On February 16 2017 21:57 plogamer wrote: No, stop asking for self-nerfs in the interest of game-play. Only Terrans are dumbass enough to do that (see hellbat nerf in hots). You think ling/bane is more forgiving? Or phoenix wars in PvP?
Tank drops might not be used often in non-mirrors, but it's still a possible threat hanging over the heads of the opponents. It could also open up new styles if you don't nerf it to the ground.
1. If a majority is interested in the same "self-nerf" then I see no problem in implementing it. 2. We are talking about TvT. If you wanna improve ZvZ or PvP pls make a proposal instead of insulting ppl that try to put some reasonable effort into it. 3. I cannot remember any drops including tanks before and after the tankivac mechanic in a non-mirror. It's not even a threat. Pls enlighten us.
You may not be aware but bio tanks is played in TvP and if often includes tanks loading into medivacs.
Also, I don't see why you talk as you didn't know that there is balance inside a mirror match up. Saying mirrors are always balanced is a bad analysis, because even in mirror you need to have several options possible for each player. For instance, drops are key in Bio vs Mech, and it doesn't appear that bio is super strong against mech atm, why nerf it even more? for the sake of having turtle to mass ravens in every TvT?
On the other hand, I must admit I've missed some pro TvT lately : do you have a consistent list of pro games where one players "stole" the win from a clearly superior player with a doom drop? It would be the first step toward a real improvement for the game : trying to identify and analyse a problem, before throwing random solutions in the air.
Cause to be honest, to me this idea sounds very much like : the "hey your finger is itching? let's cut your arm" kind of solution...
Last, if you check balance discussion from last year, there were a lot of people on this site saying that tankivacs were promoting doom drops, against all evidence. Aren't we back in a discussion were people blame the design instead of realising that things such as map awarness, reaction time and anticipation are their real issues?
Tanks are indeed part of the TvP meta, but they are not part of doom drops. You rather use bio with sieging liberators and mines for that or pure bio. Tanks inside a medivac are either for fast transport or retreat.
Regarding your TvT "balance": I think you are trying to explain something, but you talk about balance in a mirror. Even if you try to make it sound like very deep thinking and analyzing by saying mirrors do have balance. They do not. Each player has the exact same tools and thus the same chances of winning. But the aspect of time and knowledge can cause "build order losses". If you follow a path without knowledge of what your opponent is doing you risk being countered. A very good example is 3 rax reaper. In order to avoid such losses people start either using these popular builds themselves or their counters, depending on what is stronger or what they prefer. That's why we have all these reaper cyclone builds nowadays. Now this what you actually wanted to talk about: design. If mech is stronger than bio in TvT, simply play mech? You don't want be forced into mech? This is not a balance issue. It's a design issue. I could explain more and more, but I really don't wanna discuss this with you any further.
My personal opinion: Doomdrops are not fun at all. I'd rather have them removed or weakened.
On February 17 2017 00:27 Ryu3600 wrote: Honestly if this change is a go through change then I think the immortal should also take up 6-8 spaces in a warp-prism I think that would be a fair trade off especially vs that one stupid double proxy robo immortal all-in.
Wait wasn't this a change to address TvT? you silly terrans are unbelievable
Doomdrops are part of TvT. When you cant break siege line of your opponent you do doomdrop, otherwise you both will just stare at sieged tanks for 30 minutes.
Tankivacs made doomdrops much weaker while many poeple thougt that every terran will just drop tanks in opponent base. In my opinion change from this topic would not change much. Terran while doomdropping has enough medivacs to take everything.
Top players (like top 8) know where is opponent army, when something is missing they immediately defend their main base. I requires a lot of experience, good positioning, good scouting, several marines spreaded out on map.
Overall, sorry but TvT is very dynamic matchup. The dps is insane, even without tanks marines kill buildings very fast. 1 tank less wont change anything. Maybe better make upgrade for sensor tower that it will see whole map xD
On February 17 2017 00:05 eviltomahawk wrote: Someone on Reddit made a suggestion that tanks could take up 6 spots in the medivac instead of the current 4 or the suggested full 8. That would allow a marauder or a couple marines to support the tank.
6 is a stupid compromise and i have seen no actual reasoning other than some insane desire to always stand in the middle of two choices
the change is very specific to TvT doom drops so you don't need to compromise in fear of overnerfing a race and unbalancing a match up.
6 is just a smaller nerf to TvT doom drops and just makes terrans need to spread out tanks between medivacs and slightly hurts the amount of units they can fit in a drop. 8 really nerfs the game ending TvT doom drops. marine drops are unaffected so it's not like the TvT midgame will suddenly lose all attack potential.
not to mention you can't even do 6 in the SC2 editor according to people on reddit and blizzard hates using numbers that don't fit their pattern
and @ the people complaining about vZ and vP being nerfed how often do you actually doom drop with tanks in those match ups? you can still save tanks in retreat just fine seeing as you will nearly always have a higher medivac count than tank count
it's not like the game is 100% balanced right now anyways so who cares if this MICROTESIMAL nerf to other match ups is a side effect if it makes TvT so much better to watch/play
6 is better than 8 for sure and its true, terrans dont often drop tanks in other matchups. but we have to ask ourselves the question, is it actually better viewing/playing experience when doomdrops arent happening? i dont think we have a definitive answer to that question yet, but my heart says that doomdrops are good for esports
Most everyone agrees that WoL TvT was the best TvT.
