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On December 17 2012 12:34 architecture wrote: Late late game, though, mech is a viable ground army. The composition is 25tanks/25hellion/6-8 ghost.
And then the entire game hinges on you scouting the air switch and reacting accordingly. Then you also need to suicide enough of your army to make room for new units while not leaving yourself vulnerable, which is neigh impossible as it's going to take you much longer to remax with the appropriate composition than it will for the Protoss do to the same. If they take the inititive and act on that weakness then you're going to have serious trouble trading effectively while you both switch.
Mech needs a viable opening that isn't contigent on a passive opponent and some kind of interim AA cover that can hold you over while you switch.
EDIT: Not to mention that the 25 tank/25 hellion/ 6-8 ghost army is a 100% ground army. It's also the most immobile army in the game (you could always harass with hellions but if your tanks are caught without them, or your hellions without tank support then you're gonna have a bad time) and is only effective if your opponent chooses to fight you on the ground. All those costs are traded for an army that is still difficult to trade effectively with, even when playing with its strengths. Even a few voidrays are going to completely stomp every mech AA you can russle up without the Protoss needing to change up much at all because even 1 starport is going to hurt. 3 VR's beat 3 Thors. 3 VR's also beat 6 vikings. Which then gets me thinking about supply inefficiency in supporting your mech ground forces with mech AA. You're going to need to heavily out-supply any VR numbers the Protoss produces with either vikings or Thors or Widow mines (which makes you even more immobile) which will then cut into your available supply for ground forces. I just don't see it working. The amount of perfect juggling required for the Terran to adjust to a Protoss who makes a few VR's without the need to commit is insane. If you could make it work you'd be seriously outplaying your opponent and would have been able to save a ton of time and effort if you'd just gone Bio from the beginning.
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On December 17 2012 12:05 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 11:51 one-one-one wrote:On December 17 2012 11:11 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 10:57 one-one-one wrote:On December 17 2012 09:48 avilo wrote:I'm officially done test/trying mech in HOTS beta. It still sucks balls, blizzard has done nothing to address anything in terms of the tank sucking TvP and the immortal basically being the most hardcounter unit in the game that is the other problem. Here is the replay for those interested that has made me 100% quit mech TvP for now until blizzard does something (if they're going to at all): http://drop.sc/285085Ignore that he dropped from the game, he actually got disconnected at the end. a) lots of probes dead protoss on 2 base b) protoss proceeds to get immortal/archon/chargelot c) supply depot wall in + bunker + raven + 4 tanks pre-sieged + battle hellions + 20-30 SCVS what happens? Protoss 1A's up the ramp into a tiny choke, and literally obliterates a PRE-SIEGED ARMY without any micro, no anything. Ok, if this was not enough to convince you now... Look at the upgrades on my units. Look at the upgrades on his units...THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. I'm done with mech TvP. Blizzard has horrendously failed on doing anything with it. GL to all that are still trying/attempting it though, like i said, this game above is the last straw on the camel's back for me. I had to re-watch the game 2-3 times and just sigh. So yes, mech is still indeed not viable TvP. Or you have to be a lot better than the Protoss to make mech work, in which case you should have played bio because you could have saved yourself half an hour of playing time. I watched you play that game on stream. While I agree with you that the protoss win was bullshit I don't think you describe things completely fair. There are similar situations where you would just outright lose vs protoss if you go bio. Herp derp immortal pushes owning up bio placed in 5 bunkers comes to mind ... You opened the game with a hellion drop vs a 1 gate expand. Your harass did little or no damage and you lost the medivac directly. This should put you behind. Right before his final push you suicided a bunch of hellions to kill probes. You crippled his economy, but I think that you would have held his push if you had retained those hellions. You had your 3rd cc up while he was only on 2 bases. The decision to trade those hellions for probes was maybe not that good. Also, you should question that opener you did. Vs archon immortal and zealot pushes I find it very useful to have cloaked banshees and turrets. The turrets kill observers and acts as extra road blocks for the clunky protoss units. Consider opening with cloak banshees and make sure not to lose them. 3-4 banshees would have turned the battle in your favor. I still share your frustration about TvP mech though. Imo it comes down to stuff like the opening build orders. The problem I think is the fact that there are very few solid mech openers in TvP. 1 rax expand into tech is very hard due to MsC play with blink. Especially on antiga. This opener also shits on banshee openers. It is not fair that protosses can fast expand into tech and basically be safe while the terran has to hope that opponent doesn't BO counter him. This is the more general problem. In all cases I have seen mech work in the GSL it has been off 1 rax expands into mech, which is not a safe standard opener. This is the primary issue that needs to be fixed. Your game is just an example of what can happen when you open with aggression that fails. I'm wondering if they could find a way to make Protoss vs mutas playable, while taking away stalkers' ability to blink over cliffs. Later in the game, you could bring a warp prism with you to elevator up a cliff, which would take more micro and etc. etc. The widow mines help a little and with some more tweaking could be even better, but I still think most openers are too weak/unviable vs P simpy because of the possibility of a blink all in. And there are hopefully other ways to address other all-ins, like you say I feel there is too much BO countering. Also someone else mentioned this, and I like the idea. If we are to nerf the immortal and/or buff mech in TvP, we could simply lower the Immortal's shield but give it more HP. Because of the MSC and improved stargate tech, maybe they could reduce the dependence on immortals vs roaches in ZvP. I actually came with that very suggestion about the immortal in another thread today. +50 hp and -50 shields. Another thing that should be fixed is the widow mine. It could help vs blink allins if it worked more like an actual mine. If it did more splash damage you could counter blink play with good mine placement while still getting a reasonably early expand, I am just a master league terran and I can come up with a number of fixes local to TvP which would improve mech greatly. How come Blizzard cant identify these problems and do sth about them? I think they can identify these problems, they're just slow to fix it. Maybe overly careful, or maybe they lack the skills, but either way I think and hope they'll get there eventually. That's a nice idea... what if they just buffed window mines... but not exactly buff them? If they have for example, 160 damage and much more splash (perhaps distributed by % intervals instead of just a flat number), it could defend harass much better (blink stalkers). It would add more micro, forcing the protoss player to, if he wants to blink in, not blink them all in 1 clump or else possibly lose them all to a a couple mines. By making them very strong individually, just like tanks in BW, they could hold ground much better (supported by a couple tanks behind them, to prevent a couple protoss units from just tanking all the mines there, so that whatever the protoss sends, the mech player will at least trade somewhat well). But making them very strong might not make them overpowered, before you can splash yourself, and thus you may not want to clump them all up to each other, and you may not even want to have that many with your main army. Well there's still plenty of time left, i'm excited to see what they'll do next.
I believe they should take their time honestly. Considering that there was a lot of changes that happen last patch. It would be wise to make sure that everything that was changed last patch is fully utilized before further changes imo. It just that it been so many patches yet they are so hesitant to buff seige tanks which seems like the only solution atm.
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On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 04:03 Rabiator wrote:On December 17 2012 03:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 16 2012 20:04 Thezzy wrote: I don't consider Thor/Hellion to be truly Mech. For me, Mech is not specifically Mechanical units, but a playstyle.
A playstyle that builds up slowly, creeps across the map, taking expansions and being brutally cost-efficient but immobile. In BW a Siege Tank line basically meant: 'You can't go here'. Running into a Siege Tank line with nearly any army was a death sentence. Supported by Spider Mines, Science Vessels and Goliaths, Mech was all-round solid, the only true weakness being slow and immobile but having enormous damage projection to make up for it. Spider Mines could cover for flank attacks and some Starport units with Vultures could deal decently with harassment.
Tanks were also 150/100/2 and did a whopping 70 damage to many units and Immortals, Void Rays, Phoenixes, Blink and Warp Gate and so on did not exist.
Protoss had a much harder time harassing and bypassing the Mech army and even more difficulty engaging it. But, because Mech was so slow and immobile to get up and running, this was a fair tradeoff.
In SC2, there is far too much mobility and harassment available to make that tradeoff as fair as it was in BW. On top of that, the core unit of a Mech play (Tanks) got a painful nerf in comparison to BW. Their damage was cut in half against a lot of units, their gas cost increased by 25% and their supply increased by 50%.
Whereas 40 supply tanks could do 70*20 = 1400 damage at best, in WoL this dropped to 50*13 = 650 damage, but only against Armored. It drops even further against non-Armored units. BW Tanks did do 75% damage against some units and 50% damage against units like Zerglings, but even then you could get more Tanks for the same supply.
With unit AI much better and far more harassment options available (Blink, Warp-ins, Void Ray/Phoenix) the immobility of Mech hurts more and the tanks can't make up for it anymore.
