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On September 23 2015 07:18 FeyFey wrote:
I always found that if you lose units killing workers, you usually just lost alot of apm you could spend better. As every race just comes back within a minute from a full eco wipe at a base, if they have 1 or 2 other bases running. HotS Eco of course.
Thats why you don't kill workers with Phoenix as everything else apart from Zerglings is a better target.
And as people wanted harassment, we got that. But it was balanced around economy that is almost impossible to hurt. LotV is less forgiving in that regard as it is speed up. And well Eco changes being tested.
But yeah they can't just test something and already fix all the issues they thought about themself. That would obscure the test. We get that sort of fixing if they decided on something.
And seeing the release date, they definetly will pull a diablo3 on the multiplayer part and optimize post release.
I see it this way in HotS economy as well. It was never really worth it to harass lightly because if it slowed down your normal build, you would rarely get ahead enough to matter. If you go quick Oracle and kill 3 workers, you are generally way behind.
In general I like worker harassment that matters. If harassment were to only have a slight reward, then the pacing has to be sufficiently slow to allow the time and APM spent doing the harass to be beneficial and not detrimental to the harasser.
Yet the frustration with harassment/DT/widowmine/mutas/etc. I understand and feel myself in games. I don't really like a game ending tech path that wasn't scouted... but how else do you do it in an RTS? If cutting corners and greedy play is powerful, you have to allow potentially game ending tech/harass to make it so that ultra greed and defense isn't the only valid way to play.
Probably allowing better micro with something like the oracle, banshee, and widowmine is the answer.
Warp prism range pickup, medivac boost, overlord drop timing, roach burrow speed changes (and reverts), muta regen and adepts are all an attempted move in this direction. But the balance of making things good but not too good is tricky as hell. The only answer is to scout like crazy and play less greedy, but a lot of people don't want to hear that.
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United Kingdom20261 Posts
Harass in legacy is more dangerous than in HOTS i'd say - and it was a lot more dangerous instead of just a bit more dangerous when mules and chrono were gone
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I think FeyFey nailed it.
The macro moves at such a pace that unless you kill MASSIVE amounts of workers the APM spent harassing is just not worth it because it puts YOU behind.
That's a bigger issue in LotV than HotS and I don't like it.
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On September 23 2015 23:50 Blacklizard wrote:Yet the frustration with harassment/DT/widowmine/mutas/etc. I understand and feel myself in games. I don't really like a game ending tech path that wasn't scouted... but how else do you do it in an RTS? If cutting corners and greedy play is powerful, you have to allow potentially game ending tech/harass to make it so that ultra greed and defense isn't the only valid way to play.
I can imagine plenty of ways. In my opinion harassment should never end the game unless your opponent is just bad. But it should give you the potential to get ahead slightly. Pick off a few workers here and there.
If you want to punish greedy play you dont go for harassment, you go for aggression with core army units.
How to do this? Make static D good against harassment but bad against core army units. If your opponent plays greedy you can attack with a core army and win. If your opponent goes for harassment you can build static D (both players spend money) and the harassment becomes weaker.
You could also punish greedy play by greedy play of your own, perhaps with a small mixed in core army to punish your opponent or to make him build static D which will slow his economy down.
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Sad thing is, they won`t listen - as usual.
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United Kingdom20261 Posts
How to do this? Make static D good against harassment but bad against core army units. If your opponent plays greedy you can attack with a core army and win. If your opponent goes for harassment you can build static D (both players spend money) and the harassment becomes weaker.
You seem to be describing LOTV.
The macro moves at such a pace that unless you kill MASSIVE amounts of workers the APM spent harassing is just not worth it because it puts YOU behind.
That's a bigger issue in LotV than HotS and I don't like it.
So what, harassment gets weaker at plat league and below? It's well worth it by master level and at archon GM there's a ton of harassment in almost every game.
What you're describing is another issue with adding macro mechanics back in. LOTV without macro mechanics is already as demanding as HOTS because you start with 12 workers and expand quickly, needing more bases and having fewer units - LOTV with macro mechanics is way, way way more mechanically demanding than HOTS. That's the whole idea behind removing mules, chrono and toning down injects - so that players of all levels can put more focus on harass and micro without screwing themselves.
Even at the super ultra #1 pro level there is a loss of micro and harassability because stuff like Injects cannot be ignored for 5 seconds without a bigger disadvantage than you'd make up for by microing your units better.
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This community is f*ing hilarious.
"We need macro apm sinks so the game is harder!"
"I don't wanna get punished for not paying attention to my worker line!"
"Action should be pressure, not harass!"
Basically you want to play a game of "build up" where you just macro and keep expanding and throwing units at each other -- but not deathballs, god not those! -- until one side gets bored or runs dry.
Q___Q
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The reduced range MULES was truly the best balanced way to deal with the MULE mechanic. They should bring it back.
