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Recently I thought to myself One of the problems of mech (and sc2) is surely the combining and removing of upgrades. I remember when the game shipped, we had khaldaryn amulet, protoss had voidray speed, terran had 5 more upgrades too.
The beauty of upgrades is that they force players along a certain path. That makes the game more predictable. If the tank has a 150/150 research requirement, they can in turn be a little stronger once upgraded.
Think about it, this makes hybrid styles like tank marine slightly more difficult to play, which honestly just because its been around forever, isnt neccasarily a good thing. It would be much better if mech units filled the role of protecting the tank.
Bio, Mech, Air - They all have advantages and disadvantages. Imagine for a second there were no upgrades in the game, if you allow players to combine the best unit combination for X the game will be extremely boring.
It should, of course, be possible to techswitch, but it should be a decision.
So my proposal would be, add another upgrade. Please blizzard, dont be scared to break the meta, try some changes that will cause imbalances but just implement them.
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It's official, Snute thinks Terran needs the Merc structure from the Campaign.
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Hey guys,
I've been seeing a lot of these threads lately but I've never really bothered to weigh in on the conversation. I was a casual protoss player in WOL around diamond/plat league (when protoss was actually considered 'weak') so by no means am I very good. But I am an avid spectator of HOTS and I have noticed some trends. I think that a lot of the problems of TvX actually can be solved by relatively simple tweaks to race mechanics rather than simply buffing x unit by y amount versus z unit type or making any and every unit in the game move faster. The main problems I see with terran is that they have the weakest production lategame, have problems tech switching and producing simultaneously, and have the weakest static defenses/defensive options so they are forced to be aggressive early game. I would like to throw in these ideas for consideration.
I. Macro Ideas
1) I agree with everyone that terran needs the tech lab/reactor combination add on from the WOL campaign; make it unlocked by the armory. Say either the tech lab or reactor can be upgraded for like 50/50 with a 30 second upgrade time.
Why: it seems like much of terran's problems is that they are pigeon-holed into a strategy that they can't transition out of. Transitioning out of standard 4M openers are difficult because adding on starports and factories is expensive. Even when you have those factories or starports you pretty much have to keep them dedicated to constant medivac/viking or mine/hellion production and lose out on banshee, ravens, and bcs, and tanks and thors. It also makes it difficult to add in ghosts for bio play since you need to constantly produce marines and marauders. This new add on would allow terran to build, for example, a raven and a viking or a raven and a medivac from the same starport which would give new flexibility of transitions and unit composition for terran so that banshee and tank openings aren't as gimmicky. Also, lets face it, every terran tech option uses the armory so its not like terran are going out of their way.
2) Nerf protoss warpgate so that the farther a pylon is from a nexus the longer the warp-in time takes. For example, add .1 second on warp in time for every 10 units a pylon is away from a nexus. Warp prism warps are unaffected.
Why: Protoss production is already superior to terran's with chronoboost and warpgate, but it should not be equally powerful offensively and defensively. And lets face it, terran scouting, especially mid-late game just isn't the best and you can't catch every single pylon on the map. This would encourage and reward the skills of players who are using warp prism harass but make warping in zealot trains lategame and a-clicking more difficult. I think this change would be positive for all PvX match ups. Also, it would encourage use of warp prisms as static reinforcement points across the map, which is something that no one really uses. Lorewise it also makes sense: the nexus is the heart of the psionic matrix so protoss should be weaker away from them, which is the whole reason why the protoss created warp prisms in the first place.
3) Give zerg hatcheries a larvae cap and/or larva decay. For example, a hatchery can only have a maximum of 15 larvae and/or make it so that a larvae only survives for 5 minutes after it was spawned.
Why: In SC:BW zerg larvae was limited by hatcheries which encouraged good macro play/macro hatches. Instead SC2 zerg has this "oh crap my army died in a really bad trade, oh well let me just make 75 zerglings and counter attack him". At the highest level of play this change would reward zergs with good macro and reward creative uses of hatcheries, i.e. to make walls for hellion/zealot runbys or spread creep. In SC:BW a hatch was 300 minerals but in SC2 for 2 supply and 150 minerals a queen can serve as a mobile macro hatchery. Not only does this net the zerg 150 minerals but also encourages mass queen styles which allow the zerg to just turtle early game. IMO zerg shouldn't have defensive units that contribute to their economy simultaneously: something about the passivity of early zerg should be tweaked a little. This change would have little effect on the early part of the game since zerg would still make 4-6 queens and larvae are only an unused resource when zerg maxes out on 3-4 bases anyway. Also, the extra 150 minerals wouldn't hurt zerg too much in long games but would make it so that zerg have to use their minerals more wisely instead of having a 4k mineral bank on 5 bases with 200 larvae and 20 swarm hosts.