Even a fully maxed 200/200 3/3 Tank heavy army cannot as easily destroy a Protoss army. Furthermore, due to the Warp-in mechanic, Mech has to win a landslide victory in order to survive the next wave. Whereas warping in 15 Chargelots is nearly instant, Mech is painfully slow to rebuild.
There is no single thing that makes Mech harder in TvP, it's everything put together. Mechanical units can still work decently against Protoss (Thor/Hellion/Ghost with some Viking/Tank support), but you will need excellent scouting and army awareness to prevent Protoss from doing a tech-switch that kills you.
The simple fact that no pros are using true Mech in any of the tournaments is already evidence enough that Bio is simply better, otherwise the pros would have used Mech. We see it on streams here and there and we see some pros use it occiasionally on the ladder but until we start seeing it frequently on tournaments the vast majority will likely stay with Bio. In short, SC2 is a different game than BW. But that doesn't mean you can't use similar playstyles as in BW. At the same time though, there are new styles, that may or may not be present in BW. Also, I feel the majority don't consider mech to be just mechanical units, though there are some that like to include air units as mech. You are right though, for all the new options that Protoss has, mech should be much much stronger. Right now it can barely win straight up fights (and this is if you engage very well) in the early-mid game, with you being unable to pressure unless you do some sort of thor based mech, because if you try to punish him for lets say, expanding too much, you won't have your walls at home to make your engagement that much stronger. In the lategame, yes you can win fights more easily, but even so you have to keep your army together. Like you mention, I would really like the tank to hold ground better. In BW you could have a few somewhere and feel pretty safe about holding it. In SC2 you can see this in TvT. But in TvP, everything is so much faster, so much tankier, that a few tanks barely does anything without a full wall defending them. I think the siege tank can definitely be redesigned and balanced regarding its stats. Right now, simply making it stronger won't be the best idea, because of Terran's good scaling lategame thanks to MULEs (once you reach like 50 tanks you can kill almost everything even with little to no support units). It could also make early all-ins too strong from the Terran. I think the only thing that can really fix this though is removing siege tank smart fire. After all, widow mines don't have it do they? ( They overkill). If they buff tanks so that they're better early and midgame individually, but make them overkill (so that all-ins aren't too strong because the tanks need to spread out to be used as efficiently as possible), that would help mech from not having to be so fricken scared until the lategame. At the same time, you can hold more ground in the lategame without having to deathball your army in one place, and grouping up 50 tanks in one area won't be too strong due to overkill, forcing them to spread out. While I despise the stupid "its a different game argument" at the start you are coming to the right conclusions that the game doesnt really "feel right" atm and that the balance is kinda off for mech (and especially the Siege Tank). This has to do with the stupidly high mobility of Zerg and Protoss plus the ability to charge in as a super tight clump of units. To stop Siege Tanks from being too good they had to be nerfed and this changed them from "scary in a group of 5-6" to "mildly annoying in a small group". Its simple math and game design concepts which clash here, but sadly too many people dont see it. If you want to fix the Siege Tank to its proper "threatening" state you have to increase the damage, BUT you also have to make sure that people cant fill the battlefield as quickly with them ... which means taking out economic boosts like the MULE. Since you take out the economic boost for one race the others need to lose theirs as well ... in short: Inject Larvae and Chronoboost ... and since Zerg lost their production speed boosts the ones for Terran and Protoss - Reactor and Warp Gate - have to go as well. Once this is done the devs have to make sure that "Joe Bronzeleague" wont lose all his army by a-moving it into a bunch of tanks and just force-spread the units on movement AND restricting the number of units in a control group to 12 ... while making it possible for pros to tighten their clumps of units through the use of micro. After all this you would gain a higher importance for expensive (=exciting) units due to fewer production cycles being available; you could have more outrageous attacks or spells (usually AoE) since you can allow them to be 1-shotting and NOT kill half the army of your opponent AND you even add more micro for pros instead of simply limiting yourself to "Marine splitting" which is a) Terran only and b) putting the defender at a disadvantage over the attacker when it should be the other way round with the attacker having to work harder for a victory. That and Siege Tanks "working as intended again" would be quite good consequences of a few changes to the "general mechanics". Sadly Blizzard isnt yet at a point to admit that "more more more units" and "faster faster faster speed" are not going to work to make the game easy enough to play for casuals AND easy enough for viewers to follow and understand in an eSport. Sticking spells and abilities on everything wont make them exciting and only destabilize the game. I don't understand why you despise that "argument", it's simply the truth, this is a different game and so SC2 "mech" is not the same as BW "mech". Even if mech in SC2 were to be stronger and/or more positional than even BW mech, it is still different. I'm merely pointing out that we're just going to have to accept that some things from BW didn't and won't translate to SC2. I'm not saying that it's a different game and thus Blizzard can't allow mech to be as good/positional as it was in BW. SC2 is "technically" a new game, BUT it has its roots deeply anchored in the success and fan favor of its predecessor, so they should be feeling similar. Sadly Blizzard decided to put in the major changes of "perfect"ly tight unit movement (which looks totally unnatural and quite illogical to me) and other "movement boni" like Blink, Cliffwalking, the Reaper jump or even warp ins under power which screw up the balance between Siege Weapons and opposing armies. So SC2 is actually a new game while leeching on the success of the old one ... which it doesnt deserve ... and consequently it should be tuned down a bit to be more of a descendant of BW instead of a genetically manipulated "Superkid" which only has some parts which look like they are from BW.
There is another reason why I dont like this arrogant "its a new game" phrase and that is my belief that you cant make everything work and as much as people say "we want new original units" there can be only X numbers of concepts which are "original" and everything else is copied/inspired by them. Thus it should not be considered so terrible to use the old game and only make adjustments/improvements in small steps to it. There are countless FIFA / CoD games to kinda prove that small steps does work for marketing such a game, but it is the ego of the lead developer who wants HIS STAMP put on the game and who thinks he knows it better than the guys of old who designed the predecessor. Even in RTS games only a limited number of concepts work and with asymmetric races you cant increase the differences in speed or weird spells for instance before making the game perform totally random simply because the [casual / non-pro] players cant react fast enough. I think the number of patches for SC2 have shown that it is very very hard to balance while the "toned down" BW didnt require as many.
If we humans dont learn from our history then we deserve to die out and its the same in game design where the SC2 development team started with a white sheet of paper and just dumped a few things from BW on it but fails to make the comparisons to it now, to see why things worked in BW which dont work in SC2 ...
Thats why I hate the "its a new game" phrase with a passion ... the arrogance of the next generation thinking they can do it better without learning from the past and lack of respect for the past in general. Blizzard has a unique chance for game development in that they have a new game which is closely based upon a rather successful (=well tested), interesting and working game from a long time ago (for game design) and yet they fail to make comparisons.
P.S.: This "arrogance of youth" is as old as humankind and witnessed in almost every "misunderstood child" and yet parents - if they arent total blockheads - will understand them exactly, because they had the same problems in their own time. Kids need to be enlightened and sometimes "forced" into their happiness by parents who see more than them. This Real Time ACTION game of Starcraft 2 isnt the best way it could have turned out ...
On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 04:08 Azoryen wrote: Instead of over analysing why mech doesn't work and coming up with solutions, people should realize that Blizzard apparently has no intention of making mech work anymore and try to analyse that instead.
I mean, Blizzard has the knowledge and power to make mech viable, they don't need any more suggestions from anyone. If they haven't done it this far into the BETA, is simply because they prefer not to.
If I had to guess, I'd say they tested it internally and realized that T can't ever have very strong lategame compositions because of MULEs, which make possible for T armies to exceed in size the opposing army by 50 supply. And since they have huge resistance to changing basic mechanics like MULEs, that's the end of any hope of T ever being allowed to reach lategame compositions that can match Z and P. Blizzard has consistently been mentioning how they're trying to make mech in TvP work. Might you want to elaborate why you think they gave up? We just got a huge patch recently and then another buff to widow mines, so maybe they want to do things slowly. After all we still have about 2 months left of beta, so we can still see a few more patches. Just do a bit of comparison with BW ... - Why was the Siege Tank viable in that game and it isnt really in SC2? - Why would the Lurker not work in SC2? - Why does the Carrier suck in SC2?
One game of TvP can be found HERE. Just ignore the commentary and focus on what you see and then think about how many units there would be in SC2 at the same time ... you will hopefully find the culprits eventually which are responsible for mech being terrible in SC2 ... no matter what units are added or changed.
On the topic of "Blizzard says they want to make mech work" I just have to say the following to you: It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. Let them be judged by their actions and not their words!
