EDIT2: Since some people on the battle.net forums seem to think I hate all change, let me list some of the changes I like: Goliath -> Viking, great change, turning a good but somewhat bland unit into something interesting. Dragoon -> Stalker, see above Queen -> Queen, take one of the most underused units in SC and turn it into something extremely interesting and "zergy" like this, I love it. So there, 3 units of praise, now get ready for 3 units worth of complaints.. (as a note, most of the other changes I feel neither here nor there about, since I think it was generally good units being replaced by other good units).
EDIT: Initial title of this topic was "bring back the reaver" but it sort of expanded.
No, this thread isn't a petition
Watching the recent TSL finals (if you haven't seen these you should go download them right now here) I realized just how exciting a game involving reavers can be.
Yeah, the games without prominent reaver usage weren't so bad either, plenty of close spots.. But then we had the games with reavers. When reavers are involved you are constantly at the edge of your seat as they are such a high risk high reward unit, there's constant tension as players dodge scarabs while trying to kill eachothers shuttles.
Not to mention the "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh" moments when a scarab is about to run down a pack of probes.. and the ensuing "omg!", regardless of wether it's a dud or a hit. I would say the reaver/shuttle combination is probably in 2nd or 1st place when it comes to creating exciting situations in SC, the other being marines/medics, with perhaps vultures at #3.
In SC2 I'm not currently seeing any unit that fills this gap.. The colossus, which I think is a very good unit and I don't want it removed, does not have nearly the same element of excitement in its design. It would be a crying shame for SC2 to be robbed of the moments of excitement, awe and despair that the reaver brings.
Of course, blizzard has tried very hard to keep the number of units roughly the same (currently zerg and toss have 1 or 2 more units than in the original, while terran have the same I believe) but I can't help but think there has to be a way to include the reaver in there somewhere..
I'm not great at writing things like this but when talking to SoMuchBetter on msn and he asked me why I wanted it back I think I was able to sum it up nicely:
Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: I want it back because Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: of the excitement it brings Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: to the game Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: I want it back because of the Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: "aaaaaaah" moments when a scarab chases a line of probes Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: I want it back because of the Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: moments of tension in a pvp battle when both players Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: are dodging scarabs Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: I want it back because of how pissed you get when your shtutle with 2 reavers die Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: I want it back because of how happy you feel when your reaver destroys Jonathan 조나단 왈쉬 säger: an entire terran push
This thread is not only about the reaver tho, it's something I've been saying a few times about SC2; it's not that I can't accept that an old unit was replaced by a new one, it's that the old unit was much more interesting than the new one.
This is not always the case, to be sure, but in the cases where it is, the argument that "it's a new game, things change" should not be acceptable.
There are many changes to SC that I'm excited about, such as the introduction of Warpgates, the new terran ghost, the viking replacing the goliath - I'm not all against change by any stretch.
But there are, of the top of my head, 3 unit changes I'm skeptical towards: Reaver -> Colossus Vulture -> Jackal Medic -> Medivac
I don't think the colossus is a bad unit, as I've already said (in fact, out of the three, while the reaver might be the biggest loss, the colossus is certainly the most worthy replacement) but I feel that these 3 changes do very little but decrease excitement in the game.
There are some other units where I feel the replacement might not be as good as the unit being replaced (corsair -> phoenix, although this is very close, I like the phoenix, arbiter-> mothership, but I'm biased, for obvious reasons) but I think the 3 above are of the most concern. Vessel->Nomad, but no biggie.
If we look at how terran plays, removing the vultures would really change it. Yes, the game will change regardless, but do you feel that removing the vultures would be a good change?
In my opinion, the map control the vultures offer complimented the terrans otherwise sort of immobile army very well. In addition, they brought to the game a tactic unique to the terran faction - the slowpush. Neither of the other two races have anything like it, and while it might not be completely gone as long as the siege tank is still there, it will be very different. Does the addition of mobile units such as the viking or the new terran drop pods off-set this somewhat? Perhaps, but I feel there would be ample room for these units even WITH the vulture in the game (seeing as how the jackal is in).
Even still, I'm not neccessarily saying the vulture has to be kept, but I think replacing an interesting and unique unit with a, somewhat, bland attack-mover is bad, change or not.
Moving on to the medic, aside from how I feel about the medic as a unit compared to the medivac (if you care, I hate the medivac), I think it's a huge negative to not have heal until starport stage. If you've played terran in SC original you'll know how incredibly BORING marine micro is compared to in BW, and this is really an important point to consider apart from balance.
Marine micro without medics is not fun.
Finally the reaver. Do I think the removal of this unit will ruin any matchup in the same extent of the two examples above? No, I really don't think so. But I think the amount of excitement you take out of the game with its removal make up for it.
I want to add that the units they put a lot of time into also don't really add excitement: units like the Thor, bc, mothership are all fairly boring gameplay wise.
One question is how much the cliff system will add. If there are cliffs everywhere, maybe reapers and colossus will be as exciting as mutalisks. In terms of map design, I can imagine cliffs as being available for all 3 races to take advantage of, but water giving Zerg an advantage with mute harass.
I agree with you. A lot of the excitement is out the window in Sc2 with reaver being the no1 loss. There were so many great moments in the history of SC with reavers that it's uncountable. I also agree that the units you used as examples are dull with the exception of the Nomad (IMO currently the best new unit in SC2). Without the aaaaaaaaah moments this game will boil down to just another game (although superbly done) that is micro/macro heavily oriented without the magic(magic as something that made the game so cool,fun,entertaining,enjoyable etc.). As far as the development goes there are very few cool innovative units that could match the great playability/fun/skill factor of Sc1 units.
There arent many heavy investment high risk/reward units, you are right, and that is something that needs to change. Though I'm glad the Reaver itself is out, because since scarabs would no longer have such terrible AI in the more advanced SC2, dodging them with your workers would become nearly impossible and make the reaver a much more reward than risk unit.
A replacement is definitely necessary though, having all attack-move units that are all-around good at fighting (or worse, have some sort of specific "counter") removes a lot of excitment. Good post.
And just to show that I'm not all negative on old units being replaced..
Queen -> New queen = I love this change, very much. Goon -> Stalker, superb. Scout -> Warp Ray, probably pretty good.
The vessel -> Nomad could be argued as a good change but I liked the vessel so I'm biased Firebat -> Marauder, see above.
On June 04 2008 01:22 Atrioc wrote: There arent many heavy investment high risk/reward units, you are right, and that is something that needs to change. Though I'm glad the Reaver itself is out, because since scarabs would no longer have such terrible AI in the more advanced SC2, dodging them with your workers would become nearly impossible and make the reaver a much more reward than risk unit.
A replacement is definitely necessary though, having all attack-move units that are all-around good at fighting (or worse, have some sort of specific "counter") removes a lot of excitment. Good post.
The reaver AI was intentionally horrible (the scarabs, the actual reaver AI I god damn hope they didn't mess up intentionally, since they are useless from certain angles), and would probably be horrible (again by choice) in sc2
I cannot support this thread on principle of the reaver argument. I love reavers, I think they're great, and I'm right up there with everyone else who goes "aaaaaaaaaah" when those scarabs impact and kill 10+ peons, and it's the same with spider mines when they kill a ton of dragoons or probes. However, in many cases, it's pure luck that those amazing situations happen. It's very funny to me how a conundrum has appeared where players want the most competitive successor to SC possible with no random elements (other than cliff miss chance), and yet the most fun and exciting moments in SC are scarabs and mines. Those two subunits do such ridiculous damage but we've all seen scarab pathfinding that's fizzled or mines that look like they're going to run over and explode for amazing damage but instead burrow back down or get killed.
I do agree about the medics, but think of it this way too: when you have medics with your army, you essentially have permanently-stimmed Marines because there is no downside to using that ability. Strategically, this is very poor design and while it does make the medic useful, it makes it more of a necessity to build because each Marine therefore becomes almost-permanently twice as fast and twice as deadly. I love medics too but there's got to be a way for the design team to preserve the initial drawback of stimpack (and please, don't make it a cooldown).
Lower medic max mana, lower medic rate of heal - decent options even though I feel the fun that comes from having perma stimmed marines outweighs any strategical concerns.
About the luckfactor of reavers and mines, yeah there's some luck but it's a weighted gamble IMO. It's like when Goodfriend made that 3 rax build on Arkanoid, 2/3 he will find the zerg and win the game, 1/3 he'll be behind (or at least that's how I remembered it, maybe the last main was scouted via scv supply jumps and it was a luckfree build).
Furthermore it's luck that can be, somewhat, influenced by both you and your opponent (ie you can confuse the AI of a scarab or a mine with good micro, and you can position your reaver in a way that decreases the likelihood of a dud).
Now sometimes the scarab AI is just.. ridiculous, like so bad it ruins a game, but this has to be fixable without making it overpowered.
Basically I don't view the luck involved in reaver or vulture usage in the same way as I view the luck inherent to an itemdrop in WC3 or an attack with a damage range instead of an absolute damage.
Oh and one more thing is that this kind of excitement comes at a reasonably small price in terms of luck, so I think it's worth it. It's not like rolling a dice, it's more like.. I dunno, taking a risk going for some fancy submission in MMA or taking a long shot in soccer or something.
The only orgasmic thing protoss have now is mass zealot/immortal/dt/ht/stalker warp-in with over 9000 warpgates which is easily distinguished as Nal_rA's arbiter recall.
I agree about most of it. MnM and vultures were such cheap units that were capable of doing SO MUCH damage in their respective matchups. e.g. vultures destroying your economy in TvP or MYM.Raven destroying your entire army in TvZ with one group of marines n' medics.
The reaver is so great, though. I just can't explain why.
I actually slowly am starting to see where they're going with trying to replace the vulture, removing the reaver, adding immortals, nerfing storm (i know they buffed it again but from what i understand it's still not sc1 strength): Biomech for all terran matchups.
Biomech is extremely exciting. They are trying very hard to remove the slowpush it seems, in favor of something more dynamic. They're also trying to make siege tanks not be the focus of the terran army with counters to them (immortals, vikings (combined version of current goliaths with dropships dropped onto the top of siege tanks), etc). I love biomech and seeing it as the standard build would be pretty awesome.
However, I don't know what the hell the jackal is supposed to be for, and the medivac. They should probably remove the medivac. but it could be interesting if they gave it irradiate and dmatrix. I want those spells back, especially dmatrix. I know that irradiate turned around a lot of games but it's actually a really simple game mechanic that's not always that great, idk. plus it's only anti-zerg, it'd be a lot more interesting if it could be viable in tvt and tvp. Maybe irradiate with a nerf (ex. 100 energy?). I know snipe fills irradiate's niche, but the combination of the 2 dmatrix and irradiate creates an awesome dynamic, especially if they're the same cost (do i irradiate or do i dmatrix??). However I wish battlecruisers were no longer in the game. They're so boring, slow etc. I hate big huge slow units, they never give the game anything interesting. Maybe give the medivac the plasma torpedos (or allow it to choose either, yamato or plasma torpedos), dmatrix, and no irradiate... but then it might be too powerful. All of these things of excitement partially arrive out of mobility (speed shuttle, stimmed rines, speedvults). And the thor, get that out of my sight. so boring. Battlecruisers are not iconic of terran, nobody ever uses them. That's like saying that valks are iconic of terran.
However... as a combination I just realized this could be either pretty bad or pretty cool: group of marines in a medivac. turrets on the way to drop site get yamato'd, medivacs then dmatrix themselves to prevent further damage... that would be imba as hell at first glance however i think that could be still done right. Maybe instead of something like yamato, make it similar to irradiate but it can attack mech too but not buildings, so it's not instant and gives plenty of time to react and retains the aoe damage over time of irradiate.
Jackal, idk, it could be rather interesting, if it's done right. Line AOE like lurker can be pretty fucking bad. imagine 12 jackals behind a mineral line, it'd be gone in seconds... it depends on whether Jackals are as cheap as vultures. Also, they'd be a lot more interesting with some kind of special ability for the Jackals however. Vults without mines are weak as hell, part of what makes them so good at mineral harass or harass in general is that you can limit the mobility of your opponent / slow them waiting for obs and attacking mines. Not only did they move faster they could slow the enemy, kill them as they left factories. Maybe give them some small temporary machine gun turrets they drop down that have pretty short range and limited ammunition. They give you map control. Terran's power was never in mobility, Terran's power was in limiting the other guy's mobility.
also, on the subject of shooting uphill doing 75% miss chance, i wouldn't mind that being changed to 75% damage. stupid randomness.
this is just a shitload of random ideas, i might not have thought all of this through well enough...
I have to agree with you, the removal of reavers is definitely a loss. I'd like to point out some additional things that the reaver uniquely brings besides excitement:
The reaver is an original concept. It's a mobile weapons factory that makes scarabs on the battlefield. This is original to starcraft. A generic laser-shooting walker is simply uninspired imo.
The reaver takes more skill than a walker. The usefulness of the reaver/shuttle combination increases exponentially with skill. And it will cause you to lose if you don't have the skill.
Like I've said before, the finals with collossi would have been lame.
There are a ton of possibilities for improvements and additions to the reaver. Reavers are mobile factories that produce things. They could potentially make mines/droids/be a mobile shield battery/mobile nexus (resource depository), etc. I guess I just feel that there wasn't enough thought put into this, as can be evidenced by the reaver's 3D model (meh) compared to the colossus' 3D model (very nice and refined) when they were first unveiled.
I could go on and on with cool ideas for the reaver, which is already cool as it is.
Also, I can see reapers replacing vults if the explosives reapers have wouldn't be timer-based or something... unless people have genius timing. I'm not sure. it removes that aspect of laying mines in the path of the chasing opponent.
On June 04 2008 00:43 FrozenArbiter wrote: In SC2 I'm not currently seeing any unit that fills this gap.. The colossus, which I think is a very good unit and I don't want it removed, does not have nearly the same element of excitement in its design. It would be a crying shame for SC2 to be robbed of the moments of excitement, awe and despair that the reaver brings.
Why exactly do you think that? I'm not exactly sure what the colossus stats are, but isn't it really similar to reaver in range and damage per shot? If this is right it could very well replace it in moments of excitement. According to http://www.sc2armory.com/game/protoss/units/colossus/ Damage: 144 (+3) Range: 7 (same as a tower, but it has more health + can shoot from behind objects that reaver can't) Costs: 300/200/6
So it's just a heavier reaver. (same role but stronger + more expensive)
- The colossus can be dropped / microed similarly to a reaver, so those moments wouldn't be gone PLUS they can also walk up/down cliffs by themselves. So when your shuttle is killed (or maybe BEFORE it was done building) you could still be killing workers between main and nat exploiting cliffs.
- The Jackal has weaker damage per shot than a vulture but it can do AOE damage in their normal shots! Imagine if today's vultures, as fast as they are, could sneak in your main run behind your worker line and do lurker style damage to them before defending army can catch up!
- Spider mines are not gone, they just went to a different unit + reapers also has a different type of mine and that's on a unit that can harass without a dropship.
- Dropships might be easier to focus dead than medics but now there is auto-repair for your SCVs + cliff abuse for them. You lose the meatshield protection of medics but you gain drop-micro, put hurt marines in drop them behind, repeat. Isn't that even more exciting than simply placing medic meatshield in front of rines?
I mean, I agree perfectly with you that they should try to keep exciting moments such as reaver/vulture harassments in the game. But I honestly think it's too early to say that the excitement gone. IMHO it seems like Blizzard's goal with these changes are (also) to add more excitement instead.
the medivac is such a boring unit. there are many, many ways to make it far entertaining. the gunboat idea is one of them, but the simple joy of say, boxer's three drop attack, is something that the medivac doesn't really provide as much. Whee, i give heals. boring.
The Jackal is also kind of boring. Zeals rape them, and they do really low damage. Give them like EMP mines. Now that would be cool. You have a infester walking up to swarm when suddenly a mine pops up and boom no mana.
Ooh, another idea! give the jackal a firebat attack! then the "firebat rush" can rape probes! muahahahaha. Or maybe give it flame mines that burn when they get set off. Rape some zerglings and be really damn scary to a running group of zealots.
The Collosus looks really intimidating. I think it actually could be used interestingly if they gave it back the burning laser attack it used to have. You could see some probes dodging all of the beams while stalkers blink in to kill them. you can also have colluses sneak up a ramp.
IMHO a lot of the new units are built for harassing purposes, except for the Zerg units.
the excitement factor you describe is included in one particular new unit at least
i think it can best be described as "the possibility (but not probability) to fuck up tons of units suddenly in the blink of an eye" .. even though it might fail the majority of the time, the fact that you know something devastating could possibly happen always keeps you on the edge of your seat
anyways, the new protoss flyer unit has exactly that.. i think it's a genius unit design and it will create many "ahhhhhhhhh" moments when a protoss is losing but some extremely well timed overload thing brings him back into the game
having that said though, i kinda wish there were more units with that kind of potential.. reaver would be great for that
On June 04 2008 02:04 Integra wrote: Off topic question but I'm willing to risk it.
What was the reason that Blizzard gave for removing the reaver from SC2?
I don't think they gave any, just "the reaver is out of the current build" then nothing more.
Biomech is extremely exciting. They are trying very hard to remove the slowpush it seems, in favor of something more dynamic. They're also trying to make siege tanks not be the focus of the terran army with counters to them (immortals, vikings (combined version of current goliaths with dropships dropped onto the top of siege tanks), etc). I love biomech and seeing it as the standard build would be pretty awesome.
I fear this so much. Terran having 2 hugely different modes (metal vs bionic) was soooooo cool..
On June 04 2008 00:43 FrozenArbiter wrote: In SC2 I'm not currently seeing any unit that fills this gap.. The colossus, which I think is a very good unit and I don't want it removed, does not have nearly the same element of excitement in its design. It would be a crying shame for SC2 to be robbed of the moments of excitement, awe and despair that the reaver brings.
Why exactly do you think that? I'm not exactly sure what the colossus stats are, but isn't it really similar to reaver in range and damage per shot? If this is right it could very well replace it in moments of excitement. According to http://www.sc2armory.com/game/protoss/units/colossus/ Damage: 144 (+3) Range: 7 (same as a tower, but it has more health + can shoot from behind objects that reaver can't) Costs: 300/200/6
So it's just a heavier reaver. (same role but stronger + more expensive)
- The colossus can be dropped / microed similarly to a reaver, so those moments wouldn't be gone PLUS they can also walk up/down cliffs by themselves. So when your shuttle is killed (or maybe BEFORE it was done building) you could still be killing workers between main and nat exploiting cliffs.
