On October 31 2013 06:30 Joner wrote: If blizzard had just straight up removed the collossus from the game in early WoL, we could have had alot more to work with now to counteract the deathball phenomenon. It could've been removed and gateway units could've been buffed to meassure the other races early core units.
The two most criticized units in this game, the colussus and the sentry, have not ever been touched nor tweaked in any way or form, despite numerous complaints from the community since early on in SC2's lifespan. Instead things have been balanced around them. Even maps.
The fundamental issues of SC2 revolving deathballs will be around until the design team are willing to recognize the early mistakes made and revert them. Look at diablo 3. It didn't live up to it's name and now it's basically slowly turning into its predecessor, which was actually a good game.
I'm not saying make it like broodwar. I'm just saying fix it.
The question is how would you address the missing role of the sentry/colossus. The entire game would have to be re-balanced most likely. Sentries are fine(removing sentries would break it the most) imo but Colossus could probably be removed/altered.
we need more units like the HT in the game that are able to control space and are able to defend in lower numbers vs big amounts of units. 2 cannons + 2 HT per base = safe vs even relatively big armies while 2 cannons + 1 colossus is not. HT are an awesome example of an antideathball unit that dont explicitly need to be in an deathball themselve like colossus that need to be protected and therefore only work in deathballs. BW had a lot more of those units like defiler, strong tanks etc. that are able to kill much larger amounts of units and therefore force antideathball play.
and as many said 3 base eco and stuff like no defenders advantage thx to warpgate also play a big role. basically everyone hopes LotV fixes those 3 things...lets see what happens.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
I just started watching BW and all i can say is that in the last 2-3 months i saw such exciting games in broodwar, that are easily as good / or even better than the best games i saw in sc2 (despite the fact that i was no fan of a specific player unlike in sc2, i think thats an important aspect too). But i guess thats not the point here.
As i said multiple times already, my biggest problem with sc2 deathballs is the interaction between them. The toss has 2 colossi and i only roach hydra, well gg. Deathballs in sc2 are extremely unforgiving and boring to watch cause they clump to one giant blob that will do extreme amount of damage. Dont you agree on that? Do you think engagements between tossballs and another army are exciting to watch? I think these battles are extremely anticlimatic and well kinda stupid. That doesnt mean that the match itself was bad, but the fighting between 2 armys is pretty stale and boring in nearly every PvX matchup.(not exclusively only in toss matchups, but i think toss is the biggest flaw when you talk about deathballs) I am really curious if you would argue against that.
On October 31 2013 06:30 Joner wrote: If blizzard had just straight up removed the collossus from the game in early WoL, we could have had alot more to work with now to counteract the deathball phenomenon. It could've been removed and gateway units could've been buffed to meassure the other races early core units.
The two most criticized units in this game, the colussus and the sentry, have not ever been touched nor tweaked in any way or form, despite numerous complaints from the community since early on in SC2's lifespan. Instead things have been balanced around them. Even maps.
The fundamental issues of SC2 revolving deathballs will be around until the design team are willing to recognize the early mistakes made and revert them. Look at diablo 3. It didn't live up to it's name and now it's basically slowly turning into its predecessor, which was actually a good game.
I'm not saying make it like broodwar. I'm just saying fix it.
The question is how would you address the missing role of the sentry/colossus. The entire game would have to be re-balanced most likely. Sentries are fine(removing sentries would break it the most) imo but Colossus could probably be removed/altered.
It's impossible to say what would have to be tweaked to weight up for the loss of the collossus at this stage. Hence why this should've been done at a much earlier stage. However, the argument that the game would have to be rebalanced has always been the counter-argument towards the suggestion of removing or severely nerfing the collossus. It's never a good time to do such a change but that unit does not have a place in a good RTS game.
But to respond to your question. What could be done to address the missing collusus/sentry?
I would, as many have done before me, suggest buffing the other gateway units. Perhaps even tweak the immortal in some way. Removing the collosus would surely bring an age of severe imbalance but in the long run (and we STILL have a long run! one more game is coming out for starters) we would see a better game.
Granted, protoss does not rely on the sentry as heavily as they used to so it does not pose that much of a problem towards the gameplay.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
I just started watching BW and all i can say is that in the last 2-3 months i saw such exciting games in broodwar, that are easily as good / or even better than the best games i saw in sc2 (despite the fact that i was no fan of a specific player unlike in sc2, i think thats an important aspect too). But i guess thats not the point here.