Mech has certain requirements on the gameplay, but in SC2 those arent met, because the opponents simply move too fast for the rate of fire of the Siege Tank (which is one of the characteristics) AND they move in too tight packs so the damage from the tanks had to be nerfed to "balance" them. Without these "improvements" being tuned down the mech feeling we know and love from BW cant be recreated in SC2. Blizzard seems TOTALLY unwilling to do that, even though a tuned down game would be much easier to balance and far more receptive for "locally imbalanced" (=fun) abilities.
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On December 17 2012 15:56 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 04:03 Rabiator wrote:On December 17 2012 03:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 16 2012 20:04 Thezzy wrote: I don't consider Thor/Hellion to be truly Mech. For me, Mech is not specifically Mechanical units, but a playstyle.
A playstyle that builds up slowly, creeps across the map, taking expansions and being brutally cost-efficient but immobile. In BW a Siege Tank line basically meant: 'You can't go here'. Running into a Siege Tank line with nearly any army was a death sentence. Supported by Spider Mines, Science Vessels and Goliaths, Mech was all-round solid, the only true weakness being slow and immobile but having enormous damage projection to make up for it. Spider Mines could cover for flank attacks and some Starport units with Vultures could deal decently with harassment.
Tanks were also 150/100/2 and did a whopping 70 damage to many units and Immortals, Void Rays, Phoenixes, Blink and Warp Gate and so on did not exist.
Protoss had a much harder time harassing and bypassing the Mech army and even more difficulty engaging it. But, because Mech was so slow and immobile to get up and running, this was a fair tradeoff.
In SC2, there is far too much mobility and harassment available to make that tradeoff as fair as it was in BW. On top of that, the core unit of a Mech play (Tanks) got a painful nerf in comparison to BW. Their damage was cut in half against a lot of units, their gas cost increased by 25% and their supply increased by 50%.
Whereas 40 supply tanks could do 70*20 = 1400 damage at best, in WoL this dropped to 50*13 = 650 damage, but only against Armored. It drops even further against non-Armored units. BW Tanks did do 75% damage against some units and 50% damage against units like Zerglings, but even then you could get more Tanks for the same supply.
With unit AI much better and far more harassment options available (Blink, Warp-ins, Void Ray/Phoenix) the immobility of Mech hurts more and the tanks can't make up for it anymore.
Even a fully maxed 200/200 3/3 Tank heavy army cannot as easily destroy a Protoss army. Furthermore, due to the Warp-in mechanic, Mech has to win a landslide victory in order to survive the next wave. Whereas warping in 15 Chargelots is nearly instant, Mech is painfully slow to rebuild.
There is no single thing that makes Mech harder in TvP, it's everything put together. Mechanical units can still work decently against Protoss (Thor/Hellion/Ghost with some Viking/Tank support), but you will need excellent scouting and army awareness to prevent Protoss from doing a tech-switch that kills you.
The simple fact that no pros are using true Mech in any of the tournaments is already evidence enough that Bio is simply better, otherwise the pros would have used Mech. We see it on streams here and there and we see some pros use it occiasionally on the ladder but until we start seeing it frequently on tournaments the vast majority will likely stay with Bio. In short, SC2 is a different game than BW. But that doesn't mean you can't use similar playstyles as in BW. At the same time though, there are new styles, that may or may not be present in BW. Also, I feel the majority don't consider mech to be just mechanical units, though there are some that like to include air units as mech. You are right though, for all the new options that Protoss has, mech should be much much stronger. Right now it can barely win straight up fights (and this is if you engage very well) in the early-mid game, with you being unable to pressure unless you do some sort of thor based mech, because if you try to punish him for lets say, expanding too much, you won't have your walls at home to make your engagement that much stronger. In the lategame, yes you can win fights more easily, but even so you have to keep your army together. Like you mention, I would really like the tank to hold ground better. In BW you could have a few somewhere and feel pretty safe about holding it. In SC2 you can see this in TvT. But in TvP, everything is so much faster, so much tankier, that a few tanks barely does anything without a full wall defending them. I think the siege tank can definitely be redesigned and balanced regarding its stats. Right now, simply making it stronger won't be the best idea, because of Terran's good scaling lategame thanks to MULEs (once you reach like 50 tanks you can kill almost everything even with little to no support units). It could also make early all-ins too strong from the Terran. I think the only thing that can really fix this though is removing siege tank smart fire. After all, widow mines don't have it do they? ( They overkill). If they buff tanks so that they're better early and midgame individually, but make them overkill (so that all-ins aren't too strong because the tanks need to spread out to be used as efficiently as possible), that would help mech from not having to be so fricken scared until the lategame. At the same time, you can hold more ground in the lategame without having to deathball your army in one place, and grouping up 50 tanks in one area won't be too strong due to overkill, forcing them to spread out. While I despise the stupid "its a different game argument" at the start you are coming to the right conclusions that the game doesnt really "feel right" atm and that the balance is kinda off for mech (and especially the Siege Tank). This has to do with the stupidly high mobility of Zerg and Protoss plus the ability to charge in as a super tight clump of units. To stop Siege Tanks from being too good they had to be nerfed and this changed them from "scary in a group of 5-6" to "mildly annoying in a small group". Its simple math and game design concepts which clash here, but sadly too many people dont see it. If you want to fix the Siege Tank to its proper "threatening" state you have to increase the damage, BUT you also have to make sure that people cant fill the battlefield as quickly with them ... which means taking out economic boosts like the MULE. Since you take out the economic boost for one race the others need to lose theirs as well ... in short: Inject Larvae and Chronoboost ... and since Zerg lost their production speed boosts the ones for Terran and Protoss - Reactor and Warp Gate - have to go as well. Once this is done the devs have to make sure that "Joe Bronzeleague" wont lose all his army by a-moving it into a bunch of tanks and just force-spread the units on movement AND restricting the number of units in a control group to 12 ... while making it possible for pros to tighten their clumps of units through the use of micro. After all this you would gain a higher importance for expensive (=exciting) units due to fewer production cycles being available; you could have more outrageous attacks or spells (usually AoE) since you can allow them to be 1-shotting and NOT kill half the army of your opponent AND you even add more micro for pros instead of simply limiting yourself to "Marine splitting" which is a) Terran only and b) putting the defender at a disadvantage over the attacker when it should be the other way round with the attacker having to work harder for a victory. That and Siege Tanks "working as intended again" would be quite good consequences of a few changes to the "general mechanics". Sadly Blizzard isnt yet at a point to admit that "more more more units" and "faster faster faster speed" are not going to work to make the game easy enough to play for casuals AND easy enough for viewers to follow and understand in an eSport. Sticking spells and abilities on everything wont make them exciting and only destabilize the game. I don't understand why you despise that "argument", it's simply the truth, this is a different game and so SC2 "mech" is not the same as BW "mech". Even if mech in SC2 were to be stronger and/or more positional than even BW mech, it is still different. I'm merely pointing out that we're just going to have to accept that some things from BW didn't and won't translate to SC2. I'm not saying that it's a different game and thus Blizzard can't allow mech to be as good/positional as it was in BW. SC2 is "technically" a new game, BUT it has its roots deeply anchored in the success and fan favor of its predecessor, so they should be feeling similar. Sadly Blizzard decided to put in the major changes of "perfect"ly tight unit movement (which looks totally unnatural and quite illogical to me) and other "movement boni" like Blink, Cliffwalking, the Reaper jump or even warp ins under power which screw up the balance between Siege Weapons and opposing armies. So SC2 is actually a new game while leeching on the success of the old one ... which it doesnt deserve ... and consequently it should be tuned down a bit to be more of a descendant of BW instead of a genetically manipulated "Superkid" which only has some parts which look like they are from BW. There is another reason why I dont like this arrogant "its a new game" phrase and that is my belief that you cant make everything work and as much as people say "we want new original units" there can be only X numbers of concepts which are "original" and everything else is copied/inspired by them. Thus it should not be considered so terrible to use the old game and only make adjustments/improvements in small steps to it. There are countless FIFA / CoD games to kinda prove that small steps does work for marketing such a game, but it is the ego of the lead developer who wants HIS STAMP put on the game and who thinks he knows it better than the guys of old who designed the predecessor. Even in RTS games only a limited number of concepts work and with asymmetric races you cant increase the differences in speed or weird spells for instance before making the game perform totally random simply because the [casual / non-pro] players cant react fast enough. I think the number of patches for SC2 have shown that it is very very hard to balance while the "toned down" BW didnt require as many. If we humans dont learn from our history then we deserve to die out and its the same in game design where the SC2 development team started with a white sheet of paper and just dumped a few things from BW on it but fails to make the comparisons to it now, to see why things worked in BW which dont work in SC2 ... Thats why I hate the "its a new game" phrase with a passion ... the arrogance of the next generation thinking they can do it better without learning from the past and lack of respect for the past in general. Blizzard has a unique chance for game development in that they have a new game which is closely based upon a rather successful (=well tested), interesting and working game from a long time ago (for game design) and yet they fail to make comparisons. P.S.: This "arrogance of youth" is as old as humankind and witnessed in almost every "misunderstood child" and yet parents - if they arent total blockheads - will understand them exactly, because they had the same problems in their own time. Kids need to be enlightened and sometimes "forced" into their happiness by parents who see more than them. This Real Time ACTION game of Starcraft 2 isnt the best way it could have turned out ... Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 04:08 Azoryen wrote: Instead of over analysing why mech doesn't work and coming up with solutions, people should realize that Blizzard apparently has no intention of making mech work anymore and try to analyse that instead.
