|
On September 20 2011 03:52 Bashion wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:49 Micket wrote:On September 20 2011 03:40 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 02:36 Roxy wrote: I am disgusted that the ineptitude of the blizzard balance team is affecting the livelihood of these gamers
...for shame I kinda agree with you. I hate the excuse Blizzard gave saying "oh Terran is more developed". Ok, i understand that. But why would you release a game with one race being more "developed" than the other two? If it wasnt an Esport, most people wouldnt care that much,but it huts not just the balance, but viewership (dont you tell me you arent tired of watching endless TVTVTVT) and entertainment. If people get frustrated on the ladder by losing games, imagine a pro player that picked protoss. Unless they pull a byun and switch to Terran, we will probably have to wait till Legacy of the void. Of course i am exaggerating a little, but watching Protoss is so sad. Another thing that bothers me is that blizz is always faster to fix stuff when it comes to zerg. Nestea lost to a bunker rush? Give rax 5 more secs. Idra got his ass kicked by BFH? nerf them. Protoss can harass a fast third with void rays? No, sir, you cant have that. Buff spore crawlers. 1/1/1 has over 90% winratio? Wait, the metagame will shift. Infestors are too good? nerf NP, while infested terrans remain untouched and fungal rape everything else. I wont even talk about ghosts. Yes, im sad and mad. I think even sadder was the consensus amongst Teamliquid that Terran players were dominating in KR but not anywhere else was due to them being better at RTS than their Zerg and Protoss counterparts. Things like 'they are following their idols Boxer and Nada' was hilarious to hear. That consensus is at the same level of Idras "Protoss players are stupid". tbh they are, need more warp prisms.
|
On September 20 2011 03:52 Bashion wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:49 Micket wrote:On September 20 2011 03:40 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 02:36 Roxy wrote: I am disgusted that the ineptitude of the blizzard balance team is affecting the livelihood of these gamers
...for shame I kinda agree with you. I hate the excuse Blizzard gave saying "oh Terran is more developed". Ok, i understand that. But why would you release a game with one race being more "developed" than the other two? If it wasnt an Esport, most people wouldnt care that much,but it huts not just the balance, but viewership (dont you tell me you arent tired of watching endless TVTVTVT) and entertainment. If people get frustrated on the ladder by losing games, imagine a pro player that picked protoss. Unless they pull a byun and switch to Terran, we will probably have to wait till Legacy of the void. Of course i am exaggerating a little, but watching Protoss is so sad. Another thing that bothers me is that blizz is always faster to fix stuff when it comes to zerg. Nestea lost to a bunker rush? Give rax 5 more secs. Idra got his ass kicked by BFH? nerf them. Protoss can harass a fast third with void rays? No, sir, you cant have that. Buff spore crawlers. 1/1/1 has over 90% winratio? Wait, the metagame will shift. Infestors are too good? nerf NP, while infested terrans remain untouched and fungal rape everything else. I wont even talk about ghosts. Yes, im sad and mad. I think even sadder was the consensus amongst Teamliquid that Terran players were dominating in KR but not anywhere else was due to them being better at RTS than their Zerg and Protoss counterparts. Things like 'they are following their idols Boxer and Nada' was hilarious to hear. That consensus is at the same level of Idras "Protoss players are stupid".
At a certain level protoss players *are* stupid -- stupid for continually showing up to the gunfight armed with knives. It doesn't matter how amazingly skilled you are with your knife; you'll still usually lose against a guy with a gun.