Disable medivac boost for this matchup. Have a voiceover of Dustin Browder saying "the technology just isnt there yet" every time you press the button.
Remember what makes doom drops annoying is the speed of them. Doom drops were beginning to be a problem in HoTS with boosted medivacs, then sieged tank pickup became ridiculous.
Mind you: I don't think doom drops currently are all that big of a deal. At a high level of play, if you have good enough map awareness you can crush a doom drop.
On February 17 2017 13:02 Thaniri wrote: Most everyone agrees that WoL TvT was the best TvT.
WOL TvZ was also the best, at least until Infestors went into common usage. That was also the game at it's peak.
Medivac Boost is a terrible idea, always has been. The counter to drops is shooting them down, Boosters make it difficult, limiting counterplay, just like Warp Prism range pickup limits counterplay versus Warp Prism drops.
The problem with medivac boost is that the risk/reward design is awful. With the cooldown being so short the boost makes drop pretty low risk compared to how high the reward often is.
I'm not saying necessarily remove it from the game. It's deeply entangled in the game's balance at this point and the ramifications of removing it would be big.
But at least increase the cooldown (so you actually have to think strategically about when you should use it, or whether you should hold off and save it for when you really need it badly) or make it cost a decent amount of mana.
So when i read the first post, my initial reaction was "Wow, this is tame compared to what i'd do, which is nerf the medivac boost harshly/remove it."
I'm deeply pleased that the conversation made it to that subject on it's own. In other news, I'd love to see an exploration of the cooldown of boost being nerfed. Preferably by a lot, like 30 seconds or more. Naturally I'm also open to the idea of boost costing energy.
I only somewhat agree with the likening of boost to prism pickup range. It does limit reaction counterplay but it does NOT impact the case of trying to get in against a well prepared player, which boost totally does.
To those who are saying "Doom drops are good for TvT", I am only really somewhat disagreeing with you. The problem I have with doom drops as they currently exist is that they are too good, you can fly into and drop on top of like four missle turrets and still reasonably expect to deal a ton of damage, which in my opinion is a bit much.
I agree the doom drop is a issue in TVT right now. Pretty much whoever do it first has the better chance to win the game,and it's very hard to defend it in early-mid game even with a seiged-up tank in position.It's really frustrated to play against,just like the old blue flame hellion drop in wol,or hellbat drop in hots.
I also think that the medivac boost is the bigger problem here, it makes interception of incoming drops extremely difficult, static defense almost useless and ensures the successful escape in case the terran wants to retreat. Its a lot too rewarding for its cost.
So either make the afterburners an ability that has to be researched at the techlab for a nice amount of mins/gas/time and increase the cooldown a lot or at least make it energy-based so boosting the speed limits the healing abilities and excessive healing prevents boosted escapes.
On February 17 2017 13:02 Thaniri wrote: Disable medivac boost for this matchup. Have a voiceover of Dustin Browder saying "the technology just isnt there yet" every time you press the button.
On February 17 2017 13:02 Thaniri wrote: Mind you: I don't think doom drops currently are all that big of a deal. At a high level of play, if you have good enough map awareness you can crush a doom drop.
This. Doom drops can be annoying as hell if you dont have map vision/sensor towers. But they are always defendable. So if a doom drops kills you its your own fault because you were out of position.
Nerfing doom drops seems like a bad idea to me. They are an important tool to have. Especially against early or mid game mech play.
On February 17 2017 17:46 dacSyzygy wrote: I also think that the medivac boost is the bigger problem here, it makes interception of incoming drops extremely difficult, static defense almost useless and ensures the successful escape in case the terran wants to retreat. Its a lot too rewarding for its cost.
So either make the afterburners an ability that has to be researched at the techlab for a nice amount of mins/gas/time and increase the cooldown a lot or at least make it energy-based so boosting the speed limits the healing abilities and excessive healing prevents boosted escapes.
How about finding a strategical solution instead of changing the game?
You can put a sensor tower and turrets and/or create a perimeter. You can keep a small army with static defense. You can expand so, that you minimize the surface, where they can drop. But the best way is probably to move your army so, that you can catch drops before they happen. Doom drops have many counters.
In fact terran drops are a bigger problem for other races. But it is part of the game and each race has a lot of options to counter it. This makes sc2 a strategy game!
On February 17 2017 20:16 todespolka wrote: How about finding a strategical solution instead of changing the game?
You can put a sensor tower and turrets and/or create a perimeter. You can keep a small army with static defense. You can expand so, that you minimize the surface, where they can drop. But the best way is probably to move your army so, that you can catch drops before they happen. Doom drops have many counters.
In fact terran drops are a bigger problem for other races. But it is part of the game and each race has a lot of options to counter it. This makes sc2 a strategy game!
I fully agree.. these threads keep popping up, but it always feel like it's a "Wannabe game designer mega-thread" If you struggle against something it doesn't mean it's "bad design" or "bad unit interaction", maybe there are solutions which haven't been explored yet. Mech players *always* ask for more positional games, it seems to me that positioning your army to prevent doom drops or to react accordingly could be "positional gameplay" right? I don't want to see TvT where each player sieges and turtles all game long because their positions are unbreakable. I understand that right now terrans are the majority of the playerbase (maybe I'm wrong), but it seems every week there are 1-2 new threads of "game design": I will *always* trust blizzard over someone on TL, unless it's the opinion of a pro that knows the game in and out..
To add to this, most comments in these threads are super harsh and expressed with tones that would never be used in a real conversation, which makes it really toxic to read..