Dropping a colossus seems pointless when it can walk on its own? Further, I might be wrong but I don't think the colossus attack lends itself to the same awesome shuttle dodging that happened in reaver vs reaver battles. And finally, the colossus fires a 100% hit attack. There's not much excitement in knowing for sure that those 10 probes are gonna die..
- The Jackal has weaker damage per shot than a vulture but it can do AOE damage in their normal shots! Imagine if today's vultures, as fast as they are, could sneak in your main run behind your worker line and do lurker style damage to them before defending army can catch up!
I don't know the stats of the jackal, so I'm not sure what I think about it (I think I said this in my post, not sure). The main issue I have with them is that they are basically mine-less vultures.. We don't even know how fast they are either, if they are still fast that makes me less critical.
- Spider mines are not gone, they just went to a different unit + reapers also has a different type of mine and that's on a unit that can harass without a dropship.
Yeah I did forget about the nomad having spidermines, however we don't know how much use the nomad will see, compared to vultures which were used in every TvP.
- Dropships might be easier to focus dead than medics but now there is auto-repair for your SCVs + cliff abuse for them. You lose the meatshield protection of medics but you gain drop-micro, put hurt marines in drop them behind, repeat. Isn't that even more exciting than simply placing medic meatshield in front of rines?
It has nothing to do with how easy/hard the medivac is to kill, what bothers me is; - It's a high tech unit. - Having a bunch of flying units hovering over your army running back and forth without you asking them to because they are trying to heal that marine that's across the screen sounds like a complete nightmare to me.
If you watch some of the videos linked (ie boxer's immortal marines for instance) you realize this could never happen in a game with the medivac right? It's just too high tech and too clumsy comparatively.
Dropship micro is very nearly pointless with marines because of their very low HP (although with the somewhat higher HP in sc2 it might be slightly less so), overall I don't see it being all that fun. I hate SCV auto-repair btw.
I mean, I agree perfectly with you that they should try to keep exciting moments such as reaver/vulture harassments in the game. But I honestly think it's too early to say that the excitement gone. IMHO it seems like Blizzard's goal with these changes are (also) to add more excitement instead.
While that argument can be made for the medic->medivac change (even though I think it's incorrect), I don't see how the reaver->colossus or vulture-> jackal change would ever lead to "more excitement".
Meh.
I don't think it's gone completely, my title might be a little poor, I just think certain units that they've replaced they made less fun. As I think I said in a later comment, the goliath->viking and dragoon->stalker changes are excellent and will definitely lead to more excitement (blinking away JUST as the scarab explodes [yeah bring back the reaver!!] for instance).
I also hope they design the phoenix so that it's really really really hard to use.. I imagine that for game developers it's very easy to underestimate just how insanely good people will get at controlling that type of stuff, so they should basicly make it impossible to master and whoever gets closest to using it perfectly will become legendary for it
On June 04 2008 02:53 Caller wrote: the medivac is such a boring unit. there are many, many ways to make it far entertaining. the gunboat idea is one of them, but the simple joy of say, boxer's three drop attack, is something that the medivac doesn't really provide as much. Whee, i give heals. boring
Why can't the medivac provide that? That is a simple drop + rine + heal, you still have all those, actually you'll have more rines = more dmg.
Yeah I don't have anything against the medivac as long as it doesnt REPLACE the medic. Like, if the medivac was a late game upgrade for the dropship or something then sure yeah whatever, it doesn't really bother me that much because I wont have to mass produce medivacs to heal my army.. Just don't have it be the main healer unit.
On June 04 2008 02:54 FrozenArbiter wrote: Dropping a colossus seems pointless when it can walk on its own? Further, I might be wrong but I don't think the colossus attack lends itself to the same awesome shuttle dodging that happened in reaver vs reaver battles.
Shuttle (phase prism) is much faster + can't be hit by ground (colossus can be hit by both) + can walk over buildings + you could use it's new pylon thing to warp in some troops to support your drop without leaving your colossus/reaver alone. I honestly see no reason why not use shuttle with the colossus. You don't need it to get there like the reaver did but you can still use it for great support and it. They build from the same building, so you could build the colossus before the shuttle do some harass while shuttle is building, then run to shuttle's safety when defense comes in.
And finally, the colossus fires a 100% hit attack. There's not much excitement in knowing for sure that those 10 probes are gonna die.
hmmmm that's one very interesting point. I have to agree. Maybe if the colossus attack was a slow moving missile that can be dodged? They should definetly change that.
Jackals and nomads well there is just too much we don't know about them to judge imo. Think of it what if Jackals are just Vultures with lurker attack and Nomads mines are as common in TvP but now they can fly to, unsuspectingly, place mines between their main army and reinforcements! That would be exciting ^^
And while we did lose the early game pressure of m&m, you must remember there's lots of new early game offensive harassing option with reapers/mines and maybe with marauders. Yea you do lose something cool, but you get something that could be (potentially) as cool. And later when mid game comes, you get your stim + heals back and with even more micro options.
On June 04 2008 02:54 FrozenArbiter wrote: And finally, the colossus fires a 100% hit attack. There's not much excitement in knowing for sure that those 10 probes are gonna die..
I'm actually right now drawing fan-art picture for suggestion that I'll put in the corresponding thread. The point would be - replacing colossus row-of-lazerz with several bombs, which do essentially same (linear splash damage) but firstly, would imho feel more "Protossish" than lasers and secondly, since they're bombs, there would be delay between attack and actual damage. How do you think?
Well, its not necessary the reaver as it is the destruction that one unit causes. If a player can annihilate a dozen probes in one shot, thats gonna be very exciting. So anything with good splash or quick AoE damage would probably help fill the niche that the reaver left behind
On June 04 2008 02:54 FrozenArbiter wrote: And finally, the colossus fires a 100% hit attack. There's not much excitement in knowing for sure that those 10 probes are gonna die..
I'm actually right now drawing fan-art picture for suggestion that I'll put in the corresponding thread. The point would be - replacing colossus row-of-lazerz with several bombs, which do essentially same (linear splash damage) but firstly, would imho feel more "Protossish" than lasers and secondly, since they're bombs, there would be delay between attack and actual damage. How do you think?
Do it! Plasma bombs! (but should be 1 super bomb at a time imo, not several bombies, so it's not too similar to banshee + keeps excitement of 1-hit-blows-lots-of-shit-up)
Maybe even make it a flying scarab that would try to run to the target after it lands, and would be just as dumb as the original one
I honestly can't imagine Terran infantry without a medic... The medic was pretty much the backbone, or lifeline of the army, not to mention very dispensable. I wish the medics would come back.
Basically sc2 just needs more extremely strong counter units. In essence, it somewhat makes it very un-newbie friendly and obviously hard to balance. It's always exciting to see 1 or 2 key counter units to turn the tides of battles. Last thing we want sc2 to become another war3 wannabe.
Just face it, sc/bw is very hard to beat. I just hope blizzard does not make the mistake of going beta and say it's too late to make those needed drastic changes.
I see or agree that a big problem (or for sc a great risk) of modern games is that they want to achieve balance and achieve a "steril" game. Every game that gained fame had glitches and even minor bugs or simply tricks. A good example would be the quake Series or the Old Team Fortress. The *newer* versions tried to implement those old bugs and glitches as regular features or dropped them completly. The result was a steril and boring game.
So keep the random scarab and all that goes in the same categorie, or create new ones.
I don't understand why Blizzard makes certain units the way they are and why they cut other certain units.
At the same time they have a few lore-based units with no gameplay prosperities or characteristics, not tactical roles, and they just get redesigned over and over.
The vulture was probably the most gosu unit in SC. And the reaver one of the most exciting. Of course they need to do new for the sake of new. But why are they keeping boring units like the BC? And cutting these two? And replacing them with units that aren't that exciting. Not to mention the Thor and Mothership. And the Nomad, is it really more micro intensive than the SV?
And for people who think I am against change, I do think removing the medic is a good idea. Medic was needed to fix balance. It's not really exciting, except it forming walls which messes up the AI.
Also, the siege tank being so dominant. If they want change and freshness they should really have done something about that. But no. They made it do even more damage, have a bit more hp and double the gas. Range, splash AND insane damage all at the same time.
I don't see much creativity, much exciting ideas, signs that they realize why some units make exciting competitive RTS and other's don't.
The medivac seems to actually be a good idea. It makes going dropship play when you have marines, a good idea. And getting marines when you do dropship play also a good idea. Not sure if that will actually turn out good in practice.
A gunship or some APC is a terrible idea. Flying bunker? Dropship with guns? I don't get it. It only makes the dropship more expensive. And it will never be as strong as a genuine air unit.
I also wonder what Blizzard's idea about a second resource is. What does it actually add to the game? No more fact units that don't take gas. Is it just a feature to force the player to make the one unit that is mineral only? The most basic unit for each race? And you only get those because you need a mineral sink. Is that the way to use a second resource?
I would truly love the scourge and scarab back. There they were the "oh shit" moments of SC. Watching a korean game where the commentators are freaking out screaming "VESSELLLL" never gets old.
Biomech is extremely exciting. They are trying very hard to remove the slowpush it seems, in favor of something more dynamic. They're also trying to make siege tanks not be the focus of the terran army with counters to them (immortals, vikings (combined version of current goliaths with dropships dropped onto the top of siege tanks), etc). I love biomech and seeing it as the standard build would be pretty awesome.
I fear this so much. Terran having 2 hugely different modes (metal vs bionic) was soooooo cool..
To be honest it wasn't really 2 hugely different modes other than in TvZ. In TvP and TvT bio is more of a what-the-fuck near cheese strategy, it doesn't work very effectively outside of certain timing windows and especially if it's scouted then it's completely fucked (especially in TvP with psi storm and reavers and dts). Only in TvZ is metal viable sometimes (mainly if you're Flash)... and that's even only if you get on huge macro maps like Katrina with big huge cliffs that are convenient locations for siege tanks where early attacking is much less viable. To be honest it's not really 2 "options" as much as all the other races get to use a lot of their units in most matchups whereas terran gets a shitload of units that are nearly useless in a lot of situations (vessel tvt, valkyrie every matchup, bio in tvt and tvp, mech in tvz, wraith outside of tvt, battlecruiser every matchup except for the extremely rare tvt, firebats except tvz, etc). Probably the only unit that's always usable in every matchup is the SCV and the siege tank.
Yeah I did forget about the nomad having spidermines, however we don't know how much use the nomad will see, compared to vultures which were used in every TvP.
I don't know, I think nomad will be a pretty big part of all matchups, perhaps only TvZ will be excluded.
It has nothing to do with how easy/hard the medivac is to kill, what bothers me is; - It's a high tech unit. - Having a bunch of flying units hovering over your army running back and forth without you asking them to because they are trying to heal that marine that's across the screen sounds like a complete nightmare to me.
If you watch some of the videos linked (ie boxer's immortal marines for instance) you realize this could never happen in a game with the medivac right? It's just too high tech and too clumsy comparatively.
Dropship micro is very nearly pointless with marines because of their very low HP (although with the somewhat higher HP in sc2 it might be slightly less so), overall I don't see it being all that fun. I hate SCV auto-repair btw.
Yeah i agree a lot. also, how the hell does right clicking on a friendly unit work, heal or pick up??
While that argument can be made for the medic->medivac change (even though I think it's incorrect), I don't see how the reaver->colossus or vulture-> jackal change would ever lead to "more excitement".
Vulture -> Jackal is a pretty tough one without spidermines or anything else that serves a similar role or another special ability... however the line AOE could be pretty fucking awesome. Sure, it's a measly 10 damage, but if placed right that's 10 damage on several workers. 6 jackals and they all fire 3-4 shots and suddenly your worker count at that expo goes down from 20 to 4... that's pretty fucking scary.
reaver->colossus... well, i'm not a protoss player and i'm not really sure how that'll play out. to be honest it seems like colossus will be mainly only useful in PvZ, seems like viking and phoenix will be too hard counters to it. not really sure... to be honest I hope that they replace the lasers with some kind of giant bomb thing that has a delay to hit, and an AOE. Kind of like Warcraft 2 catapults that can be dodged.
While the reaver is an exciting unit, I always hated it because of the seemingly random behavior of the scarabs. Excitement based on luck should not be in the game. There are lots of other exciting units or situations in BW which are based 100% on skill instead.
This thread sucks. No way in hell the reaver is better than the colussus, and actually I prefer the medivac over the medic. Although I do agree with you on the vulture...
On June 04 2008 04:37 ggfobster wrote: This thread sucks. No way in hell the reaver is better than the colussus, and actually I prefer the medivac over the medic. Although I do agree with you on the vulture...
the dropships all got immediately scourged as soon as they arrived scourge may not be present in sc2, but now what you have is a situation with no healing, and the marines would get raped by drones.
Here's another thing to consider without the medic: anti zergling.
Consider that as soon as two units popped up, the zerglings were no longer AS effective as they were vs. marines.
Those units were the firebat and the medic. With stim, the marines were able to wipe out zergling groups.
Now there are no medics and no firebats. If you don't stim, the marines will get massacred by a zergling surround. As soon as you stim, the zerg player can run away and wait for the stim to wear off. Also, without marines and medics, how are you going to break zerg defenses/queen? siege tanks? humor me. No more exciting sunken breaks. I friggen loved Sync
Look at my tribute to the speedling blog. See just how badly two dozen lousy speedlings and half a dozen unmicroed muta did to a terran defense WITH medics and firebats. Now imagine if there were no medics and no firebats.
Anotak, my point about 2 different "modes" was that TvZ and TvP play completely differently. If we get biomech in TvT, biomech in TvZ and biomech in TvP I'm gonna be pissed.
On June 04 2008 02:04 Integra wrote: Off topic question but I'm willing to risk it.
What was the reason that Blizzard gave for removing the reaver from SC2?
I don't think they gave any, just "the reaver is out of the current build" then nothing more.
Biomech is extremely exciting. They are trying very hard to remove the slowpush it seems, in favor of something more dynamic. They're also trying to make siege tanks not be the focus of the terran army with counters to them (immortals, vikings (combined version of current goliaths with dropships dropped onto the top of siege tanks), etc). I love biomech and seeing it as the standard build would be pretty awesome.
I fear this so much. Terran having 2 hugely different modes (metal vs bionic) was soooooo cool..
To be honest it wasn't really 2 hugely different modes other than in TvZ. In TvP and TvT bio is more of a what-the-fuck near cheese strategy, it doesn't work very effectively outside of certain timing windows and especially if it's scouted then it's completely fucked (especially in TvP with psi storm and reavers and dts). Only in TvZ is metal viable sometimes (mainly if you're Flash)... and that's even only if you get on huge macro maps like Katrina with big huge cliffs that are convenient locations for siege tanks where early attacking is much less viable. To be honest it's not really 2 "options" as much as all the other races get to use a lot of their units in most matchups whereas terran gets a shitload of units that are nearly useless in a lot of situations (vessel tvt, valkyrie every matchup, bio in tvt and tvp, mech in tvz, wraith outside of tvt, battlecruiser every matchup except for the extremely rare tvt, firebats except tvz, etc). Probably the only unit that's always usable in every matchup is the SCV and the siege tank.
The fact that bio isn't viable in TvP and TvT is exactly where terran should be improved, imo. Terran has huge potential in this aspect, why ignore it? That would be like having two races in one - bio-terran and mech-terran. And I'd say that's absolutely unclear whether blizz is working on it or not, sadly. And in that game vs Kal Forgg used bio, not biomech (only 1 factory, standard in TvZ)
Was it actually Blizzard's intent for scarabs to be duds so often? I always thought it was just bad code, giving the scarab the same attack move style targetting AI other units have. It can catch a unit, effecitvely, running along side it, but never explode because when it gets close enough.. .some AI bullshit happens and fucks it.
On June 04 2008 04:37 ggfobster wrote: This thread sucks. No way in hell the reaver is better than the colussus, and actually I prefer the medivac over the medic. Although I do agree with you on the vulture...
This post sucks. No way in hell is this colossus better than the reaver, and actually I prefer the medic over the medivac.
On June 04 2008 05:52 Louder wrote: Was it actually Blizzard's intent for scarabs to be duds so often? I always thought it was just bad code, giving the scarab the same attack move style targetting AI other units have. It can catch a unit, effecitvely, running along side it, but never explode because when it gets close enough.. .some AI bullshit happens and fucks it.
Yes, the since the Reaver is kind of the Protoss Nuke equivalent. Think of the wasted resources when a full Reaver dies, the need for a shuttle ("hidden cost")... For "lesser" players Reavers were too much a random element and they are even for Pros not 100% predictable. I thought we hated randomness in competative games? Players expect a better AI - meaning that some stuff that RELIED on the carefull implementation of the old system had to change/leave. If scarabs would always hit (as they should!) they would have been to strong - it´s one out of 2 ammos you actually have to pay for and don´t get guarrentied return - the other is the nuke. Ok there are interceptors but they are a bit different.
Right now Collossi rely on carefull positioning as their Firing pattern is unique and only effective against lazy enemys that allow their units to line up against the Collossis. (the 144 was when Collossi hit one Target at a time)
Also I don´t agree with some of the replacement matchups. I´d place Vulture -> Reaver since it´s all about harrasment potentional and colorfull use of skills - D8 CAN work on units but it will be hard, just like Spidermines in a way.
And Medic was split up between Marauder (early support for Marines) and Medivac (Healing). As mentioned before we can expect a better AI meaning that walls wouldn´t work as before anyway. And just think of the Medivac/SCV relationship - it makes the Transport unit itself more attractive to inexperienced players and adds excitement to keep it alive, it might even make Field repairs more popular.
A game can be decided if a reaver scarab decides to explode or not. That doesn't belong in a high stakes competitive game.
I think the reaver can be fix by allowing manual detonation. Vultures were way too good and built too fast for 75 minerals!!! Again, can be fixed by rebalancing the cost and build time.
I'm not good enough to take advantage of the vulture's strength in cost & time. In fact, like many low level players I'd be a lot worse off if vulture was rebalanced. However, it made sense why those units would be replaced.