There's an obvious best race at this point, and there's no excuse for not playing it if you're a pro player and your job is to win at SC2. Sure, TvT gets boring -- but not as boring as XvP curb-stompings.
|
we need Stork playing SC2 ¬¬
|
On September 20 2011 05:09 Artok wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:52 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 03:49 Micket wrote:On September 20 2011 03:40 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 02:36 Roxy wrote: I am disgusted that the ineptitude of the blizzard balance team is affecting the livelihood of these gamers
...for shame I kinda agree with you. I hate the excuse Blizzard gave saying "oh Terran is more developed". Ok, i understand that. But why would you release a game with one race being more "developed" than the other two? If it wasnt an Esport, most people wouldnt care that much,but it huts not just the balance, but viewership (dont you tell me you arent tired of watching endless TVTVTVT) and entertainment. If people get frustrated on the ladder by losing games, imagine a pro player that picked protoss. Unless they pull a byun and switch to Terran, we will probably have to wait till Legacy of the void. Of course i am exaggerating a little, but watching Protoss is so sad. Another thing that bothers me is that blizz is always faster to fix stuff when it comes to zerg. Nestea lost to a bunker rush? Give rax 5 more secs. Idra got his ass kicked by BFH? nerf them. Protoss can harass a fast third with void rays? No, sir, you cant have that. Buff spore crawlers. 1/1/1 has over 90% winratio? Wait, the metagame will shift. Infestors are too good? nerf NP, while infested terrans remain untouched and fungal rape everything else. I wont even talk about ghosts. Yes, im sad and mad. I think even sadder was the consensus amongst Teamliquid that Terran players were dominating in KR but not anywhere else was due to them being better at RTS than their Zerg and Protoss counterparts. Things like 'they are following their idols Boxer and Nada' was hilarious to hear. That consensus is at the same level of Idras "Protoss players are stupid". tbh they are, need more warp prisms. to drop what, exactly? nothing.
|
4713 Posts
While I admire the original poster's attempt to inspire hope in the hearts of all the protoss players, the protoss community and all the protoss fans, I can't help but feel that these innovators, don't have anything to innovate upon and that our hopes will be dashed upon the rocks and will crumble to pieces.
I am going to try and say this cleanly and efficiently. The problem with protoss is not the lack of innovation, it is the lack of strength and the multitude of weaknesses that can be exploited.
This problem is most evident in the TvP match up and is grotesquely blown out of proportion by the 1/1/1 style of opening and variations.
Problem number 1 (P1). The protoss tier 1 and 1.5 is week against a basic tier 1.5 terran army without the use of specialist units (sentries, HT), or higher tech (colossis, HT). Marines do phenomenal DPS and in combination with Marauders are deadly because marauders can just kite zealots forever even with charge, and marauders also rip apart stalkers. This leads to problem number 2.
P2.Protoss specialist units are too easy to be countered and too expensive. Ghosts can EMP from a bigger range then a HT can feedback, EMP can potentially neutralize many HT and sentries while HT can only feedback 1 unit at a time. EMP also destroyes shields which in some cases means 50% of a protoss effective health. Ghosts contribute with real DPS even after their energy is spent, and they also do double damage against light (zealots). Ghosts with cloak can survive for a good time as well, which also puts into grave perspective problem number 3.
P3. Protoss don't have enough mobile detection, terran and zerg both have at least one more means of detection then a unit. Zerg has Overseers and Fungal growth, terran has EMP, Raven and scan. Not only do the terrans and zerg have more methods of detection, but their detector units also fulfill different roles and are stronger. The overseer can help with scouting via changeling and can also delay a critical tech or reinforcements with contaminate. Raven's provide invaluable support via point defense drone, and also have the potential to do massive damage with hunter seeker missile or harass a mineral line with auto-turrets. Lastly the detection of terran and protoss is more easily available, scans and EMPs are easy to get or already part of the terran arsenal, overseers are unlocked just by teching up to lair, and infestors are now part of many lineups.
Now, if you add up all the problems you get the following scenario. Against a terran 1/1/1 a protoss is forced to get a robo so he can have detection. Because of the lack of other detection methods the protoss becomes predictable, if he doesn't get a robotics for observers he risks dying to cloaked banshees. Also observers are easy to snipe, they have the lowest HP of any detector, and once a scan goes of they are dead. Now because protoss was forced to get robo they now have to add immortals to the army, and while great against tanks, the backbone of a 1/1/1 is the marine, and mass marines rip apart immortals, and once immortals are dead, the T1 protoss army crumbles.