II. Defensive options
1) Do something about the nexus cannon. This topic has been beaten to death so I'm not going to say anything on this point.
2) Given terran stronger vs ground static defense options, precisely the flame turret from the campaign, unlocked by engineering bay and have it cost 100/50 or something.
Why: this sounds counter-intuitive since the race with bunkers, siege tanks, planetary fortresses, and only ranged units already has some of the most powerful turtling mechanisms, but if you look at it terran really isn't that strong against warp prism/medivac/overlord drops lategame. Since terran's production is already weak, a well-placed drop in a production line can cause crippling damage which is harder for terran to recover from than the other races. Zerg centralized production allows for quick defenses and the protoss can defend anywhere anytime. Furthermore, past early game bunkers/widow mines aren't good at defending because they take up too much supply to be effective.
Also, terran missile turrets don't attack ground units. Photon cannons are already more cost efficient, and zerg static defenses are lategame supply sinks and can movie. Planetary forces are great for defending a risky third or a fourth base, but when that 4 medivac doom drop happens in your main a PF just isn't very useful. Also, the threat of drops lategame can be enough to discourage terran from moving out, which leads to more turtling and boring play.
3) Make spores and spine crawlers only able to relocate a limited number of times.
Why: zerg defenses are already strong, cheap, and lategame are a supply sink when your maxing out your army. Much of the strength of swarm host/broodlord/infestor/viper play is the fact that you can pick up and move your forest of spine crawlers whenever you want to. I don't think its good game design for something that can be used equally offensively and defensively. I think having a limit of where a spine/spore crawler can only move once or twice would still allow zergs to defend themselves properly in the early-mid game but weaken their ability to force 75 minute long split map situations.
Just some of my thoughts. GL HF
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Lmfao at Mana whining like tvp is Terran favored. Scrubtastic.
User was temp banned for this post.
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im quitting this. Like, i have 15 mines, the zerg player has no overseer and walks right into it in one ball, when it starts hitting him he doesnt bother to split them even in half and 30% die, I split all my stuff and still banes will rape me if the mutas wont. This is so far from fun it's not even redicioulus. He can't hold the push? no problem, just remass lings on one base. I can't hold the push? The muta will kill every infrastructure unit and snipe all units coming out. Build a turret? will req 20 scvs repairing each other, build a spore? requires nothing and will keep the drone alive. This is so fair!
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Haha yeah - I mean I think it's a really difficult thing to do for anyone, even pros.
You have to be able to separate the games that you play if you aren't a top 5% player (even among pros).
I am a casual Terran player (played a lot more WOL) have high masters MMR on NA and I recognize that I should not ever use any games that I play as examples or citing for balance. I have to imagine for lower level pros (especially struggling pros without any or few results) that it has to be even that much more difficult to actually acknowledge that your games aren't really the ones that should be used in diagnosing imbalance or breaking down optimally played match-ups. Obviously a guy like Nerchio feels like "How can I be using an over-powered race if I can never get passed ro16 wcs_eu?" Same can be said for most of the players interviewed.
It's one thing if you find replays that you break-down and analyze 0 mistakes were made etc..but to use your general experience in playing as concept for balance if you aren't in the top 20 players of your race is kind of silly. I really wish Blizzard would create a database similar to the one that DWF did of proleague games, GSL games and cull out "optimally" played games and analyze those, display the results for the community.
That's why I really agree with what Flash said.. players opinions should never really matter, it's the tournament results that will dictate the balance.. even top 1% players aren't going to be honest in most cases and say they are at an unfair advantage - a nerf means a chance at substantially less $$ for them.
Almost means threads like this, although interesting read, really create more misinformation in my opinion.
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United States7483 Posts
On July 08 2014 01:33 DomeGetta wrote: Haha yeah - I mean I think it's a really difficult thing to do for anyone, even pros.
You have to be able to separate the games that you play if you aren't a top 5% player (even among pros).
I am a casual Terran player (played a lot more WOL) have high masters MMR on NA and I recognize that I should not ever use any games that I play as examples or citing for balance. I have to imagine for lower level pros (especially struggling pros without any or few results) that it has to be even that much more difficult to actually acknowledge that your games aren't really the ones that should be used in diagnosing imbalance or breaking down optimally played match-ups. Obviously a guy like Nerchio feels like "How can I be using an over-powered race if I can never get passed ro16 wcs_eu?" Same can be said for most of the players interviewed.
