won't matter when no-one is interested watching it anymore.
Archon Toilet: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Hell yeah! Removed.
Storms: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Probably! Nerfed, making Colossus pretty much the better choice always.
Colossus; visually pleasing? Nope (tripods with lasers, derp). Wow-factor: No. Overpowered? Maybe ... but definitely not gamebreaking ... or interesting for that matter.
Siege Tanks: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: YES! Overpowered? Sure, why not!? Nerfed until bio was the best and easiest option in all MU's.
Bio; visually pleasing? No. Wow-factor: Yawn. Overpowered? Not enough. "Let's lower infantry upgrade cost and reaper speed so we can increase stim research time and move reaper speed to the factory when people start actually using these units. Requiring Supply Depot as a prerequisite for the Barracks also seems like a good non-random idea, that way we don't have to wrap our heads around Terran rushes or deal with the reaper. I mean, they're actually using it like some sort of .. of.. harassing unit, that pops into bases sniping light units and buildings and kiting stuff, it's disgusting!
"Now let's have coffee and discuss the bunker build time!"
"I'm still kinda on the fence about it Dustin, we can't make changes like these on a whim"
"Agreed, agreed ... what do you think David?"
"Hmmm what? ... I mean, o yeah, Terran definitely seems to be having trouble holding off early pressure builds these days. Btw, do you want one of these choclates SlayerSBoxer had delivered to my house? They're exquisite!"
"Don't mind if I do"
"Yeah, Terran definitely FEELS a little weak lately"
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On March 13 2011 23:03 Saechiis wrote:
Archon Toilet: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Hell yeah! Removed.
Storms: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Probably! Nerfed, making Colossus pretty much the better choice always.
Colossus; visually pleasing? Nope (tripods with lasers, derp). Wow-factor: No. Overpowered? Maybe ... but definitely not gamebreaking ... or interesting for that matter.
Siege Tanks: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: YES! Overpowered? Sure, why not!? Nerfed until bio was the best and easiest option in all MU's.
Bio; visually pleasing? No. Wow-factor: Yawn. Overpowered? Not enough. "Let's lower infantry upgrade cost and reaper speed so we can increase stim research time and move reaper speed to the factory when people start actually using these units. Requiring Supply Depot as a prerequisite for the Barracks also seems like a good non-random idea, that way we don't have to wrap our heads around Terran rushes or deal with the reaper. I mean, they're actually using it like some sort of .. of.. harassing unit, that pops into bases sniping light units and buildings and kitings stuff, it's ridic!
"Now let's have coffee and discuss the bunker build time!"
"I'm still kinda the fence about it Dustin, we can't make changes like these on a whim"
"Agreed, agreed ... what do you think David?"
"Hmmm what? ... O yeah, Terran definitely seems to be having trouble holding off pressure builds from Toss. Btw, do you want one of these choclates SlayerSBoxer had delivered to my house? They're excuisite!"
"Don't mind if I do"
"Yeah, Terran definitely FEELS a little weak lately"
The problem is that every "Overpowered' unit you list belongs to either Terran or Protoss. The result, of course, was the complete domination of Zerg--especially by siege tanks and reapers--that lasted until their nerf. Even now, Zergs still recognize that if T could 5-rax reaper at will with tanks that did 60 damage to everything, they'd never win. Some units actually were overpowered, and did break the game. And you forget the new "wow factors" that were added, including, the new damaging FG, or the potential for phoenix micro or mass baneling usage added in the late beta.
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Great post, and great points even from Saechis.
Removal of archon toilet is something that I really don't understand, it was spectacular to see and not overpowered (man, you need tons of gas geysers to do that!).
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not true at all that youll only get info on the current metagame
some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds, and theyre just now starting to see use and success
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Dayvi was talking to HuK on his stream and said something along the lines of "every pro thinks their race is the weakest race, I think that is a sign that we are doing a good job with balance"
Kind of is really
some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds
And same T's have been saying that the only way they can beat Zerg is by doing lame shit like Bunker rushing to block early hatcheries, or 2rax, but that isn't exactly the case either.