Shuttle (phase prism) is much faster + can't be hit by ground (colossus can be hit by both) + can walk over buildings + you could use it's new pylon thing to warp in some troops to support your drop without leaving your colossus/reaver alone. I honestly see no reason why not use shuttle with the colossus. You don't need it to get there like the reaver did but you can still use it for great support and it. They build from the same building, so you could build the colossus before the shuttle do some harass while shuttle is building, then run to shuttle's safety when defense comes in.
I really have no idea how the phase prism and the colossus compare speedwise, but the relationship between shuttle/reaver and phase prism/colossus is just not going to be close to the same =]
The medivac seems to actually be a good idea. It makes going dropship play when you have marines, a good idea. And getting marines when you do dropship play also a good idea. Not sure if that will actually turn out good in practice.
.... You mean kind of like it already is now? Dropships are, and likely will continue to be, worth the investment on their own.
A gunship or some APC is a terrible idea. Flying bunker? Dropship with guns? I don't get it. It only makes the dropship more expensive. And it will never be as strong as a genuine air unit.
The point would be as an upgrade to individual units. Perhaps it would only be useful on island maps, perhaps not - feel free to head over to the Gunship/gunboat thread if you want to discuss it further. It's interesting but I don't want to go too off-topic :D
And Medic was split up between Marauder (early support for Marines) and Medivac (Healing). As mentioned before we can expect a better AI meaning that walls wouldn´t work as before anyway. And just think of the Medivac/SCV relationship - it makes the Transport unit itself more attractive to inexperienced players and adds excitement to keep it alive, it might even make Field repairs more popular.
Blizzard could easily keep medic walling/blocking work, they are the ones programming the game anyway =p
As for the medivac/scv field repair thingy....... IF biomech becomes the standard in every matchup (perish the thought ) then maybe, but if not, then the scvs will just follow the terran mech army on foot, like always.
On June 04 2008 07:28 [X]Ken_D wrote: A game can be decided if a reaver scarab decides to explode or not. That doesn't belong in a high stakes competitive game.
I think the reaver can be fix by allowing manual detonation. Vultures were way too good and built too fast for 75 minerals!!! Again, can be fixed by rebalancing the cost and build time.
I'm not good enough to take advantage of the vulture's strength in cost & time. In fact, like many low level players I'd be a lot worse off if vulture was rebalanced. However, it made sense why those units would be replaced.
Oh please, clearly reavers were reliable enough for tonnes of high level players to choose to open with it nearly every game.
What really DOES need to be fixed about reavers is that they cannot (CANNOT) attack at certain angles, that is really bad.
The scarab AI could be fixed slightly as well (ie avoid the really ridiculous duds when the reaver is like 1 inch away from the enemy ) I don't see the problem with the unit being balanced by having less than 100% hit, is it really that different from lurkers? Their spines are easily dodged in small scale battles.
If you have completely arbitrary randomness, ie "this attack does between 20 and 95 damage depending on the roll of 3xD6" <- fuck that, but this isn't the same, it's a predictable form of "random" which can be influenced by both the defending player (blocking, moving) and the attacker (reaver positioning/targetting).
Having the scarab manually detonatable might be a good idea (it already is btw, click stop on the reaver, problem is it does no damage XD).
On June 04 2008 05:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: Anotak, my point about 2 different "modes" was that TvZ and TvP play completely differently. If we get biomech in TvT, biomech in TvZ and biomech in TvP I'm gonna be pissed.
Not sure about TvT., but it looks like there will be biomech every matchup. Then again we see mass zealot & goon in a majority of protoss matchup.
Yeah but wtf that's toss, the mech/bionic division in terran matchups is one of my favorite racial features. If that's gone in SC2 I'm just gonna go into an insane fit of nerd-rage :D IT WILL BE BRUTAL.
BRUTAL
Ahem.
Anyway, on a serious note I was really excited to play terran in SC2, but the medivac and the possible removal of the mech/bionic feature of the matchups makes me really sad =[ Not sure I'm even excited about terran after that to be honest.
That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
On June 04 2008 07:38 FrozenArbiter wrote: Oh please, clearly reavers were reliable enough for tonnes of high level players to choose to open with it nearly every game.
What really DOES need to be fixed about reavers is that they cannot (CANNOT) attack at certain angles, that is really bad.
The scarab AI could be fixed slightly as well (ie avoid the really ridiculous duds when the reaver is like 1 inch away from the enemy ) I don't see the problem with the unit being balanced by having less than 100% hit, is it really that different from lurkers? Their spines are easily dodged in small scale battles.
If you have completely arbitrary randomness, ie "this attack does between 20 and 95 damage depending on the roll of 3xD6" <- fuck that, but this isn't the same, it's a predictable form of "random" which can be influenced by both the defending player (blocking, moving) and the attacker (reaver positioning/targetting).
Having the scarab manually detonatable might be a good idea (it already is btw, click stop on the reaver, problem is it does no damage XD).
I'd say the threat of the how much damage the reaver can potentially do forces people to make turrets or defend. Some skimp on turrets by making less turrets than they should. They should get punish hard if someone can get a reaver that close to their workers. I have experience way too many games where I drop a reaver right behind the enemy mineral and the scarab just gets stuck for a while. What's worse is the reavers can't shoot another scarab until the first finally explode. When their opponent allows m&m, vultures or templars in their mineral line, they are punish hard.
Press S, scarab explodes =P I think things like that could be solved tho without ruining the excitement. IE the scarab doesn't have to run for 30 seconds while the reaver sits there doing nothing.
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I see no problems with marines & medics. They have so much hard counters against them like psi storm, tank splash, reaver splash. I don't think medics were remove because they were too powerful, but rather remove because Blizzard wanted to try something different with the medivac.
I'd rather complain about the burrow supply depot. I can see why Blizzard implemented that, but it might end up being, "Let's make Terran even more turtle friendly!" Not everyone knows how to do a perfect barrack supply wall on every position on every map. Burrow supply depot simplifies that. In SC1, pros would wall with engineering bay at their expo. They would lift engineering bay and leave it floating so they can constantly get units out. Here was when their opponent could get a counter attack. With SC2, burrow depot would be built as the inital wall then the expo wall. If Terran sees opponent coming with weak defense, just raise burrow supply depot every time there is a threat. It's so easy to do and way too safe.
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I drool over well built bases frequently =[
Oh well guess we just really disagree about the medic.
The fact that you agree the medivac wont be able to replace the medic but aren't worried about this removing all the early game micro situations seems weird to me.
Psionic storm. Block one exit off with stalkers. Workers run to other side to escape. Psionic Storm. Teleport stalkers to other side!!! All the workers are raped! You just have to be creative.
On June 04 2008 02:56 GroT wrote: I also hope they design the phoenix so that it's really really really hard to use.. I imagine that for game developers it's very easy to underestimate just how insanely good people will get at controlling that type of stuff, so they should basicly make it impossible to master and whoever gets closest to using it perfectly will become legendary for it
Interesting and important concept
Would Rainbow become a legend for controlling colossi? Rainbow mastered one of the hardest units to use in the game and attained legend status.
Where would nal_ra be without Sair/Reaver?
Or Savior without his defilers?
Boxer without his MnM control or Nada without his vultures/vessels?
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I drool over well built bases frequently =[
Oh well guess we just really disagree about the medic.
The fact that you agree the medivac wont be able to replace the medic but aren't worried about this removing all the early game micro situations seems weird to me.
I think the other units (marine, ghost, reaper, marauder) will be able to replace those situations... Besides, how often do we see this "early-game micro" outside of TvZ?
For a while I was annoyed by the loss of the medic but I'm starting to realize with all the infantry in the mix it would be hard to keep the unit mix right with medics there randomly as well (that would make 5 infantry types)... I mean honestly, I really do appreciate the medic walls and whatnot, but I appreciate units with high damage/micro/maybe spellcasting potential (reaper/ghost). And the marauder will make that even better to do. Sure, it may be a little hard to visualize right now, but I think that ghost/reaper/marauder/marine micro could do some amazing things.
I think what really converted me though was I started trying to think up strategies to use in various matchups. I mean there's the obvious ghost rush (hope they don't have detection up), and the reaper rush (laugh when a zeal-heavy toss can't keep up with your mobility / mines). Fast ghost-drop or fast rine-drop will be more powerful with medivac (cliffing with ghosts might be viable too, I understand they do extra damage to workers?). It'll be easier to hold a position defensively with marines/marauders/reapers/ghosts. viking/ghost/banshee tvz will hopefully be quite strong (get to quick viking tech, take out ovies, spore colonies (detection), workers, queen, etc while getting ghosts. Use cloaked ghosts on the now detectionless zerg, transition into banshees to close the deal. rauder/rine rush against melee-heavy zerg and toss opponents. Ghost snipe on roaches. You get the picture.
ps. I love good building placement, i just meant that there's not much more to it than placement, and you can do placement with any unit, doesn't have to be a medic.
FA, I think what you're basically asking for are high risk/high reward units. The most exciting units and abilities in SC generally satisfied these two conditions:
So what units can potentially satisfy these criteria in SC2? (they don't need to be direct successors)
Ghost Reapers New M&M?? Stalkers Nullifier Nydus worm Banelings Infestor
Not looking too shabby so far. So basically, I agree 100% with your view that SC2 requires more of these high risk/high reward units, but I think the jury is still out on this one. I'm hoping Blizzard understands that this is what delivers excitement in a game and am hoping they incorporate this idea into their design philosophy.
Ghost is a good example. The original one had imba stats; too weak. And it's abilities didn't work together to make it have a viable unit role niche.
On top of that, most of the times you would be going for a factory based production.
What they did now was give it better abilities. And most importantly, give it big stats. But the ghost is not a harass unit like the DT. It's not a guerrilla unit that operates independent from all other units. It's not a special force unit.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
Ghost should be a specialist/ninja, operating independent of the main force. It should have less hp for sure, for example.
Again, nobody has answered how terrans are supposed to deal with a massive speedling rush in the early game. Please tell me.
Marines? No medics means that stimming is really weak against lings- a zerg player hears the stim and then just runs away until it runs off.
Marauders? Expensive gas unit that doesn't do splash. Wee I stunned a zergling. Only another 99 to go. OH crap its no longer stunned.
Ghosts? Wayyy to late game and they shoot slow. Snipe zerglings? give me a break.
Reapers... yeahhhhhhh
Without medics OR firebats, there is no counter to speedling rushes. Also, whats to stop a protoss from quickly teching to blinking stalkers? Without medics, again, the marines will be raped.
Hell, the only feasible counter would be sending scvs to block. That's just stupidity. It would delay your economy to no end and the zerg can just get infesters and rape the shit out of your base b/c ur marines wont have heals and the infested marines are free. Or they can rush nydus worm into ur base and send 99999 lings inside.
On June 04 2008 09:49 teamsolid wrote: FA, I think what you're basically asking for are high risk/high reward units. The most exciting units and abilities in SC generally satisfied these two conditions:
So what units can potentially satisfy these criteria in SC2? (they don't need to be direct successors)
Ghost Reapers New M&M?? Stalkers Nullifier Nydus worm Banelings Infestor
Not looking too shabby so far. So basically, I agree 100% with your view that SC2 requires more of these high risk/high reward units, but I think the jury is still out on this one. I'm hoping Blizzard understands that this is what delivers excitement in a game and am hoping they incorporate this idea into their design philosophy.
On June 04 2008 09:58 BlackStar wrote: Ghost is a good example. The original one had imba stats; too weak. And it's abilities didn't work together to make it have a viable unit role niche.
On top of that, most of the times you would be going for a factory based production.
What they did now was give it better abilities. And most importantly, give it big stats. But the ghost is not a harass unit like the DT. It's not a guerrilla unit that operates independent from all other units. It's not a special force unit.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
Ghost should be a specialist/ninja, operating independent of the main force. It should have less hp for sure, for example.
Nuclear Launch Detected.
Other than that, it wouldn't be too bad if ghost was improved.
On June 04 2008 09:59 Caller wrote: Again, nobody has answered how terrans are supposed to deal with a massive speedling rush in the early game. Please tell me.
Marines? No medics means that stimming is really weak against lings- a zerg player hears the stim and then just runs away until it runs off.
Marauders? Expensive gas unit that doesn't do splash. Wee I stunned a zergling. Only another 99 to go. OH crap its no longer stunned.
Ghosts? Wayyy to late game and they shoot slow. Snipe zerglings? give me a break.
Reapers... yeahhhhhhh
Without medics OR firebats, there is no counter to speedling rushes. Also, whats to stop a protoss from quickly teching to blinking stalkers? Without medics, again, the marines will be raped.
Hell, the only feasible counter would be sending scvs to block. That's just stupidity. It would delay your economy to no end and the zerg can just get infesters and rape the shit out of your base b/c ur marines wont have heals and the infested marines are free. Or they can rush nydus worm into ur base and send 99999 lings inside.
YOU CANT DO THIS BLIZZARD
Ghosts aren't that lategame, they rape small unarmored units. Reapers rape small unarmored units. Marines are stronger than they were in BW. Marauders assist by slowing lings. If anything, speedlings will be weaker in SC2.
And stalkers? They do less damage vs. unarmored weaker units. And they have the same range as rines. And the teleport is on cooldown and I believe has to be researched. Marines are slightly better than stalkers it seems to be honest.
Also, SC2 you have more starting works and each worker is worth less in mining time, worker blocking is cheaper now.
Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
To be honest I doubt this... you'll probably need a lot of dancing and snipe micro to make them useful at higher levels.
On June 04 2008 09:58 BlackStar wrote: Right now it's an elite shock troop, a sardaukar, a combat support unit. It's not a ninja or jedi. And this means it's also not a high risk, high reward unit. It doesn't need proper usage, proper control, proper tactics and proper use of special abilities. Just attack move the ghosts and it's pretty decent.
How do you know this? Doesn't ghost snipe increase its damage potential by leaps and bounds? It's normal attack could be painfully slow and hardly make an effective attacker. And what are its HPs? Maybe it's a very slow moving unit thus making it fragile, especially w/out medic support.
I think the ghost is headed in the right direction, but we'll have to see.
On June 04 2008 10:07 anotak wrote: Ghosts aren't that lategame, they rape small unarmored units. Reapers rape small unarmored units. Marines are stronger than they were in BW. Marauders assist by slowing lings. If anything, speedlings will be weaker in SC2.
And stalkers? They do less damage vs. unarmored weaker units. And they have the same range as rines. And the teleport is on cooldown and I believe has to be researched. Marines are slightly better than stalkers it seems to be honest.
Also, SC2 you have more starting works and each worker is worth less in mining time, worker blocking is cheaper now.
ghosts are actually pretty late game. They also cost a ton of gas. Zerglings are very early game.
I believe you have to go from barracks-->reaper tech --> ghost tech
what does more starting workers change with anything the zerg will have as many workers and they'll be just as far ahead.
Marines are stronger in BW only when they get the upgrade... which is late game. Marauders are more expensive than firebats and medics, and even if they each slow one ling twice as many are charging towards them. Add mutalisk harassment and without medics the Terran is basically screwed until they get ghosts, which requires mucho micro for snipe and the like.
You're probably right about the stalker point, but even so dragoons functioned like that and yet they were very effective against marines.
As for reapers, their mines only work against non moving units... which are definitely not zerglings. Their normal attack, while fast, doesn't do "extra damage" it just does normal damage fast. However, they are very susceptible to a flank.
The new ghost has been a sticky on basically all SC2 boards for a month quite a while ago. Use search.
It's a unit with decent hp and very good damage vs light armoured units. Which include marines, zealots, all workers, mutalisks, zerglings, phoenix, etc.
Ghost is tech level 1.5
It's a straightforward combat unit which is effective vs armies high on light and has some neat abilities to back it up. It used to have EMP. Does it still have that? Then of course nuke also. And cloak.
Also, they reveal enemy caster units, which are targetable with snipe, in the fog of war. Which is probably one of the few guerrilla friendly aspects of the ghost.
Nuke will always be a humiliation tactic. Exactly because of the high risk/high reward.
On June 04 2008 10:12 Caller wrote: ghosts are actually pretty late game. They also cost a ton of gas. Zerglings are very early game.
I believe you have to go from barracks-->reaper tech --> ghost tech
what does more starting workers change with anything the zerg will have as many workers and they'll be just as far ahead.
Marines are stronger in BW only when they get the upgrade... which is late game. Marauders are more expensive than firebats and medics, and even if they each slow one ling twice as many are charging towards them. Add mutalisk harassment and without medics the Terran is basically screwed until they get ghosts, which requires mucho micro for snipe and the like.
You're probably right about the stalker point, but even so dragoons functioned like that and yet they were very effective against marines.
As for reapers, their mines only work against non moving units... which are definitely not zerglings. Their normal attack, while fast, doesn't do "extra damage" it just does normal damage fast. However, they are very susceptible to a flank.
Reaps from what I understood were more effective than rines against units like lings but less effective against larger units. And goons generally are stronger than rines because of the range advantage.
I'm not worried about the balance issues that come with removing the medic - at all. Really, I just don't see the game being as fun without them.
Blablabla marauder blabalbal ghosts.. I don't know what they cost, I don't know where they are in the tech tree, I don't know how they do vs unit X. But I do know they don't let marines stim freely. And that is boring.
I do know that they won't increase the longevity of the fragile marines, which again is boring. These units aren't like the super fast and medium hitpoint vultures or the shuttle born reavers, the only reason you see hero marines in games is because of the medic -_-
Rushing, meh, terran will just make a bunker or something, they survive all throughout vanilla SC afterall. Stalkers? Nah, no range upgrade and hopefully TvP will still be a mech matchup.
Anotak, you seem to find the idea of terran infantry being composed of a marine/marauder/ghost/reaper mix appealing while I find it to be quite the opposite (different views I suppose). I like ghosts as specialized units, if they suddenly become a massable infantry unit I'm going to be quite disappointed..
Will removing the medic and adding in all the micro elements of the ghosts, reapers and marauders not create new opportunities? Sure it will, but it just sounds like WC3 Humans to me and their rifle/caster army (marines - riflemen, marauders - sorcerers /w slow mixed with spell breakers I guess, meh dunno wc3 well enough to make exact comparisions, just that the style of control with multiple units with special abilities would feel very un-terran to me).