It's one thing if you find replays that you break-down and analyze 0 mistakes were made etc..but to use your general experience in playing as concept for balance if you aren't in the top 20 players of your race is kind of silly. I really wish Blizzard would create a database similar to the one that DWF did of proleague games, GSL games and cull out "optimally" played games and analyze those, display the results for the community.
That's why I really agree with what Flash said.. players opinions should never really matter, it's the tournament results that will dictate the balance.. even top 1% players aren't going to be honest in most cases and say they are at an unfair advantage - a nerf means a chance at substantially less $$ for them.
Almost means threads like this, although interesting read, really create more misinformation in my opinion.
Ah, but you see, it's not whether they think there's a problem or not, it's what they say the problem is that makes it interesting.
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On July 08 2014 01:37 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 01:33 DomeGetta wrote: Haha yeah - I mean I think it's a really difficult thing to do for anyone, even pros.
You have to be able to separate the games that you play if you aren't a top 5% player (even among pros).
I am a casual Terran player (played a lot more WOL) have high masters MMR on NA and I recognize that I should not ever use any games that I play as examples or citing for balance. I have to imagine for lower level pros (especially struggling pros without any or few results) that it has to be even that much more difficult to actually acknowledge that your games aren't really the ones that should be used in diagnosing imbalance or breaking down optimally played match-ups. Obviously a guy like Nerchio feels like "How can I be using an over-powered race if I can never get passed ro16 wcs_eu?" Same can be said for most of the players interviewed.
It's one thing if you find replays that you break-down and analyze 0 mistakes were made etc..but to use your general experience in playing as concept for balance if you aren't in the top 20 players of your race is kind of silly. I really wish Blizzard would create a database similar to the one that DWF did of proleague games, GSL games and cull out "optimally" played games and analyze those, display the results for the community.
That's why I really agree with what Flash said.. players opinions should never really matter, it's the tournament results that will dictate the balance.. even top 1% players aren't going to be honest in most cases and say they are at an unfair advantage - a nerf means a chance at substantially less $$ for them.
Almost means threads like this, although interesting read, really create more misinformation in my opinion. Ah, but you see, it's not whether they think there's a problem or not, it's what they say the problem is that makes it interesting.
Haha yeah I can agree with that.. I liked reading it at any rate.. it's just you have to take it with a grain of salt..almost to the point where you can convince yourself that most are being utterly dishonest.. think about it - if your livelihood relied on the strength of the race that you played - would you ever honestly be able to say "yes, imba - nerf pls". I have to imagine no.. even the most dignified individual would find a way to lie to himself lolol -
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On July 06 2014 08:27 SirPinky wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2014 08:18 TheDwf wrote:On July 06 2014 08:16 SirPinky wrote:On July 06 2014 08:13 WonDeRSC wrote: I liked Xeno's answers. I think that finding a solution for mass banes and mass muta is the correct answer. I also like Qxc's suggestion to make creep recede faster. This will allow a more long lasting effect of properly pushing creep back. I don't know how tanks will affect TvZ, but I really hope for no mech buffs in TvT. I remember there was a Blizzard test map to play around with creep tumor energy cost from the queen to help in reducing creep spread. I think it was actually at the end of WoL with the horrible state of Terran (go figure we are in the same place again). I don't know why they didn't implement it. Mvp won sLivko, Vortix and Nerchio so all was fine. Lol, that makes sense. One Terran to balance the entire game around. Why do I feel Taeja and Maru are being used as the scapegoats for opposing races to say, "See they beat a P and Z. It can be done!" Ya, too bad you only need 10,000 apm to do it.
Seriously. Not to mention MVP is/was a god of the game, and those three zergs are absolutely nobody in comparison.
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I'd be okay having Photon Overcharge only work on 1 Nexus at a time.
Would that help, Terrans?
To be honest I rarely use it PvZ and in PvP you don't really get pronged that much. So 1 at a time is okay.