The game and the people playing it has changed A LOT from the Beta, anything people have said back then is anecdotal at best
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Blizzards hands are tied to a degree when it comes to balance. They can't add new things because that would require artwork and testing and a number of other things they don't want to spend money on till the expansions. So even though it would make more sense to be like, "Oh, storm is crushing bio. Lets give terran a unit that creates an area of immunity to spells" or some other absurd new thing that would make the game more exciting, blizzard can't do that.
The only thing they can do is change numbers or remove things. That's fine by me actually. We shouldn't be worrying about the games exciting BS value until the expansions come out. Think about how much of the exciting stuff in sc1 existed before broodwar. Not nearly as much!
If blizzard fails to make sc2 more exciting with their new stuff in the expansions then we can totally complain. I don't think we should be complaining about this stuff until then.
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On March 13 2011 23:22 IdrA wrote:
not true at all that youll only get info on the current metagame
some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds, and theyre just now starting to see use and success
So I'm waiting for the next "Imbalanced!" episode :-D
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On March 13 2011 23:16 imareaver3 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2011 23:03 Saechiis wrote:
Archon Toilet: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Hell yeah! Removed.
Storms: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Probably! Nerfed, making Colossus pretty much the better choice always.
Colossus; visually pleasing? Nope (tripods with lasers, derp). Wow-factor: No. Overpowered? Maybe ... but definitely not gamebreaking ... or interesting for that matter.
Siege Tanks: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: YES! Overpowered? Sure, why not!? Nerfed until bio was the best and easiest option in all MU's.
Bio; visually pleasing? No. Wow-factor: Yawn. Overpowered? Not enough. "Let's lower infantry upgrade cost and reaper speed so we can increase stim research time and move reaper speed to the factory when people start actually using these units. Requiring Supply Depot as a prerequisite for the Barracks also seems like a good non-random idea, that way we don't have to wrap our heads around Terran rushes or deal with the reaper. I mean, they're actually using it like some sort of .. of.. harassing unit, that pops into bases sniping light units and buildings and kitings stuff, it's ridic!
"Now let's have coffee and discuss the bunker build time!"
"I'm still kinda the fence about it Dustin, we can't make changes like these on a whim"
"Agreed, agreed ... what do you think David?"
"Hmmm what? ... O yeah, Terran definitely seems to be having trouble holding off pressure builds from Toss. Btw, do you want one of these choclates SlayerSBoxer had delivered to my house? They're excuisite!"
"Don't mind if I do"
"Yeah, Terran definitely FEELS a little weak lately"
The problem is that every "Overpowered' unit you list belongs to either Terran or Protoss. The result, of course, was the complete domination of Zerg--especially by siege tanks and reapers--that lasted until their nerf. Even now, Zergs still recognize that if T could 5-rax reaper at will with tanks that did 60 damage to everything, they'd never win. Some units actually were overpowered, and did break the game. And you forget the new "wow factors" that were added, including, the new damaging FG, or the potential for phoenix micro or mass baneling usage added in the late beta.
You can't say that; sure Zergs were having a hard time dealing with siege tanks and reaper rushes but you could also say that these styles were being figured out rapidly just before they got neutered. Point being that no-one ever got the chance or the inclinination to explore the game as it was, since whining and leaning back was a much more effective way of dealing with it. This is especially sad in light of Blizzard nerfing or blatantly removing spectacular units and abilities in favor of bland things like stimmed marine marauder kiting.
I'm not saying they shouldn't balance the game, I think they should keep their balance design completely indoors and not giving any indication of taking community balance whines into consideration. The fact that Dustin would actually mention in interviews that he finds 2 rax pressure "trash" enforces all the whiners in their whiny whiner ways. Buff Zerg instead of nerfing interesting units away, keep the game interesting to watch, keep the wow-factor, keep the magic of "how the fuck did he come back from that". Don't degrade Starcraft 2 into online checkers + Show Spoiler +
I don't care whether they hire Michael Bay to blow some stuff up, but the ones making or breaking the game are the audience, not the sponsors or players (unsportsmanlike as it may sound).
