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On September 08 2015 01:52 TimeSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2015 23:14 Big J wrote:On September 07 2015 22:56 TimeSpiral wrote:On September 07 2015 18:09 JCoto wrote: Oh god, Adepts being armored, please not.... Bio will shredd Toss so comfy again.
Could we please have the old version of the adept tested and something for Ghost/Reaper instead of just making MMM the ultimate solution again? I think it may be a simple two-part fix: (1) reduce damage to light a tiny bit so it three-shots workers and marines. (2) Give the shade a cancel threshold, and if it has been canceled, give it some sort of perceptible tell (to help with TvP). Or just nix the teleporting of the shade. It's already a pretty awesome free invulnerable scout. On September 07 2015 18:44 Big J wrote: @Blizzard: Any way to make zerg less of a "always defend early" race? Throw us the one or other bone please, it's getting annoying. Terran has banshees and liberators and medivacs and hellions and reapers. Protoss gets super-warp prisms and adepts that tunnel-move whereever they want and oracles and phoenixes. Meanwhile zerg has to go completely allin if they want to not sit back early.
It's getting annoying because I know you have understood the problem seeing how you buffed drops to T1 and introduced the strong ravager to begin with and why you tried burrow movement without an extra upgrade. But we are going to be back to WoL/HotS defensive play or allin every game soon while the other races are free to enter my base whenever they want. Interesting take, and you might be on to something. From a Terran perspective it feels like: "kill 20+ drones in the early-to-mid game, or do game-ending damage or Zerg's economy will snowball and the game will be over before the midgame even starts". Just giving you my ignorant scrubby perspective. Maybe Zerg doesn't have a ton of early game harass options because their economic and map control options are so powerful?Personally, I think moving the Overlord drops to Lair is probably a mistake, for the reasons you mention, but I'm wondering if my point is at all valid. Would fairly simple, low-cost harass units make Zerg's economic openings even more difficult to deal with? Ha, yeah you are basically writing that part that I deleted because the post got excessive. Trying to put it short, Zerg had that problem even more when the game came out because everyone was allowed to open 1basish against them and you literally couldn't do any damage as zerg when your opponent opened tank+banshee before CC. So what blizzard did is they buffed zerg defense and nerfed P/T opening attacks until we reached a balance/metagame state in which zerg could freely drone up and their everyone could only do the economic openings. And based on that we now have some Zerg allins like roach/bane in ZvT, since Terrans kind of have to open 3CC and metagame stuff like that. But in essence, zerg's design with the T1-T2-T3 structure layout makes it nearly impossible to do anything that isn't on the T1 level early. It's supereasy to scout and heavily delayed. And on that T1 level, zerg hardly has any trickery. Obviously there is the problem with larva and just overruning your opponent when you give zerg something strong early, but I find it peculiar when blizzard is OK with stuff like adepts early, but zerg must not ever bypass walls. I personally would like the opposite direction - everyone should have to respect walls and terrain in the first few mins - but only given the one side the tools and not the other one is probably the worst way of doing it. Because then you end up with the slippery slope of "zerg gets compensated by getting default advantages if you don't do anything to them". TT, it's gotten excessive again. On the huge 4-player maps, like Ruins, Zerg can easily 3-hatch and by the time you get across the map with any type of early-game army they have more bases, more drones, and more fighting units. Which means, like you said, you have to open some sort of flying harass unit (as Terran) and try to quickly build 3-CCs and hope Zerg doesn't decide to build units. TvZ is a ... difficult matchup, atm. Either way, having some early game harassing as Zerg would make quick 3-hatching even more free than it already seems to be (on big maps).
I thought that having singular units that were super strong and early tech are automatically out because of how easy it is to mass produce them. Like if you could make banshees from larva? Way OP. I liked the idea of overlord drop being hatch tech but being put on a hatchery again instead of the overlord, so that it competes with queen production and thus limits macro. Maybe (and this could be too complicated) if larva (or at least inject) stopped being produced while the hatchery was upgrading or building a queen? Then you have this stronger tradeoff of time to balance units vs tech. Or slightly more units now versus many more units later.
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On September 07 2015 18:44 Big J wrote: @Blizzard: Any way to make zerg less of a "always defend early" race? Throw us the one or other bone please, it's getting annoying. Terran has banshees and liberators and medivacs and hellions and reapers. Protoss gets super-warp prisms and adepts that tunnel-move whereever they want and oracles and phoenixes. Meanwhile zerg has to go completely allin if they want to not sit back early.