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On July 08 2014 01:44 TronJovolta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2014 08:27 SirPinky wrote:On July 06 2014 08:18 TheDwf wrote:On July 06 2014 08:16 SirPinky wrote:On July 06 2014 08:13 WonDeRSC wrote: I liked Xeno's answers. I think that finding a solution for mass banes and mass muta is the correct answer. I also like Qxc's suggestion to make creep recede faster. This will allow a more long lasting effect of properly pushing creep back. I don't know how tanks will affect TvZ, but I really hope for no mech buffs in TvT. I remember there was a Blizzard test map to play around with creep tumor energy cost from the queen to help in reducing creep spread. I think it was actually at the end of WoL with the horrible state of Terran (go figure we are in the same place again). I don't know why they didn't implement it. Mvp won sLivko, Vortix and Nerchio so all was fine. Lol, that makes sense. One Terran to balance the entire game around. Why do I feel Taeja and Maru are being used as the scapegoats for opposing races to say, "See they beat a P and Z. It can be done!" Ya, too bad you only need 10,000 apm to do it. Seriously. Not to mention MVP is/was a god of the game, and those three zergs are absolutely nobody in comparison.
That's one thing I go back and forth on a lot when thinking about RTS.. Should degree of difficulty be considered when solving for balance?
It makes the assumptions that you have to declare different depending on the answer..
Like assuming both races are being played 100% perfectly - you have balance 1 equation.
Assuming that both races are being played 98% perfectly - you have balance 2 equation etc.
If the argument is that Terran is balanced because it has the highest skill ceiling it should then probably be solved for how often that skill ceiling is reached during top professional games.. because SC2 is typically played in tournaments or league formats professionally you'd even have to go as far as saying how often that skill ceiling is reached and maintained for an entire tournament run.
This, in my opinion is what is mostly responsible for the lack of results for Terran players (currently) and lack of results for foreign Terran players historically. Even if you can play to the top of the skill ceiling for Terran (which less than 10% of even top Koreans do consistently) can you do it for the duration of a series and then a full tournament without 1 misstep. This is something you rarely see and as such the poor results follow. We've seen Taeja do it.. we've seen Maru do it.. we've seen Innovation do it.. but we really haven't seen any Terran player do it at the highest level of play (WCS_KR - sorry folks ;( ) consistently (Last Terran GSL code S winner - Maru 2013 - season 2).
I think this sort of thing is extremely hard to fix - because you teeter on the edge of giving those players an imbalanced advantage by buffing too much and on the opposite end you have the situation now where even those players aren't able to show any consistent results (and please don't go on about dreamhack and HSC for Taeja, yes he was very impressive but in neither tournament was there stiff competition).
So, in conclusion I think that degree of difficulty has to be considered in balance when the skill ceiling for a particular race is actually unobtainable for a stretch of time long enough to win a tournament. Presently we are in a state where that skill ceiling isn't high enough with the strength of the units and compositions available. This can be fixed but it most likely will involve not only a buff for Terran, but some mechanic that will allow the other races to raise their own skill ceilings to compensate.
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I think they should focus more on just adjusting some numbers here and there to try and achieve 50/50 win rate but I really hope they take a look at some fundamental changes for LotV.
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4713 Posts
On July 08 2014 01:58 DomeGetta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 01:44 TronJovolta wrote:On July 06 2014 08:27 SirPinky wrote:On July 06 2014 08:18 TheDwf wrote:On July 06 2014 08:16 SirPinky wrote:On July 06 2014 08:13 WonDeRSC wrote: I liked Xeno's answers. I think that finding a solution for mass banes and mass muta is the correct answer. I also like Qxc's suggestion to make creep recede faster. This will allow a more long lasting effect of properly pushing creep back. I don't know how tanks will affect TvZ, but I really hope for no mech buffs in TvT. I remember there was a Blizzard test map to play around with creep tumor energy cost from the queen to help in reducing creep spread. I think it was actually at the end of WoL with the horrible state of Terran (go figure we are in the same place again). I don't know why they didn't implement it. Mvp won sLivko, Vortix and Nerchio so all was fine. Lol, that makes sense. One Terran to balance the entire game around. Why do I feel Taeja and Maru are being used as the scapegoats for opposing races to say, "See they beat a P and Z. It can be done!" Ya, too bad you only need 10,000 apm to do it. Seriously. Not to mention MVP is/was a god of the game, and those three zergs are absolutely nobody in comparison. That's one thing I go back and forth on a lot when thinking about RTS.. Should degree of difficulty be considered when solving for balance? It makes the assumptions that you have to declare different depending on the answer.. Like assuming both races are being played 100% perfectly - you have balance 1 equation. Assuming that both races are being played 98% perfectly - you have balance 2 equation etc. If the argument is that Terran is balanced because it has the highest skill ceiling it should then probably be solved for how often that skill ceiling is reached during