I mean, Blizzard has the knowledge and power to make mech viable, they don't need any more suggestions from anyone. If they haven't done it this far into the BETA, is simply because they prefer not to.
If I had to guess, I'd say they tested it internally and realized that T can't ever have very strong lategame compositions because of MULEs, which make possible for T armies to exceed in size the opposing army by 50 supply. And since they have huge resistance to changing basic mechanics like MULEs, that's the end of any hope of T ever being allowed to reach lategame compositions that can match Z and P. Blizzard has consistently been mentioning how they're trying to make mech in TvP work. Might you want to elaborate why you think they gave up? We just got a huge patch recently and then another buff to widow mines, so maybe they want to do things slowly. After all we still have about 2 months left of beta, so we can still see a few more patches. Just do a bit of comparison with BW ... - Why was the Siege Tank viable in that game and it isnt really in SC2? - Why would the Lurker not work in SC2? - Why does the Carrier suck in SC2? One game of TvP can be found HERE. Just ignore the commentary and focus on what you see and then think about how many units there would be in SC2 at the same time ... you will hopefully find the culprits eventually which are responsible for mech being terrible in SC2 ... no matter what units are added or changed. On the topic of "Blizzard says they want to make mech work" I just have to say the following to you: It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. Let them be judged by their actions and not their words! Mech has certain requirements on the gameplay, but in SC2 those arent met, because the opponents simply move too fast for the rate of fire of the Siege Tank (which is one of the characteristics) AND they move in too tight packs so the damage from the tanks had to be nerfed to "balance" them. Without these "improvements" being tuned down the mech feeling we know and love from BW cant be recreated in SC2. Blizzard seems TOTALLY unwilling to do that, even though a tuned down game would be much easier to balance and far more receptive for "locally imbalanced" (=fun) abilities.
Not sure if I would judge Blizzard as you described. But again, if you are referring specifically to me, i wasn't arguing any of the things you described you don't like. As in, I wasn't saying "it's a different game" to justify SC2 TvP mech not working [well]. They're different games, and mech has both new pros and new cons. Whether it has more pros or more cons isn't relevant to what i'm saying though.
What I was saying is that (and again if you weren't referring specifically to me, i would still like to elaborate on my previous post), although thor/hellion styles can't really be found in BW (because those units didn't exist), mech in BW was known to mean "factory units", and thus that should translate to SC2 as also meaning "factory units" since we are talking about SC2 and not BW. If we were to refer to a BW mech style in a SC2 forum for comparison, we should specify that. So, although he may not feel thor/hellion is in the spirit of BW mech styles, it is part of SC2 mech. And my counter argument to those who think saying "mech" in a SC2 forum should refer to BW mech because BW mech came first is this: do we then have to call styles and/or compositions based on mainly factory units to be "SC2 mech" or even something else like "heavy factory style" or "heavy factory comp"? And same would go for bio and air.
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On December 17 2012 12:34 architecture wrote: Mech sucks as an opening. You have to open bio, or stuff that requires ghost to counter (Archon/immo) will roll you in the midgame. Without ghost, mech cannot fight cost effectively, and you generally can't afford ghost until way later.
Late late game, though, mech is a viable ground army. The composition is 25tanks/25hellion/6-8 ghost. The question is if you can get there, and how much you had to invest in bio. Maybe it depends on how aggressive/not aggressive the P is planning to be on that map.
Mech also requires Ghost and its not a problem for me.If in BW for EMPs they must make SVessel,make ghost in SC2 is OK.This statement change when you realise that ghosts alone dont allow you to DETECT as the SV did.The SV was a ghost and Raven together and benefists from mech upgrades so it was perfectly balanced in the mech composition.Ghost actually is BIO unit,btu you need it as hell in TvP mech.
I can get your composition in late game,but thats not an issue.Its to move and deny P expand all over the map and survive 1-2 fights and remax again in 1-2 min as they would do.Nowadays is not possible.In BW as well,but they also couldnt win every engage so costeffective and remax for them was as hard as for T,because of Gateways and no Warpgates.Observer needed to detect early mines was also harder to get,much more tech and now they even dont need it: MScore...Not enough with this their PF can shoot AIR!!!!How can I harass them if they got 20000 ways to be secure if me not going for BIO??? Turrets dont shoot ground.I would pay an 300m300g/200sec upgrade if they was able to shoot both as cannons do,and make them cost 200 instead of 100.Protoss GOT ALL the tools we need.
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I used to agree with that position, Dustin being an egomaniac, but I've seen sanity prevail. Coming from a historical perspective from WWI and WWII:
Huge leaps of innovation took place during these two world wars. They barely were recognizable next to each other. And they took place less than ten years apart!
Consider that between SC:BW and SC2 WoL and SC2 HOTS are 10 and 3 RL years apart. Between Zeratul disappearance, Kerrigan's subjugation of the various broods and Mengsk's consolidation and preparation for his next confrontation with the aliens, things SHOULD change significantly.
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On December 17 2012 13:03 SheaR619 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 12:05 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 11:51 one-one-one wrote:On December 17 2012 11:11 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 10:57 one-one-one wrote:On December 17 2012 09:48 avilo wrote:I'm officially done test/trying mech in HOTS beta. It still sucks balls, blizzard has done nothing to address anything in terms of the tank sucking TvP and the immortal basically being the most hardcounter unit in the game that is the other problem. Here is the replay for those interested that has made me 100% quit mech TvP for now until blizzard does something (if they're going to at all): http://drop.sc/285085Ignore that he dropped from the game, he actually got disconnected at the end. a) lots of probes dead protoss on 2 base b) protoss proceeds to get immortal/archon/chargelot c) supply depot wall in + bunker + raven + 4 tanks pre-sieged + battle hellions + 20-30 SCVS what happens? Protoss 1A's up the ramp into a tiny choke, and literally obliterates a PRE-SIEGED ARMY without any micro, no anything. Ok, if this was not enough to convince you now... Look at the upgrades on my units. Look at the upgrades on his units...THIS SHOULD NOT BE POSSIBLE. I'm done with mech TvP. Blizzard has horrendously failed on doing anything with it. GL to all that are still trying/attempting it though, like i said, this game above is the last straw on the camel's back for me. I had to re-watch the game 2-3 times and just sigh. So yes, mech is still indeed not viable TvP. Or you have to be a lot better than the Protoss to make mech work, in which case you should have played bio because you could have saved yourself half an hour of playing time. I watched you play that game on stream. While I agree with you that the protoss win was bullshit I don't think you describe things completely fair. There are similar situations where you would just outright lose vs protoss if you go bio. Herp derp immortal pushes owning up bio placed in 5 bunkers comes to mind ... You opened the game with a hellion drop vs a 1 gate expand. Your harass did little or no damage and you lost the medivac directly. This should put you behind. Right before his final push you suicided a bunch of hellions to kill probes. You crippled his economy, but I think that you would have held his push if you had retained those hellions. You had your 3rd cc up while he was only on 2 bases. The decision to trade those hellions for probes was maybe not that good. Also, you should question that opener you did. Vs archon immortal and zealot pushes I find it very useful to have cloaked banshees and turrets. The turrets kill observers and acts as extra road blocks for the clunky protoss units. Consider opening with cloak banshees and make sure not to lose them. 3-4 banshees would have turned the battle in your favor. I still share your frustration about TvP mech though. Imo it comes down to stuff like the opening build orders. The problem I think is the fact that there are very few solid mech openers in TvP. 1 rax expand into tech is very hard due to MsC play with blink. Especially on antiga. This opener also shits on banshee openers. It is not fair that protosses can fast expand into tech and basically be safe while the terran has to hope that opponent doesn't BO counter him. This is the more general problem. In all cases I have seen mech work in the GSL it has been off 1 rax expands into mech, which is not a safe standard opener. This is the primary issue that needs to be fixed. Your game is just an example of what can happen when you open with aggression that fails. I'm wondering if they could find a way to make Protoss vs mutas playable, while taking away stalkers' ability to blink over cliffs. Later in the game, you could bring a warp prism with you to elevator up a cliff, which would take more micro and etc. etc. The widow mines help a little and with some more tweaking could be even better, but I still think most openers are too weak/unviable vs P simpy because of the possibility of a blink all in. And there are hopefully other ways to address other all-ins, like you say I feel there is too much BO countering. Also someone else mentioned this, and I like the idea. If we are to nerf the immortal and/or buff mech in TvP, we could simply lower the Immortal's shield but give it more HP. Because of the MSC and improved stargate tech, maybe they could reduce the dependence on immortals vs roaches in ZvP. I actually came with that very suggestion about the immortal in another thread today. +50 hp and -50 shields. Another thing that should be fixed is the widow mine. It could help vs blink allins if it worked more like an actual mine. If it did more splash damage you could counter blink play with good mine placement while still getting a reasonably early expand, I am just a master league terran and I can come up with a number of fixes local to TvP which would improve mech greatly. How come Blizzard cant identify these problems and do sth about them? I think they can identify these problems, they're just slow to fix it. Maybe overly careful, or maybe they lack the skills, but either way I think and hope they'll get there eventually. That's a nice idea... what if they just buffed window mines... but not exactly buff them? If they have for example, 160 damage and much more splash (perhaps distributed by % intervals instead of just a flat number), it could defend harass much better (blink stalkers). It would add more micro, forcing the protoss player to, if he wants to blink in, not blink them all in 1 clump or else possibly lose them all to a a couple mines. By making them very strong individually, just like tanks in BW, they could hold ground much better (supported by a couple tanks behind them, to prevent a couple protoss units from just tanking all the mines there, so that whatever the protoss sends, the mech player will at least trade somewhat well). But making them very strong might not make them overpowered, before you can splash yourself, and thus you may not want to clump them all up to each other, and you may not even want to have that many with your main army. Well there's still plenty of time left, i'm excited to see what they'll do next. I believe they should take their time honestly. Considering that there was a lot of changes that happen last patch. It would be wise to make sure that everything that was changed last patch is fully utilized before further changes imo. It just that it been so many patches yet they are so hesitant to buff seige tanks which seems like the only solution atm.
