The other day I was watching some GSL PvP, specific game is unimportant. However, both players were doing 4gate because obviously that is all anybody ever does in this matchup (obviously), and I realized after a while that I was having some difficulty figuring out whose units were whose. Stalkers are mostly blue no matter what, one of the players was blue, their lasers are all blue, etc.
At this time I stumbled upon the greatest and most obvious realization of what would make Protoss better to watch, and play, on a competitive level.
Protoss units laser beams should be the hue of their player color.
Now, as we all know from Blizzcon and its horribly inane questions, Protoss beams are powered by warp and/or psi, and psi is clearly blue, because it is. Therefor, Protoss beams should always be blue.
But trust me when I tell you that this change, while breaking the incredibly airtight canon that is Starcraft lore, will be better for everybody. I shall explain why, point by point.
The problem Quickly, here is a video of your standard PvP game. Fast forward to the end to see the inevitable 4 gate vs. 4 gate.
Can you tell whose Stalkers are whose? Wouldn't it be way more awesome if the laser beams were different colors?
Point A It is a clear tenet of any sort of entertainment involving laser guns that each sides lasers should be different colors. I'd like you all to close your eyes and imagine how much fun you had watching cartoons as a kid. In fact, screw closing your eyes, watch this: + Show Spoiler +
Do you think GI Joe would have been as entertaining as it was without both sides having different colored lasers? Or any Saturday morning cartoon for that matter? Of course not. Obviously. I cannot tell the Joes and the Cobras apart half the time, I have no idea what most of their names are. But you know who is winning because of the different colors of the lasers.
We can bring this same kind of simple aesthetic beauty to Stalkers, Sentries, Phoenixes, etc. And it will be awesome like Saturday morning cartoons. Hell, Cobra Commander kinda looks like a Protoss, sort of. Clearly the creators of GI Joe had Starcraft in mind when they pioneered pew pewing and reaped its high entertainment value. They were paving the way for the future of PvP.
Point B Nobody actually cares about Starcraft canon, which is clearly the only reason why Protoss lasers are currently always blue. I mean, this is a universe where a Marine on drugs can run faster than a state of the art space fighter jet, but can't run even close to as fast as the speed of a Nydus Worms bowel movements, which bend spacetime to shit banelings onto islands.
If we put up with that, we can put up with Stalkers having red and purple and green lasers. Because the above is silly, but Stalkers shooting red lasers would just be awesome.
Point C I realize that a lot of you may be skeptic about how clearly awesome this change would be, so I took the liberty of creating a custom map in which Protoss's laser beams actually can be different colors. I played and recorded a TvP game vs. a red Protoss, in which the usual Colossus vs. Viking + MMM strategies were used.
I have the replay shown below, with a video of normal Protoss gameplay for reference, followed by the video on the new map where the lasers are red like the red Protoss player. I think you will agree that the video with the improved laser effect is much, much more entertaining.
I think based on these videos, it is clear that we would be much more entertained with Protoss gameplay, and PvP specifically, if their lasers could be different colors.
As usual, this is an extremely important issue that Blizzard desperately needs to address.
You know you have played too much PvP when you read this title as "Improving PvP's Warpability". and don't catch the mistake until you read the first 2 paragraphs.....
Edit: Also yes this is a cool idea, could be interesting from a player prescriptive also.
It's not the 4 gating that makes me sick of watching PvP it's the fall back after a 4gate it's always falling back taking your expo get your gas mass collossus, I dont do that i fallback mass voids and get a mothership god it really doesn't work but that one time it does and i recall into he's base it's just priceless
Well this is a non-issue imho, I don't care about the lasers' colors, as long as the actual units' colors are different. Moreso I feel that there are a lot of more important issues, I mean, lasers' colors may or may not be top priority.
On March 25 2011 14:27 iCCup.Diamond wrote: Wait wait wait. How did you manage to pick like one of the only two scenes in Star Wars where they have the same color laser bolts?
Edit: Actually rereading OP that might have been intentional, I'm a bit lost.....
I got the idea for the thread, went looking up the Hoth battle (laughing all the way), found out that the lasers were all red, shook an angry fist and made the thread anyway. Star Wars has failed us, clearly.
I'm actually a bit bothered that the OP managed to pick a scene in Star Wars where all the lasers are the same color because I honestly would have believed that the Star Wars scene supported the point if it had been a tie fighter vs. X-wing battle or something.
So uh...the post is clearly tongue-in-cheek, but the idea is actually pretty good, and even if you really care about lore it's not that hard a justification to say that the game is simply coloring the lasers to make it easier for us to view.
And now I desperately want to see pink lasers vs. yellow lasers.
Or how about we give the colossus the AT-AT's laser beams? To balance it, give terran an upgrade to vikings that gives them cables to wrap around the colossus's legs.
StarWars jokes aside, Quake did this with unique railgun colors and it definitely helped out quite a bit, especially in rail fights. I can definitely see this translating to SC2 well :D (as long as the colors aren't something obscene)
I think they could do a better job on coloring the units in general because I feel that distinguishing between who owns which units in a mirror is hard, even for me as a player. Especially in zvz where all the lings are colored to look nearly identical or pvp where the zealots and stalkers look nearly the same regardless of player color... there's just so little coloring on the units that it's hard to tell when I'm losing a fight until it's too late!
On March 25 2011 14:51 neSix wrote: I think they could do a better job on coloring the units in general because I feel that distinguishing between who owns which units in a mirror is hard, even for me as a player. Especially in zvz where all the lings are colored to look nearly identical or pvp where the zealots and stalkers look nearly the same regardless of player color... there's just so little coloring on the units that it's hard to tell when I'm losing a fight until it's too late!
I especially hate watching zvz for the very reason you can't tell which units apart. When lings and roaches engage, it becomes just a big mass of brown. I remember pre-beta videos where the colors were much more distinct. Also, mutalisk projectiles were green colored, radioactive-like. So sad to see these change.
EPT
