Most people (including Blizzard) agree gameplay involving deathballs is undesirable. The main reason why deathballs are favored for protoss is to strengthen the collosus (stalkers are in the deathball to protect collosus against anti-air, zealots and archons are in the deathball to tank damage).
So, why not split up the deathball by splitting up the individual collosus?
For example, make it so the collosus lasers cannot stack (of course buff damage accordingly). This will both force players to spread out their collosus + make fewer collosus as at some point there will be nothing to be gained from more collosus. This may also make players create multiple small armies with each small army having its own set of collosus for support. What do you guys think?
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ?
I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas.
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ?
I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas.
Yes, I know - but that is impossible if they stay as normal attacks with current game mechanics. For the sake of consistency, I think it's better to have it change.
Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs?
I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs?
Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area.
My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead.
And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems...
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ?
You could make all collosi in an area around the collosi have a joined attacks where the area would be like a pylon radius so they all attack the same point so the damage would be 30*X on a single point where x is amount collosi leading to having to many collosi will do alot of overkill damage.
On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs?
I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs?
Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area.
My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead.
And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems...
More or less how I feel about the Protoss race as well. Sure would be nice to actually see a FF nerf and gateway unit buff, allowing protoss to actually be effective in small numbers, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. It's pretty lame being stuck in your base until you are ready to try and end the game with one big attack, and having the outcome of engagements swing in massive favor one way or the other depending on whether or not you had perfect forcefields (especiallly againt zerg, where if your large forcefield wall has a small gap in it for a couple seconds, instead of destroying a portion of their army while the other half is blocked off, the forcefields are essentially useless, as their whole army can run through this gap at lightspeed in a split second.)
I think one of the problems with SC2 is that some forms of AoE are too easy to use, particularly the colossus and infestor. Making AoE attacks require manual (or being greatly limited by positioning; lurkers and siege tanks) control seems like a good way to fix this. The control required can be increased even more by making these AoE attacks quite small. Even with the current form of the fungal growth spell, it would be harder to use if the AoE were smaller and either more damaging or just infestors half of the cost. Another thing that could perhaps make AoE type attacks more interesting could be to make them channelled, which would make them somewhat more positionally based, but not to such a degree that siege tanks are.
Edit: Making slow projectile AoE attacks could also be interesting, as using them would require prediction of unit movement. Some sort of baneling launcher, or just giving them the ability to jump, which could help the fact that one of zerg's major forms of AoE has the considerable disadvantage of being melee.
On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs?
I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs?
Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area.
My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead.
And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems...
More or less how I feel about the Protoss race as well. Sure would be nice to actually see a FF nerf and gateway unit buff, allowing protoss to actually be effective in small numbers, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. It's pretty lame being stuck in your base until you are ready to try and end the game with one big attack, and having the outcome of engagements swing in massive favor one way or the other depending on whether or not you had perfect forcefields (especiallly againt zerg, where if your large forcefield wall has a small gap in it for a couple seconds, instead of destroying a portion of their army while the other half is blocked off, the forcefields are essentially useless, as their whole army can run through this gap at lightspeed in a split second.)
I have been playing quite alot of HotS and I can't really say that most of this is actually true anymore, you don't have to go collossi every game anymore, the tempest is pretty good. Saying that protoss is the only race that has a "death ball" is very stupid, there isn't a single race that doesn't have a deathball. Ever played a pvt? Terrans goes gets a bio deathball. The way to get away from the deathball is to create incentive to split and attack in differant locations, one way of doing this would be lowering the range on ALL units making all the ranged units that are out of range useless.
First of all, this would not work. The problem is in the design of the colossus weakness, it's vulnerability to air attacks. That means it needs baby sitting by stalkers, and a lot of stalkers at that, because stalkers have terrible DPS. If protoss was forced to separate their colossi like this, they would never be able to have 20 stalkers following around each colossus. The colossus is a big part of the protoss deathball, but for a completely different reason than you think. The only way to protect them is with the whole rest of your army.
Second, it's pretty silly that people still think of protoss as being the only race to have a deathball. Terrans run around with a huge ball of mmm+ghost+viking overhead. The surface area on that thing is the same as a protoss. And zergs are the worst offenders at the moment, not out of necessity, but out of sheer power of the broodlord+infestor combo.