I like it the way it was in BW, with marines/medics/firebats (replaced by marauders now) form the mainstay, but of course the ghost should now be made viable (perhaps it could take on a dark templar type role, attacking casters and preventing expansions, I don't know).
This post is all over the place, partly because I'm tired and partly because of the lack of exact info on how things currently work, I'll probably go back and edit it a few times---
Nuke will always be a humiliation tactic. Exactly because of the high risk/high reward.
With stand-alone nuclear silos and, I believe, much cheaper nukes I've sort of assumed blizzard mean for them to become "standard" fare in, at least, late game. A move which I applaud
On June 04 2008 10:42 BlackStar wrote: The new ghost has been a sticky on basically all SC2 boards for a month quite a while ago. Use search.
It's a unit with decent hp and very good damage vs light armoured units. Which include marines, zealots, all workers, mutalisks, zerglings, phoenix, etc.
Ghost is tech level 1.5
It's a straightforward combat unit which is effective vs armies high on light and has some neat abilities to back it up. It used to have EMP. Does it still have that? Then of course nuke also. And cloak.
Also, they reveal enemy caster units, which are targetable with snipe, in the fog of war. Which is probably one of the few guerrilla friendly aspects of the ghost.
Nuke will always be a humiliation tactic. Exactly because of the high risk/high reward.
You didn't answer any of my questions. Tech level 1.5 doesn't mean it's definitely a powerful combat unit if its extremely slow moving/attacking. They are also quite gas-expensive, which you can't exactly afford in large numbers, especially early in the game. Either way, I'm not going to count it out. It sounds like an interesting unit, with much needed improvement over the original.
On June 04 2008 09:49 teamsolid wrote: FA, I think what you're basically asking for are high risk/high reward units. The most exciting units and abilities in SC generally satisfied these two conditions:
So what units can potentially satisfy these criteria in SC2? (they don't need to be direct successors)
Ghost Reapers New M&M?? Stalkers Nullifier Nydus worm Banelings Infestor
Not looking too shabby so far. So basically, I agree 100% with your view that SC2 requires more of these high risk/high reward units, but I think the jury is still out on this one. I'm hoping Blizzard understands that this is what delivers excitement in a game and am hoping they incorporate this idea into their design philosophy.
Hm, what spell does the Nullifier have other than cyclone (anti-gravity, whatever, it's cyclone damnit! )? Nydus worms/warp-in are both awesome.
And I know you put question marks behind it but the new M/M (marine medivac.. ughughguhguhfgfg)..... I just don't see it. It wont happen before starport time, which is semi-high tech, so.. terran is supposed to do what until then? Turtle? Run around with marines/marauders and be really picky about when to stim (I'm sorry but this just isn't fun lol, I've played a lot of vanilla recently and marines are boring as fuck without medics)?
On June 04 2008 07:51 FrozenArbiter wrote: That is another thing, nobody in this thread (or any other thread) has explained to me how the medivac is gonna be able to take the medics place in all the early game micro situations.
They aren't... but marauders, ghosts, and reapers are there instead. It's a different game, there's no 1 to 1 relationship between the units of SC1 and SC2 and you can't really say X will take the place of Y.
To be honest having another kind of infantry coming out of the rax with all the stuff they've added would be a pain to me as a terran player.
Really other than a few rare extraordinary mnm ubergosu micro situations, medic is actually more of a chore to build them, a pain in the ass than something cool, nobody ever says "hey check out that AMAZING SUPPLY DEPOT MICRO".
I drool over well built bases frequently =[
Oh well guess we just really disagree about the medic.
The fact that you agree the medivac wont be able to replace the medic but aren't worried about this removing all the early game micro situations seems weird to me.
I think the other units (marine, ghost, reaper, marauder) will be able to replace those situations... Besides, how often do we see this "early-game micro" outside of TvZ?
It happens, but even if it didn't that would be irrelevant as we see it in >EVERY< TvZ (although I must say I'm sort of old school in my view of TvZ, I think TvZ back when terrans always opened 2 rax in main was cooler than the CC first stuff, the medivac fits slightly better into the latter).
For a while I was annoyed by the loss of the medic but I'm starting to realize with all the infantry in the mix it would be hard to keep the unit mix right with medics there randomly as well (that would make 5 infantry types)... I mean honestly, I really do appreciate the medic walls and whatnot, but I appreciate units with high damage/micro/maybe spellcasting potential (reaper/ghost). And the marauder will make that even better to do. Sure, it may be a little hard to visualize right now, but I think that ghost/reaper/marauder/marine micro could do some amazing things.
I said it before but I honestly feel like that type of micro is more WC3 Human than BW Terran >_< And I really really hope the ghost won't be part of the regular terran army, I hope its role is more like a dark templar.
I vehemently disagree about it being difficult to phase in medics into that mix regardless tho ;p
I think what really converted me though was I started trying to think up strategies to use in various matchups. I mean there's the obvious ghost rush (hope they don't have detection up),
Which I sincerely doubt will be useful.. (but I could be wrong because I have a hard time not thinking in terms of the SC1 ghost :D)
and the reaper rush (laugh when a zeal-heavy toss can't keep up with your mobility / mines).
.. which has what to do with the medic ;p?
Fast ghost-drop or fast rine-drop will be more powerful with medivac (cliffing with ghosts might be viable too, I understand they do extra damage to workers?).
.. why will it be easier? ok so you will have 1 more spot in your dropship, woohoo
It'll be easier to hold a position defensively with marines/marauders/reapers/ghosts.
.. and it would be even easier if we add in the medic.
viking/ghost/banshee tvz will hopefully be quite strong (get to quick viking tech, take out ovies, spore colonies (detection), workers, queen, etc while getting ghosts. Use cloaked ghosts on the now detectionless zerg, transition into banshees to close the deal.
..yet again, the medic being or not being in the game has zero impact on this build :D
rauder/rine rush against melee-heavy zerg and toss opponents. Ghost snipe on roaches. You get the picture.
ps. I love good building placement, i just meant that there's not much more to it than placement, and you can do placement with any unit, doesn't have to be a medic.
Again these ideas are just as doable/not-doable regardless of if the medic is a medic or a medivac.. ghosts/vikings don't even involve medic OR medivac tech, nor does a reaper rush.
FA, you actually convinced me on the medic. But the medic does force the zerg to retrain itself from being overly aggressive. No medic does mean less marine micro. But it also means more zerg aggression.
But I do think Blizz lacks vision. They rely on making up cool lore ideas, putting them in the game and then hoping they will turn out great.
Also, just look at the units that Blizz desperately tries or tried to keep in. And the units Blizz discarded so easily. Both new and old.
Hm, just for fun let's try to make a list of what units they seem persistent on keeping..
The mothership (they seem really hellbent on this one ;D) The thor The medivac (damn you, daaaaaaaamn you! *shakes fist*), although they did say they were split internally on this.
Units they seemed to remove somewhat easily: Reaver Firebat
The Silver Surfer.. I mean the Soul Hunter they let go of pretty quickly too, thank god =]
EDIT: Btw, with regards to what you said about the medic forcing zerg to restrain their aggression, I would be totally fine with zerg getting, say, a less bad version of spawn broodling..
Could work like parasite in Alien Swarm, you get hit by a parasite, start taking damage, then when you die more parasites explode out of your body. Would give terran a reason to research restore as well.
On June 04 2008 02:04 Integra wrote: Off topic question but I'm willing to risk it.
What was the reason that Blizzard gave for removing the reaver from SC2?
reavers are insufficient to the war. too weak. the colossus units are far more powerful. reavers were some sort of processing plant that was reconfigured for war by making it build scarab drones which would go out and explode on targets. the colossus units are recovered from a previous protoss war and they were not used for a long time because they were too powerful and it was considered bad mannered to use them. but now they need something better than reavers, so that is the colossus units.
On June 04 2008 02:04 Integra wrote: Off topic question but I'm willing to risk it.
What was the reason that Blizzard gave for removing the reaver from SC2?
reavers are insufficient to the war. too weak. the colossus units are far more powerful. reavers were some sort of processing plant that was reconfigured for war by making it build scarab drones which would go out and explode on targets. the colossus units are recovered from a previous protoss war and they were not used for a long time because they were too powerful and it was considered bad mannered to use them. but now they need something better than reavers, so that is the colossus units.
Balance-wise, they said the two overlapped roles too much...since the colossus is basically a reaver + shuttle for most purposes.
This thread seems more like a "How could we improve Terran" thread, since it seems that they are getting the least of the new changes.
I think using lore ideas and concepts to create units is perfectly fine. Starting with what you have and looking at what could be added is a simple and effecive way to add new content. That could be in fact the part where Blizzard went wrong in the first place. Without a strong background to work off of, a new concept will easily be underdeveloped, weak, and not smoothly fitting with the rest of the unit mix.
These new units don't seem to have very strong lore backing them up. Terran technology is pretty simple and practical, not the most efficient but it gets the job done. Humans are also highly specialized. Trying to mix roles and create a unit that can do-it-all is not Terran at all. This is one reason why the Medivac does not belong. For the Thor and Jackal, it seems that Terran technology has not progressed, but regressed. The Thor is reminiscent of the idea where we thought a plane would fly if it had more wings, so we stacked on as much as we could in hopes that it would fly. That's what it is, after all. The Thor is supposed to be the biggest and baddest weapon because it has every single gun. Similarly, the Vulture is a hoverbike. This is important because it needs to be able to traverse many different kinds of terrain to act as a fast moving scout. The Jackal cannot do this.
The Ghost is without a doubt the best "new" unit I've seen so far for Terran. Even though it looks like it has major flaws, I see the potential and creativity from Blizzard. Snipe looks like an attempt at making it a Terran Assassin, but I think it's a bit cheesy and too obvious. Ghosts aren't known for their ability with weapons; they are known for their Psionic capability. Using snipe from a distance requires no finesse, that's not Ghost-like at all. To replace Snipe, I would suggest and ability where Ghosts must close in on their targets to near-melee range before dealing the critical blow. Another flaw I see is that they tried to make the ghost a strong standalone unit by giving it an HP boost. This doesn't fit well because no matter how physically strong a human is, a human should still be no match against a Zergling's claws or the Zealot's blades. A better way might be to increase the damage output and cooldown, while keeping it at reasonably low hp. This would mean that the Ghost would be able to take on individual units, but would not fare well against groups. On a more positive note, I absolutely loved it when they added the ability to sense when units with energy were nearby: this fit in perfectly with what Ghosts did/could do.
I know I haven't really touched on how the units affect excitement, but I don't think I can argue that one. Looking at the SCBW unit set, I don't think I would have imagined how exciting they could be. All the units appear to be so simple. I probably would have been more excited by the unit that you could play around with the most. Yet things like Marine Medic control, Vulture patrol, Dragoon dancing come up, making those simple looking units the most fun to play in the game. And it turns out that the units with all the special abilities are the ones that aren't used (Queen, Ghost, etc.)
Just want to say it sucks that the transport units have slow load/unload animations now. Completely removing load/unload dropship micro. Intensity just dropped a point. Which is part of the 'excitement' of starcraft.
On June 04 2008 10:47 FrozenArbiter wrote: I'm not worried about the balance issues that come with removing the medic - at all. Really, I just don't see the game being as fun without them.
Blablabla marauder blabalbal ghosts.. I don't know what they cost, I don't know where they are in the tech tree, I don't know how they do vs unit X. But I do know they don't let marines stim freely. And that is boring.
I do know that they won't increase the longevity of the fragile marines, which again is boring. These units aren't like the super fast and medium hitpoint vultures or the shuttle born reavers, the only reason you see hero marines in games is because of the medic -_-
Rushing, meh, terran will just make a bunker or something, they survive all throughout vanilla SC afterall. Stalkers? Nah, no range upgrade and hopefully TvP will still be a mech matchup.
Anotak, you seem to find the idea of terran infantry being composed of a marine/marauder/ghost/reaper mix appealing while I find it to be quite the opposite (different views I suppose). I like ghosts as specialized units, if they suddenly become a massable infantry unit I'm going to be quite disappointed..
Will removing the medic and adding in all the micro elements of the ghosts, reapers and marauders not create new opportunities? Sure it will, but it just sounds like WC3 Humans to me and their rifle/caster army (marines - riflemen, marauders - sorcerers /w slow mixed with spell breakers I guess, meh dunno wc3 well enough to make exact comparisions, just that the style of control with multiple units with special abilities would feel very un-terran to me).
I like it the way it was in BW, with marines/medics/firebats (replaced by marauders now) form the mainstay, but of course the ghost should now be made viable (perhaps it could take on a dark templar type role, attacking casters and preventing expansions, I don't know).
This post is all over the place, partly because I'm tired and partly because of the lack of exact info on how things currently work, I'll probably go back and edit it a few times---
Nuke will always be a humiliation tactic. Exactly because of the high risk/high reward.
With stand-alone nuclear silos and, I believe, much cheaper nukes I've sort of assumed blizzard mean for them to become "standard" fare in, at least, late game. A move which I applaud
Actually, Maruaders/ghosts/reapers do increase the life span of fragile marines. Marauders slow down approaching enemy units. You can use reapers to whittle down the opponent before they even get to you marines. Ghosts can take out key units with snipe.
On June 04 2008 12:07 Ghostclaws wrote:These new units don't seem to have very strong lore backing them up. Terran technology is pretty simple and practical, not the most efficient but it gets the job done. Humans are also highly specialized. Trying to mix roles and create a unit that can do-it-all is not Terran at all. This is one reason why the Medivac does not belong. For the Thor and Jackal, it seems that Terran technology has not progressed, but regressed. The Thor is reminiscent of the idea where we thought a plane would fly if it had more wings, so we stacked on as much as we could in hopes that it would fly. That's what it is, after all. The Thor is supposed to be the biggest and baddest weapon because it has every single gun. Similarly, the Vulture is a hoverbike. This is important because it needs to be able to traverse many different kinds of terrain to act as a fast moving scout. The Jackal cannot do this.
actually, the UED (earthlings) were the ones to create medics, and the terrans the ones to create medivacs.
the thor just sounds like it's supposed to be a super goliath, no big deal.
have you seen the jackal in action? i don't know much about it. but how can you call a line splash attack by the terrans a backwards jump in technology?
concussion grenades? doesn't sound so high tech to me. doesn't even do splash attack but it's a grenade? ahahaha...must be really low tech. personally i could never figure why spider mines didn't do damage only to one target and concussion grenades didn't do splash when i was first playing starcraft as a new boy. i mean, why would they be called spider mines if they blow up? seems like that they should bite you or something...haha. in the end i didn't worry about the fact that the vulture attack was called a grenade and figured the mines scitter and jump around so they are spidery.
On June 04 2008 12:07 Ghostclaws wrote:These new units don't seem to have very strong lore backing them up. Terran technology is pretty simple and practical, not the most efficient but it gets the job done. Humans are also highly specialized. Trying to mix roles and create a unit that can do-it-all is not Terran at all. This is one reason why the Medivac does not belong. For the Thor and Jackal, it seems that Terran technology has not progressed, but regressed. The Thor is reminiscent of the idea where we thought a plane would fly if it had more wings, so we stacked on as much as we could in hopes that it would fly. That's what it is, after all. The Thor is supposed to be the biggest and baddest weapon because it has every single gun. Similarly, the Vulture is a hoverbike. This is important because it needs to be able to traverse many different kinds of terrain to act as a fast moving scout. The Jackal cannot do this.
actually, the UED (earthlings) were the ones to create medics, and the terrans the ones to create medivacs.
the thor just sounds like it's supposed to be a super goliath, no big deal.
have you seen the jackal in action? i don't know much about it. but how can you call a line splash attack by the terrans a backwards jump in technology?
concussion grenades? doesn't sound so high tech to me. doesn't even do splash attack but it's a grenade? ahahaha...must be really low tech. personally i could never figure why spider mines didn't do damage only to one target and concussion grenades didn't do splash when i was first playing starcraft as a new boy. i mean, why would they be called spider mines if they blow up? seems like that they should bite you or something...haha. in the end i didn't worry about the fact that the vulture attack was called a grenade and figured the mines scitter and jump around so they are spidery.
The point I was trying to get across was that units with a stronger and/or more developed concept will work better in the game, rather than the ones that are come up with out of almost nowhere, because they will have a better idea of what the unit does or can do. Thus, a strong focus on unit concept/lore is important.
Even if it has line splash, there's no way the Jackal's wheels beats the Vulture's hover at being able to move around quickly over different terrain types ;d (assuming that they have similar roles)
What was strong in starcraft was that there were many units that had HUGE potential. The defining factor of how strong the unit was the players ability to use that unit, no the unit's raw strength.
For example, the reaver/shuttle combo. Reaver/shuttle in my hands means something totally different to reaver/shuttle in JainFei's hands. The units are of course identicle. But his ability using them means that the combo can reach its full potential and can be rediculously powerful.
This dynamic works the same for most units in starcraft.
I look at things like the collosus and the new hightemplar with smartcasting, and its clear that we are going to lose a lot of this dynamic. The full potential of units will be attainable by most players.
On June 04 2008 10:47 FrozenArbiter wrote: Blablabla marauder blabalbal ghosts.. I don't know what they cost, I don't know where they are in the tech tree, I don't know how they do vs unit X. But I do know they don't let marines stim freely. And that is boring.
I agree that you do lose something fun. Early game heal for stim spam was fun indeed and you'll lose it. But it's a trade-off, early reapers/marauders/ghost can potentially be a lot of fun TOO. You lose something fun but you gain something fun. And you don't completely lose the stim fun because it's still there for late game. But you couldn't have it all (old early medics + new troops), because that would be way too much and hard to balance. So Blizzard opted to removereplace early game medics so they could ADD MORE fun units to the game. Because on sc2 you still have fun early game (but with different units, new troops instead of medics) while in late game you still have the same fun as before PLUS the new early game fun which totals in more fun overall
But you're probably asking. Are marauder/ghosts/reapers just as fun as early game medics+stim? Well I don't know But I do see a potential on them and I would love to give them a try and see what Flash can do with reaper and probes ^^
The glaring issue I see with most of the changes I'm afraid of in SC2 so far seems so trivial: they don't seem to ask WHY they are changing something before they change it. Almost all the change they've made seems to be change for the sake of change. That's fine for changing half the units around, but besides that it makes no sense, especially with gameplay issues. Changing the medic to the medivac? Why? If you want medics harder to get, just put them farther up on the tech tree; don't make some unit that's completely unrealistic to ever be used (people will just mech in all matchups). The damage and size types is another example. In BW they allowed for a great deal of balancing ability because you can make a unit more powerful in some situations without overpowering it in situations it was already balanced. Now there's just 2 armor types and armor-type-vs bonuses for attacks.