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Very good write-up as always Filter. But like someone above me said: Sadly they, most likely, won´t listen. One of David Kim´s recent statements let me question his ability to design an RTS game even more. He said that many of the coolest moments in StarCraft II come from worker Harassment: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/18705072378#1
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The real problem with harass is when it's both cheap and powerful. If you lose a handful of widow mines against a protoss, meh, who cares? They are so cheap you can afford to just keep mindlessly throwing them away; if the Protoss misses them just once or twice it can be game ending damage, and if not, you can just win with your regular macro instead (See: Maru v Myungsik on Deadwing, SPL2015 Round 3 Week 2 Match 3 Game 2). On the other hand, 3 medivacs full of bio can also quickly do game ending damage, but if you lose them due to miscontrol or stellar defense, your army size will be significantly diminished. Banshees have the opposite drawback - they can be pretty cheap (for most early game harass you only need 1 or 2) so if you lose them it's not too much of a problem, but at least they only kill workers one at a time, so there's more potential for countermeasures.
Basically, harass should either be slower, or come at a greater cost. Mutas, doom drops, banshees, DTs, burrowed roaches/infestors all have one of those two drawbacks. Mine drops, oracles, adepts? Not so much. (I'm not familiar enough with the beta to make a conclusive judgement on the other new units)
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On September 24 2015 01:50 jubil wrote:The real problem with harass is when it's both cheap and powerful. If you lose a handful of widow mines against a protoss, meh, who cares? They are so cheap you can afford to just keep mindlessly throwing them away; if the Protoss misses them just once or twice it can be game ending damage, and if not, you can just win with your regular macro instead (See: Maru v Myungsik on Deadwing, SPL2015 Round 3 Week 2 Match 3 Game 2). On the other hand, 3 medivacs full of bio can also quickly do game ending damage, but if you lose them due to miscontrol or stellar defense, your army size will be significantly diminished. Banshees have the opposite drawback - they can be pretty cheap (for most early game harass you only need 1 or 2) so if you lose them it's not too much of a problem, but at least they only kill workers one at a time, so there's more potential for countermeasures. Basically, harass should either be slower, or come at a greater cost. Mutas, doom drops, banshees, DTs, burrowed roaches/infestors all have one of those two drawbacks. Mine drops, oracles, adepts? Not so much. (I'm not familiar enough with the beta to make a conclusive judgement on the other new units)
Losing that many Medivacs and Mines would normally cost you the game, but the skill disparity between Maru and Myungsik was too great that day.
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United Kingdom20261 Posts
On September 24 2015 01:23 Blacklizard wrote:
The reduced range MULES was truly the best balanced way to deal with the MULE mechanic. They should bring it back.
Energy based mules don't work well with reduced range - they can just land once every 2 minutes and drop all 4 mules then lift off again.
Cooldown based mules no longer compete with scans and supply drop for energy so you get silly stuff like 100 energy scans and players that are buying one OC and both muling and supply dropping at the same time.
The solution IMO is just to remove the mule and balance after that
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The joy of playing sc2 stems from overcoming "dicy situations" like harass, sure it gets your nerves but when you overcome it (good reads, better execution...) god it's so satisfying.
If you suppress frustration in the game then you suppress joy.
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On September 24 2015 02:20 v_lm wrote:
The joy of playing sc2 stems from overcoming "dicy situations" like harass, sure it gets your nerves but when you overcome it (good reads, better execution...) god it's so satisfying.
If you suppress frustration in the game then you suppress joy.
But it goes the other way to, if everything is "joy" then nothing is.
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Did everyone forget how overwhelmingly powerful harassment was in BW? Every race was chocked full of uber powerful harassment units that pretty regularly ended games or basically ended them.
How many Reaver/Sair builds just picked the Zerg apart? Alot
How many Mutalisk clouds won ZvT games outright? Alot
Vulture backstabs and drops?
Don't get me wrong, I really despise Oracles for how quickly they kill workers, but this OP is just kind of an exaggeration and sounds like it was made in frustration.
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Hm, I remember this one game where Bunny or some low-tier Terran was against sOs(?) in PL, and did a double drop of widowmines. I think he killed 20-30 probes and the game was effectively over.
I laughed so hard, but there's no denying that it was stupid. It's as dumb as early DTs, except can't be hard countered.
I think precise micro harass is alright, but there really isn't a huge amount of that...
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Just learn a safe build and do that every time and you won't die to harass unless your opponent is just a lot better than you, in which case you're going to lose anyways.
I don't get it.
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On September 24 2015 00:41 Thouhastmail wrote:
Sad thing is, they won`t listen - as usual.
The problem with LotV is that blizzard is listening too much. This is a big community, and it's mostly made up of low level players with minimal understanding of the game.
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Completely agree. That's why War3 is still way more fun to play and watch for me. It's units and workers don't die en masse just from the sight of an enemy.
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8748 Posts
I'm absolutely certain that players have put more effort into developing aggressive harassment-based builds than they have into developing defensive anti-harassment builds. If you don't like the way games are playing out, then start on the project of mapping out and spreading good build orders so the bad builds that rely on the ignorance of the opponent lose traction.
There are basically four things you need to pay attention to when countering threats: (1) when playing in the dark, do a build that is capable of responding to the threat when you first detect it or without detecting it, (2) figure out when you need to detect it to be able to respond in time, (3) figure out how to get that scouting done and (4) figure out the most efficient way to repel the threat. Simple. But this can take SO much experimentation to nail down a build that deals with everything. And most people aren't even trying yet.
edit: In other words, I think the counter-measures possible in the game will prove to be good enough in the long run and it's not surprising that they aren't winning the arms race early on.
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