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GSL finals spoiler:
+ Show Spoiler +First off there is a lot of drama about the GSL finals, which inspired me to write this post. Please know that I'm not whining because july lost, I'm simply discussing this.
Also: some gsl final spoilers up ahead
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Should there really be abilities that disallow the other player to micro? Force Fields, Concussive Shells and Fungal Growth are the abilities we're talking about here.
My answer is no. Not like this. These abilities have way too much influence. They have enormous potential to be 'exploited'. The better the user, the better his ability to use these micro stoppers, and the smaller the chance for the opponent to do something about it.
For example MC vs July. Because of the huge number of forcefields, and MC's skill to place them, there was nothing july could do. Most of his units were not attacking so/and he couldn't micro them. Micro is very important, so abilities that negate it, although using those requires skill, are unfair. It feels like the game would have been much closer and more fun without those forcefields. Blocking ramps with forcefields, or bunching up and locking in units with forcefield to storm them seems unfair.
But there is also the problem of protoss needing to forcefield their ramp to survive certain rushes. Also something that should not happen, it just sounds and feels lame/unintuitive.
The same applies to concussive shells. They make terran extremely strong early game (against protoss especially, marauder CS rush), and they make terran drops really good as well. Why are 4 zealots and a few stalkers unable to stop a simple 4 marauder drop? Why are many units so ineffective against a bioball? Because many units don't reach their target, and retreating means losing a lot of units for nothing! Think of concussive shell + stim kiting and I hope you agree that it's lame and shouldn't happen.
I would say fungal is slightly less 'abusive' but that's mainly because we don't see it a lot. It also has a lot of potential to make it impossible for the opponent to manage his units, imagine huge flocks of muta's or marines being stunned and killed.
One could also argue that EMP is casted too fast for the huge AoE and damage to shields/removal of energy it has. It is possible to micro against it by splitting units of course, but you still have to attack and the sc2 engine will nicely stack your units together.
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People have been complaining about it, since the start of beta, because it was something obvious.
But here's what Blizzard had to say: "We are seeing a lot of Force Fields which we really, really like. We don’t want to see fewer Force Fields"
Yes, they REALLY, REALLY like it.
Changes made:
Sentry damage from 8 to 6.
Concussive shells from a default ability to a 50/50/60 upgrade.
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Hmm. Read a good thread about smart casting a while ago. Think that would apply here. Imagine how the GSL would have been if FF had to be clone casted .. 
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I think you should focus this thread a little more if you want a better discussion. How about focus on forcefields for now. I believe it was Louder who said during the beta that forcefields were the most broken thing in the game. I definitely think that in many situations he's right.
So some of the comments you make about forcefields and some other observations to consider
The better the user...
Stops opponents ability to micro
Blocking ramps; Strategical advantage (rush survival/cutting off reinforcements)
Bunching up units; Tactical advantage (melee disadvantage/range advantage)
The better the user... Skill ceilings are essential to the success of a competitive game. If there were a very low skill ceiling, SC2 would get stale very quickly (some say it has- I disagree that the ceiling is too low, though). If a player cannot physically outplay an opponent, then all that's left is strategy, something that develops slowly, but is disseminated quickly. Basically everyone would be at just about the same level. It is not the fact that one player possesses higher skill than another, it is the ability to activate that skill that is a problem. If one race has built in mechanics that allow them to outplay their opponent through physical skill and the other does not, then one race is at a disadvantage. Likewise, if one race must actively activate more skill to gain an advantage or stay on par with another race, there is a problem there as well, unless the other races are able to similarly take advantage of physical skill (think Terran in SC:BW).
They stop the opponents ability to micro. I don't think this is a problem in itself, as long as it is something that can be avoided. Basically, it takes good micro to successfully use and successfully avoid forcefields. The impetus is on Protoss to gain an advantage. However, the opposing race does not gain an advantage from successfully avoiding being forcefielded. However, if sentries are seen as an investment (which they are) and a compromise between more powerful units (which they are), their failure to be utilized properly does put the Protoss at a disadvantage. the important question here is "does failure to utilize the investment of sentries put me at as much of a disadvantage as my opponent failing to properly avoid my forcefields." I think the answer to this question might very well be "no" in many circumstances.