Back to the topic: As for unit changes, they are obviously necessary, but they seem to make poor choices. If they want SC2 to be an esport, it's easy to tell the important units to keep from the original. Obviously you need at least the tier-1 staples from BW, so ling, zealot, and marine. Beyond that, just watch any Korean game and note which units are being used when the announcers and crowd all scream at once. They change in each match up, so there's actually quite a few (not all need to come back). I'd say primarily it's defilers (plague), temps (storm in pvz), reavers, arbiters (recall in pvt), vultures (mines in tvp) and vessels (irradiate in tvz). For the most part they are the high risk vs high reward upper tier units. Currently they took out defilers, nerfed storm, took out reavers, and took out vessels and vults. There seems to be a replacement for plague (disease?), and warp in and forcefield replace arbs. Other than that, there seems to be very few exciting units. Banelings and reapers could certainly be exciting, along with disease and warp-in. Other than that, their replacement units are pretty bland. And if I had to guess, banelings will have to be nerfed to either not kill workers in 1 hit or to be stopped by a cannon on your minline, and reapers are too mobile too early in the tech, so they'll also be nerfed against workers. As opposed to having opportunities in mid and late game in every matchup for dramatic game-changing, exciting plays, there are very few that I can picture.
That's just my opinion, in an unorganized, train-of-thought post.
I personally don't mind the medic being replaced by Medivac (which isn't it a little faster to get now? Like no control tower needed any more?) as it seems that in SC2 the Terren's infantry will be stronger. For instance in Tier 1, the dragoon is replaced by the more fragile Stalker. I just fear that the Terren have too many units Tier 1. Before in SC1 you would have barracks with marines and then after academy you get medics/firebats. Now in SC2 you build the reactor core (if that's still the case) and you get Ghosts and Marauders, AND you can build the reaper building to get reapers (I guess this actually makes them more Tier 2 than 1.5).
4 infantry units seems like too many. I remember reading one time a call for the combination of Marauder and Reaper, which would be nice to have both their pros with 1 less unit to need to create, but it's really hard to think of how that would work well (maybe adding the slow effect to the time-bombs?) Both units seem really cool but the Terran infantry is just really messy right now (or so it seems as none of us has played the game yet :\).
BTW, in regards to the Colossus, I'm pretty sure that Blizz said they cannot be put into phase prisms (or warped-in for that matter, since I'm pretty sure only gateway/warp-gate units can be warped in).
The Terran themselves seem like the messiest (and by that I mean they have the most questionable line-up) of the races. Toss seem pretty set except for the exact role of the Mothership (I think it should just go in the role of a bit of a buffed-up Arbitor) and Zerg seem pretty set except they only really have 1 spell-caster (queen and overseer seem to just kind of like, "half" of a spell-caster ). Terran infantry seems really iffy right now and thors, well wtf is with Thors. It seems that every unit has a few roles to play now and even then they still have more roles to fill or something (my pros get very bad this time of the night, sorry :\).
I'm not sure why they took away the collosus's sweeping lasers (I thought that was cooler+made more sense) but collosus + prism seems kind of similiar (the sweeping kind) to reavers imo.
You have a point that collosus at this state seem kind of boring. I think blizzard should do is have the lasers start near the collosus and then sweep forward to whatever. This would give a split second for the victim to react before all their workers get fried much like reaver + scarab.
Plus collosus cliff-walking is just too damn cool and makes more sense than instant dropping and picking up a reaver. How the hell does that happen. I believe phase prisms are there for collosuses to go on islands.
Vultures in broodwar, although were cool (and weird, speed bikes planting mines?), I think Blizzard intends to replace them with reapers going bio or jackal/viking/banshee going mech. Reapers conceptually are pretty obvious and I'm pretty sure jackals were anti mass zealots with proper micro so I guess the new slow push would be siege tanks + jackals. Vikings will replace goliaths with anti-air.
The removal of the medic is kind of unclear to me. I guess they did buff the marines with more hp, ghosts are stronger, and marauders seem more useful than firebats later on, but I'm still skeptical on this. One theory that I have is that the medivacs seems pretty much essential in bio armies so when you get the medivac, you also get dropships. This will encourage terran players to start using drops + harass pretty much all the time in TvZ. I'm just guessing here since I'm not blizzard =P
Edit: I just realized something. Do we really want another 10 years of MnM's, reavers, and vultures? I think that blizzard intends to create new harass techniques and small little details in starcraft 2 for us to discover. I think this is what the decline of starcraft needs, we need a new fresh starcraft. Now if only blizzard could refine their new units =P C'mon, giant scvs and mass motherships?
And to compensate for the count of unit types, merge Nullifiers and Observers. No reason really, just came up with it at the top of my head as I don't want to remove other cooler units. Haha, whatever it takes to bring back Reavers without messing up too much of the Protoss.
On June 04 2008 12:15 prOxi.swAMi wrote: Just want to say it sucks that the transport units have slow load/unload animations now. Completely removing load/unload dropship micro. Intensity just dropped a point. Which is part of the 'excitement' of starcraft.
The phase prism doesn't have that, right? I'm sort of assuming that by the end of the development they'll have removed the ridiculous landing animation of the dropship so we can get micro back..
On June 04 2008 10:47 FrozenArbiter wrote: Blablabla marauder blabalbal ghosts.. I don't know what they cost, I don't know where they are in the tech tree, I don't know how they do vs unit X. But I do know they don't let marines stim freely. And that is boring.
I agree that you do lose something fun. Early game heal for stim spam was fun indeed and you'll lose it. But it's a trade-off, early reapers/marauders/ghost can potentially be a lot of fun TOO. You lose something fun but you gain something fun. And you don't completely lose the stim fun because it's still there for late game. But you couldn't have it all (old early medics + new troops), because that would be way too much and hard to balance. So Blizzard opted to removereplace early game medics so they could ADD MORE fun units to the game. Because on sc2 you still have fun early game (but with different units, new troops instead of medics) while in late game you still have the same fun as before PLUS the new early game fun which totals in more fun overall
But you're probably asking. Are marauder/ghosts/reapers just as fun as early game medics+stim? Well I don't know But I do see a potential on them and I would love to give them a try and see what Flash can do with reaper and probes ^^
Don't you think they could balance it in some other way, say, giving the medic a slower heal rate, or making heal more expensive.. Then if they really want the medivac they could make it an upgrade (ie dropship upgrades to medivac and can now heal as long as there's a medic inside).
I know at least some of this is personal bias, as I like the fast m&m micro and don't really like the kind of micro that seems to come from having marines/marauders/ghosts (it seems less "CHARGE THE SUNKENS" and more I dunno, let's sit back and wait for shit to come then we destroy them") but =.=
I pretty much agree that keeping SC2 exciting is very important. They need to have units that become 10 times their worth under skilled hands. A boxer marine is 10 times more deadly than a stenole marine, even if I've seen the moves and know somewhat in my head what I want to do. The same goes for the reaver. It has some very specific weaknesses and powers. Slow movement speed, low firing rate, a slow projectile that must run along the ground, can miss and be obstructed. Like the marine's natural partner is the medic, the reaver's natural partner is the shuttle. Having units like this that open up doors for fun tactics and possibilies is good. The collosus is a bland unit that will mostly attack move along with the protoss army. I think all it does is give protoss an AOE unit that they don't have to fuss too much with. At noob level this may make a matchup like PvZ a little more bearable. But as a spectator and player, it doesn't add FUN.
I think a reasoning behind a lot of Blizzard's decisions is to make the game easier to balance. Units that behave reliably with little randomness and finite micro options make for a game that is much easier to balance.
I would say that it is more important to make sure SC2 is FUN than balanced. A FUN game can be made balanced. But if it is not FUN, you can't patch it into being FUN.
Because basemanagement will be a lot easier in SC2, please don't take potential for fun micro out of the game also. I want to do more than just focus firing and making concave formations and casting dumb spells.
many of you are missing the point. this isn't about protoss losing their worker harassment abilities. this is about sc2 losing the dynamic units that made all the races unique and fun and replacing them with things you control by adding them into your huge group selection with everything else then forgetting theyre even there.
stenole is on the money with the point frozenarbiter was trying to make
On June 04 2008 20:57 FrozenArbiter wrote: I know at least some of this is personal bias, as I like the fast m&m micro and don't really like the kind of micro that seems to come from having marines/marauders/ghosts (it seems less "CHARGE THE SUNKENS" and more I dunno, let's sit back and wait for shit to come then we destroy them") but =.=
I feel the exact opposite way about it, as a terran player these changes are giving me a lot more freedom and mobility to charge those sunkens, harass workers, etc instead of adfasfdasgf mutalisks or lurker contain.
The strategies I was naming were potentially great strategies that can all take place without medics.
On June 04 2008 23:15 SoMuchBetter wrote: many of you are missing the point. this isn't about protoss losing their worker harassment abilities. this is about sc2 losing the dynamic units that made all the races unique and fun and replacing them with things you control by adding them into your huge group selection with everything else then forgetting theyre even there.
stenole is on the money with the point frozenarbiter was trying to make
I can't speak for the Protoss changes, but medics are not really dynamic units. All they do is heal and act as a wall. If anything they look more like something you add to your huge group selection and then forget about.
And I agree about the thor and the battlecruiser.. get rid of them.
The strategies I was naming were potentially great strategies that can all take place without medics.
Precisely! They can take place regardless of wether or not the medic is in the game, hence mentioning them when debating wether the medic should be in the game is sort of pointless?
If the ghost becomes a more viable unit, it could actually potentially lead to the medic becoming more interesting as well. Flare would actually have quite a lot of use now, especially if overlords need to be invidiually upgraded before they can spot cloaked units.
Further, it could easily be changed so it can be used on buildings too (might be too imbalanced, but could provide a 10 second blind or something). Like, I would rather see the medic adapted to work with the new units while still keeping terran early game marine micro.
Assuming the new terran cloakable units (ghost, banshee) are actually more useful than the wraith/ghost of old that is.
Lifted off buildings no longer have that huge vision.
Medics & high HP ghosts would be really strong. Ghosts can snipe HTs before the two armies get into range of each other.
Reaver is a walking robot factory. You can give the reaver any new ability one can come up with. Cloaked anti air mines. Scarabs with Plague, EMP or irradiate effect. Single target anyti armour. The old splash. Detection scarabs. Deflection shield scarabs. Repair bots. Everything you can come up with you can add to the reaver and not make it too silly.
i don't mind colossus , i think the walk across cliffs could add alot to strategy certainly it adds more than the terran super mech but yeah , i would like to see reavers back in and possibly a nerf to colossus so it's not a kill all superunit
scvs now have auto repair which = a heal for mech units. if anything ur encouraging only mech play
Ghosts shouldn't be massable. They're not supposed to be infantry like in Diplo, they're supposed to be specialists, with cloaking for assassinations and the like.
And infantry will suck against mutalisks without the medic. Without stim, the mutas will out run you and do tons of damage. With stim, the zerg can run the mutas away till stim wears off. Oh sure, you can snipe the friggen mutalisks, but that costs a ton of gas, and its a "hard" counter, which is not what SC is about really. Then when the marines have stimmed 3 times or so, the mutaling comes in to rape the shit out of everything. GG.
Combining a medic and dropship isn't versatility. Having a dropship that can have stuff shoot out of it IS versatility.
No more vultures and dropships means you use marines as your mineral sink. You will always get tons of marines. It's the only mineral only unit. Of course unless every map has tons more gas to compensate.
If you are fighting P with marines you will always need to have ghosts. Because then you can snipe the HTs and insta kill them. No way for P to prevent this except not getting close or trying to snipe the ghosts themselves before they get close.
To find out whether this game has unit quirks like Starcraft and is as exciting to play means you have to wait for ALL the units to be released and play it moderately. Trying to shoehorn in old units that don't fit in the game design for the sake of nostalgia is a bad idea. I would rather see M&M in BroodWar where it actually fits the game ,than see a poor copy of it in SC2. Just look at the Mutalisks in SC2;if it plays differently than the original perhaps it should be different to begin with.
On June 04 2008 23:57 BlackStar wrote: Ghosts will own mutas. With or without medics.
No more vultures and dropships means you use marines as your mineral sink. You will always get tons of marines. It's the only mineral only unit. Of course unless every map has tons more gas to compensate.
If you are fighting P with marines you will always need to have ghosts. Because then you can snipe the HTs and insta kill them. No way for P to prevent this except not getting close or trying to snipe the ghosts themselves before they get close.
Marines as a mineral sink... hmm...
Let's look at the Protoss units and see which ones "counter"marines zealot, high templar, dark templar, colossus
that basically means you'll be going biomech every single game. which is really stupid. Zerg vs. Protoss had its own style as opposed to ZvT and PvT, where you would get hydras vs. P and not T, and you could go any sort of build in PvT, and in ZvT you use lurkers and mutas, etc. And t had bio and mech.
With marines ALWAYS as a mineral sink, you will always end up using biomech builds, like it or not, which to be honest is soooo boring if its the same thing all the time. I liked having vultures and whatnot.
Which brings up my next point: all the other terran units use gas. Ghosts use tons of gas, not to mention research. Whereas zerglings and zealots become far better late game (speed/crack-charge), marines relatively aren't made better by the addition of some lousy hit points. They need medics to do well. No medics = raped by psistorm, colossus, zealots-hell, did you see those 8 zeals just rape those 18 marines with charge? and Zeals/lings dont use gas. If you have 12 marines and you see 6 zeals, what do you do? stim? Then they run away till stim wears off. Not stim? you know what happens.
I hate having to HAVE to get units. You don't HAVE to get dragoons or zeals.. You don't HAVE to get firebats or gols or even tanks. You don't HAVE to mass SVs to win TvZ. Having to HAVE to get marines and ghosts all the time feels boring.
On June 05 2008 00:43 moebius_string wrote: To find out whether this game has unit quirks like Starcraft and is as exciting to play means you have to wait for ALL the units to be released and play it moderately. Trying to shoehorn in old units that don't fit in the game design for the sake of nostalgia is a bad idea. I would rather see M&M in BroodWar where it actually fits the game ,than see a poor copy of it in SC2. Just look at the Mutalisks in SC2;if it plays differently than the original perhaps it should be different to begin with.
On June 04 2008 23:57 BlackStar wrote: Ghosts will own mutas. With or without medics.
No more vultures and dropships means you use marines as your mineral sink. You will always get tons of marines. It's the only mineral only unit. Of course unless every map has tons more gas to compensate.
If you are fighting P with marines you will always need to have ghosts. Because then you can snipe the HTs and insta kill them. No way for P to prevent this except not getting close or trying to snipe the ghosts themselves before they get close.
Marines as a mineral sink... hmm...
Let's look at the Protoss units and see which ones "counter"marines zealot, high templar, dark templar, colossus
that basically means you'll be going biomech every single game. which is really stupid. Zerg vs. Protoss had its own style as opposed to ZvT and PvT, where you would get hydras vs. P and not T, and you could go any sort of build in PvT, and in ZvT you use lurkers and mutas, etc. And t had bio and mech.
With marines ALWAYS as a mineral sink, you will always end up using biomech builds, like it or not, which to be honest is soooo boring if its the same thing all the time. I liked having vultures and whatnot.
Which brings up my next point: all the other terran units use gas. Ghosts use tons of gas, not to mention research. Whereas zerglings and zealots become far better late game (speed/crack-charge), marines relatively aren't made better by the addition of some lousy hit points. They need medics to do well. No medics = raped by psistorm, colossus, zealots-hell, did you see those 8 zeals just rape those 18 marines with charge? and Zeals/lings dont use gas. If you have 12 marines and you see 6 zeals, what do you do? stim? Then they run away till stim wears off. Not stim? you know what happens.
I hate having to HAVE to get units. You don't HAVE to get dragoons or zeals.. You don't HAVE to get firebats or gols or even tanks. You don't HAVE to mass SVs to win TvZ. Having to HAVE to get marines and ghosts all the time feels boring.
1) all videos of charging zealots or any video does not represent gameplay balance. 2) in SC1 in TvT you HAVE to get tanks. in SC1 in TvP you HAVE to get tanks. In TvZ most builds include tanks. I can't think of a protoss situation where you're not going to want at least some zealots. every matchup includes zerglings. 3) marines have the effect of critical mass and attack upgrades being much more useful to them than other units.
On June 05 2008 00:43 moebius_string wrote: To find out whether this game has unit quirks like Starcraft and is as exciting to play means you have to wait for ALL the units to be released and play it moderately. Trying to shoehorn in old units that don't fit in the game design for the sake of nostalgia is a bad idea. I would rather see M&M in BroodWar where it actually fits the game ,than see a poor copy of it in SC2. Just look at the Mutalisks in SC2;if it plays differently than the original perhaps it should be different to begin with.
did you actually read the thread
I read the thread. This is what made Broodwar exciting. I agree. Reaver -> Colossus Vulture -> Jackal Medic -> Medivac
This what could make Starcraft 2 exciting if you wait.
The units are still being toyed with by Blizz and may just surprise you how they react in the next revision. No one has had enough time to try and exploit AL behavior on pathing on any of these new units. We have had 10 years on the old ones so of course they fair better in comparison.
On June 04 2008 02:54 FrozenArbiter wrote: And finally, the colossus fires a 100% hit attack. There's not much excitement in knowing for sure that those 10 probes are gonna die..
I'm actually right now drawing fan-art picture for suggestion that I'll put in the corresponding thread. The point would be - replacing colossus row-of-lazerz with several bombs, which do essentially same (linear splash damage) but firstly, would imho feel more "Protossish" than lasers and secondly, since they're bombs, there would be delay between attack and actual damage. How do you think?
Do it! Plasma bombs! (but should be 1 super bomb at a time imo, not several bombies, so it's not too similar to banshee + keeps excitement of 1-hit-blows-lots-of-shit-up)
Maybe even make it a flying scarab that would try to run to the target after it lands, and would be just as dumb as the original one
This is awesome, get some blizz attention on this idea!