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I still wanna see the storms killing marines - I fear that will disappear next patch 
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This was an amazing post.
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I think the game is really close to balanced, and it really didn't take that long at all when you think about it. Hasn't been out for a year yet. Blizzard are patching often yes, but it's not purely to patch balance, it's also to patch the GUI and also add / subtract maps from the pool. I'm happy with them to keep ADDING features, balance wise as well. I feel the more decent options you have as a race, the less chance of having exciting match ups like PvP (Should I 4 gate? He's gonna 4 gate. I better 4 gate.)
In my opinion, this is why Terran felt so incredibly overpowered early in SC2's life. All of their units felt useful, and every combination of unit was useful for something. Not gonna go on a balance rant, just wanted to say I trust in Blizzard and their process.
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Took some time to glance through the previous thread before posting. I have to say that I agree with the OP on how Blizzard is going about achieving balance. Rather than going and completely removing particular elements, they should be either altering timings and/or shifting positions in the tech trees.
There was a post in the previous thread that discussed how Zergs suffered from early game pressure because lack of defensive capabilities. Rather than fixing that, Blizzard opted to gradually weed out early game attacks such as the 5 rax reaper and cannon rushes. But this effectively removes cheese that could used in other matches i.e. proxy rax in a TvP. For their focus on one particular elements, those changes have implications on other match ups that aren't considered because of the more pressing issue that people bitch about.
Talking about SanZenith v.s. SCfou
+ Show Spoiler [Just in case] +I actually caught the SanZenith vs SCfou series live and was impressed by San's usage of templars. I think that kind of play would encourage more management because of the threat of storms raining down on an army. We saw a lack of focus from SCfou in I believe game 2 and just letting his army sit in storms. Such threats would help to improve player ability because it would force players to have to be actively aware about the battle (and I don't seen why they couldn't since buildings can be bound to hotkeys now). But to remove KA would discourage (or eliminate in San's case) such gameplay and thus cause stagnation into singular strategy gameplay, in this case more Colossus heavy gameplay.
Part of it probably comes down to Blizzard's mentality to making the game "casual player friendly." If you can't play the game without knowing strategies (be it you don't want to be hardcore or don't have the ability to dedicate or whatever), you're not going to want to play cause you're just going to lose every time and that's a blatant dis-motivator to even playing at all. So it would make sense for Blizzard to "cop out" and just remove particularly strong strategies, again such as 5 rax reaper.
Things could be balanced through effort of adjusting values such as build times and other values like in the case of KA starting energy. But such balancing could potentially take months to figure out (I mean come on, how many tries would it take to figure that [hypothetically] it would take KA to add +18 start energy to make the game balanced?) Rather Blizzard wants quick fixes and the easiest manner is to go anything and everything that can break the game. I think Saechiis covers some decent topics so no need for me to go into them.
To say something is broken is pretty damn easy (Imba threads raging rampant on TL should make for clear examples). But to achieve balance through fine tuning rather than elimination is hard. Eliminating the elements that unbalance something are easy. Here's an analogy: you have a scale and one side is obviously heavier than the other. You're only allowed to add on weight or completely remove all the weight on both sides. Thus, you can either balance it by carefully adding on weight ever so carefully and making the most minute adjustments to balance the scale. Or you can just say "fuck this shit" and clear both sides of the scale. Both achieve the same result but it's more rewarding though more difficult to fine tune. To just clear it, I mean, what the hell? Do you just not care OR did you want to do it as fast as possible? The way Blizzard is going right now, they're just trying to go as fast as possible.
The issue though is how do we convince Blizzard to slow the hell down and try to balance the delicate scale that is Starcraft II? That, my fellow TLers, is beyond me to answer.
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Very well written, and I honestly have to agree. Blizzard keeps taking things away from us, but they're not putting anything into the game to replace what they are taking away. I understand balance is essential but I think that even higher-tier players want variety and dynamic gameplay.