That replay is just depressing... my god.
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Lore is not a good reason for removing core gameplay mechanics that were present, well-tested, and well-loved by players of Brood War.
Blizzard doesn't understand positional play. More specifically, Dustin Browder does not understand it. His entire career has been rock-paper-scissors deathball gameplay, and it is no surprise that the units he introduced create that exact type of gameplay.
Even when they claimed they wanted to make "mech" viable, the unit they proposed was the Warhound. Or that to strengthen mech, they were considering making Battle Hellions into Biological units so they can be healed by medivacs. These people don't even know that they don't know.
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On December 17 2012 17:53 ledarsi wrote: Lore is not a good reason for removing core gameplay mechanics that were present, well-tested, and well-loved by players of Brood War.
Blizzard doesn't understand positional play. More specifically, Dustin Browder does not understand it. His entire career has been rock-paper-scissors deathball gameplay, and it is no surprise that the units he introduced create that exact type of gameplay. Core game mechanics? Lol. SC2 core mechanics are stuff like MULEs, warpgates, larva injects, forcefields... Any strategy / unit composition must be compatible with those and I believe that's not the case with traditional BW mech.
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All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go?
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On December 17 2012 17:53 ledarsi wrote: Lore is not a good reason for removing core gameplay mechanics that were present, well-tested, and well-loved by players of Brood War.
Blizzard doesn't understand positional play. More specifically, Dustin Browder does not understand it. His entire career has been rock-paper-scissors deathball gameplay, and it is no surprise that the units he introduced create that exact type of gameplay.
Even when they claimed they wanted to make "mech" viable, the unit they proposed was the Warhound. Or that to strengthen mech, they were considering making Battle Hellions into Biological units so they can be healed by medivacs. These people don't even know that they don't know.
I tend to agree with this. Though it's probably more "they don't want to" rather then "they don't understand". The Warhound i think tells us all about what Blizzard thinks of mech.
They even said they don't want siege Tank play because it makes Terran play passive (David Kim?), so what we will most likely end up with as "mech" will be a death ball of Thor/hellbat/ ghosts/ a few tanks/ Vikings/ Banshees. In other words, "mech" will be Protoss like play, and siege lines are a big no,no.
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On December 17 2012 18:47 ledarsi wrote: All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go? Why are you upset? I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying that's the way it is and that nothing in SC2 can be balanced without considering those mechanics, and that's what makes them core.
Just consider, for example, how ZvT is affected by such mechanics in WoL: - In a very lategame scenario, MULEs theoretically allow terran to match 80 drones economy with a few SCVs for gas + MULEs - this frees a lot of supply for terran army, it's almost like terran's supply cap is 250 instead of 200. - not saying this is OP in WoL, but the OPness potential is there and is a constant consideration for the balance team - so how is this balanced? - Z must be able to trade armies before T gets to his perfect lategame 170 supply army.
Now consider how this would work with a mech style similar to BW. Could a maxed Z trade efficiently against T at that critical point in the game when T is threatening to go for an even bigger supply army? I believe not.
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On December 17 2012 16:58 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 15:56 Rabiator wrote:On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 04:03 Rabiator wrote:On December 17 2012 03:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 16 2012 20:04 Thezzy wrote: I don't consider Thor/Hellion to be truly Mech. For me, Mech is not specifically Mechanical units, but a playstyle.
A playstyle that builds up slowly, creeps across the map, taking expansions and being brutally cost-efficient but immobile. In BW a Siege Tank line basically meant: 'You can't go here'. Running into a Siege Tank line with nearly any army was a death sentence. Supported by Spider Mines, Science Vessels and Goliaths, Mech was all-round solid, the only true weakness being slow and immobile but having enormous damage projection to make up for it. Spider Mines could cover for flank attacks and some Starport units with Vultures could deal decently with harassment.
Tanks were also 150/100/2 and did a whopping 70 damage to many units and Immortals, Void Rays, Phoenixes, Blink and Warp Gate and so on did not exist.
Protoss had a much harder time harassing and bypassing the Mech army and even more difficulty engaging it. But, because Mech was so slow and immobile to get up and running, this was a fair tradeoff.
In SC2, there is far too much mobility and harassment available to make that tradeoff as fair as it was in BW. On top of that, the core unit of a Mech play (Tanks) got a painful nerf in comparison to BW. Their damage was cut in half against a lot of units, their gas cost increased by 25% and their supply increased by 50%.
Whereas 40 supply tanks could do 70*20 = 1400 damage at best, in WoL this dropped to 50*13 = 650 damage, but only against Armored. It drops even further against non-Armored units. BW Tanks did do 75% damage against some units and 50% damage against units like Zerglings, but even then you could get more Tanks for the same supply.
With unit AI much better and far more harassment options available (Blink, Warp-ins, Void Ray/Phoenix) the immobility of Mech hurts more and the tanks can't make up for it anymore.
Even a fully maxed 200/200 3/3 Tank heavy army cannot as easily destroy a Protoss army. Furthermore, due to the Warp-in mechanic, Mech has to win a landslide victory in order to survive the next wave. Whereas warping in 15 Chargelots is nearly instant, Mech is painfully slow to rebuild.
There is no single thing that makes Mech harder in TvP, it's everything put together. Mechanical units can still work decently against Protoss (Thor/Hellion/Ghost with some Viking/Tank support), but you will need excellent scouting and army awareness to prevent Protoss from doing a tech-switch that kills you.