As i said multiple times already, my biggest problem with sc2 deathballs is the interaction between them. The toss has 2 colossi and i only roach hydra, well gg. Deathballs in sc2 are extremely unforgiving and boring to watch cause they clump to one giant blob that will do extreme amount of damage. Dont you agree on that? Do you think engagements between tossballs and another army are exciting to watch? I think these battles are extremely anticlimatic and well kinda stupid. That doesnt mean that the match itself was bad, but the fighting between 2 armys is pretty stale and boring in nearly every PvX matchup.(not exclusively only in toss matchups, but i think toss is the biggest flaw when you talk about deathballs) I am really curious if you would argue against that.
I disagree with that entirely, actually.
And what you (and several other people) fail to recognize is that the top players still playing BW are doing so on the mantle of skill and knowledge of 12 years of top-level play. Starcraft has 3 years. Less than 1 year of HOTS. If people are still playing SC2 in 12 years, I imagine the games will be stupidly good.
Also, the top level players make even the big maxed-army engagements look interesting to me, or at the very least impressive.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
I just started watching BW and all i can say is that in the last 2-3 months i saw such exciting games in broodwar, that are easily as good / or even better than the best games i saw in sc2 (despite the fact that i was no fan of a specific player unlike in sc2, i think thats an important aspect too). But i guess thats not the point here.
As i said multiple times already, my biggest problem with sc2 deathballs is the interaction between them. The toss has 2 colossi and i only roach hydra, well gg. Deathballs in sc2 are extremely unforgiving and boring to watch cause they clump to one giant blob that will do extreme amount of damage. Dont you agree on that? Do you think engagements between tossballs and another army are exciting to watch? I think these battles are extremely anticlimatic and well kinda stupid. That doesnt mean that the match itself was bad, but the fighting between 2 armys is pretty stale and boring in nearly every PvX matchup.(not exclusively only in toss matchups, but i think toss is the biggest flaw when you talk about deathballs) I am really curious if you would argue against that.
I disagree with that entirely, actually.
And what you (and several other people) fail to recognize is that the top players still playing BW are doing so on the mantle of skill and knowledge of 12 years of top-level play. Starcraft has 3 years. Less than 1 year of HOTS. If people are still playing SC2 in 12 years, I imagine the games will be stupidly good.
Also, the top level players make even the big maxed-army engagements look interesting to me, or at the very least impressive.
Wow that is pretty impressive to me^^ As i said i love sc2 too, but i can acknowledge possible flaws.
No we dont fail to recognize anything. BW had the slow evolution cause it was new, nobody had an idea how to play such a rts with that specific style. The same isnt true for sc2, the proplayers know everything from broodwar ( i talk about general ideas ofc, the game itself is different, but in the core many ideas apply to both!) You just cant compare these 2 settings, it is pretty ignorant to do so i think. What did take several years in broodwar was known from the start, we live in the age of the internet (vods, replays, forums, etc), the development is just way WAY faster.
So you wanna tell me that this fight here looks appealing to you? (maybe not the best example, but it is sufficient i think)
They need to increase the micro capabilities of the units. The main way to discourage deathball usage is increase the number of skirmishes, which is why we have a lot more harassing units in HotS.
However, in SC2, the viability and utility of harassment units (with the exception of mutalisks) drastically decreases once the opponent has set up the necessary defenses. BW, on the other hand, allows the players to do massive damage with those units, even though the defender may have the appropriate defenses.
Check out this video from lalush, which talks about the micro mechanics of BW and highlights some great micro moments.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
I could show you hundreds upon hundreds of games like this. Where as on the opposite end you have to nitpick the good games of SC2 such as Dear vs Maru game 1 so your post is actually quite ironic.
I am not romanticizing BW, I didnt say OMGZ WE NEED VULTURES BACK IN SC2 NOW. I put that SC2 is lacking the intensity of tons of huge army battles and used a BW game as an example of such intensity.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
I could show you hundreds upon hundreds of games like this. Where as on the opposite end you have to nitpick the good games of SC2 such as Dear vs Maru game 1 so your post is actually quite ironic.
I am not romanticizing BW, I didnt say OMGZ WE NEED VULTURES BACK IN SC2 NOW. I put that SC2 is lacking the intensity of tons of huge army battles and used a BW game as an example of such intensity.
Really we merely needs to introduce the concept of BW back. One of the more exciting part of BW is that you can win with multiple angles instead of boiling down everything down to 1 huge battle.
A brief list: 1. Outmacroing your opponent, the macro component of SC2 is heavily downplayed due to MBS.