Normally in balance of RTS games, if units are very cheep they should be a lot weaker (zerg), if units are more expensive they should be stronger (protoss), however, protoss T1 units are really not that good for the amount they cost, zealots and stalkers are way too weak without sentries, and against a 1/1/1 sentries don't help all that much because tanks have huge range, do massive damage, and there are also banshees that can mess them over.
This problem is put into sharp focus in games where, you see a terran not expand, you see the protoss fast expand at min 4, and at 12 minutes into the game the terran has a bigger supply army then the protoss. Its a problem in game balance that a 1 base player could have equal or more supply then a player on 2 bases for 66% of the game. What is even more wrong is that the 1 base player's army is so strong that it can annihilate the 2 base player's army.
Now, if we look away from the 1/1/1 and focus on the meta game, in a late game scenario the protoss doesn't stand much chance. A terran bio ball is cheaper to replenish, is more durable because of medivacs, and it does more DPS then the standard tier 1.5 of protoss. Protoss needs sentries and HT or colossis, however, sentries and HT are easily countered by ghosts, colossis are easily countered by vikings. In a head to head fight, the terran just needs to have the patience to emp the specialists, snipe the colossis with vikings, then the bio ball an just do the rest. Also warp prism micro with HT isn't so hot because they can be sniped by vikings, just the same way colossis are sniped. To rub salt onto the wounds, EMP also directly reduce survivability of protoss units by destroying shields.
Now I ask, where can you innovate in there? Protoss are already using 99% of their units, they use zealots, stalkers, sentries, HT, colossus, observer and warp prism. Protoss air force is weak, they Phoenix and Void rays are already easily countered by units the terran already gets, marines, vikings and ghosts. Carriers cost too much, take too much time to build and require too big numbers to be effective. Carriers in small number are easily sniped by vikings. Mothership is even worst because it can be EMPed from farther away then it can vortex, once EMPed it becomes a big meat shield waiting to die horribly to vikings and marines.
How can you innovate against a 1/1/1, when from the get go, you need to get a robo for detection? Also how can you innovate a build against the 1/1/1 when you risk creating a build that can completely counter the 1/1/1 but fail miserably to form of early pressure?
And, keep in mind that, terrans still haven't widely adopted the use of ravens and/or mass ravens. With patch 1.4 that might change because, seeker missiles will be able to outrun zealots even with charge, and stalkers and sentries and probles, and ravens also hard counter stalkers by reducing their DPS to 0 via PDD.
Against zerg the problems aren't quite as bad, but they aren't great either. The timings of 4 gates and 6 gates has been figured out. Protoss can't do 4 gate because it won't work, the zerg can prepare an appropriate defense while still having a 1 base advantage. If protoss chooses to fast expand into a 6 gate, the zerg can just take a quick 3rd, and can have defenses out in time for any form of protoss preasure. Air play can be easily countered by the proper and strategic placement of spore crawlers and building of extra queens (which zerg have already started doing). And if the protoss decides to not go air and go a 6 gate or robo+ a number of gates, then the zerg can still have an big enough army in time to defend against it, and still retain a 1 base advantage.
The recent game of Check.Prime vs Tails from IGN qualifiers is a good example of zerg being able to take a fast 3rd and come out ahead of a protoss FE. As for late game, infestors are a big double risk problem. Not only can they fungal the entire protoss army, but they can neural colossis, and/or archons. Fungal does respectable DPS, but more critically it leaves the protoss open to brood lords and baneling drops, both of which can do massive damage.
Again, carriers and motherships won't help, they still take too long to build, cost too much, are too vulnerable to corrupters, and worst, are vulnerable to neurals.
The only conclusion I can draw is that, protoss doesn't have anything to innovate upon, they are already using all their tools, and now that terran and zerg have started to fully use their tools the cracks are starting to show. I really wish I was wrong here but, it trully feels like it will take either a very big patch (1.4 won't cut it), or the expansion to fix the current protoss problems.