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On March 13 2011 23:22 Dommk wrote:Dayvi was talking to HuK on his stream and said something along the lines of "every pro thinks their race is the weakest race, I think that is a sign that we are doing a good job with balance" Kind of is really Show nested quote +some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds And same T's have been saying that the only way they can beat Zerg is by doing lame shit like Bunker rushing to block early hatcheries, or 2rax, but that isn't exactly the case either.
results back one up and not the other
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If we're talking about Balance and Design, shouldn't we talk about the actual design of some of the units then?
When I see a corruptor, I see a cool looking unit that has the most boring ability in both Starcraft and Starcraft 2. It has good stats and certainly fills a role in the zerg army, but it doesn't do anything more than that. Corruption has absolutely zero strategy in relation to it. It can't be used to harass. It requires absolutely no real micro other than spamming.
How does this affect balance? It's huge. Consider the Viking and the Phoenix both with phenomenal ground-support abilities. Both Lift/Land and Anti-Gravity have tons of uses in actual strategy/tactics. It allows for more dynamic gameplay, harassment etc. etc. Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
Overmaking Corruptors is a common defense against the colossus. It is expensive and deadly. With Terran its much less of an issue because they can actually support the ground with the lift/land. But a lot of zerg's issues lie with these kind of odd design choices, not with the unit stats and costs.
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@GhostFall:
Are you working for Blizzard or earning money for a SC2-linked activity? This is a serious question.
Because I've checked your post history and this is your third post about the exact same topic, asking for players to "stop talking and to wait". Who has interest to do that kind of thread again and again, seriously?
About the OP: I of course totally disagree, about almost everything. First because you can compare SC1 and SC2 gameplay/epicness but not SC1 and SC2 evolution. The context was not the same (economic, esport developpment/knowledge/community, numbers of casual/pro players, etc ...), at all.
If a new strategy is never found, it’s bad for spectators because less strategies = worse viewer experience. If a new strategy is found and then it may be overpowering because of earlier buffs, it becomes bad for the players and thus bad for the spectators.
A new strategy is never found it's bad, a new strategy is found it's bad. Impressive, and now?
If there are more Terran pros, you're going to get more feedback that is Terran biased from the overall community. A simple numbers argument.
No. If you ask 10 terrans pro for feedbacks, you'll probably hear the 2-3 same obvious things again and again. Same if you ask 100, 1000, 10000 terrans pro. Bad argument.
I'll stop here, because those pro-blizzard arguments are the same we're hearing since the release of the game, some kind of copy/past argues: "let's wait", "game still young", "sc1 tooks years ...", "new strategies are to come". This could last for years.
@TL Admins:
Trolls are doing such a great job on balance/imbalance threads production that we can't talk anymore about this subject. I don't remember which SC2 pro player was saying something like "this is just impossible to talk about imbalances because even if you're pro arguying about that, silver players comes and freely keep saying you're a newb who know nothing about the game, and you have to demonstrate obvious stuff on and on", it sums it up nicely.
So I propose to start a thread only open for pro players to comments/talk about balance/imbalance. Everyone would be of course allowed to read. The Artosis/Idra videos were a good start for that, but it looks dead right now, because of Idra going back to US, idk.
ps: excuse my horrible english.
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Removing KA does not remove gameplay.
This and your previous thread have been centralized around this supposed issue. While you line of thinking is not "wrong" as such, it is not in line with what the design of the game is and you are looking at from the wrong perspective.
KA is mechanic that stagnates, that causes over reliance on a mechanic (warpgates) instead of using a more varied array of styles and more interesting strategies than just warp-in -> storm.
KA is not being removed because it is not balanced (although it can be argued that it is unbalanced, that is not the issue here) who was complaining about it before this? What pros thought it was grievously imbalanced? I would wager there weren't very many who thought KA was the reason they find it difficult to beat Protoss.
The KA change, and in fact the "Design" of the game is centred around being fun, entertaining and skilful.
Warp-in storm is just a dumb mechanic, dumb as in stupid, not clever. There is no thought, no planing, no strategy, no tension, no skill factor.
