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Starcraft 2 has become a game of extreme firepower. Almost all units seem to have an extremely strong damage output and become unstopable in certain situations. The heavy splash damage units are able to absolutely crush certain kinds of units with very little ability to micro out of the situation. There's even spells in the game to lock units in place until they get crushed. We've all been in a situation where FF come down and you're units all get roasted by the backup storms or colli, fungals hold you up for the banes to crush past or even for broods to smash your army from range. If you get hit by these spells your options to escape don't exist and the game is essentially over.
This problem doesn't just exist with crushing AoE though, it happens with most of the low tier units too. Zerglings with a couple of upgrades can rip apart almost any ground unit in a small clump making and their pure speed makes it impossible to fight without being balled up, or behind a wall. This leads to pure frustration when you get caught out of position by some lings and lose 1/3 or half your army and at that point there's nothing you can do about the situation. 4 Zealots can hold off a 2mara, 4 rines drop if you don't stutter micro it (makes having a second engagement elsewhere on the map hard as hell). Marines are by far the most powerful unit in the game if you don't have AoE around to deal with them. A group of stimmed marines can crush any army that doesn't have Banes, Infestors, Templar, Colli or Tanks in it.
I bet 75%+ of the games I watch or play in end very, very decisively with a big engagement going to one player or the other. Very few games are decided with slow, sweeping gameplay where each player deals and receives multiple blows. This is because of four factors that I'm really started to get fed up with in the game and I'm going to list them off here.
Factor #1: Too much firepower.
As I described in the opening the game has way, way too much firepower. It's not just the big AoE units that are the problem though, literally every unit has a huge amount of firepower against certain kinds of units, or just in general. Marauders crush stalkers and roaches so hard it's not even funny. Lings with favorable numbers eat through almost everything. Zealots themselves can do insane amounts of damage to forces that can't escape them. Give any unit in the game a slight advantage and favourable matchup in a fight and there's very little the other player can do about it. Immortals crunch anything that hits hard and has armor, like tanks, thors, roaches and Stalkers. If all of a sudden all the units in the game lost some of their damage, or had more room for micro (and micro doesn't mean speed, it means micro. Blink micro doesn't take a lot of speed but a good player can make some amazing plays with it.) things would be a lot more interesting.
Factor #2: No units that can zone, no true "siege" units.
This one of fairly straight forward. Tanks can't zone anything without support. If you leave 3 or 4 tanks at an expansion and the opponent sends 10 chargelots you lose, or if they send 30 lings in you lose. Give those tanks 10 marines though and things change, they can hold off runbys and small armies with ease. Zerg can't zone anything, if they take a ling runby in ZvZ they lose a lot of drones, Toss can leave a few blink stalkers around to fend off drops and use their warpin mechanic to bring units to the fight but if gates are on cd or the toss is maxed then they're going to lose a lot of probes.
Simply put, no race can zone out expansions properly, or even zone areas of the map without aggressively positioning their army. If a protoss has his army where your third and forth are located you can't send your army to go kill one of his bases or he'll move in and crush yours so you end up with two big armies dancing back and forth until one player makes a mistake and get crushed. If the Terran could use a few tanks to zone their third/forth expansion and make attacking it a risky idea then the toss would have to be backed up, or risk having one of his bases taken out. This would lead to move interesting engagements and games in general where you can run away from the toss in a big fight, but right now if that fight happens at your doorstep and you lose the games over, his reinforcements will get there before yours do if he has a pylon around.
Factor #3: Static defenses are god awful. Spine crawlers can't even kill a marine with medivac support, same thing with cannons and turrets get rolled by a pack of muta's once it gets reasonably sized. The only static defense that works well is the PF and thats a huge investment for Terrans. If you made static defenses twice as powerful as they are now (PF excluded) things would be a lot more interesting, especially if races had the ability to zone out and siege better. If zerg could put down a couple of spines and a lurker and know that ling runbys would be totally useless imagine how different zvz would look. If there were no banelings things would be a lot more stable in that matchup.
If static defense was more powerful then we'd see people not trying to all in nearly as much, and in turn players playing a lot less greedy than they are now. The threat of a bunker rush would go up if bunkers had more hp or armor, and the threat of a cannon rush would go way up if they hit twice as hard however by simply getting that second barracks before expanding and scouting your own main you'd be able to hold them off no problem, better spines would make going for a six gate useless and make playing safe and slowly expanding more of a viable option for zerg. If they could use their army to hold a position for awhile while they got their third up and then dropping a couple of spines there to protect it from smaller forces things would be more interesting.