And while all this situation might really suck and demoralize a lot of players, lets have faith and remember that SC2 is only 1 year old, hopefully we will be looking back at this period in time and remember it was the darkness before the dusk, the calm before the storm. Change will come, even if Blizzard has to act.
|
Lulz biased much? Honorable mention HuK, I lulz'd.
|
On September 20 2011 05:27 galivet wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 03:52 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 03:49 Micket wrote:On September 20 2011 03:40 Bashion wrote:On September 20 2011 02:36 Roxy wrote: I am disgusted that the ineptitude of the blizzard balance team is affecting the livelihood of these gamers
...for shame I kinda agree with you. I hate the excuse Blizzard gave saying "oh Terran is more developed". Ok, i understand that. But why would you release a game with one race being more "developed" than the other two? If it wasnt an Esport, most people wouldnt care that much,but it huts not just the balance, but viewership (dont you tell me you arent tired of watching endless TVTVTVT) and entertainment. If people get frustrated on the ladder by losing games, imagine a pro player that picked protoss. Unless they pull a byun and switch to Terran, we will probably have to wait till Legacy of the void. Of course i am exaggerating a little, but watching Protoss is so sad. Another thing that bothers me is that blizz is always faster to fix stuff when it comes to zerg. Nestea lost to a bunker rush? Give rax 5 more secs. Idra got his ass kicked by BFH? nerf them. Protoss can harass a fast third with void rays? No, sir, you cant have that. Buff spore crawlers. 1/1/1 has over 90% winratio? Wait, the metagame will shift. Infestors are too good? nerf NP, while infested terrans remain untouched and fungal rape everything else. I wont even talk about ghosts. Yes, im sad and mad. I think even sadder was the consensus amongst Teamliquid that Terran players were dominating in KR but not anywhere else was due to them being better at RTS than their Zerg and Protoss counterparts. Things like 'they are following their idols Boxer and Nada' was hilarious to hear. That consensus is at the same level of Idras "Protoss players are stupid". At a certain level protoss players *are* stupid -- stupid for continually showing up to the gunfight armed with knives. It doesn't matter how amazingly skilled you are with your knife; you'll still usually lose against a guy with a gun. There's an obvious best race at this point, and there's no excuse for not playing it if you're a pro player and your job is to win at SC2. Sure, TvT gets boring -- but not as boring as XvP curb-stompings.
To be fair, as a pro player you have to focus on playing your race. Worrying about balance is detrimental to your practice regimen and also to your mental strength. Its part of the pro mindset to not complain about balance, since it only frustrates you and doesnt help you to improve.
All this heroism legend hope stuff for protoss on here seems rather cynical IMO. Since pros are systematically unable to notice it, someone should protect them from wasting their lives for something that appears to be not archievable. Even if some people claim thats how it should be.
Ultimately, you cannot tell skill and balance apart anyways. Truth is, it is a matter of opinion if terran players have more skill or if terran is insanely OP, there is no logical sound way to "measure" these values independent from each other. In the end you have to DECIDE if its balanced or not.
If people in the sc2 community decide that terrans are better and protosses suck, they can not be proven wrong. Not even after nobody plays protoss anymore.
Balance is the question of how you want a competitive landscape to look like.
|
An extremely biased list leaving several heavy hitters out. Guess its fun to write these up though.
|
to me, the problem isn't really that toss would be so weak right now, but that each and every successful strategy protoss ever had was denounced "OP" and - most of them at least - nerfed; or units that deal with it buffed
#1 on top of all: 4 gate; even though the nerf was meant for PvP it also meant a drastic nerf in PvT and PvZ #2: double gate zealot pressure PvZ; zealot-buildtime-nerf was claimed to have been introduced due to proxy gate in bronze league, but in reality it removed the protoss equivalent to double rax pressure openings that terrans have #3: voidrays: both the all-in (which could have worked out perfectly in the metagame, forcing terrans into not greedy macro games) and the lategame (flux vanes) was nerfed #4: zealot/templar PvT: terrans cried and amulet...no..didn't get nerfed, but got completely removed #5: protoss deathball PvZ: zergs cried and got the infestor buffed; the funny thing is, the deathball really should be strong, as it consists of each and every protoss high-tech-unit; not something like infestor/ling-2-tier-2-unit bs; also it comes with the disadvantage of zero mapcontrol
People that call for more innovation need to realize that the other races didn't really "evolve"....it was the actually very simple fact that most of the good stuff protoss had got nerfed. I would love to see some real "innovations", the problem is though, that there's a reason why these supposedly good strategies haven't been used yet.