top professional games.. because SC2 is typically played in tournaments or league formats professionally you'd even have to go as far as saying how often that skill ceiling is reached and maintained for an entire tournament run. This, in my opinion is what is mostly responsible for the lack of results for Terran players (currently) and lack of results for foreign Terran players historically. Even if you can play to the top of the skill ceiling for Terran (which less than 10% of even top Koreans do consistently) can you do it for the duration of a series and then a full tournament without 1 misstep. This is something you rarely see and as such the poor results follow. We've seen Taeja do it.. we've seen Maru do it.. we've seen Innovation do it.. but we really haven't seen any Terran player do it at the highest level of play (WCS_KR - sorry folks ;( ) consistently (Last Terran GSL code S winner - Maru 2013 - season 2). I think this sort of thing is extremely hard to fix - because you teeter on the edge of giving those players an imbalanced advantage by buffing too much and on the opposite end you have the situation now where even those players aren't able to show any consistent results (and please don't go on about dreamhack and HSC for Taeja, yes he was very impressive but in neither tournament was there stiff competition). So, in conclusion I think that degree of difficulty has to be considered in balance when the skill ceiling for a particular race is actually unobtainable for a stretch of time long enough to win a tournament. Presently we are in a state where that skill ceiling isn't high enough with the strength of the units and compositions available. This can be fixed but it most likely will involve not only a buff for Terran, but some mechanic that will allow the other races to raise their own skill ceilings to compensate.
I kind of agree and disagree with you. Right now I believe the degree off difficulty is indeed a factor for terrans performance, but I think that, instead of taking it into account and tackling it head on, the other races should be redesigned so that they require more input to be successful and the level of their success scales smoothly with the amount of effort put in.
Say, we compare the battle micro of both terran and protoss. Protoss has a lot more automation in their micro and their units are by default a lot more efficient with limited input. Zealots automatically charge, Colossus automatically splash and are easy to position due to unitwalking, FF is fire and forget spell, Guardian Shield is fire and forget, Storm is fire and forget, the only action that requires slightly more input is blinking the stalkers and target firing vikings.
On the terran side of things the bio needs to constantly be re positioned trough kiting, splitting and dodging to avoid taking massive damage and it preferably needs to maintain its arc at all times. The vikings must be positioned as to not be above the bio (to prevent a super efficient storm), they need to target fire the colossus and occasionally also re positioned to avoid too much damage. The ghosts need to be positioned in such a way as to not impede the position of the rest of the army, they must be close enough to EMP the templars and army but secure enough to retreat them in order to survive. All of these actions are continuous in their nature and must be executed several times in rapid and correct order. The discrepancy is massive and it can often feels extremely unfair for the terran to lose one of these engagements when he has put so much effort into it.
If you say, remove some of those automations and redesign some units to require more micro and to scale with micro, then some of the battles wouldn't be as one sided as they are now (they would be in the beginning though for the race that has to learn to micro) and they would feel a lot more fair. Examples are maybe removing autocast on charge, make FF and GS require more input to be efficient, like GS only blocking a limited amount of total damage for only 1-2 seconds after which it had to be refreshed, colossus no longer having unit and terrain walk and doing friendly fire. A lot of those would go a long, long way to making fights a lot more even.
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I don't think the game should be balanced around winrates. Clearly if there are never Terrans in any events and they never win any tournaments then it's an issue. When you balance around win rates, you have really good Terrans beating mediocre P and Z because the mediocre Terrans couldn't cut it. So win rates are inflated because of skill differential.
Re: destructicon:
I think you are entirely missing the point of why T has trouble with P at the professional level. It's not because the armies are hard to control. It's because the early game is hard for Terran and P can be pretty greedy while at the same time threatening huge economic damage with their openings if unscouted (Oracles). So T is forced to play on the back foot for a while during which P can get ahead economically if they play it out correctly.
Any pro gamer worth his salt can kite units and make a concave.
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On July 08 2014 02:33 DinoMight wrote: Re: destructicon:
I think you are entirely missing the point of why T has trouble with P at the professional level. It's not because the armies are hard to control. It's because the early game is hard for Terran and P can be pretty greedy while at the same time threatening huge economic damage with their openings if unscouted (Oracles). So T is forced to play on the back foot for a while during which P can get ahead economically if they play it out correctly.
Any pro gamer worth his salt can kite units and make a concave.
I disagree. Late game TvP the T needs much more army management and better control than the Protoss player.