It's getting annoying because I know you have understood the problem seeing how you buffed drops to T1 and introduced the strong ravager to begin with and why you tried burrow movement without an extra upgrade. But we are going to be back to WoL/HotS defensive play or allin every game soon while the other races are free to enter my base whenever they want.
There isn't really a way due to how Zerg is designed. If you are making units, you aren't making drones.
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On September 07 2015 18:09 JCoto wrote: Oh god, Adepts being armored, please not.... Bio will shredd Toss so comfy again.
Could we please have the old version of the adept tested and something for Ghost/Reaper instead of just making MMM the ultimate solution again?
Wouldn't Mech still the better solution vs Protoss in LOTV?
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I've seen the claim in this thread that Flash has previously complained about the lack of macro as a differentiating quality between players in SC2. The argument is then presented that removing macro mechanics will make this phenomenon worse.
Brood War didn't even have macro mechanics. The difficulties there revolved around managing huge base counts and armies on multiple fronts.
Don't forget that all of the first changes introduced to LOTV were intended to make it more like Brood War in this respect. Get rid of the death-balls, get rid of the macro mechanics (therefore increasing the imperative to harass workers, which have become more valuable), increase base counts, and add more harassment options in general. The economy scales very quickly in this expansion, requiring players to take 3rd and 4th bases much more quickly than before. I don't think it will be uncommon to see people floating resources during this phase of the game (especially when it first releases), just because the battles and harassment don't really let up either.
I do think Flash could potentially be more suited to LOTV than HOTS, although for him personally I think all the complicated new unit interactions may prove challenging. Flash doesn't seem like he can quite get a handle on all the crazy tactics in HOTS, and LOTV just amps that up even more. Then again, if he builds more than everybody else, maybe it wont matter.
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On September 08 2015 15:17 alexanderzero wrote: I've seen the claim in this thread that Flash has previously complained about the lack of macro as a differentiating quality between players in SC2. The argument is then presented that removing macro mechanics will make this phenomenon worse.
Brood War didn't even have macro mechanics. The difficulties there revolved around managing huge base counts and armies on multiple fronts.
Don't forget that all of the first changes introduced to LOTV were intended to make it more like Brood War in this respect. Get rid of the death-balls, get rid of the macro mechanics (therefore increasing the imperative to harass workers, which have become more valuable), increase base counts, and add more harassment options in general. The economy scales very quickly in this expansion, requiring players to take 3rd and 4th bases much more quickly than before. I don't think it will be uncommon to see people floating resources during this phase of the game (especially when it first releases), just because the battles and harassment don't really let up either.
I do think Flash could potentially be more suited to LOTV than HOTS, although for him personally I think all the complicated new unit interactions may prove challenging. Flash doesn't seem like he can quite get a handle on all the crazy tactics in HOTS, and LOTV just amps that up even more. Then again, if he builds more than everybody else, maybe it wont matter.
It wasn't "managing huge bases" as much as it was lack of automine and MBS. This made BW significantly harder than SC2 even with macro mechanics. Granted, Terran always had the least punishing macro mechanic with mules.
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On September 08 2015 16:45 FabledIntegral wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2015 15:17 alexanderzero wrote: I've seen the claim in this thread that Flash has previously complained about the lack of macro as a differentiating quality between players in SC2. The argument is then presented that removing macro mechanics will make this phenomenon worse.
Brood War didn't even have macro mechanics. The difficulties there revolved around managing huge base counts and armies on multiple fronts.
Don't forget that all of the first changes introduced to LOTV were intended to make it more like Brood War in this respect. Get rid of the death-balls, get rid of the macro mechanics (therefore increasing the imperative to harass workers, which have become more valuable), increase base counts, and add more harassment options in general. The economy scales very quickly in this expansion, requiring players to take 3rd and 4th bases much more quickly than before. I don't think it will be uncommon to see people floating resources during this phase of the game (especially when it first releases), just because the battles and harassment don't really let up either.
I do think Flash could potentially be more suited to LOTV than HOTS, although for him personally I think all the complicated new unit interactions may prove challenging. Flash doesn't seem like he can quite get a handle on all the crazy tactics in HOTS, and LOTV just amps that up even more. Then again, if he builds more than everybody else, maybe it wont matter. It wasn't "managing huge bases" as much as it was lack of automine and MBS. This made BW significantly harder than SC2 even with macro mechanics. Granted, Terran always had the least punishing macro mechanic with mules.
To add to your post,BW had a different economy curve where you could stay on one base for a long time and your 1st expansion wasnt always easy to take. Whereas now it s almost a given. Even more so in LOTV. Removing macro mechanics is a good decision imho but i still dont like larva autocast...