The simple fact that no pros are using true Mech in any of the tournaments is already evidence enough that Bio is simply better, otherwise the pros would have used Mech. We see it on streams here and there and we see some pros use it occiasionally on the ladder but until we start seeing it frequently on tournaments the vast majority will likely stay with Bio. In short, SC2 is a different game than BW. But that doesn't mean you can't use similar playstyles as in BW. At the same time though, there are new styles, that may or may not be present in BW. Also, I feel the majority don't consider mech to be just mechanical units, though there are some that like to include air units as mech. You are right though, for all the new options that Protoss has, mech should be much much stronger. Right now it can barely win straight up fights (and this is if you engage very well) in the early-mid game, with you being unable to pressure unless you do some sort of thor based mech, because if you try to punish him for lets say, expanding too much, you won't have your walls at home to make your engagement that much stronger. In the lategame, yes you can win fights more easily, but even so you have to keep your army together. Like you mention, I would really like the tank to hold ground better. In BW you could have a few somewhere and feel pretty safe about holding it. In SC2 you can see this in TvT. But in TvP, everything is so much faster, so much tankier, that a few tanks barely does anything without a full wall defending them. I think the siege tank can definitely be redesigned and balanced regarding its stats. Right now, simply making it stronger won't be the best idea, because of Terran's good scaling lategame thanks to MULEs (once you reach like 50 tanks you can kill almost everything even with little to no support units). It could also make early all-ins too strong from the Terran. I think the only thing that can really fix this though is removing siege tank smart fire. After all, widow mines don't have it do they? ( They overkill). If they buff tanks so that they're better early and midgame individually, but make them overkill (so that all-ins aren't too strong because the tanks need to spread out to be used as efficiently as possible), that would help mech from not having to be so fricken scared until the lategame. At the same time, you can hold more ground in the lategame without having to deathball your army in one place, and grouping up 50 tanks in one area won't be too strong due to overkill, forcing them to spread out. While I despise the stupid "its a different game argument" at the start you are coming to the right conclusions that the game doesnt really "feel right" atm and that the balance is kinda off for mech (and especially the Siege Tank). This has to do with the stupidly high mobility of Zerg and Protoss plus the ability to charge in as a super tight clump of units. To stop Siege Tanks from being too good they had to be nerfed and this changed them from "scary in a group of 5-6" to "mildly annoying in a small group". Its simple math and game design concepts which clash here, but sadly too many people dont see it. If you want to fix the Siege Tank to its proper "threatening" state you have to increase the damage, BUT you also have to make sure that people cant fill the battlefield as quickly with them ... which means taking out economic boosts like the MULE. Since you take out the economic boost for one race the others need to lose theirs as well ... in short: Inject Larvae and Chronoboost ... and since Zerg lost their production speed boosts the ones for Terran and Protoss - Reactor and Warp Gate - have to go as well. Once this is done the devs have to make sure that "Joe Bronzeleague" wont lose all his army by a-moving it into a bunch of tanks and just force-spread the units on movement AND restricting the number of units in a control group to 12 ... while making it possible for pros to tighten their clumps of units through the use of micro. After all this you would gain a higher importance for expensive (=exciting) units due to fewer production cycles being available; you could have more outrageous attacks or spells (usually AoE) since you can allow them to be 1-shotting and NOT kill half the army of your opponent AND you even add more micro for pros instead of simply limiting yourself to "Marine splitting" which is a) Terran only and b) putting the defender at a disadvantage over the attacker when it should be the other way round with the attacker having to work harder for a victory. That and Siege Tanks "working as intended again" would be quite good consequences of a few changes to the "general mechanics". Sadly Blizzard isnt yet at a point to admit that "more more more units" and "faster faster faster speed" are not going to work to make the game easy enough to play for casuals AND easy enough for viewers to follow and understand in an eSport. Sticking spells and abilities on everything wont make them exciting and only destabilize the game. I don't understand why you despise that "argument", it's simply the truth, this is a different game and so SC2 "mech" is not the same as BW "mech". Even if mech in SC2 were to be stronger and/or more positional than even BW mech, it is still different. I'm merely pointing out that we're just going to have to accept that some things from BW didn't and won't translate to SC2. I'm not saying that it's a different game and thus Blizzard can't allow mech to be as good/positional as it was in BW. SC2 is "technically" a new game, BUT it has its roots deeply anchored in the success and fan favor of its predecessor, so they should be feeling similar. Sadly Blizzard decided to put in the major changes of "perfect"ly tight unit movement (which looks totally unnatural and quite illogical to me) and other "movement boni" like Blink, Cliffwalking, the Reaper jump or even warp ins under power which screw up the balance between Siege Weapons and opposing armies. So SC2 is actually a new game while leeching on the success of the old one ... which it doesnt deserve ... and consequently it should be tuned down a bit to be more of a descendant of BW instead of a genetically manipulated "Superkid" which only has some parts which look like they are from BW. There is another reason why I dont like this arrogant "its a new game" phrase and that is my belief that you cant make everything work and as much as people say "we want new original units" there can be only X numbers of concepts which are "original" and everything else is copied/inspired by them. Thus it should not be considered so terrible to use the old game and only make adjustments/improvements in small steps to it. There are countless FIFA / CoD games to kinda prove that small steps does work for marketing such a game, but it is the ego of the lead developer who wants HIS STAMP put on the game and who thinks he knows it better than the guys of old who designed the predecessor. Even in RTS games only a limited number of concepts work and with asymmetric races you cant increase the differences in speed or weird spells for instance before making the game perform totally random simply because the [casual / non-pro] players cant react fast enough. I think the number of patches for SC2 have shown that it is very very hard to balance while the "toned down" BW didnt require as many. If we humans dont learn from our history then we deserve to die out and its the same in game design where the SC2 development team started with a white sheet of paper and just dumped a few things from BW on it but fails to make the comparisons to it now, to see why things worked in BW which dont work in SC2 ... Thats why I hate the "its a new game" phrase with a passion ... the arrogance of the next generation thinking they can do it better without learning from the past and lack of respect for the past in general. Blizzard has a unique chance for game development in that they have a new game which is closely based upon a rather successful (=well tested), interesting and working game from a long time ago (for game design) and yet they fail to make comparisons. P.S.: This "arrogance of youth" is as old as humankind and witnessed in almost every "misunderstood child" and yet parents - if they arent total blockheads - will understand them exactly, because they had the same problems in their own time. Kids need to be enlightened and sometimes "forced" into their happiness by parents who see more than them. This Real Time ACTION game of Starcraft 2 isnt the best way it could have turned out ... On December 17 2012 07:16 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On December 17 2012 04:08 Azoryen wrote: Instead of over analysing why mech doesn't work and coming up with solutions, people should realize that Blizzard apparently has no intention of making mech work anymore and try to analyse that instead.
I mean, Blizzard has the knowledge and power to make mech viable, they don't need any more suggestions from anyone. If they haven't done it this far into the BETA, is simply because they prefer not to.
If I had to guess, I'd say they tested it internally and realized that T can't ever have very strong lategame compositions because of MULEs, which make possible for T armies to exceed in size the opposing army by 50 supply. And since they have huge resistance to changing basic mechanics like MULEs, that's the end of any hope of T ever being allowed to reach lategame compositions that can match Z and P. Blizzard has consistently been mentioning how they're trying to make mech in TvP work. Might you want to elaborate why you think they gave up? We just got a huge patch recently and then another buff to widow mines, so maybe they want to do things slowly. After all we still have about 2 months left of beta, so we can still see a few more patches. Just do a bit of comparison with BW ... - Why was the Siege Tank viable in that game and it isnt really in SC2? - Why would the Lurker not work in SC2? - Why does the Carrier suck in SC2? One game of TvP can be found HERE. Just ignore the commentary and focus on what you see and then think about how many units there would be in SC2 at the same time ... you will hopefully find the culprits eventually which are responsible for mech being terrible in SC2 ... no matter what units are added or changed. On the topic of "Blizzard says they want to make mech work" I just have to say the following to you: It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do. Let them be judged by their actions and not their words! Mech has certain requirements on the gameplay, but in SC2 those arent met, because the opponents simply move too fast for the rate of fire of the Siege Tank (which is one of the characteristics) AND they move in too tight packs so the damage from the tanks had to be nerfed to "balance" them. Without these "improvements" being tuned down the mech feeling we know and love from BW cant be recreated in SC2. Blizzard seems TOTALLY unwilling to do that, even though a tuned down game would be much easier to balance and far more receptive for "locally imbalanced" (=fun) abilities. Not sure if I would judge Blizzard as you described. But again, if you are referring specifically to me, i wasn't arguing any of the things you described you don't like. As in, I wasn't saying "it's a different game" to justify SC2 TvP mech not working [well]. They're different games, and mech has both new pros and new cons. Whether it has more pros or more cons isn't relevant to what i'm saying though. What I was saying is that (and again if you weren't referring specifically to me, i would still like to elaborate on my previous post), although thor/hellion styles can't really be found in BW (because those units didn't exist), mech in BW was known to mean "factory units", and thus that should translate to SC2 as also meaning "factory units" since we are talking about SC2 and not BW. If we were to refer to a BW mech style in a SC2 forum for comparison, we should specify that. So, although he may not feel thor/hellion is in the spirit of BW mech styles, it is part of SC2 mech. And my counter argument to those who think saying "mech" in a SC2 forum should refer to BW mech because BW mech came first is this: do we then have to call styles and/or compositions based on mainly factory units to be "SC2 mech" or even something else like "heavy factory style" or "heavy factory comp"? And same would go for bio and air. I wasnt "accusing" you of being one of those "SC2 is a new game so screw you BW fans"-guys ... quite the contrary. I just think that phrase is pretty stupid to use in any concept just as the "new original units" phrase.