Factor #4: Units that are amazing against one thing, but garbage against another.
There's way too many units that are terrible against some things and amazing against others. This makes it almost impossible to have creative compositions. If we took a 50% cut on the effectiveness of these units against what they roll right now and made them better against what they can't kill it would be very interesting to see.
Hellions either wipe the floor with lings or get smashed by roaches. They also fire way too slowly. Let them get in your mineral line though and all hopes lost. If hellions did 50% less to lings and 50% more to roaches imagine how the game would look. Yeah they'd still be able to mop up lings, but at the same time lings would be a reasonable way to play against them, however those early roach all ins would be a lot less acceptable and the game would be a lot more based on who was the better player than a simple coin flip.
Immortals are the same story, 1 immortal can easily kill 3 presieged up tanks. How is that reasonable at all? 2v1 tanks should be able to kill an immortal without a loss(but near death), but 1v1 an immortal should mop up a tank. Give immortals a bit faster fire rate and all of a sudden they become viable against marines too.
Conclusion: Stalkers
I personally feel that Stalkers are one of the most well designed units in the entire game. They don't kill things exceptionally fast, really gain a heavy edge in terms of your ability to micro them and even have an upgrade that lets them become extremely strong in the hands of a skilled player. Have you ever lost to a player using a lot of stalkers (outside of allins) where it felt awful and terrible? Where it felt like there was nothing you could do he just clicked a couple of buttons and autowon? I haven't. The problem is so many units destroy stalkers in the right conditions. A reasonable number of lings in a ling roach situation allows the zerg player to a-move the stalkers and there's nothing they can do, blink only helps so much. What about if they get fungled? gg. Terran has marauders? gg. Toss made immortals? gg. Each of those situations requires the stalker player to micro his ass off to survive, but the Marauder, Immortal, Ling/Roach or Infestor player has to do almost nothing to smash the stalkers to pieces. This needs to change.
Disclaimer: Take this thread for what it is. I only wrote it to vent some of my own frustrations with my own games, as well as games I watch in various tourneys. I want sc2 to be the best it can be and while some of my idea's are a bit crack potted and probably wrong I do feel that the general theme of this thread is solid, Too much damage, No Zoning, Crap Static Defenses, Hard Counters and of course Stalkers.
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intresting read  Agree with a lot
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I think Blink Stalkers are the scariest deathball in the game. I want goons back
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It's true. I went back and played some brood war for the first time in a long time, and it amazed me how SLOW it is compared to SC2. Not in the sense that you want to speed it up, but in the sense that you have time to react and micro. Doing a 10/15 gate dragoon pressure vs a terran, it's amazing how the micro feels. You have ample time to react to what dragoon is being damaged and move it back, focus on getting a good concave etc. This isn't really possible in SC2 since units die so ridiculously fast, and units close distances so quickly. In SC2, you're often discouraged from microing at all since it's all about critical firepower for a second or two. Losing just one second firing can leave your army decimated, and then you'll do no damage.
UPDATE:
What we really need, is a custom map for SC2 which explores this. Similar to SC2BW, but pure SC2 with more BW like balance, trying to implement what you mention in your post: stronger static defenses, more equalized counters, maybe the classic complaint about ball pathing. Just to see how it would actually work out in practice.
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there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome.
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On January 18 2012 18:46 bokeevboke wrote:
there is endless list of issues and flaws in sc2 design. funny that people only now started to discuss it. I was crying about it since the beginning. I hope blizzard will take some notes and improve in HotS. Otherwise I already lost interest in stacraft 2.
I think these are the most important things to work on:
- defender's advantage and zone controlling (this is the reason TvT is very good matchup)
- unit clumping (need to spread a bit)
- terrible terrible damage syndrome.
Not to take anything away from you being early, but these issues have been discussed since beta, all the way from when people first noticed how different highground advantage worked in SC2.
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On January 18 2012 18:28 Filter wrote:
Factor #4: Units that are amazing against one thing, but garbage against another.
There's way too many units that are terrible against some things and amazing against others. This makes it almost impossible to have creative compositions. If we took a 50% cut on the effectiveness of these units against what they roll right now and made them better against what they can't kill it would be very interesting to see.