Splitting against storms is hard, spreading vikings and targeting on colossi is hard. Dealing with the warp prism harass in your base is hard too while the main battle is going on.
Even when a Terran does a drop, they have to babysit the drop to maximize its damage, while a P who warps in 8 zealots in a T's main with a warp prism can just forget about it, and let the Zealots automatically do some work. You can eventually go back to it when you see the blip on the minimap that it's being attacked, but zealots are pretty tanky and don't have to be babysat instantly.
The hardest thing in PvT battles imo is high templar positioning.
If you think about many pro PvT games, the Immortals aren't even targeting down marauders individually, they're on A-move, and spend a lot of time attacking marines. Whereas a T will generally target fire immortals and other high-priority units down with their bio.
I liked some of the changes that philosophosaurusrex proposed, especially with the larva cap on each hatchery. Z should have to commit more resources to making more macro hatches late game to increase overall larva count. Z's are usually the ones banking the most resources in any non-mirror matchup they play. Terran and P both have to devote resources to more production facilities to ensure a fast remax. Z just has to spend APM injecting when they're maxxed out to bank something like 80 larva over 4 bases. That could technically be 80 mutalisks (obviously i'm exaggerating, 80 mutas would be 160supply, which is crazy). If a Terran wanted to make 80 vikings at a time, they'd need 40 starports with reactors on it....
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On July 07 2014 09:07 SC2John wrote: There has never been any real doubt, I think, as to the efficacy of Terran's mid game, which is, by far stronger than the other races. That said, IN YOUR ARTICLE, you specifically talk about Terran coming into the late game behind the other races, which was a direct result of early game invulnerability combined with a fair amount of mid game invulnerability (fueled in part bu the early game. Then how can Zerg and Protoss have "a fair amount of midgame invulnerability" if Terran's midgame is "far stronger than the other races"? People confuse several concepts. Having the initiative and being the aggressor doesn't mean you have the advantage per se. Terran winning the majority of their TvP games between 10 and 16 minutes means midgame is their strongest phase, but it doesn't mean it's as strong as it should be.
The article did talk about Terran midgame issues in several places:
+ Show Spoiler +TvZCombined with Zerg's refined anti-4M play, the effects of the Mine nerf were flagrant. Terrans quickly lost their ability to pressure efficiently enough in midgame; keeping the creep in check and preventing Zerg from saturating too quickly his fourth was a critical point in ensuring that Terran doesn't get overwhelmed by the huge amount of units a 80+ Drone economy can produce. As a result of this slackened pressure, the original sin of the Queen patch, i.e. Zerg's development (creep, economy, tech) getting out of hand, resurfaced anew. To capitalize on Terran's newfound lack of a powerful AoE weapon, Zergs started morphing incredibly high amount of Banelings. The idea is simple: since Terrans can no longer get rid of enough banes via Mine detonations, all Marines are slaughtered and mutas reign supreme at the end of the engagement. This possibility was also aided by the fact Terran could no longer trade enough in midgame, so Zerg no longer needs to pour as much gas into Baneling replenishment, allowing the accumulation and eventual advantage. TvPYet what happens in HotS? Terran is progressively robbed of all aggressive early game options, which means Protoss enters midgame (and by extension lategame) in better shape than ever. Protoss has so little to fear in the first 10 minutes that they can tech way too agressively in complete impunity: what they earned in superior builds far outclasses what remains of Terran's new offensive potential. Due to this, and despite the fact Medivacs can often land troops by brute force with Boost, top Protoss are barely droppable: sOs vs Bomber, Akilon Wastes, Blizzcon; Maru vs herO, Outboxer, Proleague; Polt vs Rain, Frost, IEM Cologne; Bogus vs Zest, King Sejong, Code S RO16 or Maru vs Classic, King Sejong, Code S RO4 show Terran's risky attempts repeatedly fail to seriously dent the brick wall. This is not good news for Terran: if midgame timings/all-ins get solved, then it means the race has to play even closer to lategame.
Regarding midgame, Terran issues vs Zerg and Protoss don't stem from the same root. Against Zerg, Terran has no troubles entering midgame on an even foot; the problem is simply that their armies don't have the strength they should have because Mines are too weak. Against Protoss going certain builds, Terran is systematically behind; not because Terran builds lack power per se but because Protoss' ones are allowed to be too ambitious (mainly in tech, but also partly in economy) compared with what they should be. The result is a bolted midgame.