2. Harassment have more impact. Imagine a 200/200 army with 150 supply being army with the rest being workers. In BW, you had to replenish those workers slowly after harassment because it hinders your economy so much so you can reproduce the units in time to battle. In SC2 though, oh I'll just use those macro mechanics to get those workers back in 15 seconds mining. No big deal. So less players are opting for that stylistic choice.
3. Space controlling. Reason why battles ends so quickly in a SC2 game is two-fold. First one being the defender's advantage that accede players to retreat back after a bad engagement w/o much causalities. 2nd one being the unit design in SC2 doesn't allow you to improve on your defensive stance but rather increasing the amount of dmg you do. So players have to choose which position favors their unit combination to engage. Force more decision making.
Really, its those simple concept. Ofc fast 10 seconds battles still takes skills to pull off but it is less spectator friendly which is detrimental for a self-proclaimed sport title.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
ok maybe a bit crazy, but how about this idea: make units cost more supply each when you have a certain amount of them (could only apply do massive etc....) you would get encouraged to get a few broodlords and a few ultras, but you cant have more than 5 without the additional ones costing more supply.
They are? That games ends with a ball vs ball fight and that's the problem.
If you look at an RTS there's really 2 parts to it: -The part where you stay alive -The part where you win (ie decisively commit to trying to take the game)
Staying alive in SC2 has always been reasonably robust. You have the classic turtle, the greedy expander, and the harasser (harassing can give you an advantage/win which is why it's great, but tactically it's also really important as a way to gain space and stay alive). All three get represented to a decent degree.
It's the 2nd part that has a problem. In SC2 when it comes down to that 'part where you win' it's almost entirely reliant on the single tactic of 'ball'. Ball being an army that you just jam down your opponents throat in an attempt to choke them.
So what is needed is more variety in that 2nd category. When you look at BW by comparison that's where things like mech, Sauron/swarm-y zerg, or arbiters come into play. These styles of winning moves are fundamentally different from ball vs ball attacks in how they execute. It's not longer about facing ball vs ball or just getting lucky in a harass. You're fundamentally relying on some different mechanism of confrontation to resolve the game. Again there's a long list of reasons why, but fundamentally SC2 fails in providing variety at this point and we just see ball vs ball. When ball is the only tactic to really reliably try to make a winning move you see people play entirely towards that.
I disagree. Nada's tornado terran last push is definition of death ball. One guy has small army because of vulture harass you have large army -> Unsiege -> A-MOVE. Game winning fights with arbiters is also very similar. Use arbiter, freeze tanks in back -> Spread zealots and dragoons and A-MOVE -> Storm stuff. Whats boring is just sitting in your base until 200/200 and then attacking once. Dear vs Maru was as good or better than most BW games.
No other fights except for 1 deathball fight = deathball play.
Ending with deathball != deathball play.
You should go read my post on the previous page. It not only completely proves you wrong it also shows you a game from Nada himself. In bw Tvp getting 200/200 is just the foreplay.
It does nothing to prove him wrong. A single drawn-out game doesn't erase the multitude of others that ended with an unsieged a-move (which DID happen quite frequently).
Quit romanticizing BW.
That's simply false. That's horrible false.
What game- let alone games?
Keep in mind I'm not saying the unsieged a-move is boring. In fact quite the opposite, because Nada would pick apart the other player using harass and he would win with the a-move. So you can't pick out a game that was boring where all he did was max and a-move then win, because that didn't happen. I was merely pointing out that a game that ends in an a-move isn't boring if it got to that point through sick play.
On the other hand, we can watch a shitty Stork on Katrina game:
Now if you analyze the game you see a lot of micro elements. But guess what we can be reductionist and say, stork built a big army and won, blah blah blah. A layman won't notice the zealot bombs, the storms, the mine drags, and the constant dragoon repositioning. Likewise, if you were to interview pro SC2 players about what they ACTUALLY did during a fight they would tell you so many little things that we never notice. I think this is the fault of how our pro scene functions. It isn't about sick plays, micro and decision making, no its about white guy vs korean and stupid crap like that. Games could be so much more fun if they were explained correctly. I made my friend who plays LoL watch WCS with me, while I explained all the little things and their minds were blown. Why would I have to do this when there were casters that should be doing this exact job?