Hellions either wipe the floor with lings or get smashed by roaches. They also fire way too slowly. Let them get in your mineral line though and all hopes lost. If hellions did 50% less to lings and 50% more to roaches imagine how the game would look. Yeah they'd still be able to mop up lings, but at the same time lings would be a reasonable way to play against them, however those early roach all ins would be a lot less acceptable and the game would be a lot more based on who was the better player than a simple coin flip.
Immortals are the same story, 1 immortal can easily kill 3 presieged up tanks. How is that reasonable at all? 2v1 tanks should be able to kill an immortal without a loss(but near death), but 1v1 an immortal should mop up a tank. Give immortals a bit faster fire rate and all of a sudden they become viable against marines too.
Conclusion: Stalkers
I personally feel that Stalkers are one of the most well designed units in the entire game. They don't kill things exceptionally fast, really gain a heavy edge in terms of your ability to micro them and even have an upgrade that lets them become extremely strong in the hands of a skilled player. Have you ever lost to a player using a lot of stalkers (outside of allins) where it felt awful and terrible? Where it felt like there was nothing you could do he just clicked a couple of buttons and autowon? I haven't. The problem is so many units destroy stalkers in the right conditions. A reasonable number of lings in a ling roach situation allows the zerg player to a-move the stalkers and there's nothing they can do, blink only helps so much. What about if they get fungled? gg. Terran has marauders? gg. Toss made immortals? gg. Each of those situations requires the stalker player to micro his ass off to survive, but the Marauder, Immortal, Ling/Roach or Infestor player has to do almost nothing to smash the stalkers to pieces. This needs to change.
I don't like all the design QQ threads that have been popping up lately, but I definitely agree with this factor in particular and your conclusion as a whole. The whole war3 inspired X automatically counters Y thing when it comes to low tiered units can lead to some really stupid situations. I understand and support it being that way when it comes to higher tier units, but when you're dealing with roaches/lings/zealots/marauders/marines/stalkers sentries, I wish things operated on a more soft counter basis and leave the hard counters for higher tier units like in BW.
PvP is actually pretty fun because a lot of these problems are relatively minimal. Obviously there's the 200/200 who has more colossi thing, but that comes up pretty rarely and for the most part there's back and forth action with just a few "high firepower" units mixed in making things interesting but not completely dominating the battlefield and invalidating everything else.
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If you don't like the game, go back to playing BW. Noone's stopping you. You're listing off complete design changes instead of specific issues.
I love BW and won't hate you for switching back.
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very interesting, but I don't agree with your static defense... cannons would be just to strong! Just imagine A cannon going up behind the zerg expansion or behind a wall, making it impossible to attack. Also all this changes would make Mutas pretty useless. If Turrets would do even more damage, Mutas would be stupid to play. You already need like 18+ Mutas to kill 1 Turret, when the terran repairs it and often time you still lose one. And if there is any Zerg unit, which can't get really hardcountered, it's the Mutalisk. With proper micro you can dodge storms, magic box against thors and so on...
But that leads to a problem, you already mentioned: Too much firepower, or at least to hard counters.
Like you said it's just a joke to fight with Stalkers or Roaches against Marauders or sth like that. But also, did you ever fight with an army of just stalkers and sentries against a Roach Ling army and completely got crushed? Probably yes, but did you fight against one with the same size and completely crushes him just because of forcefields? Probably YES! I think something like forcefields is sooo hard to balance. In the early game, they can just prevent any aggression in many situations and in other, nearly completely useless. I know I might wrote some weird things :D but well in the end I just think that there are too many hardcounters and the DPS against certain Unit types is obviously a huge factor.
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On January 18 2012 18:58 slytown wrote:If you don't like the game, go back to playing BW. Noone's stopping you. You're listing off complete design changes instead of specific issues. I love BW and won't hate you for switching back.
The OP isn't about not liking the design of SC2 compared to BW, it's about flaws in the design which BW didn't have. Going back to BW won't remove those issues from SC2.
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On January 18 2012 18:58 slytown wrote:If you don't like the game, go back to playing BW. Noone's stopping you. You're listing off complete design changes instead of specific issues. I love BW and won't hate you for switching back.
I never understood these kind of comments - 'go play BW'. What's wrong with wanting to make the game better? if there is smth good in bw why shouldn't we adopt it.
if you have nothing to contribute to discussion just move on pls.