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On September 05 2015 17:46 xtorn wrote:Show nested quote + We’d also like to remind everyone that the direction we’ve taken here has come out of the community summit where top-tier Korean pro players nearly unanimously said that even HotS is way too difficult to master in all aspects. As we discussed the topic with them, reducing the clicks and work needed on macro mechanics was the best solution we came up with in that discussion group. We just wanted to point this out, because there does seem to be some disconnect between the Korean pro players’ opinions vs. some crowds of people making conclusions on what they believe Korean pros would think on these changes.
I find this paragraph very interesting. Core changes were discussed with the top-tier koreans and they approved them. This is the correct approach they should have taken, and I'm glad they did. It kinda gives me a very cozy feeling now that they did the right thing. Show nested quote +On September 05 2015 07:18 Lexender wrote:On September 05 2015 06:38 Charoisaur wrote:On September 05 2015 06:30 Gullis wrote: I am a little surprised by the korean pro feedback. Or atleast that all aspects of the game was to hard. I would have guessed that they only though the game was to punishing, volatile and random. maybe DK misinterpreted it... Or he just asked a small number of koreans who have another opinion than the other koreans. + Show Spoiler +I remember flash and others complaining multiple times that macro is to easy in sc2 and players can't really differentiate themselves through macro. I doubt they have changed their opinion. Or he is telling the truth, after all I'm pretty sure he has talked with more korean progamers than anybody in TL Exactly.
Yes, I find DK's Korean Pro statement to be very cool indeed, and it is good to see a move more towards BW. Micro oriented play outside of all-ins and a few minor cases has always been weak in SC2, and this is the first real push to bring micro back for ALL races which is GREAT. Still, they should just totally remove macro mechanics I think for the best results. There are all of these harassment options early on, but you can't concentrate on them because your income is already HotS midgame income speed and you desperately have to build infrastructure or your harassment turns into an all-in with bank.
Zerg's current macro is the best of the 3, just about like it was in BW (plus creep spread). I say make Terran and Protoss more like Zerg's current macro, and we are golden.
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I'd say Zerg has the worst macro of the three races not the best. They have to spread creep which is pretty much akin to building depots in terms of chore work (they can blindly make ovies without losing camera focus obv) but that is about all they have to do. They don't have to worry about making units on time nor adding production structures. They just make their expansion hatches, put a queen next to them and call it a day for production. At least in brood wars you had to spam around hatches, select larvae and make your units. Now Zerg macro is basically just selecting all hatches and holding down a key.
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On September 10 2015 03:07 Tenks wrote: I'd say Zerg has the worst macro of the three races not the best. They have to spread creep which is pretty much akin to building depots in terms of chore work (they can blindly make ovies without losing camera focus obv) but that is about all they have to do. They don't have to worry about making units on time nor adding production structures. They just make their expansion hatches, put a queen next to them and call it a day for production. At least in brood wars you had to spam around hatches, select larvae and make your units. Now Zerg macro is basically just selecting all hatches and holding down a key.
I think this captures the essence of the high-level consensus I've heard, atm. Scaling up Zerg production capability is probably a little too easy to execute. But really, because of the way larva works, I really don't know how they fix it. I've read many-a-Zerg's ideas here, and I don't think anyone has really nailed it yet (including the lame ideas I've floated).
RE: Creep - I don't consider creep "macro", in the traditional sense of economy, tech, and production. Yes, the creep tumor is a building (technically), and yes it requires clicks to iterate it across the map, but I've always ticked this off in the "Army Control / Positioning" checkbox of gameplay. I just don't see any logical way to categorize Creep as macro: It doesn't cost minerals. It doesn't cost gas. It doesn't cost supply. It doesn't provide tech. It doesn't provide supply. It doesn't provide or enhance economy (hatches can be built without it, and drones don't get speed buff). Instead: it burrows (like a unit), it grants vision, prevents non-Zerg structures from building, and provides a passive speed buff for all Zerg units (almost like a spell / ability). It seems very clear to me that this is a army / tactical task.
I think people like to throw it in with macro, when talking about Zerg, and that's fine, conversationally, but now that we're having a detailed conversation about Zerg macro, I think it's--at worst--intellectually dishonest to include creep--and at best--maybe just a little thoughtless to include it.