|
On September 20 2011 02:29 Talin wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 02:21 Jinivus wrote:On September 20 2011 02:08 Talin wrote:On September 20 2011 02:03 Jinivus wrote:On September 20 2011 01:52 Talin wrote:On September 20 2011 01:46 tomatriedes wrote:On September 20 2011 01:31 Talin wrote:On September 20 2011 01:16 Yaotzin wrote: 1) BW was never this bad. 2) You're assuming it's a period, and by the time you realise you're wrong the game will be dead.
Don't understand you people who insist on waiting forever for some massive metagame change that probably will never happen, while people just stop watching because a 2-race Starcraft is just boring. 1) It absolutely was (and arguably is, save for one fluke player). 2) You're assuming it's not. By the time you realize that you can't keep patching previous patches that were patches to problems caused by other patches, SC2 will lose any legitimacy as a competitive game. Every time a game is patched, it's basically reset and completely messed up. A month later somebody will finally come up with refined ways of abusing the changes and another race will need a patch. Rinse and repeat. It never ends, and it certainly never ends well. Why is it sooo inconceivable to people like you that the game might require another patch or two to improve the balance? Is such a concept so absurd that it cannot even be considered? Why didn't we have this 'no more patching attitude' before the KA and warpgate nerfs? Why couldn't we have stopped patching and let the metagame sort it out before those major nerfs? It's kind of absurd, given that every patch is pretty much a gamble. Nobody can possibly conceive all the consequences of a balance change immediately, and it could (and usually does) just as easily create additional problems in various matchups later on. With that attitude, you'll never stop patching, which is just absurd because then you're effectively determining all the results by patching. We already have patches on average each 2 months, and they never seem to fix anything long term. It's just going back and forth. You act as if patches solve something, but they don't - they only change things. I thought the game was perfectly playable after Terrans could no longer build Barracks before Depots btw. -_- On September 20 2011 01:46 tomatriedes wrote: Do you really know so much more than all the top Korean protoss players (and even one terran player) and experts like Gisado who are claiming a problem? No, I'm saying that they don't know everything. Obviously I know even less, but until you've got the game crunched down to the last detail, you can't conclusively claim it's imbalanced. And since knowing everything in a game of such complexity is not humanly possible, all balance complaints are really based on arbitrary and incomplete observations. Well if balance is so unattainable might as well give Protoss a chance to win something right? So you would have another 33% (or 66%) of SC2 users whine instead of you, what's the difference? ^_^ Balance whining annoys me no matter where it comes from, and as for games on my level I win when I'm better than my opponent and lose when I'm worse. It's all the same to me. I wouldn't mind a Protoss-favored patch obviously, but I know it'll really change little in terms of how good overall game balance is and it will eventually just be counter-patched again (especially if the trend continues and people keep demanding and expecting patches). No i just want an enjoyable and competitive game at least from the perspective of a Protoss player. I want to actually have a shred of hope that a protoss player can take down a competent zerg or terran. Not be in a constant state of depression on these forums because I have to see MC play a PvZ on a freaking map like Dual Sight. That's what the depressed Zergs wanted as well, so they got super buffed on multiple fronts and apparently that's why you now can't have what you want, and so on and so forth. Among people who think balance is the be-all, end-all reason for players of certain race doing badly while a game is evolving very rapidly, then out of all of you, one third at least will always be unhappy and depressed. And the rest of us will have to swim through oceans of tears EVERYWHERE on forums. -_- What can I tell you... just don't get depressed.
nope you're pretty much wronged here.