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Just so you know, a lot of Protoss players stay around 190/200 supply intentionally so that they can deal with potential drop play, until they are stable enough with photon cannons + high templar in place.
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remember, lings actually got nerfed in sc2 
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On January 18 2012 19:06 GeOnoSis wrote:
very interesting, but I don't agree with your static defense... cannons would be just to strong! Just imagine A cannon going up behind the zerg expansion or behind a wall, making it impossible to attack. Also all this changes would make Mutas pretty useless. If Turrets would do even more damage, Mutas would be stupid to play. You already need like 18+ Mutas to kill 1 Turret, when the terran repairs it and often time you still lose one. And if there is any Zerg unit, which can't get really hardcountered, it's the Mutalisk. With proper micro you can dodge storms, magic box against thors and so on...
But that leads to a problem, you already mentioned: Too much firepower, or at least to hard counters.
Like you said it's just a joke to fight with Stalkers or Roaches against Marauders or sth like that. But also, did you ever fight with an army of just stalkers and sentries against a Roach Ling army and completely got crushed? Probably yes, but did you fight against one with the same size and completely crushes him just because of forcefields? Probably YES! I think something like forcefields is sooo hard to balance. In the early game, they can just prevent any aggression in many situations and in other, nearly completely useless. I know I might wrote some weird things :D but well in the end I just think that there are too many hardcounters and the DPS against certain Unit types is obviously a huge factor.
Thors vs Muta overall is just dumb as crap. One minor mistake, such as flying 1 milimeter too close to a thor you haven't seen, and he gets one shot off. Boom, 20 mutas brought to orange HP. The idea that you have to micro mutas against Thors is a good thing, it's a counter which can be overcome by skill. Problem again being firepower and speed, there's NO margin for error. A ½ second is enough to go from a good position to a bad position just because of the insane firepower of a single thor. Like OP said, this fight would also benefit from a 50% balance. Lower the damage by 50%, but increase the splash range, or something like that. Encourange micro, while not making minor mistakes cost too much.
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As someone who just beat 200/200 protoss army with 5 colossus with pure stim marines no micro I must agree.
User was temp banned for this post.
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Totally agree with your post, makes me want to play brood war.
Guess I'm just crossing my fingers the expansion might make the game better (lol)
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This seems like a copy of the "philosophy behind design of units"-thread (or sth like that). Though, only point 2 and 3 are the same. You have a point that some units are just too effective against others.
I agree with you that stalkers are good multi purpose units that don't counter anything specifically. I'd say roaches are also such a unit. (But some again, complain that roaches are too boring).
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On January 18 2012 18:44 Tobberoth wrote:
It's true. I went back and played some brood war for the first time in a long time, and it amazed me how SLOW it is compared to SC2. Not in the sense that you want to speed it up, but in the sense that you have time to react and micro. Doing a 10/15 gate dragoon pressure vs a terran, it's amazing how the micro feels. You have ample time to react to what dragoon is being damaged and move it back, focus on getting a good concave etc. This isn't really possible in SC2 since units die so ridiculously fast, and units close distances so quickly. In SC2, you're often discouraged from microing at all since it's all about critical firepower for a second or two. Losing just one second firing can leave your army decimated, and then you'll do no damage.
Yes this is exactly why I think SC2 needs its default gamespeed to be a bit lower. It's one of the reasons why battles are too decisive. Also, many players get away with suboptimal formations and unit positionings because it's often not worth the effort, especially when the opposing player is likely doing the same thing. Given a bit more available APM, players would finally find it worth the time to achieve more optimal formations, leading to less unsightly deathball clashes.
It just seems to me that SC2 has compensated for its easier mechanics by effectively speeding everything up. (I know that the game speed actually hasn't increased between BW and SC2, but it just feels that way.)
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Tobberoth I agree with you, but that's the life of TvZ! Terran doesn't micro, everything is dead. Terran does micro: minimal losses and every zerg unit is dead. You don't watch your mutas for one second, 5-10 (if not even every) are just dead (flying over marines just because terran moved randomly out). One mistake can lead to an instant loss...for BOTH sides.
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Are you playing the same game as us? I've played plenty of protoss (as zerg) that could quite literally press A, click and afk from the keyboard. Everything else you said though was pretty accurate and awesome, gj
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EPT