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I think they could just make it similar to broodwar and it would get a little bit harder, no more inject at all, just macro hatcheries with probably a higher larva cap than 3, balance the game accordingly, remove macro mechanics for P and T too obviously
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My concern with that Fayth is a matter of base clutter. Hatches are pretty damn big and the maps aren't really designed to accomodate that many town hall structures. Maybe they could look into something like a larvae next which is about the size of a spawning pool which spawns macro larvae. Or what about maybe making it so Hatches can have like 8 larvae, Lair can have 12 and Hive 16 or something? That way if you want to spend a resource (in this case amount of room in your base) you can. Since 2 hatches == 1 Hive. But if you are running low or simply don't want to create a maze for your units as defense you can pay some gas to ramp up your production.
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Also something I think would be cool is if larva were more a resource instead of the current iteration where it is "I have more of these than I can spend" larva harassment could be a real thing. Back in WoL days when Zergs were abysmal at injects I would purposefully attack larva with blue-flame hellions. With the upgrade they could roast then rather quickly and they would not be able to amass enough of an army to counter my timing attack follow up.
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hatcheries are just a bit bigger than gateways/stargate/barracks etc. realistically you wouldn't need to make that many of them, it could be capped at something like 5 or 6 larvas and you'd probably be fine with just 1 extra hatch per expansion, or maybe like 7 hatch on 3 base... pretty hard to tell since we're just theory crafting, I think it would be worth giving this a shot in the current beta
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Well, I just played my first two games of LotV and it feels like Protoss got a huge buff between the adepts and the autochrono. I've been struggling with Terrans in HotS and I just crushed two (I know I know, small sample size). Autochrono has made my timings a lot more crisp in the first 3 minutes or so. The autochrono helped me get my warpgate and blink out fast.
I've been reading about how devastating adept harass can be so that was my strategy in these games. I was able to cut through the Terran mineral lines like a hot knife through butter. Then I followed up with a quick push up the ramp about a minute or two later and it was over in both games.
Like I said, this is a small sample size. But here are some of my general feeling.
1) I don't see a purpose for the zealot in early game. Maybe that was intentional when blizzard made the adept, idk.
2) Autochrono is powerful. My probes maxed quickly and that allowed me to pump out upgrades and robo units without much thought. I just need remember which nexus is autocasting on what building (Not difficult in my opinion).
3) If you're terran and you lose a lot of scv's to a mineral harass, you lose the game. Protoss can hit with with a warp prism full of adepts really quickly. Defensive play around the mineral line is more important than ever.
4) The games seems to progress incredibly fast in the beginning because all the probes you start with.
5) I think the MULE autocast is pointless because it takes all decision out of it, and it makes it impossible for a terran to recover from a bad scv harass. I remember a fantastic game I watched where PartinG beautifully harassed a terran mineral line with blink stalkers, forcing the terran player to use all his OC energy on mules, and then PartinG ended the game with DT's because his opponent had no scans. That's great tactics and high level play right there. It's a small part of the game but I think it is a large part of what makes SC2 great on the highest level.
One last thing. I think my opponents responded very poorly to my mineral harass. They did not pull their scv's quickly. They had no units or static defense that could attack the adepts quickly. They just seemed woefully unprepared. Maybe it was their first foray into LotV and they hadn't read about it as much as I have. idk.
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Yeah I'm done till Adepts get nerfed. TvP is essentially unplayable. They are too tanky and deal too much damage early on to Terran. Terran is either flat out dead, or 90% crippled after any halfway decent warp prism + adept drop.
I dont really understand why they have to be so tanky in the first place either, wasn't that the zealot's job? What are zealots good for nowadays when for 25 gas you essentially get a ranged zealot that is much more tanky?
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Ugh. I'd like them to do something about nerfed zerg early/mid game. Larva production is so low compared to hots.
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Game is too easy or too difficult due to macro changes discussions We’ve heard the discussions on both sides of this topic. Our perspective so far is that we think there’s still plenty of both micro and macro mastery needed in StarCraft II, and freeing up some clicks per race does look to be a good direction to go. While we hear some pro gamers who say things like “macro is so easy that everyone’s macro will be equal now”, we highly doubt they will all be playing at the highest possible skill level due to these changes. Further, we’re definitely not seeing perfect macro from any of the three races right now. Last weekend, we looked at pro-level players competitively playing archon mode and we were able to point out plenty of player mistakes in terms of macro, micro, delayed reaction times, etc. This is with two pros playing as one, so we just imagine how big the skill-gap among professional players would still be especially in 1v1 games.