I do not disagree that mines probably need to go back to their original power. However, there is no doubt of the power of MMM and mines in the mid game in all matchups. Personally, I think the best place for Blizzard to start is the late game, where they can literally buff ONE thing and not have it affect the entire matchup. The history of Terran is littered with early and mid game options that, combined with Terran's already strong mid game, made Terran seem invulnerable, therefore leading to a swift blow with the nerf hammer. Starting in the late game will allow Terrans, even Terrans who are behind from the early and mid game, to play more fairly in the Zerg and Protoss dominated late games.
If that isn't enough, then perhaps a buff to the early/mid game can get going. But a buff to the medivac? Why? What's the purpose of buffing Terrans where they're already strong? If you're going to buff a mid game unit, I would much rather just see a mine buff. I voted against the Medivac change as explained here. Blizzard's past blunders are not an argument to deny needed changes to early and midgame. People are deluded if they think one can magically fix "lategame" without first addressing the very root of the issues. That's putting the cart before the horse. For instance, TvP cannot be relanced without Protoss conceding a part of his HotS gas loot (directly with an Overcharge nerf, or indirectly with stim recovering its original search time so the threat of earlier timings forces caution from Protoss, who would be forced to reallocate some resources currently spent on tech to gates/units). No amount of Thor/Battlecruiser buff would change that.
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On July 08 2014 03:35 TheDwf wrote:I voted against the Medivac change as explained here. Blizzard's past blunders are not an argument to deny needed changes to early and midgame. People are deluded if they think one can magically fix "lategame" without first addressing the very root of the issues. That's putting the cart before the horse. For instance, TvP cannot be relanced without Protoss conceding a part of his HotS gas loot (directly with an Overcharge nerf, or indirectly with stim recovering its original search time so the threat of earlier timings forces caution from Protoss, who would be forced to reallocate some resources currently spent on tech to gates/units). No amount of Thor/Battlecruiser buff would change that. This very thing is what confounds me about people asking for mech buffs to solve the issue. Making Terran late-game units OP isn't a solution, it's masking the root of the issue and creating additional potential problems in the late game (and especially TvT issues). Fixing Terran's early game to allow for aggression and greed punishment again has a huge snowball effect on the way the rest of the game plays. It's best to address that first and then see how the game changes accordingly before modifying late game units.
One community suggestion I sincerely hope never sees fruition is another tank buff. Pure bio play in TvT is practically extinct as it is; there's no reason to further diminish bio-mech as well. Furthermore, if people want to see tanks in TvZ again, they should look at the mutalisk. Muta clouds sniping away tanks was already a dynamic concept in WoL, but the muta buffs make it ridiculous for Terran to deal with. The muta buffs are also a problem in every single match up, prompting alternative buffs for all three races (widow mines strike air, phoenix range, spore crawler vs bio). Frankly, if they reverted all that band-aid junk and/or kept but nerfed widow mine AA, they'd solve a lot of other problems in the game.
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On July 08 2014 02:55 jojamon wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2014 02:33 DinoMight wrote: Re: destructicon:
I think you are entirely missing the point of why T has trouble with P at the professional level. It's not because the armies are hard to control. It's because the early game is hard for Terran and P can be pretty greedy while at the same time threatening huge economic damage with their openings if unscouted (Oracles). So T is forced to play on the back foot for a while during which P can get ahead economically if they play it out correctly.
Any pro gamer worth his salt can kite units and make a concave. I disagree. Late game TvP the T needs much more army management and better control than the Protoss player. Splitting against storms is hard, spreading vikings and targeting on colossi is hard. Dealing with the warp prism harass in your base is hard too while the main battle is going on. Even when a Terran does a drop, they have to babysit the drop to maximize its damage, while a P who warps in 8 zealots in a T's main with a warp prism can just forget about it, and let the Zealots automatically do some work. You can eventually go back to it when you see the blip on the minimap that it's being attacked, but zealots are pretty tanky and don't have to be babysat instantly. The hardest thing in PvT battles imo is high templar positioning. If you think about many pro PvT games, the Immortals aren't even targeting down marauders individually, they're on A-move, and spend a lot of time attacking marines. Whereas a T will generally target fire immortals and other high-priority units down with their bio. I liked some of the changes that philosophosaurusrex proposed, especially with the larva cap on each hatchery. Z should have to commit more resources to making more macro hatches late game to increase overall larva count. Z's are usually the ones banking the most resources in any non-mirror matchup they play. Terran and P both have to devote resources to more production facilities to ensure a fast remax. Z just has to spend APM injecting when they're maxxed out to bank something like 80 larva over 4 bases. That could technically be 80 mutalisks (obviously i'm exaggerating, 80 mutas would be 160supply, which is crazy). If a Terran wanted to make 80 vikings at a time, they'd need 40 starports with reactors on it....