If Blizz's claims to how powerful its map editing tools are is true, then FA you've got to team up with some guys with time on their hands and BRING BACK THE REAVER, MEDIC, ETC.
We'll call it the "real SC2" and everyone go patch it =p
On June 05 2008 02:04 Caller wrote: With marines ALWAYS as a mineral sink, you will always end up using biomech builds, like it or not, which to be honest is soooo boring if its the same thing all the time. I liked having vultures and whatnot.
Honestly, I don't see why this is more boring than going factory builds all the time.
But strategy divergence will be in where you spend your gas on. That's clear to me with only gasless unit.
And, protoss and zerg always get their basic unit. Well, almost always. It's just that T didn't have to because they had both vultures and dropships.
Also, cracklings are gone.
Also, FA's argument. Didn't we have this one article saying randomness makes bad competitive games? Now we have people saying there needs to be randomness otherwise it's not exiting?
BleuNuit, I opened a topic about that. Blizz has to add new stuff, even if it makes the game worse. If they can't come up with even better units than reavers and vultures, they will have to remove those anyway and do with something inferior.
On June 05 2008 02:17 anotak wrote: 1) all videos of charging zealots or any video does not represent gameplay balance. 2) in SC1 in TvT you HAVE to get tanks. in SC1 in TvP you HAVE to get tanks. In TvZ most builds include tanks. I can't think of a protoss situation where you're not going to want at least some zealots. every matchup includes zerglings. 3) marines have the effect of critical mass and attack upgrades being much more useful to them than other units.
1) assuming they still do 16 damage, 3 hits = dead marine 2) well, seeing as siege tanks are still in the game, I don't want to HAVE to get more than one unit. Otherwise my army composition every game will be marines and tanks.
Protoss when you don't want zeals: 2fact vult, wraiths, throughout the early game as non speed zeals arent very good. Besides, you don't HAVE to get more than one kind of unit. And zerglings are zerglings. But zerg aren't forced to get any kind of unit besides them. Making terrans the only ones that have to get tanks + marines + ghosts for 3 kinds of units is kinda boring.
3) so do tanks and hydras and stalkers and every ranged unit ever except for maybe jackals. Vultures, too.
On June 05 2008 00:43 moebius_string wrote: To find out whether this game has unit quirks like Starcraft and is as exciting to play means you have to wait for ALL the units to be released and play it moderately. Trying to shoehorn in old units that don't fit in the game design for the sake of nostalgia is a bad idea. I would rather see M&M in BroodWar where it actually fits the game ,than see a poor copy of it in SC2. Just look at the Mutalisks in SC2;if it plays differently than the original perhaps it should be different to begin with.
did you actually read the thread
I read the thread. Read my post and you see my reaction to it.
if you read the thread you'd notice how we're not trying to shoehorn in old units for the sake of nostalgia. It's just that we don't like these new units b/c they're so BORING. I don't understand how you can make a flying medic exciting. Unless it was a medic with a jetpack.
The only reason the medivac is in the game, realistically, is to support the reaper. The reaper is like the pet terran unit, its getting all this stuff just to allow it to stay in the game. I mean i like it, but no point making units solely b/c of so and so.
Honestly, I don't see why this is more boring than going factory builds all the time.
Because in SC you go factory units (most of the time) in 2 of the matchups while you go bio units (most of the time) in 1 of the matchups =P Having to go bio in all 3 matchups would suck to me.
Also, cracklings are gone.
Wow I hadn't even thought about this, that's.. weird, dunno what to think.
Also, FA's argument. Didn't we have this one article saying randomness makes bad competitive games? Now we have people saying there needs to be randomness otherwise it's not exiting?
I don't view the scarabs randomness as the same kind of randomness that an attack which does, say, between 20 and 90 damage. The latter is arbitrary and doesn't do much good while the first can be influenced (reaver targetting, unit dodging) by both players.
I think the cliff % to miss did create interesting/tense moments, and I'm not sure I think it's a bad feature.. I mean, both players know you're only 70% to hit so you make a calculated gamble. It is more similiar to a 20-90 attack tho.
On June 05 2008 02:04 Caller wrote: With marines ALWAYS as a mineral sink, you will always end up using biomech builds, like it or not, which to be honest is soooo boring if its the same thing all the time. I liked having vultures and whatnot.
Honestly, I don't see why this is more boring than going factory builds all the time.
But strategy divergence will be in where you spend your gas on. That's clear to me with only gasless unit.
And, protoss and zerg always get their basic unit. Well, almost always. It's just that T didn't have to because they had both vultures and dropships.
Also, cracklings are gone.
Also, FA's argument. Didn't we have this one article saying randomness makes bad competitive games? Now we have people saying there needs to be randomness otherwise it's not exiting?
BleuNuit, I opened a topic about that. Blizz has to add new stuff, even if it makes the game worse. If they can't come up with even better units than reavers and vultures, they will have to remove those anyway and do with something inferior.
Terrans always build siege tanks, Protoss Zeals, and Zerg Zerglings. You're saying now we need to spend it only on marines, and to help marines we need ghosts. Protoss aren't required to get more than one unit, as is zerg. But now terran has to get 3 kinds of units.
Randomness in terms of unit, not in strategy, is what FA is saying. And dropships cost gas.
Also, in terms of gas, hydras and dragoons cost pretty low amounts of gas, they're basically mineral units.
Having to go bio in all 3 matchups would suck to me.
Yeah, but that's besides the point. I mean, that's the reason why I brought it up in the first place.
The thing is that protoss builds all their backbone units from their gateway. And then additional and specialized units are build from the other buildings.
Zerg lack production buildings altogether.
Is it actually good to force a player to make a choice regarding what production building to get? What if you split up the gateway? Zealots, and templar from one. And Stalkers and Immortals from the other. Would that add to strategy?
The thing seems that zealots and zerglings worked better as a mineral sink was because they were quick and could be used as cannon fodder. You can't do that with marines, ever. You could with vultures. Is that the main issue here?
Having to go bio in all 3 matchups would suck to me.
Yeah, but that's besides the point. I mean, that's the reason why I brought it up in the first place.
The thing is that protoss builds all their backbone units from their gateway. And then additional and specialized units are build from the other buildings.
Zerg lack production buildings altogether.
Is it actually good to force a player to make a choice regarding what production building to get? What if you split up the gateway? Zealots, and templar from one. And Stalkers and Immortals from the other. Would that add to strategy?
The thing seems that zealots and zerglings worked better as a mineral sink was because they were quick and could be used as cannon fodder. You can't do that with marines, ever. You could with vultures. Is that the main issue here?
I'm a little confused as to what we're arguing over here.. Maybe there's been some misunderstanding o_O
To recap; Caller said it would be boring to always have to go marines (ie the only mineral sink) and that he liked having vultures as an option.
You said you didn't see how this were different from having to go factory builds everytime (I took this to mean mech, maybe you meant that you have to get a factory in every matchup) which was what I was replying to.
I don't know wether it's "good" or "bad" to have to choose between two production routes, I think it was an interesting feature for the terrans (one that obviously worked out quite well). So even if zerg and toss don't have it that way I see no reason why the terrans couldnt continue on that path.
On June 05 2008 00:43 moebius_string wrote: To find out whether this game has unit quirks like Starcraft and is as exciting to play means you have to wait for ALL the units to be released and play it moderately. Trying to shoehorn in old units that don't fit in the game design for the sake of nostalgia is a bad idea. I would rather see M&M in BroodWar where it actually fits the game ,than see a poor copy of it in SC2. Just look at the Mutalisks in SC2;if it plays differently than the original perhaps it should be different to begin with.
did you actually read the thread
I read the thread. Read my post and you see my reaction to it.
if you read the thread you'd notice how we're not trying to shoehorn in old units for the sake of nostalgia. It's just that we don't like these new units b/c they're so BORING. I don't understand how you can make a flying medic exciting. Unless it was a medic with a jetpack.
The only reason the medivac is in the game, realistically, is to support the reaper. The reaper is like the pet terran unit, its getting all this stuff just to allow it to stay in the game. I mean i like it, but no point making units solely b/c of so and so.
Read up above I edited my post. The game is in alpha. That may explain why it seems boring at the moment.
I don't think the game seems boring overall, I think the changes mentioned in the original post are a step back however.
If they really want to remove the reaver, the vulture and the medivac I would like to see BETTER replacements for them. I don't really see the point in replacing the vulture with a less-interesting but visually very similiar unit, and the medic with a unit that performs the exact same thing but worse. The colossus is good at least - even if I still hope there's room for the reaver.
Blizzard has said themselves they want to fix the mutalisk micro btw.
On June 05 2008 03:41 FrozenArbiter wrote: Blizzard has said themselves they want to fix the mutalisk micro btw.
That part never made sense to me. If they were going to bring back the Muta with no changes, why not make it handle the same way as BroodWar. If it doesn't handle the same you might as well change it.
EDIT: In reference to mutas. I think they intended for it to handle the same way but it ended up being different because of the engine. The way mutas handle now seems pretty ehh, not as fun, which I think is important. They have said it wont be 100% the same as in BW which is fine, but from the videos it seems very hard to hit and run with them, which is what I think they intended for the mutas' role to be anyway.
On June 05 2008 04:05 edahl wrote: I agree completely. I'm going to miss the reaver if it disappears forever. Also, the jackal seems like a degraded vulture.
BTW, I think drop-pods are out of multi-player.
The jackals sort of "shock wave" (tauren hero from warcraft3) could set up some extemely exciting situations. It would also force the opponent to position there army in a different way. The jackal is pretty much combining the vultures normal attack with its spider mine into one attack. I for one think that is really cool.
Even though I think the reaver is cool, I don't really care its going, we have so many new units that can fill its role!
i agree on vulture -> jackal slightly being boring at the moment. I mean i love the line AOE because it makes positioning much much more important but I wish that there was some equivalent to mines or something else to make them more than just a hyperactive terran lurker and give them that ability to limit enemy mobility...
well. i do agree that the medivac is kind of stupid. I think that marine<->medic is an awesome relationship in SC1, but at the moment SC2 terran is oversaturated to hell with infantry units and that's a hell of of a problem i think many of you are underestimating... maybe if the marauder's slowing was given to the jackal (and the marauder cut), then medics would be good to be back in? or just as like some kind of slowing-mine ability or slowing-grenade or something. The marauder's only purpose it seems is to make other terran infantry more viable. This could make both the marauder and jackal much more interesting? I do agree that the medic was interesting, but the reaper and ghost are much more interesting to me... however, the marauder is actually bland as hell now that i'm thinking about it.
On June 04 2008 02:11 anotak wrote: I actually slowly am starting to see where they're going with trying to replace the vulture, removing the reaver, adding immortals, nerfing storm (i know they buffed it again but from what i understand it's still not sc1 strength): Biomech for all terran matchups. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jeBlCAjtFU Biomech is extremely exciting. They are trying very hard to remove the slowpush it seems, in favor of something more dynamic. They're also trying to make siege tanks not be the focus of the terran army with counters to them (immortals, vikings (combined version of current goliaths with dropships dropped onto the top of siege tanks), etc). I love biomech and seeing it as the standard build would be pretty awesome.
However, I don't know what the hell the jackal is supposed to be for, and the medivac. They should probably remove the medivac. but it could be interesting if they gave it irradiate and dmatrix. I want those spells back, especially dmatrix. I know that irradiate turned around a lot of games but it's actually a really simple game mechanic that's not always that great, idk. plus it's only anti-zerg, it'd be a lot more interesting if it could be viable in tvt and tvp. Maybe irradiate with a nerf (ex. 100 energy?). I know snipe fills irradiate's niche, but the combination of the 2 dmatrix and irradiate creates an awesome dynamic, especially if they're the same cost (do i irradiate or do i dmatrix??). However I wish battlecruisers were no longer in the game. They're so boring, slow etc. I hate big huge slow units, they never give the game anything interesting. Maybe give the medivac the plasma torpedos (or allow it to choose either, yamato or plasma torpedos), dmatrix, and no irradiate... but then it might be too powerful. All of these things of excitement partially arrive out of mobility (speed shuttle, stimmed rines, speedvults). And the thor, get that out of my sight. so boring. Battlecruisers are not iconic of terran, nobody ever uses them. That's like saying that valks are iconic of terran.
However... as a combination I just realized this could be either pretty bad or pretty cool: group of marines in a medivac. turrets on the way to drop site get yamato'd, medivacs then dmatrix themselves to prevent further damage... that would be imba as hell at first glance however i think that could be still done right. Maybe instead of something like yamato, make it similar to irradiate but it can attack mech too but not buildings, so it's not instant and gives plenty of time to react and retains the aoe damage over time of irradiate.
Jackal, idk, it could be rather interesting, if it's done right. Line AOE like lurker can be pretty fucking bad. imagine 12 jackals behind a mineral line, it'd be gone in seconds... it depends on whether Jackals are as cheap as vultures. Also, they'd be a lot more interesting with some kind of special ability for the Jackals however. Vults without mines are weak as hell, part of what makes them so good at mineral harass or harass in general is that you can limit the mobility of your opponent / slow them waiting for obs and attacking mines. Not only did they move faster they could slow the enemy, kill them as they left factories. Maybe give them some small temporary machine gun turrets they drop down that have pretty short range and limited ammunition. They give you map control. Terran's power was never in mobility, Terran's power was in limiting the other guy's mobility.
also, on the subject of shooting uphill doing 75% miss chance, i wouldn't mind that being changed to 75% damage. stupid randomness.
this is just a shitload of random ideas, i might not have thought all of this through well enough...
I agree with every word of this post, wow. Randomness sucks, damage reduction is much better. And biomech is awesome to watch, of course! A slow-push can be nice but it definitely is not too fun to watch.
And the OP post I agree with as well, reavers are just incredibly exciting. Same with spider mines - will the opponent walk on them and turn his goons into blue soup? I am not seeing very good replacements for this stuff in SC2 currently.
edit - btw, I don`t believe that Reaver scarabs are truly random.
On June 05 2008 04:09 FrozenArbiter wrote: EDIT: In reference to mutas. I think they intended for it to handle the same way but it ended up being different because of the engine. The way mutas handle now seems pretty ehh, not as fun, which I think is important. They have said it wont be 100% the same as in BW which is fine, but from the videos it seems very hard to hit and run with them, which is what I think they intended for the mutas' role to be anyway.
Yeah, I think the problem is in the long attack animation though. I think they're working on it.
Also, cracklings are gone.
Could it be because they surround so much better? It looks like it from the videos. And there's room for more lings around an object or unit, so I think crack could make them imba.
On June 04 2008 03:20 FrozenArbiter wrote: Yeah I don't have anything against the medivac as long as it doesnt REPLACE the medic. Like, if the medivac was a late game upgrade for the dropship or something then sure yeah whatever, it doesn't really bother me that much because I wont have to mass produce medivacs to heal my army.. Just don't have it be the main healer unit.
Sorry this is from page two but i have something too say. Medivacs heal multiple units at a time. that means 1 medivac could equal 2-3 medics. Therefore you won't have too mass produce medivacs unless your 200 supply army only consists of infantry.
Medivac also opens up a new air unit to kill. This gives even more excitement to marines/medivac attacks. Since each medivac is worth 2-3 normal medics it will be a huge loss if it dies. Medivac micro will be huge, and people will most likely build air units to accompany it. In my opinion marine/marauder/medivac/viking is cooler than marine/firebat/medic.
How big is their range? How much mana do they have? Do they have 3x the mana of a medic? Do they have to run back and forth to heal? Etc. To me none of this REALLY matters tho, I dislike the unit as a unit and regardless of how the unit actually plays once you get to it, it still will negatively impact the early game. I don't think it will play that well, but even if it does play ok I think it's an inferior unit (bleh not sure how well I put this).
I don't see why you'd build air units to accompany the medivac, did you build wraiths to accompany your vessels? Nah, the marines protect them.
In my opinion marine/marauder/medivac/viking is cooler than marine/firebat/medic.
A marine/marauder/medic army is exactly the same only it doesn't ruin the early game micro potential.
We don´t even know if the Medivac needs Energy at all or if they will grant it additional abilities. I´m shure Blizzard would like your Crystal Ball since back then they couldn´t predict the micro potentional of Reavers and Mutalisks etc...
On June 05 2008 07:15 FrozenArbiter wrote: How big is their range? How much mana do they have? Do they have 3x the mana of a medic? Do they have to run back and forth to heal? Etc.
I don't see why you'd build air units to accompany the medivac, did you build wraiths to accompany your vessels? Nah, the marines protect them.
In my opinion marine/marauder/medivac/viking is cooler than marine/firebat/medic.
A marine/marauder/medic army is exactly the same only it doesn't ruin the early game micro potential.
Good point about air unit part. But I really don't think the medic being gone will ruin early game micro. It will be different for sure, not necessarily worse though. Plus it isn't exactly the same, anti-air units will come into play more often vs infantry due to one more very important air unit healing the infantry.
EDIT: AND people might make cool little donut shaped formations, with SCV's on inside healing dropship and marines/marauders on outside! you gotta say, that is pretty cool.
On June 05 2008 07:22 Unentschieden wrote: We don´t even know if the Medivac needs Energy at all or if they will grant it additional abilities. I´m shure Blizzard would like your Crystal Ball since back then they couldn´t predict the micro potentional of Reavers and Mutalisks etc...
I can only go on what they've told us about the medivac so far, as little as that may be, but it does not sound fun/it sounds bad.
Crystalball comment I don't get, you don't think we can infer anything about how the units will play, even after all the videos, people playing the game and so on?
If that's not what you meant please elaborate, I don't think I can tell FOR SURE that what I say is the truth but based on the info we have at this point, that's what it looks like to me.
EDIT: AND people might make cool little donut shaped formations, with SCV's on inside healing dropship and marines/marauders on outside! you gotta say, that is pretty cool.
.. Maybe in single player video sequences >.< And again, that kind of wall thing is just as possible with the medic.. Meh.
On June 05 2008 07:22 Unentschieden wrote: We don´t even know if the Medivac needs Energy at all or if they will grant it additional abilities. I´m shure Blizzard would like your Crystal Ball since back then they couldn´t predict the micro potentional of Reavers and Mutalisks etc...