Zerg wasnt and never been in as bad state as protoss is.
Protoss win rates have been bad since the beginning compared to the other 2 races and you only see one protoss winning top tourneys earlier and that was MC while the rest of the winners usually are Terran most of the time.
Protoss is lacking what the other two races have and that is mobility of armies or units.
Terran has medivacs(lmao transporter and healer in 1 unit!) and can afford to lose a few of those.Plus, they're hella cose effective.
Zerg has perma speed lings that could shred protoss base apart if u dont wall in carefully and they can afford to lose bunch of zerglings.Mutas...no explanation needed
Zealots are extremely slow, melee and can easily be kited until u have charge, which, sometimes charged into death = free gold for your opponent.Marine has stim and can scout pretty well while speedlings... u know how good they are.
Stalkers do pathetic DPS, slow aspd and low dmg.EXTREMELY TERRIBLE in a small group vs small group like 5stalkers vs 6marines with medivac.
All in all, imo, they need to buff protss tier1 units a bit.They can leave the OP ghosts and Infestor as what they are now.
|
Blizzard should move DT´s to templar archives maybe, dark shrine was the most stupid thing in game, in SC1 you could go templar tech, harassing with DT´s and making HT for your big engagements at least
|
On September 20 2011 06:10 dirtyBeat wrote: Blizzard should move DT´s to templar archives maybe, dark shrine was the most stupid thing in game, in SC1 you could go templar tech, harassing with DT´s and making HT for your big engagements at least
Nobody understood the reasoning behind the crazy gas-expensive dark shrine, iirc even some mods/pros complained hard about that in beta. The funny thing is, if you blizz is afraid of "insta" warped DTs, they only have to set the warp-in-time to, like, 25, so it would be insanely risky to warp them in at a proxy location.
|
On September 20 2011 06:10 dirtyBeat wrote: Blizzard should move DT´s to templar archives maybe, dark shrine was the most stupid thing in game, in SC1 you could go templar tech, harassing with DT´s and making HT for your big engagements at least
But then Zerg would need much earlier detection; overseers and/or spores would need to be rebalanced.
|
Sorry, but I'm not convinced. We won't have a code s protoss champion for a looong time.
|
On September 20 2011 06:16 KimJongChill wrote: Sorry, but I'm not convinced. We won't have a code s protoss champion for a looong time.
and looking at the brackets, not even a code A champion for the matter
|
On September 20 2011 06:14 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 06:10 dirtyBeat wrote: Blizzard should move DT´s to templar archives maybe, dark shrine was the most stupid thing in game, in SC1 you could go templar tech, harassing with DT´s and making HT for your big engagements at least But then Zerg would need much earlier detection; overseers and/or spores would need to be rebalanced.
Well thei will still be tier 2.5 or even 3. So zerg will have plenty time to build 1 or 2 spores or even create an overseer.
|
They should give Dark Templars a researchable blink upgrade Okay that might be OP but it would make them a far more potent and resilient harass unit.
Maybe the expansion could add a unit that is built at the forge so that it would still be accessible tier 1 but wont need to be cost ineffective because of warp functionality. Something tailored for fast expands like a slow, tough defender unit...
|
he's not top notch, but if you're talking innovative, you might want to check out nexsickness
|
Hopefully Protoss will innovate their way back into this. All I've heard are terran terran terran innovating their strategies constantly week after week. Zerg have also occationally adapted and improved their previous strategies. Time for protoss to do something besides asking for buffs. Until everything tried fails, then the game is unbalanced.
|
On September 20 2011 06:14 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On September 20 2011 06:10 dirtyBeat wrote: Blizzard should move DT´s to templar archives maybe, dark shrine was the most stupid thing in game, in SC1 you could go templar tech, harassing with DT´s and making HT for your big engagements at least But then Zerg would need much earlier detection; overseers and/or spores would need to be rebalanced.
not really just change the build time of the archives to the same of the shrine and there you go the timings dont change its just that now it isnt useless.
|
|
|
|