I get nostalgic sometimes too. I mean, I love me some broodwar, I stayed up till 4am to watch Jaedong vs. Bisu; I watched live as Flash created double armory build in TvP to beat Stork in GOM Invitational, then proceed to cheese him 3-0 in OSL; I watched proleague every night. For all of that there were no casters, so we had to watch for the little things people were doing and because we got good at that through sheer force of will, when we saw it, we loved it. Moreover, when Tasteless starting casting for GOM, his breadth of knowledge was apparent and every game I would learn so much because he could not only predict everything, he'd explain it perfectly as well. This combination of game knowledge and on-screen charisma has since not been matched in the SC2 casting scene. Artosis is good but compared to when they were kids looking at and talking about progamer replays all day and all night, there's no comparison to that level of knowledge attained through obsession.
Anyways, sorry for the rant. This "fix SC2" shit has been getting on my nerves lately.
On October 31 2013 06:30 Joner wrote: If blizzard had just straight up removed the collossus from the game in early WoL, we could have had alot more to work with now to counteract the deathball phenomenon. It could've been removed and gateway units could've been buffed to meassure the other races early core units.
The two most criticized units in this game, the colussus and the sentry, have not ever been touched nor tweaked in any way or form, despite numerous complaints from the community since early on in SC2's lifespan. Instead things have been balanced around them. Even maps.
The fundamental issues of SC2 revolving deathballs will be around until the design team are willing to recognize the early mistakes made and revert them. Look at diablo 3. It didn't live up to it's name and now it's basically slowly turning into its predecessor, which was actually a good game.
I'm not saying make it like broodwar. I'm just saying fix it.
The question is how would you address the missing role of the sentry/colossus. The entire game would have to be re-balanced most likely. Sentries are fine(removing sentries would break it the most) imo but Colossus could probably be removed/altered.
It's impossible to say what would have to be tweaked to weight up for the loss of the collossus at this stage. Hence why this should've been done at a much earlier stage. However, the argument that the game would have to be rebalanced has always been the counter-argument towards the suggestion of removing or severely nerfing the collossus. It's never a good time to do such a change but that unit does not have a place in a good RTS game.
But to respond to your question. What could be done to address the missing collusus/sentry?
I would, as many have done before me, suggest buffing the other gateway units. Perhaps even tweak the immortal in some way. Removing the collosus would surely bring an age of severe imbalance but in the long run (and we STILL have a long run! one more game is coming out for starters) we would see a better game.
Granted, protoss does not rely on the sentry as heavily as they used to so it does not pose that much of a problem towards the gameplay.
You can't really buff gateway units due to warp-ins though as counter-attacks will be super strong.I don't think the colossus would be too hard to replace but it's the sentry that is the tricky one to replace.
The problem isn't that micro isn't happening in big battles in SC2- The only problem is that because units are so clumped up it's difficult to see it sometimes. One the other hand if you didn't find Dear vs Maru at WCS entertaining then you might as well give up on watching starcraft as far as I'm concerned because it's unlikely that you have any appreciation for the game. That series had more amazing multitask harrass, defense and counterattacks than many BW PvTs I've seen.
I think dropships are a bit more exciting than Brood War's air based harass, since you can bypass some terrain, but you're still using ground units that are affected by terrain once you land them. (not to say that I prefer SC2 to BW) Maru vs Dear was almost purely dropships with infantry, with high templar to add some spice. I guess they are proven rts concepts and with good execution by the players it becomes very exciting. I don't think there is that much strategy to it however, although you do need very good decision making for when to use drops, where to prioritize attention, what unit groups to move.
So the games were fun, but conceptually easy enough that honestly there is no excuse why not every game could look like that. This should be the baseline level, with even more amazing plays constantly going on as well. Blizzard has the power to change the maps, (remove the colossus), and tweak the economy so that it more often resembles that game's low economy situations.
On October 31 2013 13:41 graNite wrote: ok maybe a bit crazy, but how about this idea: make units cost more supply each when you have a certain amount of them (could only apply do massive etc....) you would get encouraged to get a few broodlords and a few ultras, but you cant have more than 5 without the additional ones costing more supply.
I dont remember when was the last time I ve watched BC, BroodLords or Carriers, the T3 are now under used, its a bad idea.
My bet:
- Siege units should be more slow and more powerfull, they have to rely on positioning and units microing arround then. Right now you move forward with your deathball, siege/burrow, attack and go back way too fast. - Better map design/mechanics to force players to achieve more objectives, so they have to split their army to have full map control. For example: gold minerals, rich gas, towers that give army buffs. The idea is to change the mecanics: macro/1expand -> fight deathball vs deathball -> 3base/resupply -> attack natural/main -> win into full map action like: macro/1expand -> claim map zone 1 -> engage -> resupply -> claim map zone 2(optional) -> 3base/resupply -> engage/defend map zones -> attack natural/main -> win.
EPT