Where are the intrinsic unit tensions between Ghost and Templar if they are never on the field with enough energy to storm for more than 5 seconds? Where is the multipronged drop harass and skirmished based play if Drops and small attacks that take planning, time and resources to execute are stopped dead by instant warp in?
Ling run-bys? The Muta harass? Infestor harass (although HT can still feedback on warp in)?
All severely hindered by KA.
KA actually reduces the number of viable strategies and tactics that the game can offer, not the other way around.
HT on the other hand do not need to have instant storm on warp in to be viable.
Another example of this similar effect of a nerf making more strategies viable not less.
Bunker build time:
What pro, or indeed who at all is complaining the bunker builds to fast? Quite a few pros have been quite vocal about being annoyed that blizzard is in their opinion wasting their time making tiny changes such as those to the bunker.
The issue is not balance, it's more likely that bunker rushes can too easily end a game and result in that repetitive stagnation that you are keen to avoid. Bunker rushes are so good that they are pretty much always worth doing against zerg. Example July Vs Nada, Nada Bunker rushes every game.
Bunker rushes are not grievously imbalanced, but they are probably too easy and too effective for the cost/risk, making them almost mandatory, like getting siege mode for tanks, it's not overpowered it's just such a good upgrade that it is required if you want to use tanks.
A similar parallel can be drawn with the bunker, but while siege mode increases strategic variety, fast, low risk bunkers reduce it by deciding games very quickly or by simply resulting in dull and repetitive strategy.
TLDR You are not wrong, but you are looking at the "issue" from the wrong perspective, even assuming there is an "issue" in the first place negatively colours your thoughts.
Most changes are not directly related to the mythical creature "balance" but how the game actually plays.
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On March 14 2011 00:21 DoubleReed wrote:
If we're talking about Balance and Design, shouldn't we talk about the actual design of some of the units then?
When I see a corruptor, I see a cool looking unit that has the most boring ability in both Starcraft and Starcraft 2. It has good stats and certainly fills a role in the zerg army, but it doesn't do anything more than that. Corruption has absolutely zero strategy in relation to it. It can't be used to harass. It requires absolutely no real micro other than spamming.
How does this affect balance? It's huge. Consider the Viking and the Phoenix both with phenomenal ground-support abilities. Both Lift/Land and Anti-Gravity have tons of uses in actual strategy/tactics. It allows for more dynamic gameplay, harassment etc. etc. Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
Overmaking Corruptors is a common defense against the colossus. It is expensive and deadly. With Terran its much less of an issue because they can actually support the ground with the lift/land. But a lot of zerg's issues lie with these kind of odd design choices, not with the unit stats and costs.
Lift/land does not have "tons of uses" nor is it a "phenomenal ground support ability". I can count on one hand the times i've seen landed vikings do anything beside fail miserably at GtG combat.
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On March 14 2011 00:31 karpo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 00:21 DoubleReed wrote:
If we're talking about Balance and Design, shouldn't we talk about the actual design of some of the units then?
When I see a corruptor, I see a cool looking unit that has the most boring ability in both Starcraft and Starcraft 2. It has good stats and certainly fills a role in the zerg army, but it doesn't do anything more than that. Corruption has absolutely zero strategy in relation to it. It can't be used to harass. It requires absolutely no real micro other than spamming.
How does this affect balance? It's huge. Consider the Viking and the Phoenix both with phenomenal ground-support abilities. Both Lift/Land and Anti-Gravity have tons of uses in actual strategy/tactics. It allows for more dynamic gameplay, harassment etc. etc. Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
Overmaking Corruptors is a common defense against the colossus. It is expensive and deadly. With Terran its much less of an issue because they can actually support the ground with the lift/land. But a lot of zerg's issues lie with these kind of odd design choices, not with the unit stats and costs. Lift/land does not have "tons of uses" nor is it a "phenomenal ground support ability". I can count on one hand the times i've seen landed vikings do anything beside fail miserably at GtG combat.
What? You've never seen them land to harass a worker line? You've never seen them kill all the Colossi and then immediately land for ground support? Really? Because it actually works really well.
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EPT