Blocking Ramps. The ability to instantly create impassable terrain is, on the surface, really really cool. That's probably why Blizzard likes it so much. It's a really novel idea and I think it deserves recognition. That being said, forcefields being used to strategically block a ramp (as opposed to being used tactically to gain an advantage on the battlefield) greatly change the strategical make-up of SC2. It messes with some of the fundamental concepts of an RTS game (as do a few other SC2 innovations). I'll start with the obvious. Not being able to reinforce your units (or utilize a large chunk of your army) during a key fight completely changes the advantage disadvantage balance of the game. One of the fundamental choices in SC2 is whether to build units or build economy. Each of those decisions has benefits and consequences for all of the races. When you are denied the benefits of the decision to build an army at a specific point, you are forced to cope with both the inherent disadvantages (not building an economy) and the lack of immediate advantages (which can turn into a permanent lack of advantage. This can be incredibly bad, as we've seen. Players should never be punished for making good decisions (as July was when he decided to build roaches to defend MC's push- as obvious of a decision as that was).
The decision to invest in military, economy, or technology is also fundamental to any rts game (as far as I know there are no games with only a single type of un-upgradeable attacking unit). The decision to rush is basically a decision to focus on military might as quickly and as aggressively as possible. It comes with advantages (I kill my opponent, I survive a rush) and disadvantages (putting off economy and tech). Forcefielding a ramp to survive a rush eliminates this inherent and necessary compromise in many situations; My opponent decides to rush, I decide to tech to gain an advantage. For a small price (the significance of which needs to be questioned), I am able to completely negate my opponents decision and immediately and completely punish him for making another good (in the sense that it should have to be reconciled appropriately by the opponent) decision. This is a bad thing. However, if forcefields are absolutely necessary for the survival of a race against certain strategies (meaning there are no other options that don't put the defender at a disadvantage), then it is perfectly fine as long as the benefit of making the proper decision is appropriately rewarded (meaning that you don't immediately win the game by defending the rush or whatever). I think in this respect forcefields, while annoying, are mostly okay (defensively). Now lets go back to the offensive aspect of forcefields being used to block an opponents reinforcements. The interesting thing here is that Protoss has another HUGE strategic advantage. The warp-in mechanic (which deserves it's own thread), fundamentally changes another basic aspect of RTS play, the rush distance, or better, the unit reinforcement period. Since time is the most valuable of all resources in any rts game (more on that some other time), eliminating the reinforcement period through warp-in should be considered a major modification to the usual mechanic of the game. The odd thing here is that Protoss has both of these advantages. Putting these two things together seems incredibly risky from a balance perspective. Of course, if these things are counter-balanced by advantages in the other race, it is fine. Zerg certainly has many advantages, but the question is does Zerg have a reasonable advantage at the right stages of the game to make it balance. An interesting thought; since Protoss clearly has the offensive advantage with warp-in, wouldn't it make more sense for the Zerg to have a defensive advantage (they do have one key one- flexibility)? From a strategic perspective it almost seems like Zerg should have the forcefield ability (or course this makes no sense from a narrative perspective).
Finally, the tactical use of forcefields; Forcefields have two tactical uses on the battlefield. First, it has the ability to artificially lower the number of enemy units in an engagement (by cutting them in half and the like). There are other abilities that do this (Vortex) and certain tactical maneuvers can accomplish it (good concaves, engaging at chokes). The other is that it can situationally remove the opponent's ability to deal damage, while still allowing them to take damage. Again, fungal growth can do the same thing (while also dealing damage) and the high ground advantage also simulates this. These are both very powerful advantages that can determine the outcome of games and of course, should be very carefully considered. The first one is not of as much interest because it is fairly straight forward and doesn't depend much of unit composition or other tactical advantages/disadvantages. A smaller army is a smaller army. It's the second situation that I think is really notable because it has the potential of greatly amplifying other advantages. One of the basic disadvantages of a melee unit is that it cannot deal damage if it cannot get in range of a target. Forcefields coupled with units of higher range essentially turn any unit into a temporary melee unit. A roach has range 4, a stalker has range 6. A forcefielded roach essentially has range 0 versus a stalker and can obviously do no damage while being itself killed. There is nothing complicated about it. What is interesting, however, is the fact that a hydralisk has only base range 5, but can be upgraded to range six to equal a stalker. Hydralisks are also higher tier units than stalker and are extremely slow moving whereas stalkers are extremely fast. While they do good dps to stalkers and stalkers do slightly limited damage to hydras, stalkers are naturally more strategically advantaged to hydralisks, a fact that I'm sure is no accident on blizzards part. This strategically advantage is normally balanced by the fact that hydralisks have a statistical advantage on stalkers: they are cheaper and they do more damage. But with forcefields and the fact that stalkers outrange hydras and roaches (pre-upgrade), stalkers can literally kill an infinite number of hydralisks. Add to that the fact that hydras are much too slow to micro against forcefields and you have the recipe for the kind of carnage that July experienced at the hands of MC. If hydras are the natural response to mass stalker, yet sentries with forcefields can completely nullify them, one must carefully consider the timings and situational options that a Zerg has to deal with such a scenario to see if it is too situationally slanted in one races favor or another.