Yah and just to clarify - I'm not talking about only micro. Micro in Tvp and Tvz battles is definitely a higher degree of difficultly but it's not the only factor in terms of skill ceiling in my opinion.. based on the current meta and standard unit compositions (excluding mech - which this does not apply to) - you really can't just take a maxed army as Terran and engage a maxed Zerg or Protoss (if zerg chases you off of creep you can, if protoss walks through a choke you can - sometimes). Because of the fact that Terran really doesn't have a tier 3 to switch to (or even a tier 2 for that matter) you also can't just play the wait game... you have no army that will compete with maxed colo/templar/tempest/archon/zealot especially when factoring in the instant remax mechanic. Same goes for Ultra/Broodlord/Infestor/Bane with as many larva as they will have to remax (unless you some how manage to transition off of bio into mass raven which should be impossible). Based on this in both match-ups the Terran has to take the initiative through creative splitting of his army looking for weak-points to clear creep (or bases) while still defending and expanding.
So now the Terran is in a position where he not only has to out-micro his opponent substantially to stand a chance (or hope he a moves off creep / hope he clumps all his templar in range of ghost etc) but also has to figure out a way to inflict critical economic or infrastructural damage while not losing his army and defending counter attacks. Mass muta / warp prism / proxy pylons make this even more difficult. A single misstep in terms of micro in one engagment / multitask / even macro and the game is thrown. It is a lot harder to throw a game as Zerg vs T (don't fight off creep) or Protoss vs T (don't walk through chokes presplit templar).
All this would be fine (not really fine in my opinion as it would really make turtling the best option for all 3 races and 2 hr long games the norm) if into the late game all 3 races had armies that could trade cost effectively with the others..the problem for T now is that it really does not have an army that can survive to that point but also be cost effective into the late game.
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It IS entirely possible for Terran to have the strongest mid-game, and weakest late-game.. And buffing it's superiority at the 11 minute mark over both others is NOT the answer..
It is so biased that is completely missing the target, as well as only favouring those who can "profit" the most..
Terran's problem is that in it's non-mirrors there's a "clock".. And if it ticks out - it's done.. You can't play whole game long while worrying about a "tick clock", let the pros do that cause they can, but let the others "survive" after a mistake as long as at the attempt of fixing they're not too slow..
THAT's the problem, not the winrates, nor the "opponents not enough vulnerable", nor the game-design, nor the units (except Raven, Tempest, Swarmhost )..
But - THE POINT IS - the less "clocks or lose" "situations" (not to be mistaken with TIMINGS - timings are DEFENDABLE - and if you defend well it is YOU who end up on top) - the better the game overall..
And I'm not talking about turtling either - i'm talking about "flexibility" in some other "form" than drops.. Right now the only flexibility "form" Terran has are drops, and nothing more.. PERIOD
To make matters even worse/more-fragile - those drops are far too strong.. Zerg can't kill 30 workers in 5 seconds unless baneling drops, Protoss can't either, Terran CAN - and DOES with the most produced unit in the game, so that "threat" of that is ALWAYS on the run past the 10 minute mark (as opposed to other races that threat exists as long as they have the exact unit that causes those snowballs)..
So - pretty FAIR for Terran to have those "other" disadvantages TBH
BUT - The problem STILL REMAINS - should figure out something for Terran to be able to GET RID of that "doom clock".. AND - make it possible to "get rid" of it as long as the changes to the current gameplay are as MINIMAL as possible..
// Sorry for the capped words, but think those "define" the post so much
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On July 08 2014 04:21 VArsovskiSC wrote: To make matters even worse/more-fragile - those drops are far too strong.. Zerg can't kill 30 workers in 5 seconds unless baneling drops, Protoss can't either, Terran CAN with the most produced unit in the game, so.. Not unfair for Terran to have other disadvantages TBH..
BUT - Terran needs to get rid of that "clock" somehow without changing the gameplay (or at least those being as minimal as possible) before Care to link us all those games with Medivac drops killing 30 workers in 5 seconds?
An important thing to consider is that it's not at all the same thing if the clock starts ticking at 16' or 25'. There's also a huge difference between the disadvantage after this time being 45:55 or 20:80...
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