There are a lot of design problems with the Collosus. It's more than lasers stacking because in fact in Collosus vs Collosus battles, Protoss are already trying to spread out into a concave.
The issues are much more fundamental including it's crazy mobility in which it can ignore terrain as well as any army on the ground. But the big issue is how the Collosus actually attacks. Burst damage and the cool down in between is a big deal
To make the Collosus more microable, you'd have to look at these things: 1) Burst damage (Front loaded damage, time in between shots) 2) Speed 3) Speed between attacking and moving and moving and attacking 4) Relatively low hit points. (Although with how fast things die in SC2, this point might be moot.)
(Oracle stuff is out of date, but the principles remain relevant. 6:10 for Reaver-Collosus comparison)
The mobility, combined with the rate of fire (and non-directional arc damage) means that to be balanced, it must be vulnerable to air. Once it's vulnerable to air, it is very difficult to operate independently from the main army. Aka an unit stuck in the deathball rather than being used for raids, offense and defence.
Still, I'm 100% sure that collosi are not a problem in high level play (except the boring late PvP). Right now, I would prefer to see a rework on the infestor.
I played Half-life 2 recently and there are colossus type units used by the combine but they don't shot lasers like in sc2. In HL2 they should lasers in a burst with about 5 lasers in a short period of time with no splash damage. However there is a slow secondary with some aoe damage. Has one of the best shooters the model for a successful colossus? See link for more info http://half-life.wikia.com/wiki/Strider
Still, I'm 100% sure that collosi are not a problem in high level play (except the boring late PvP). Right now, I would prefer to see a rework on the infestor.
I think that any form of AoE that is easy to use is bad for interesting gameplay. The colossus is one of the prime examples of an easy to use AoE; it does massive damage with its attack, has a long range, can walk up cliffs and over other units.
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ?
I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas.
This will encourage your opposing player to clump their units up as much as possible when you're going colossus. It will also nerf colossus too much when defending chokes, tight areas and ff'd units.
On November 05 2012 11:01 Falling wrote: There are a lot of design problems with the Collosus. It's more than lasers stacking because in fact in Collosus vs Collosus battles, Protoss are already trying to spread out into a concave.
The issues are much more fundamental including it's crazy mobility in which it can ignore terrain as well as any army on the ground. But the big issue is how the Collosus actually attacks. Burst damage and the cool down in between is a big deal
To make the Collosus more microable, you'd have to look at these things: 1) Burst damage (Front loaded damage, time in between shots) 2) Speed 3) Speed between attacking and moving and moving and attacking 4) Relatively low hit points. (Although with how fast things die in SC2, this point might be moot.)
The mobility, combined with the rate of fire (and non-directional arc damage) means that to be balanced, it must be vulnerable to air. Once it's vulnerable to air, it is very difficult to operate independently from the main army. Aka an unit stuck in the deathball rather than being used for raids, offense and defence.
Thank you for showing the difference between Reaver and Colossus and how the Reaver is more interesting than the Colossus. One sentence you said does push me into another "rant" again though, because "it doesnt kill anything outright" is true not only for the Colossus, but also for the Siege Tank. The culprit which caused this is obviously the tighly packed units which would be obliterated too easily by high damage burst attacks, so Blizzard changed it to more continuous low damage attacks. Without the tight formations it would be possible to have high damage burst attacks (although the precisely aimed Colossus attacks are too good for that compared with the kinda random Reaver energy balls - which can be blocked, right?) again.
Thus I cannot understand why people are still not crying out over the tight formation and unlimited unit selection more and why there are too many idiots who say things like "I like the deathball". That junk limits micro, limits the creativity of the devs and most certainly limits the creativity of the players by making one tactic much more efficient than any others. Cutesy micro like that for the Reaver or the Carrier has no place in a game with massive blobs of infantry which tears them apart too easily and you wont have much time for any micro with the huge number of units on the battlefield anyways. Culprit #2 are the production speed boosts ... which cause the battlefield to be full of units.
Personally I have always liked the Reaver much more because of the "lottery shot" and the excitement it causes. When one of those energy balls is stuck on the scenery for a second or two before eliminating either half a dozen workers or none at all you have more excitement than with that "War of the Worlds" quadrupod.