Do I think that forcefields are broken? Yes. Do I think that that is necessarily bad? No. Forcefields add a really interesting element to the game. However, they seem to change some of the fundamental aspects of the game, and that is something that definitely needs to be considered. If forcefields are necessary to defend a rush, then they need to be available for that, but if they give too much advantage to one player without the other player having an appropriate response or a similarly powerful advantage, they need to be dealt with.
One possible solution- increase the energy requirement for using forcefields while at the same time raising the starting energy of the sentry. This would mean that a single sentry would still be enough to defend a rush while not having so much energy as to become overly useful later in the game. Only a thought.
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Forcefield requires impossible amounts of micro from one player to deny the other player the ability to micro. Forcefield is probably bringing more micro into the game just from the other player. It also requires the receiver of the forcefield to consider positioning and how he is going to engage much more. If there is one thing forcefield isn't doing its dumbing down the game.
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^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp?
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^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
Doing forcefield micro like a pro such as mc or huk is difficult and requires skill. If you don't consider this true then try emulating what they are doing. It's the same as Marineking splitting his marines to negate banelings. He makes it work through his own skill as a player.
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except you can't smart cast your marines in concentric circles by literally holding down a button.
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in the game julyzerg won, i was thinking it would have been great if he microed the trapped hydras and dropped them behind the FF's
which leads me to think that you guys should just use drop or burrow micro to save your units instead of hoping for blizzard to fix things.
on one hand people say they can't wait for SC2 to evolve, but it seems like that only means they want patches to buff their race :|
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On March 19 2011 18:56 wonderwall wrote:Show nested quote +
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
Doing forcefield micro like a pro such as mc or huk is difficult and requires skill. If you don't consider this true then try emulating what they are doing. It's the same as Marineking splitting his marines to negate banelings. He makes it work through his own skill as a player.
I agree good forcefield micro is an art and is not nearly as easy at it seems it needs to be done deliberatley and very fast and you have to think in a split second about the right positioning based off of how the opponents army is positioned, i would know i suck at forcefields lol
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On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp?
Try do it as well as MC does as quick as he does it. So absurd that people just try down play it like this. How many people other than MC do you see force fielding like that? Other than MC, NO one, no one as actually used Force Field that well in any type of tournament, not even SanZenith or HuK when they did a 6gate push.
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I think a lot of people just see the forcefields own july... but they forget how good and how much control MC actually has. If every protoss could just do that strait up.. the win / loss for PvZ would be 100% - 0% on the ladder, but its not.
I dont think forcefields are op'ed. I do think that a lot of zergs forget that if you fight protoss at your own natural, you die. you HAVE to fight protoss half way to your base. Anyway its hard for zerg no doubt but OP... naaa.
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On March 19 2011 18:58 Teivospy wrote:
in the game julyzerg won, i was thinking it would have been great if he microed the trapped hydras and dropped them behind the FF's
which leads me to think that you guys should just use drop or burrow micro to save your units instead of hoping for blizzard to fix things.
on one hand people say they can't wait for SC2 to evolve, but it seems like that only means they want patches to buff their race :|
In game one how is July, or any other Zerg in the same situation, supposed to use drop or burrow micro? He literally couldn't get down the ramp due to forcefields, in a situation where forcefields definetely do not require micro.
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On March 19 2011 18:56 wonderwall wrote:Show nested quote +
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
Doing forcefield micro like a pro such as mc or huk is difficult and requires skill. If you don't consider this true then try emulating what they are doing. It's the same as Marineking splitting his marines to negate banelings. He makes it work through his own skill as a player.
What he's saying is that forcefields make it impossible for the opponent to micro out of the situation. Using your example, you can split marines, but then the Zerg can counter split their banelings (or pull them back, or whatever). With forcefield, the opponent is forced into having 0 responses available to him during that battle. Basically, the forcefielder is deciding what the forcefieldee does in the battle because forcefields remove all micro options from the forcefieldee.
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On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp?
Not as easy as you think. Optimal FF usage is difficult because it is hard to place them so that they do not stack and become a waste of energy. Also, there's only one sweet spot on the ramp to place the FF on so that units cannot come through. One hex difference, and all the units come streaming out.