We’d also like to remind everyone that the direction we’ve taken here has come out of the community summit where top-tier Korean pro players nearly unanimously said that even HotS is way too difficult to master in all aspects. As we discussed the topic with them, reducing the clicks and work needed on macro mechanics was the best solution we came up with in that discussion group. We just wanted to point this out, because there does seem to be some disconnect between the Korean pro players’ opinions vs. some crowds of people making conclusions on what they believe Korean pros would think on these changes. Good job Blizzard on including the motivations behind reconsidering macro mechanics as-it-stood. Korean pros calling for it is certainly grounds to investigate a change. I still think they should've reconsidered, along the lines of the famous retort on teamliquid, but at least they provided us this.
Adept We’ve tried various upgrades for the Adept this week, and realized that we do really want a more straightforward upgrade for this unit. As a core unit, the Adept is already pushing it in terms of ability complexity, and the unit itself (even without any upgrades) is already in a cool, distinct spot. However, we do still agree that a health upgrade on an already tanky unit is probably not the best way to go. We’ll most likely try out a different, simple stat upgrade for this unit’s upgrade slot soon.
Separate from the Adept upgrade, we wanted to discuss one additional topic for the Adept. Currently there’s an issue where Adepts are very difficult to counter with tier 1 or tier 2 units on Protoss. There’s also another potential issue of early game Terran bio not having a solid counter to Adepts since Adepts counter Marines in the early game, and Marauders are only soft counters to the Adept. Here, we’re testing a version of the Adept that is armored instead of light. Anything to make my TvP early game focus around ensuring I don't immediately die to adepts while I'm still getting stim out and the natural is hard-ish to defend.
Cyclone damage We agree with the general feedback here that the AA damage can use some help in the late-game. We’d like to improve this perhaps by pointing the ability damage to be more +armored focused so that not all air units are countered easily by the Cyclone in the late game. Still, we would like to also point out that having the initially lower damage (before the +damage research) has been a good thing because it allows the opponents to harass against players teching to early Cyclones; it also gives opponents enough time to react before the upgraded Cyclone comes into play. Solid discussed change. Give it a role late-game. Terran is generally lacking in interesting lategame units to make a BIO or MECH army more robust against other race's classical lategame comp challenges.
Liberator strength This we believe is mostly a timing thing. Sometimes, Liberators come into play before the counters are ready, and especially with the use of Zero-ground on some maps, they can become very difficult to deal with. We don’t think it’s a good idea to have to build maps around this unit going forward, so we believe a good solution here would be to bring the upgrade back into the game. This would allow us to have a tool to control the timing of when Liberators can start attacking ground units a bit better. We probably don’t need the armory requirement in this case, because the upgrade requirement as well as the tech lab needed for the first Starport might already be enough of a nerf. Hallelujah, looks like they won't nerf this into the ground while making it easier to defend its economic harass and early push potential.
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PartinG beautifully harassed a terran mineral line with blink stalkers, forcing the terran player to use all his OC energy on mules, and then PartinG ended the game with DT's because his opponent had no scans. That's great tactics and high level play right there
Really? Sound like a basic strategy from 2011! High level strategies are decisions that are much more difficult to figure out.
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On September 10 2015 18:54 Hider wrote:Show nested quote + PartinG beautifully harassed a terran mineral line with blink stalkers, forcing the terran player to use all his OC energy on mules, and then PartinG ended the game with DT's because his opponent had no scans. That's great tactics and high level play right there Really? Sound like a basic strategy from 2011! High level strategies are decisions that are much more difficult to figure out. Well I'll be the first to admit that I'm a newb (<100 games on HotS), but I thought how well he employed that tactic was great. My bigger point was that the MULE requires no choice or thought at all now. It's just there to prop up the terran and make them playable. At least with autochrono you can change what building it's being cast on.
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On September 10 2015 16:29 Rowrin wrote: Yeah I'm done till Adepts get nerfed. TvP is essentially unplayable. They are too tanky and deal too much damage early on to Terran. Terran is either flat out dead, or 90% crippled after any halfway decent warp prism + adept drop.
I dont really understand why they have to be so tanky in the first place either, wasn't that the zealot's job? What are zealots good for nowadays when for 25 gas you essentially get a ranged zealot that is much more tanky?
While I entirely agree that adepts are broken to the point of game ending vs T (really I don't see too much dmg done at all), I feel simply reducing their "vs light" dmg to 22 would do wonders. Would cause them to 3-hit marines and SCVs, greatly reducing their strength early game specifically and not really affecting PvP or PvZ. Also, they wouldn't be able to 2 hit stimmed, combat shield marines if a medivac hadn't healed them yet.
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