I can only go on what they've told us about the medivac so far, as little as that may be, but it does not sound fun/it sounds bad.
Crystalball comment I don't get, you don't think we can infer anything about how the units will play, even after all the videos, people playing the game and so on?
If that's not what you meant please elaborate, I don't think I can tell FOR SURE that what I say is the truth but based on the info we have at this point, that's what it looks like to me.
EDIT: AND people might make cool little donut shaped formations, with SCV's on inside healing dropship and marines/marauders on outside! you gotta say, that is pretty cool.
.. Maybe in single player video sequences >.< And again, that kind of wall thing is just as possible with the medic.. Meh.
It is not that hard to put troops in a formation, a circle formation is actually the easiest as it won't break at all when units move.
Oh AND, just think all units are dead except the SCV's, then the SCV's kill the weakened enemy units, how funny would it be too see that in a pro game?
On June 05 2008 07:22 Unentschieden wrote: We don´t even know if the Medivac needs Energy at all or if they will grant it additional abilities. I´m shure Blizzard would like your Crystal Ball since back then they couldn´t predict the micro potentional of Reavers and Mutalisks etc...
I can only go on what they've told us about the medivac so far, as little as that may be, but it does not sound fun/it sounds bad.
Crystalball comment I don't get, you don't think we can infer anything about how the units will play, even after all the videos, people playing the game and so on?
If that's not what you meant please elaborate, I don't think I can tell FOR SURE that what I say is the truth but based on the info we have at this point, that's what it looks like to me.
EDIT: AND people might make cool little donut shaped formations, with SCV's on inside healing dropship and marines/marauders on outside! you gotta say, that is pretty cool.
.. Maybe in single player video sequences >.< And again, that kind of wall thing is just as possible with the medic.. Meh.
It is not that hard to put troops in a formation, a circle formation is actually the easiest as it won't break at all when units move.
Oh AND, just think all units are dead except the SCV's, then the SCV's kill the weakened enemy units, how funny would it be too see that in a pro game?
umm you can see this in games with or without medics.
Besides those kinds of formations are asking for a colossus rape or storm or swarm guardians or disease or anything. With the medic that wouldn't have happened.
By the way, how are terrans supposed to deal with infested marines without medics? not only can you not produce units, but you have no medics so your 50 mins marines will get raped and the free infested marines will just rape the fck out of everything. GG.
I feel like a lot of SC2 is removing the amazing, exciting things you could do in SC1 and replacing them with lamer alternatives.
For example, watching insane dragoon dancing was always awesome. Seeing them sniping mines, killing tanks behind the wall, dismantling a FD push...that kind of stuff was unbelievable. SC2's alternative is to remove the dragoon and replace it with a unit whose dancing really isn't dancing - the stalker and its blink ability. I think it's an interesting concept, but it lacks the craziness of gosu dragoon dancing.
I feel like reaver/shuttle micro was replaced by the collosus, which can traverse terrain (like a shuttle) and has an AoE attack (like the reaver). Except it's in one compact unit that lacks the excitment of the original.
The speed zealot was always one of my favorites - using your legs to set up surrounds around hydralisks or chasing down stray tanks. SC2's new alternative is the new charge ability, which in my opinion really takes some of the frenzy of speedlot micro.
For example, watching insane dragoon dancing was always awesome. Seeing them sniping mines, killing tanks behind the wall, dismantling a FD push...that kind of stuff was unbelievable. SC2's alternative is to remove the dragoon and replace it with a unit whose dancing really isn't dancing - the stalker and its blink ability. I think it's an interesting concept, but it lacks the craziness of gosu dragoon dancing.
I disagree with this, I think you'll see some REALLY crazy usage of blink to dodge attacks (and if scarabs in the game I think stalker vs reaver would be AWESOME), it's basically like shuttle micro in that regard but you can do it with all your basic units, it will lead to some really sick micro.
On June 05 2008 08:29 Centric wrote: I feel like a lot of SC2 is removing the amazing, exciting things you could do in SC1 and replacing them with lamer alternatives.
For example, watching insane dragoon dancing was always awesome. Seeing them sniping mines, killing tanks behind the wall, dismantling a FD push...that kind of stuff was unbelievable. SC2's alternative is to remove the dragoon and replace it with a unit whose dancing really isn't dancing - the stalker and its blink ability. I think it's an interesting concept, but it lacks the craziness of gosu dragoon dancing.
I feel like reaver/shuttle micro was replaced by the collosus, which can traverse terrain (like a shuttle) and has an AoE attack (like the reaver). Except it's in one compact unit that lacks the excitment of the original.
The speed zealot was always one of my favorites - using your legs to set up surrounds around hydralisks or chasing down stray tanks. SC2's new alternative is the new charge ability, which in my opinion really takes some of the frenzy of speedlot micro.
Collosus can be stored in phase prism. The phase prism saves the Collosuses (sp?) energy signature so it can carry such a big unit. So you still have shuttle micro. I don't see what the problem with the teleportation is. There will still be dancing, just now there will also be a teleport every 5 seconds. I do agree with you on the speedlot thing though.
I don't like the long cooldown on blink. It doesn't feel like Starcraft, but more like Warcraft's hero spell. Blink, then long wait, blink. In Starcraft, special abilities were done in rapid successions. I'd rather they just give the dragoon a mana bar and short cooldown just like every other spell. Marines can stim all they want in a short time frame. Defilers can consume all they want as well. It's fast. Still, I'm not sure which would be a better implementation. Each has their pros and cons.
I agree about Reavers. They're the basic Protoss harass unit and its so interesting to watch pros use it. The Colossus is an interesting replacement. It doesn't have the harass abilities of the Reaver but has some good AOE attacks. Speaking of attack-move units, I think the Colossus can somewhat fall into that category. Yes, you do have strategies using cliffs and stuff, but generally you don't need to be micro intensive like Reaver usage.
I agree about blink also. 15 second cooldown seems way too long to be useful.
Phase prisms? Don't they take time to get all the units warped in? It seems to be better for mass unit transportation OUT of combat than for micro oriented strategies like Reaver/Shuttle combo. As opposed to the previous shuttle/reaver combos with fast drop and loading, phase prisms seem like they are less micro friendly. Correct me if im wrong.
I have no clue where this medic debate is going or what it is saying, but I'm not too up on terran bio builds.
If terran go biomech every time, it seems boring, but I think Blizzard is trying to go away from the heavy seige with Protoss, as some people have already mentioned. Charge for zealots and Immortals are both highly anti-seige tank.
What I'm going to miss is arbiters. And reavers. But nobody's mentioned arbiters yet. Yes, the mothership kind of takes over that role, they're only a little more expensive than arbiters, but I don't really like how blizzard is making so many insanely powerful units. Yes they say every unit has counters, like reapers vs. Immortals, but imo, if you make too many powerful units, its easier to mass them and just win with one unit. I haven't played the game yet, so that's just speculation, but that's generally what I think would happen if units were too powerful. So having motherships with a TON of skills and Zerg queens/infestor (I know the units aren't finalized yet) kind of destroys the balance a little. Too much overkill. I would think more micro oriented units would be better than insanely overpowered units, even though all the races have some insanely powerful units.
I think the new Ultralisk with the burrow ability completely goes against regular Zerg swarm theory. Imo the race distinctions should stay clear. Queen being able to secrete Creep? Protoss with mobile pylons? That makes both more mobile (as in buildings)--something Terran are supposed to be good at.
Sorry for the long post, but basically more micro oriented units, less powerful units, and keeping race distinctions is what I want to see in SC2. Yes, change is good, but some of the more unique aspects of Starcraft should remain.
*Edit*
On a side note, I think Terran are completely uninspired compared to the new Protoss/Zerg units. I think Blizzard has done a good job updating the graphics and all, but the core aspects of SC1 are changing.
Phase prisms? Don't they take time to get all the units warped in? It seems to be better for mass unit transportation OUT of combat than for micro oriented strategies like Reaver/Shuttle combo. As opposed to the previous shuttle/reaver combos with fast drop and loading, phase prisms seem like they are less micro friendly. Correct me if im wrong.
Phase prisms work as normal shuttles but have a secondary role as moving pylons, that way you can warp in units from your gate(warp)gates into their area when they deploy.
What I'm going to miss is arbiters. And reavers. But nobody's mentioned arbiters yet. Yes, the mothership kind of takes over that role, they're only a little more expensive than arbiters, but I don't really like how blizzard is making so many insanely powerful units. Yes they say every unit has counters, like reapers vs. Immortals, but imo, if you make too many powerful units, its easier to mass them and just win with one unit. I haven't played the game yet, so that's just speculation, but that's generally what I think would happen if units were too powerful. So having motherships with a TON of skills and Zerg queens/infestor (I know the units aren't finalized yet) kind of destroys the balance a little. Too much overkill. I would think more micro oriented units would be better than insanely overpowered units, even though all the races have some insanely powerful units.
The mothership is one of a kind tho, I like the arbiter better (who could have guessed given my name huh?) but it's not a big deal in the sense the medic/reaver/vulture is. The zerg queen does NOT seem very powerful, it seems like a big worker with some defensive skills and possibly offensive use in ZvZs. I like =] The infestor is basically a defiler without consume but with move-while-burrowed and the awesome building infest, doubt it will be overpowered
I think the new Ultralisk with the burrow ability completely goes against regular Zerg swarm theory. Imo the race distinctions should stay clear. Queen being able to secrete Creep? Protoss with mobile pylons? That makes both more mobile (as in buildings)--something Terran are supposed to be good at.
Why? I'm not sure what you mean.
I think protoss being able to warp in units to far away location is extremely protoss, the mobile pylons are not really pylons (dont generate food) but a secondary mode for the new shuttle (phase prism). I don't think protoss have moving cannons anymore either, although zerg might have moving sunkens (not clear on what the latest word on that is).
Queen secreting creep is.. I think it's good because it opens the door for zerg cheese finally, which is good. I think it will create some interesting builds with the queen in the long run, good idea in my book.
Could you elaborate on why you feel this hurts race distinction?
Someone made a pretty good reply to a post I made on the bnet forums (they have a thread about this thread =])
Nice read and I hope you will read this
Talking about MnM I read somewhere that Shield upgrade gives +25HP to Marines. This means they are even 2 times stronger against certain opponents like Sunkens and Lurkers* IMO
But even after that they are hurt badly by multiple stimming. What if Stim would steal less HP but be cooldowned? (btw not all Marines have to be stimmed in all situations )
About Medivac itself, without fact on mind it replaces Medic, doesn't it bring much more flexibility for Terran? Terrans are enforced to make them to heal troops but they can carry anything so after all they gain maybe better combo unit for same/slightly higher price as old Dropship.
Keeping Medivacs safe won't be so hard: in TvZ there are Scourges no more, even Hydras are Tier2 so far and their replacement on T1 can't hit air. In both TvT and TvP MnMs are no big use with or without Medics... unless new Nomad's Defensive Matrix is still in and makes into the game (what I hope will happen http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/TF-620_Nomad_ )
I think stim with cooldown could *maybe* make marines viable in a similiar way to how they are viable now in early game, not sure tho. Would still have the issue of being less durable, although I'm not sure if they still have the hp upgrade or at what tech it becomes available.
It still leaves two issues tho: * Marines in early game situations (rushing, sunken breaks), imagine those scenarios in SC with no medics, I feel like it might force terrans into some degree of passivity. * The medivac is not as fun as the medic (personal opinion) Especially, with the - supposedly - more viable ghost I'd like to see a more useful version of flare (perhaps even one that works on buildings), that way the medic could actually see some cool usage outside of healing.
On June 04 2008 15:28 LonelyMargarita wrote: If you want medics harder to get, just put them farther up on the tech tree; don't make some unit that's completely unrealistic to ever be used (people will just mech in all matchups).
huh?????? the medic is more useless than the medivac if you only get mech...medivacs can at least drop.
On June 04 2008 15:28 LonelyMargarita wrote: If they want SC2 to be an esport, it's easy to tell the important units to keep from the original. Obviously you need at least the tier-1 staples from BW, so ling, zealot, and marine. Beyond that, just watch any Korean game and note which units are being used when the announcers and crowd all scream at once. They change in each match up, so there's actually quite a few (not all need to come back). I'd say primarily it's defilers (plague), temps (storm in pvz), reavers, arbiters ... Banelings and reapers could certainly be exciting, along with disease and warp-in. Other than that, their replacement units are pretty bland.
people are supposed to get nostalgic about defilers or whatever it is that gets taken out for the sake of the new game. and new stuff is going to be exciting and you can't tell now just how exciting it will be or how loud the screams are going to be.
On June 04 2008 15:29 Ideas wrote: Now in SC2 you build the reactor core (if that's still the case) and you get Ghosts and Marauders, AND you can build the reaper building to get reapers (I guess this actually makes them more Tier 2 than 1.5).
stop trying to analyze terran and protoss builds by tiers. only zerg have tiers. by the way... the reactor core lets you build marines twice as fast, and that's all you can build from that barracks. something along those lines, and i think they are planning to do something similar with the other terran stuff like factory and starport.
stop trying to analyze terran and protoss builds by tiers. only zerg have tiers. by the way... the reactor core lets you build marines twice as fast, and that's all you can build from that barracks. something along those lines, and i think they are planning to do something similar with the other terran stuff like factory and starport
Blizzard themselves called the ghost a Tier 1.5 unit I think..
About the reactor cores, I'm not sure how they currently work, I don't think anyone is.. They've gone through quite a few changes I believe..?
On June 04 2008 23:57 BlackStar wrote: Ghosts will own mutas. With or without medics.
No more vultures and dropships means you use marines as your mineral sink. You will always get tons of marines. It's the only mineral only unit. Of course unless every map has tons more gas to compensate.
If you are fighting P with marines you will always need to have ghosts. Because then you can snipe the HTs and insta kill them. No way for P to prevent this except not getting close or trying to snipe the ghosts themselves before they get close.
Marines as a mineral sink... hmm...
Let's look at the Protoss units and see which ones "counter"marines zealot, high templar, dark templar, colossus
that basically means you'll be going biomech every single game. which is really stupid. Zerg vs. Protoss had its own style as opposed to ZvT and PvT, where you would get hydras vs. P and not T, and you could go any sort of build in PvT, and in ZvT you use lurkers and mutas, etc. And t had bio and mech.
With marines ALWAYS as a mineral sink, you will always end up using biomech builds, like it or not, which to be honest is soooo boring if its the same thing all the time. I liked having vultures and whatnot.
Which brings up my next point: all the other terran units use gas. Ghosts use tons of gas, not to mention research. Whereas zerglings and zealots become far better late game (speed/crack-charge), marines relatively aren't made better by the addition of some lousy hit points. They need medics to do well. No medics = raped by psistorm, colossus, zealots-hell, did you see those 8 zeals just rape those 18 marines with charge? and Zeals/lings dont use gas. If you have 12 marines and you see 6 zeals, what do you do? stim? Then they run away till stim wears off. Not stim? you know what happens.
I hate having to HAVE to get units. You don't HAVE to get dragoons or zeals.. You don't HAVE to get firebats or gols or even tanks. You don't HAVE to mass SVs to win TvZ. Having to HAVE to get marines and ghosts all the time feels boring.
yeah, maybe terrans in sc2 will feel the pain zerg felt in starcraft. NEED MORE VESPENE GAS!!!
about the reaver...it was an exciting unit, and i get what you are all saying about it, and yeah, the colossus does not do the same thing. but i think the warp ray and the phoenix will both be interesting and kindof quirky just like the reaver was...protoss seems to be getting flying reavers i think in sc2...well, called warp rays and phoenix units anyway.
stop trying to analyze terran and protoss builds by tiers. only zerg have tiers. by the way... the reactor core lets you build marines twice as fast, and that's all you can build from that barracks. something along those lines, and i think they are planning to do something similar with the other terran stuff like factory and starport
Blizzard themselves called the ghost a Tier 1.5 unit I think..
About the reactor cores, I'm not sure how they currently work, I don't think anyone is.. They've gone through quite a few changes I believe..?
Reactor cores allow you to build two units at a time, but only the units that can normally be built from the building (without the tech lab).
On June 05 2008 07:58 Caller wrote: By the way, how are terrans supposed to deal with infested marines without medics? not only can you not produce units, but you have no medics so your 50 mins marines will get raped and the free infested marines will just rape the fck out of everything. GG.
what are you thinking? infestors coming before medivacs? i don't think so. if the terran can't get medivacs before the enemy gets infestors, that's his fault.
On June 05 2008 10:45 FrozenArbiter wrote: The mothership is one of a kind tho, I like the arbiter better (who could have guessed given my name huh?)
oh, i was wondering why you kept saying you were biased. i guess i didn't try to figure out it out.
On June 05 2008 07:58 Caller wrote: By the way, how are terrans supposed to deal with infested marines without medics? not only can you not produce units, but you have no medics so your 50 mins marines will get raped and the free infested marines will just rape the fck out of everything. GG.
what are you thinking? infestors coming before medivacs? i don't think so. if the terran can't get medivacs before the enemy gets infestors, that's his fault.
I think protoss being able to warp in units to far away location is extremely protoss, the mobile pylons are not really pylons (dont generate food) but a secondary mode for the new shuttle (phase prism). I don't think protoss have moving cannons anymore either, although zerg might have moving sunkens (not clear on what the latest word on that is).
Queen secreting creep is.. I think it's good because it opens the door for zerg cheese finally, which is good. I think it will create some interesting builds with the queen in the long run, good idea in my book.
Could you elaborate on why you feel this hurts race distinction?
Oh I didn't know the mobile pylons didn't give food. I guess the warp in makes sense for Protoss, but Anyway, Ultralisks are like the antithesis of the typical zerg unit. They are big, look powerful in SC2, and can burrow? I just think that first off, a large unit is not zerg, and burrow for a large unit is kinda unrealistic.
Secrete creep could provides some interesting strategies, its a side thing and I guess is kinda zerg like, being as they are supposed to "swarm".
Zerg get the corrupter, which (in demos) seem good. Probably hard to get such massive numbers, but I think zerg should be based more on swarming than special abilities, like Protoss are supposed to be good at. Psionic abilities. Keep them distinct. Terran get reactor cores. Faster production. Thats getting into the zerg realm.