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United States15275 Posts
On March 19 2011 18:58 Dommk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp? Try do it as well as MC does as quick as he does it. So absurd that people just try down play it like this. How many people other than MC do you see force fielding like that? Other than MC, NO one, no one as actually used Force Field that well in any type of tournament, not even SanZenith or HuK when they did a 6gate push.
HuK can throw down forcefields with great precision, but his builds tend to be weaker on the macro side so he has less of everything for his pushes.
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I'm not trying to sound offensive here, but you really can't just look at one BO and call out the ability as being OP or needing to be removed. If you've watched any PvT lately, you'd know that FF are absolutely pertinent to staying alive through early stim pushes. So... to outright remove the ability from the game would leave a gaping hole in Protoss defense. I'm trying to speak impartially (I am a Zerg player) so I think it's unbiased when I say the ability has its place.
That being said, in the capable hands of MC and his weird fast 4gas into 6gate Stalker/Sentry, it's ludicrous. I guess my question to you is, rather than just point out its flaws, how would you go about balancing the situation? My suggestion would be to make FF cost more energy or perhaps make it a Twilight Council upgrade?
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On March 19 2011 18:58 Dommk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp? Try do it as well as MC does as quick as he does it. So absurd that people just try down play it like this. How many people other than MC do you see force fielding like that? Other than MC, NO one, no one as actually used Force Field that well in any type of tournament, not even SanZenith or HuK when they did a 6gate push.
The thing is that, as other players get better, soon everyone (well, every pro) will have the same forcefield "skill". Sure, right now MC is "the best" Protoss but that doesn't mean you can't say that abilities such as force fields are game breaking.
That being said, in the capable hands of MC and his weird fast 4gas into 6gate Stalker/Sentry, it's ludicrous. I guess my question to you is, rather than just point out its flaws, how would you go about balancing the situation? My suggestion would be to make FF cost more energy or perhaps make it a Twilight Council upgrade?
As has been suggested a million times since the beta began, give them health instead of a timer. This way, they're still good and allows the opponent to actually, shock horror, micro against them.
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On March 19 2011 19:03 Jimmeh wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2011 18:58 Dommk wrote:On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp? Try do it as well as MC does as quick as he does it. So absurd that people just try down play it like this. How many people other than MC do you see force fielding like that? Other than MC, NO one, no one as actually used Force Field that well in any type of tournament, not even SanZenith or HuK when they did a 6gate push. The thing is that, as other players get better, soon everyone (well, every pro) will have the same forcefield "skill". Sure, right now MC is "the best" Protoss but that doesn't mean you can't say that abilities such as force fields are game breaking.
Then if more and more people get better and better at force fields then the more and more that Zerg will have to get burrow and tunneling claws faster.
Julys burrow in every game was super late, regular 5gate 2base all-ins hit before that, and you need to have burrow researching to stop them, if they are done well
Sentries are definitely not a problem against Terran, they get much quicker drop ships and their lower tier DPS have high DPS with great range, eventually they get Ghosts to deal with them. The problem became that Ghosts were too good against Sentries, the leaked notes that Naniwa leaked had a small bit about how quick ghost timings were too hard for Protoss to handle
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On March 19 2011 19:05 Dommk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2011 19:03 Jimmeh wrote:On March 19 2011 18:58 Dommk wrote:On March 19 2011 18:53 RiceRiceRice wrote:
^ how much micro does holding down F and clicking your mouse in a circle take?
or rather, how much micro do you need with you have 15+ FF available, and all you have to do is click in the middle of a ramp? Try do it as well as MC does as quick as he does it. So absurd that people just try down play it like this. How many people other than MC do you see force fielding like that? Other than MC, NO one, no one as actually used Force Field that well in any type of tournament, not even SanZenith or HuK when they did a 6gate push. The thing is that, as other players get better, soon everyone (well, every pro) will have the same forcefield "skill". Sure, right now MC is "the best" Protoss but that doesn't mean you can't say that abilities such as force fields are game breaking. Then if more and more people get better and better at force fields then the more and more that Zerg will have to get burrow and tunneling claws faster. Julys burrow in every game was super late, regular 5gate 2base all-ins hit before that, and you need to have burrow researching to stop them, if they are done well
Again, how would burrow help him game 1? July had enough units to actually defend but simply couldn't get down his ramp to do so. No amount of ability would save him that game because MC could literally forcefield July's ramp as long as he wanted.
Sure, once you've got tunelling claw you can micro vs forcefields with roaches. But you can't micro with any other unit vs forcefields still, and until you have burrow AND burrow movement you still can't micro against forcefields with roaches.
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EPT