The thing is that mech in BW also refers (and is referred to in SC2 as well) to a playstyle of immobile units centered around the Siege Tank. The stuff they added for HotS doesnt really synergize well with that core unit of mech playing style, Blizzard has yet to show any interest in changing it and the general gameplay options which boost the potential and mobility of many of the other units too much, so the slow and methodical mech is basically dead anyways, no matter what Blizzard does (short of making factory units OP).
On December 17 2012 17:50 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: I used to agree with that position, Dustin being an egomaniac, but I've seen sanity prevail. Coming from a historical perspective from WWI and WWII:
Huge leaps of innovation took place during these two world wars. They barely were recognizable next to each other. And they took place less than ten years apart!
Consider that between SC:BW and SC2 WoL and SC2 HOTS are 10 and 3 RL years apart. Between Zeratul disappearance, Kerrigan's subjugation of the various broods and Mengsk's consolidation and preparation for his next confrontation with the aliens, things SHOULD change significantly. So its ok for Siege Tanks to deal LESS damage after 10 years of development? Your argument is hollow and irrelevant, because the only thing that matters is that it works in the game. "Logic" like yours doesnt apply to games, because otherwise we would have to make BCs immune to Marine fire and adjust their sizes to the "correct" ratio anyways.
Sadly Blizzard "improved" too much and in a future environment technology will NOT make such huge leaps as you said it would.
P.S.: WWI and WWII are 21 years apart AND airplanes and tanks only started to become useful after WWI. In Starcraft context they have the evolution of the Baneling and maybe some other changes, but for all intents and purposes why did Protoss "forget" how to build Arbiters or Terrans with their Goliaths and Wraiths and whatnot? Goliaths and Wraiths are MUCH better than their current counterpart and Arbiters are totally awesome as well.
On December 17 2012 17:53 ledarsi wrote: Lore is not a good reason for removing core gameplay mechanics that were present, well-tested, and well-loved by players of Brood War.
Blizzard doesn't understand positional play. More specifically, Dustin Browder does not understand it. His entire career has been rock-paper-scissors deathball gameplay, and it is no surprise that the units he introduced create that exact type of gameplay.
Even when they claimed they wanted to make "mech" viable, the unit they proposed was the Warhound. Or that to strengthen mech, they were considering making Battle Hellions into Biological units so they can be healed by medivacs. These people don't even know that they don't know. I fully agree with you on this point and the unwillingness of the dev team to "compare" with BW to find out what gives them problems in SC2 clearly shows their "colors" ...
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On December 17 2012 20:10 Azoryen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 18:47 ledarsi wrote: All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go? Why are you upset? I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying that's the way it is and that nothing in SC2 can be balanced without considering those mechanics, and that's what makes them core. Just consider, for example, how ZvT is affected by such mechanics in WoL: - In a very lategame scenario, MULEs theoretically allow terran to match 80 drones economy with a few SCVs for gas + MULEs - this frees a lot of supply for terran army, it's almost like terran's supply cap is 250 instead of 200. - not saying this is OP in WoL, but the OPness potential is there and is a constant consideration for the balance team - so how is this balanced? - Z must be able to trade armies before T gets to his perfect lategame 170 supply army. Now consider how this would work with a mech style similar to BW. Could a maxed Z trade efficiently against T at that critical point in the game when T is threatening to go for an even bigger supply army? I believe not.
People over exaggerate the ability mule gives terran in the so called "super late game". It only really happens in TvT (Thorzain vs. Ryung comes to mind) because even though the mule gives mineral boost and ability to eventually get rid of most of SCVs, that super terran army is still limited by gas and by how game doesn't naturally progress into that late game army for terran
Think of it. Zerg is designed to go to hive eventually, if nothing, than because of the upgrades. From there on, only requirement is to make greater spire or ultralisk cavern. The core of the army, infestor is available much sooner and augments the zerg late game army perfectly. It is a natural transition by design itself. Terran has to commit to building tons of production and go for an army (raven, bc, viking, ghost, thor etc.) that is completely different from an army player was building during the earlier stages of the game.
Since this transition comes much later for terran, terran will be forced to fight zerg late game army under time frame zerg is ready to fight, not terran. Only exceptions are super turtle friendly maps like Metropolis or Shakuras.
So even though this scary 170 supply army is always a potential terran has, it was rarely achieved in WoL and it is too early to tell if it will be common (and a problem) in Hots. If anything, first year of Hots will hardly be something we could considered "figured out" and I see no point in fixing something that really isn't a problem in actual gameplay (only theoretical).
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On December 17 2012 19:55 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 17:53 ledarsi wrote: Lore is not a good reason for removing core gameplay mechanics that were present, well-tested, and well-loved by players of Brood War.
Blizzard doesn't understand positional play. More specifically, Dustin Browder does not understand it. His entire career has been rock-paper-scissors deathball gameplay, and it is no surprise that the units he introduced create that exact type of gameplay.
Even when they claimed they wanted to make "mech" viable, the unit they proposed was the Warhound. Or that to strengthen mech, they were considering making Battle Hellions into Biological units so they can be healed by medivacs. These people don't even know that they don't know. I tend to agree with this. Though it's probably more "they don't want to" rather then "they don't understand". The Warhound i think tells us all about what Blizzard thinks of mech. They even said they don't want siege Tank play because it makes Terran play passive (David Kim?), so what we will most likely end up with as "mech" will be a death ball of Thor/hellbat/ ghosts/ a few tanks/ Vikings/ Banshees. In other words, "mech" will be Protoss like play, and siege lines are a big no,no.
Yes, this is going to happen.. This or bio for next 2 years (Iikely forever). Nearly every matchup is shifting towards tankless gameplay. Every race now has more than enough tools to dismantle tank-based positional play.
TvP:
Immortals, Blink, Chargelot, Tempest, Carrier, Void Ray, Warp Prism, Collosus, Archon, everything can trade at least evenly with Tanks. Are you going to give up mobility, map control, economy and flow of the game in exchange for an army, that Protoss can 1a into and still come out ahead? Fuck, give me tank, that can at least kill stuff, that for same reason happens to 1a into my sieged line.. (!!!)
Factory based play is possible now.. Some combination of Hellbat/Thor/Ghost/Viking + maybe 3-4 Tanks and Raven support is going to work, but forget about "mech" play.
TvZ:
Vipers are now ultimate answer to Tanks in TvZ. But it's ok, since here, when Terran is really careful, slowly moves forward, places Widow Mines, Turrets and spreads his Tanks, he is usually rewarded for this. It's hard, but at least, you can't 1a into Zerg with mech deathball and expect to win easily. At the same time, Zergs can't just sit and wait till Greater Spire finishes and then go AFK.
TvT:
Get rid of this Reaper madness in the beginning and we might have balanced and skill-rewarding matchup, as TvT always was.
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On December 17 2012 20:31 Qwerty85 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 20:10 Azoryen wrote:On December 17 2012 18:47 ledarsi wrote: All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go? Why are you upset? I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying that's the way it is and that nothing in SC2 can be balanced without considering those mechanics, and that's what makes them core. Just consider, for example, how ZvT is affected by such mechanics in WoL: - In a very lategame scenario, MULEs theoretically allow terran to match 80 drones economy with a few SCVs for gas + MULEs - this frees a lot of supply for terran army, it's almost like terran's supply cap is 250 instead of 200. - not saying this is OP in WoL, but the OPness potential is there and is a constant consideration for the balance team - so how is this balanced? - Z must be able to trade armies before T gets to his perfect lategame 170 supply army. Now consider how this would work with a mech style similar to BW. Could a maxed Z trade efficiently against T at that critical point in the game when T is threatening to go for an even bigger supply army? I believe not. People over exaggerate the ability mule gives terran in the so called "super late game". It only really happens in TvT (Thorzain vs. Ryung comes to mind) because even though the mule gives mineral boost and ability to eventually get rid of most of SCVs, that super terran army is still limited by gas and by how game doesn't naturally progress into that late game army for terranThink of it. Zerg is designed to go to hive eventually, if nothing, than because of the upgrades. From there on, only requirement is to make greater spire or ultralisk cavern. The core of the army, infestor is available much sooner and augments the zerg late game army perfectly. It is a natural transition by design itself. Terran has to commit to building tons of production and go for an army (raven, bc, viking, ghost, thor etc.) that is completely different from an army player was building during the earlier stages of the game. Since this transition comes much later for terran, terran will be forced to fight zerg late game army under time frame zerg is ready to fight, not terran. Only exceptions are super turtle friendly maps like Metropolis or Shakuras. So even though this scary 170 supply army is always a potential terran has, it was rarely achieved in WoL and it is too early to tell if it will be common (and a problem) in Hots. If anything, first year of Hots will hardly be something we could considered "figured out" and I see no point in fixing something that really isn't a problem in actual gameplay (only theoretical). I'm not exaggerating the potential of T's extra supply in WoL, like I said, in WoL it has been balanced by allowing Z to force engagements and trade armies before T gets there, so you are only reinforcinf my argument. All I'm saying is that you can't think about mech without considering that potential. T lategame MULE advantage means T must be hindered in other ways, like weaker armies, bad transitions, slower remaxes, or a combination of all of that.
What people here forget is that if you give T a fully functional puristic mech style with smooth transitions, then the zero-supply economy becomes an issue. It would be like BW with 250 supply cap for T and 200 for Z.
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United Kingdom12010 Posts
On December 17 2012 20:59 Azoryen wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 20:31 Qwerty85 wrote:On December 17 2012 20:10 Azoryen wrote:On December 17 2012 18:47 ledarsi wrote: All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go? Why are you upset? I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying that's the way it is and that nothing in SC2 can be balanced without considering those mechanics, and that's what makes them core. Just consider, for example, how ZvT is affected by such mechanics in WoL: - In a very lategame scenario, MULEs theoretically allow terran to match 80 drones economy with a few SCVs for gas + MULEs - this frees a lot of supply for terran army, it's almost like terran's supply cap is 250 instead of 200. - not saying this is OP in WoL, but the OPness potential is there and is a constant consideration for the balance team - so how is this balanced? - Z must be able to trade armies before T gets to his perfect lategame 170 supply army. Now consider how this would work with a mech style similar to BW. Could a maxed Z trade efficiently against T at that critical point in the game when T is threatening to go for an even bigger supply army? I believe not. People over exaggerate the ability mule gives terran in the so called "super late game". It only really happens in TvT (Thorzain vs. Ryung comes to mind) because even though the mule gives mineral boost and ability to eventually get rid of most of SCVs, that super terran army is still limited by gas and by how game doesn't naturally progress into that late game army for terranThink of it. Zerg is designed to go to hive eventually, if nothing, than because of the upgrades. From there on, only requirement is to make greater spire or ultralisk cavern. The core of the army, infestor is available much sooner and augments the zerg late game army perfectly. It is a natural transition by design itself. Terran has to commit to building tons of production and go for an army (raven, bc, viking, ghost, thor etc.) that is completely different from an army player was building during the earlier stages of the game. Since this transition comes much later for terran, terran will be forced to fight zerg late game army under time frame zerg is ready to fight, not terran. Only exceptions are super turtle friendly maps like Metropolis or Shakuras. So even though this scary 170 supply army is always a potential terran has, it was rarely achieved in WoL and it is too early to tell if it will be common (and a problem) in Hots. If anything, first year of Hots will hardly be something we could considered "figured out" and I see no point in fixing something that really isn't a problem in actual gameplay (only theoretical). I'm not exaggerating the potential of T's extra supply in WoL, like I said, in WoL it has been balanced by allowing Z to force engagements and trade armies before T gets there, so you are only reinforcinf my argument. All I'm saying is that you can't think about mech without considering that potential. T lategame MULE advantage means T must be hindered in other ways, like weaker armies, bad transitions, slower remaxes, or a combination of all of that. What people here forget is that if you give T a fully functional puristic mech style with smooth transitions, then the zero-supply economy becomes an issue. It would be like BW with 250 supply cap for T and 200 for Z.
I'm sure you're deliberately forgetting that tanks were 2 supply in BW meaning that a 130 supply army for Terran now is only about 1/3rd of that. 170 supply gives terran an army which is about the same size as a 130 supply mech army from BW, infact it's still smaller due to the fact thors and tanks are so supply heavy.
So not only is a 170 supply army in SC2 more expensive supply wise than it's counterpart, it's also significantly weaker.
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On December 17 2012 21:05 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 17 2012 20:59 Azoryen wrote:On December 17 2012 20:31 Qwerty85 wrote:On December 17 2012 20:10 Azoryen wrote:On December 17 2012 18:47 ledarsi wrote: All the stuff you list are literal, designer-created gimmicks that do what the designer created them to do, and that is all they can ever do.
Mech is an actual gameplay mechanic that involves static vs mobile, harass vs economy, and board or territory control. There is an entire realm of play styles and player actions and skills that are involved. Whereas a MULE is called with a click and it mines some minerals, and that's it. Same for the other bonehead "mechanics" as you call them. If MULEs, etc, are "core" mechanics, then go play Plants vs Zombies as it has more depth.
If MULE conflicts with mech, then guess which one should go? Why are you upset? I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying that's the way it is and that nothing in SC2 can be balanced without considering those mechanics, and that's what makes them core. Just consider, for example, how ZvT is affected by such mechanics in WoL: - In a very lategame scenario, MULEs theoretically allow terran to match 80 drones economy with a few SCVs for gas + MULEs - this frees a lot of supply for terran army, it's almost like terran's supply cap is 250 instead of 200. - not saying this is OP in WoL, but the OPness potential is there and is a constant consideration for the balance team - so how is this balanced? - Z must be able to trade armies before T gets to his perfect lategame 170 supply army. Now consider how this would work with a mech style similar to BW. Could a maxed Z trade efficiently against T at that critical point in the game when T is threatening to go for an even bigger supply army? I believe not. People over exaggerate the ability mule gives terran in the so called "super late game". It only really happens in TvT (Thorzain vs. Ryung comes to mind) because even though the mule gives mineral boost and ability to eventually get rid of most of SCVs, that super terran army is still limited by gas and by how game doesn't naturally progress into that late game army for terranThink of it. Zerg is designed to go to hive eventually, if nothing, than because of the upgrades. From there on, only requirement is to make greater spire or ultralisk cavern. The core of the army, infestor is available much sooner and augments the zerg late game army perfectly. It is a natural transition by design itself. Terran has to commit to building tons of production and go for an army (raven, bc, viking, ghost, thor etc.) that is completely different from an army player was building during the earlier stages of the game. Since this transition comes much later for terran, terran will be forced to fight zerg late game army under time frame zerg is ready to fight, not terran. Only exceptions are super turtle friendly maps like Metropolis or Shakuras. So even though this scary 170 supply army is always a potential terran has, it was rarely achieved in WoL and it is too early to tell if it will be common (and a problem) in Hots. If anything, first year of Hots will hardly be something we could considered "figured out" and I see no point in fixing something that really isn't a problem in actual gameplay (only theoretical). I'm not exaggerating the potential of T's extra supply in WoL, like I said, in WoL it has been balanced by allowing Z to force engagements and trade armies before T gets there, so you are only reinforcinf my argument. All I'm saying is that you can't think about mech without considering that potential. T lategame MULE advantage means T must be hindered in other ways, like weaker armies, bad transitions, slower remaxes, or a combination of all of that. What people here forget is that if you give T a fully functional puristic mech style with smooth transitions, then the zero-supply economy becomes an issue. It would be like BW with 250 supply cap for T and 200 for Z. I'm sure you're deliberately forgetting that tanks were 2 supply in BW meaning that a 130 supply army for Terran now is only about 1/3rd of that. 170 supply gives terran an army which is about the same size as a 130 supply mech army from BW, infact it's still smaller due to the fact thors and tanks are so supply heavy. So not only is a 170 supply army in SC2 more expensive supply wise than it's counterpart, it's also significantly weaker. Of course it is significantly weaker, that's exactly my point. Once again, you don't seem to understand what I'm saying. The weakness in mech (or any T lategame composition) is the logical consequence of having the supply advantage provided by MULEs. Strong mech in HotS would mean 2 things: - T would be more capable of transitioning from a 120 supply army to a 170 supply army - That 170 supply army would be a lot more powerful than in WoL, so it would no longer be countered by lower supply Z and P
This discussion is something like this: - You: I want strong mech in HotS - Me: If you had that kind of mech combined with MULEs, you could make a 170 supply invincible army - You: no I couldn't because mech is weak and I can't do that in WoL - Me: Wtf ???????
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- Me: If you had that kind of mech combined with MULEs, you could make a 170 supply invincible army Really your argument might have made sense if terran didnt have a great lategame army that would literally devastate everything if you have a chance in hell of getting there: Get 140 supply of battlecruisers + 30 supply of ravens (preferably WOL ravens).
So if you say mech has to be weak since otherwise in the barely ever reached case of 170 supply it might be strong, then you better start nerfing battlecruisers. Even if you would reach it, and then have a very strong army, you still got its weakness of horrible mobility.
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I find BW borring. Sc2 is so much more fun. A lot more possibilities because the core mechanics are so much easier. Why cling to BW fantasies of mech ?
It's a real issue that mech is gimmicky against P now. But if the Terran mech is Thors, helions/whound, and a few tanks (and not tank-based), well what about it ? It's a different game.
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