Basically, I like the new Protoss units, they fit the strong and expensive category. Stalker is interesting and yet still Protoss. Zerg is borderline. Queen, well, we'll see how the gameplay is on that one. But corrupter and those spellcasters are somewhat un-zerg like. Well not necessarily un-zerg like, but its definitely more in the Protoss realm. Terran, I don't know what's going on with them. But Vikings are good. Probably they'll have to revise them later. Anyway, I'd like to keep Starcraft being micro oriented rather while at the same time keeping the races distinct.
On June 05 2008 11:52 Caller wrote: true fact: infesters are tier 2 tech, i.e. lair medivacs are tier 2.5/3 tech, i.e. barraks---> factory ---> starport
no, terran units are not in teirs. you can't compare zerg tiers to protoss and terran tiers because you don't have the same kind of pace with all that. if you call the terrans and protoss having tiers...and the zerg...then there isn't a proper system to judge it all with...
old system:
for example. mutalisks are tier 2 queens are tier 2 ultralisks are tier 3 zerglings are tier 1 lurkers are tier 2 hydralisks are tier 1
now, if you apply your idea of techs... science vessel is tier 6 (rax, fact, star, control, science fac) battlecruiser is tier 7 (rax, fact, star, control, science fac, physics lab) siege tank is tier 3 (rax, fact, shop) goliath is tier 3 (rax, fact, armory) vulture is tier 2 (rax, fact) marines are tier 1 (rax) medics are tier 2 (rax, academy)
mutalisks are tier 3 (pool, lair, spire) ultralisks are tier 5 (pool, lair, nest, hive, den) defilers are tier 5 (pool, lair, nest, hive, mound) guardians are tier 6 (pool, lair, nest, hive, spire, greater) queens are tier 3 (pool, lair, nest) lurkers are tier 3 (pool, den, lair) hydralisks are tier 2 (pool, den)
as you can see, a medivac being built at your reckoning would be tier 3, same as a mutalisk. same as a lurker(of old), and if my guess is right, same as an infestor.
edit: well, the medivac might very well require control tower or whatever...so maybe it's really tier 4...but there isn't that big of a jump between those...
and anyway you can't compare those because the protoss and terrans don't have to upgrade their main hall. they just build new buildings or in the case of the terrans they get addons.
Zerg get the corrupter, which (in demos) seem good. Probably hard to get such massive numbers, but I think zerg should be based more on swarming than special abilities, like Protoss are supposed to be good at. Psionic abilities. Keep them distinct. Terran get reactor cores. Faster production. Thats getting into the zerg realm.
About the zerg, I actually feel like they have become LESS about special abilities. Let me elaborate; in SC modern ZvT is mostly about stalling until hive tech for swarm, very unlike how zerg played just 5 or so years ago (wow, just 5 huh? time flies, doesnt seem that long ago).
With the infestor at tier two (not sure if it gets swarm then) but with no consume and lurkers at tier 3, I'm thinking they might want zerg to pick one of 3 routes once they reach hive tech - the lurker, for swarm/lurker play, ultralisk for the more mass-swarmy stuff or guardian. This is of course speculation, but wtih the lurker out of the mid-game zerg will have to rely on their more swarmy units right (lings, hydras, maybe roaches)?
I don't know of course, but it's my initial thoughts.
@Post above me, eh, you could just simplify things and call rax tier 1, fac tier 2, starport tier 3, considering you need a rax to build a fac and a fac to build a starport much like you go from hatch to lair to hive.
Also, as I said, blizzard themselves refer to the ghosts as tier 1.5 units.
just to further make my point i was trying to make in my above post, i'm not saying i think there is some kind of law about tiers...as far as i know there isn't, that's why it sounds weird that even blizzard is talking about tiers in starcraft...in my opinion, it looks like they are just mistaken when they call a particular unit a tier 1.5 or whatever unit. after all, tiers are warcraft, right? and no upgraded halls in starcraft...
but it is entirely possible that when the game comes out, blizzard will define tiers in some build map...i doubt it, but if they do that we'll have to go with it. but as it stands, i don't see how you can compare terran and protoss tech to warcraft 3 tech like that. zerg is fine...they go hatchery, lair, hive. like necropolis, halls of dead, black citadel. or town hall, keep, castle, or great hall, stronghold, fortress, or tree of life, tree of ages, and tree of eternity. command center. upgradable in sc2 like a mutalisk. nexus. so far nothing special. those are NOT tiers!
but to the subject though....i think at least reavers will although not be in the game not be too sorely missed, as i said i think overload should be exciting, making people wonder if someone will skillfully take out a bunch of units with that skill...
I'm not saying that blizzard is completely wrong, I'm going purely on the description of the units from the starcraft wiki, and also some from vids of demos. Obviously the demos are trying to show off the unit's power, so in practice corrupters may/may not be as powerful as they seem on paper or even in the demonstration, but based on the theory, zerg needs to be revised. Of course in practice it may be completely different. I'm just pointing out the way I think the game should be made. But I guess we'll have to wait till the game actually comes out or we see more actual gameplay instead of demos (i'm kinda lazy to go watch the pros testing out of the game--the video's aren't too good quality as its a video of the screen instead of those VODs you get).
I was talking with my friend earlier today, he's a zerg and he's happy the reaver is gone...but I'm sad. I'm a Toss of course. Hope it comes back.
@ above post: phoenix doesn't replace reaver simply because it doesn't target land units and therefore isn't a good harass. Anyway...
The Protoss have indeed lost the reaver/shuttle combo, but it has gained much more. The Phase Prism + Warp Gate combo opens up a lot of space for criativity. Stalker micro is going to be extreeemely intense, Colossus + Cliff as well, and other units such as High templar and phoenix will make the toss gameplay better than before, in my opinion.
On June 05 2008 11:02 FrozenArbiter wrote: Someone made a pretty good reply to a post I made on the bnet forums (they have a thread about this thread =])
Talking about MnM I read somewhere that Shield upgrade gives +25HP to Marines. This means they are even 2 times stronger against certain opponents like Sunkens and Lurkers* IMO
But even after that they are hurt badly by multiple stimming. What if Stim would steal less HP but be cooldowned? (btw not all Marines have to be stimmed in all situations )
About Medivac itself, without fact on mind it replaces Medic, doesn't it bring much more flexibility for Terran? Terrans are enforced to make them to heal troops but they can carry anything so after all they gain maybe better combo unit for same/slightly higher price as old Dropship.
Keeping Medivacs safe won't be so hard: in TvZ there are Scourges no more, even Hydras are Tier2 so far and their replacement on T1 can't hit air. In both TvT and TvP MnMs are no big use with or without Medics... unless new Nomad's Defensive Matrix is still in and makes into the game (what I hope will happen http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/TF-620_Nomad_ )
I think stim with cooldown could *maybe* make marines viable in a similiar way to how they are viable now in early game, not sure tho. Would still have the issue of being less durable, although I'm not sure if they still have the hp upgrade or at what tech it becomes available.
It still leaves two issues tho: * Marines in early game situations (rushing, sunken breaks), imagine those scenarios in SC with no medics, I feel like it might force terrans into some degree of passivity. * The medivac is not as fun as the medic (personal opinion) Especially, with the - supposedly - more viable ghost I'd like to see a more useful version of flare (perhaps even one that works on buildings), that way the medic could actually see some cool usage outside of healing.
@FA, very nice topic. I saw it the other day but didn't have time to post. This bnet post made me think on the marine situation in a different way. Some random thoughts/questions:
Blizzard's goal still seems to be to change the old battles from BW. If SC2 marines and medics were the early game combo for TvZ, then what would the Zerg's answer to that be? I think it'd be the same as in BW, but without lurker options since they come later. So lings or ling/muta or sunken or maybe roaches. I don't see early dark swarm (low Infester count) as being viable without consume, so I think we have to leave that out. So if my guess is right, that would make it almost the same but with less options than BW. Bad for business. Obviously they could leave in the medic and do something else with Zerg, but right now they are headed in the other direction I guess.
Suggestion: Make the flame throwing jackals work... make them useful but with a weakness. If they are fun enough and useful enough in the right situations, maybe they can replace early medics. Probably not, but maybe. Assuming TvZ will always require one factory (or maybe you can go dual fact vs all ground Zerg), then you have tanks for sunkens and jackals for units.
I sorely miss the reaver- the colossus (while pretty solid in the flashy/eye candy department... which doesn't much matter after the first week of play) just doesn't have the same play style or concentration needed as an old reaver/shuttle combo. To me Blizz is slowly realizing this and trying to pump up the colossus (new attacks, etc.), but it's still going to be hard to make it as fun as the reaver. My only hope is that the other unit combos and abilities for Toss make up for it.
Suggestion: Speaking of pumping up the colossus, I like the idea of two different attacks mentioned earlier, picked via a toggle. One is the old sweeping lance for one situation (maybe only good for supporting zealots/stalkers??) and the other is a more explosive type (similar to the multi-lance but with better graphics) more similar to reavers which would be OK for support but very good for probe killing and such. But how do you replace reaver drops on tanks? Can't be done with the colossus... unless the map allows for it somehow. Hmmm. The closest would be attacking from cliffs probably... which would feel more like a weak seige tank than a reaver. I dunno.
On June 04 2008 22:55 stenole wrote: I pretty much agree that keeping SC2 exciting is very important. They need to have units that become 10 times their worth under skilled hands. A boxer marine is 10 times more deadly than a stenole marine, even if I've seen the moves and know somewhat in my head what I want to do. The same goes for the reaver. It has some very specific weaknesses and powers. Slow movement speed, low firing rate, a slow projectile that must run along the ground, can miss and be obstructed. Like the marine's natural partner is the medic, the reaver's natural partner is the shuttle. Having units like this that open up doors for fun tactics and possibilies is good. The collosus is a bland unit that will mostly attack move along with the protoss army. I think all it does is give protoss an AOE unit that they don't have to fuss too much with. At noob level this may make a matchup like PvZ a little more bearable. But as a spectator and player, it doesn't add FUN.
I think a reasoning behind a lot of Blizzard's decisions is to make the game easier to balance. Units that behave reliably with little randomness and finite micro options make for a game that is much easier to balance.
I would say that it is more important to make sure SC2 is FUN than balanced. A FUN game can be made balanced. But if it is not FUN, you can't patch it into being FUN.
Because basemanagement will be a lot easier in SC2, please don't take potential for fun micro out of the game also. I want to do more than just focus firing and making concave formations and casting dumb spells.
I like your point although I don't agree with the way your worded the last sentence as I like spells or special abilities usually. But basically, yeah, units should be fun and balancing should come after even if it takes a few patches. For me, there are two big ways to make them fun.
One, a special ability that does lots of damage but takes skill to use or skill to get set up for use. The reaver/scarab is the best example even though it's not really a special ability, followed by spider mines, psi storm, irradiate, plague, etc.
And two, functions that make the unit unique and useful and can affect the battle in a fairly big way if you know what you are doing- but NOT a super unit. Usually this means having odd strengths and an odd weaknesses. Examples are reavers (again), lurkers, scourge, dark swarm, consume, corsairs , siege tanks, observers, etc.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard believes in fun first... but the ease of use factor comes into play. More competitive people like things to be a little harder to do while the general population (in the US at least) appear to want things easier to do. Blizzard games typically do a really good job of having that perfect learning curve where both groups are happy. They need to refocus and concentrate on this instead of watering down units and hard countering abilities too much.
One thing I hadn't considered with the tier 3 lurkers is that we wont be seeing nearly as much marine v lurker micro, which is sad
Anyway, I totally understand blizzard wanting to change the zerg vs terran matchup a little, but I'd much rather they did it by either nerfing the medic or buffing the effectiveness of zerg unit combinations in combating them. IE if ling/roach or hydra/ling /w infestors were more viable in straight up fights it might bring zerg closer to a more swarm type of play, sort of like how ZvT played in 2002-2003 (when hydra/lurk was still used, ah I miss hydra lurk).
But with (I believe) tier 2 disease (plague, not sure how I feel about the name change), tier 2 swarm, roaches AND banelings.. I duno, it seems like more options to combat M&M no? If M&M are still too strong vs that, surely they could just weaken the medic.
As for the jackal, from the TvT video (posted somewhere here recently) it seems to move alright, which is good, but I don't really see it being an exciting TvZ unit. If tank/jackal becomes a TvZ army (no anti-air tho, so I guess tank/jackal/marines or tank jackal vikings) I dunno how I feel about that. Marines being the cornerstone vs zerg has always struck a chord in me There's just something about the whole marines vs swarms of alien bugs thing..
Anyway, it wouldn't really solve the issue of early game mobility/useability of the marine. Assuming the jackal isn't effective vs buildings (which I think is a fair assumption given the nature of its attack), then it really still wouldn't allow for marines to charge static defenses. In addition it's a bit further up the tech tree than the medic.
I just don't really see how you can remove the medics (early game) heal without making marines boring :O
Oh by the way, on another subject brought up in this thread, how many units the medivac can heal at once, I was reading through the Q&A archives today and found an answer:
The Medivac is a very interesting Unit, but there are not many information given to us so far. Can you tell us any more details about it? At which tier can it be found? How does the healing work? Can it even heal multiple units at once and how fast does it heal compared to the medic?
The Medivac is currently available from the Starport (no add-ons required). The healing works just like the medic. We will (if we keep the mechanic) be adding a graphic of the Medivac deploying medical drones to heal friendly biological units. It will only be able to heal a single unit at one time. The speed at which it heals changes frequently as we try different balance options.
So, assuming we'll need a similiar amount of medivacs to medics.... Anyone else feel like having 5-6 medivacs floating around is gonna be a pain the ass :-)?
Medivac Dropships heal much faster than Medics from StarCraft Brood War. Also, players using Marines in the original StarCraft still used Stim Pack often. Now the Marines have more health with the upgrade and is still very effective while stimmed. Combined with Marauders’ slow ability means additional shots with Stim Pack often leading to that unit’s death before it can do damage.
The idea isn´t to directly replace Medics with Medivacs. The idea is to change the implementation of the Healing concept in the game itself.
Step 1 is to turn Healing strictly OOC, out of combat. Indicators: New Protoss shield restoration mechanic lack of shield batteries. Zerg Regeneration never mattered in the heat of battle. THe only unit where this applies right now is the Roach and that unit justifies it´s existance over it´s quirky survivability.
Only Terrans sort of could "Tank&Spank". WC3 had loads of that especially since troopdeaths were even "worse" due to XPgain for your enemy. One of the earliest complaints against Medivacs was that Reapers are expendable and don´t need Healing anyway - doesn´t that refer to Terran Infantry as a whole?
Step 2 is give Micro/enemy effort dependant possibilities for effectivity increases. Early on there wasn´t much you could do about your enemys Medics. Marauders/Ghosts/Reapers are at the same time potentionally stronger but also harder to utilize.
Step 3 is to reintroduce Healing for infantry in a different way to avoid the original issues. Players shouldn´t buy Medivacs for healing - they should buy them for transportation and be happy about the healing. That they are better targettable is intentional, Players should micro them to keep them on the field/ heal their Marines.
Due to that Medics would get HP - Heal as a upgrade. So what would they start out with? How about a "free" Stimpack?
Well in that case I think it's a bad turn of events since terran was already the only race with in combat healing, and there is a huge difference between reapers (primarily seen as harassers) and marines (the mainstay of any terran bio army).
I don't understand your last sentence.... Are you saying that if the medic were to stay, but they would still try to go in the direction you outlined above, that it should start without heal as an ability..? I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly, please clarify.
Or did you mean to write marines and not medics in the last sentence?
The base idea is that Healing is removed as "combat variable" for Terrans infantry in the form it currently exists. Spells/skills in BW have always drawbacks, "normal" repair took quite a amount of attention and ate resources. Medics were unique in that regard since they are "passive", you just have them next to your marines and Stimpacks become effectivly free and therefore pseudopassive.
To make Stimpacks an active ability it has to be more complex than "press Hotkey every x seconds". HP were initially a unique issue to manage for Terrans - but medics made heal to accessable.
The main issue is to "move" heal out of direct skirmishes like for example salves in WC3 were useless in combat. That way the HP loss is a issue during a encouner but once you clear the immediate threath you can heal - Protoss shields also work like that.
Of course Marines need appropiate new tactics to make up for the lack of the Heal over Time in combat. Medics initially had AOE heal for that reason so that Players would be forced to "dance" their individual marines more.
The Stimpack on Medic idea was a more indirect suggestion. Due to the later available Heal enemys would have ways to "dispose" Medics once they have Heal available - like snipe or antigrav. IT´s not really a thought trough idea as it would just postpone a lot of the issues instead of solving them.
Meh, just give medics a lower mana cap or a higher cost for heal (that way it wont hurt their other abilities). If you've ever played, say, nexus tvz you'll know how bad constant stimming is when your medics don't have a shitload of mana
You guys may laugh at this idea, but what if marines could heal on their own? They would have energy or a timer like stalkers, and after you upgrade "self-heal", they could restore HP with the touch of a hotkey. This creates timing issues, like do you upgrade stim or heal first. It is also less powerful than medics, because you can no longer create a wall in front of your marines.
EDIT as for colossi, to make them more fun, maybe they could buy a "scarab" (or several). When they have these, they could no longer use their normal attack. The enemy could see when the unit is in this process, so the colossus could be attacked when it is defenseless. After using its "scarabs", it would go back to its normal attack mode.
RE EDIT The scarab could be lobbed at the target, so that it can be dodged. This rewards quick response time. Also, if you can target the ground, the colossus can try to guess where the enemy units will be, a bit like storm dodging. This adds more skill requirements. It would also make the following situation possible: All the colossi get their scarabs in advance, to do massive damage when engaging the enemy. The oponent briefly engages then disengages, so the colossi lob all of their scarabs but most of them hit the ground. The oponent then comes back in for the kill. You would then have to micromanage your colossi well so that they attack only at the optimal time. Also, if there were a delay between when the colossus goes from scarab mode to normal mode, the potential rewards of good micro would be much greater.
Whoops, yeah totally wasn't thinking about disease or swarm + banelings. Damn the early morning. I know what you mean about mnm vs zerg. Like you say or imply, it's a style all its own and it will be missed greatly. I can only theorycraft on Blizzard's attempt at replacement strats/builds so let me have some leeway here.
My thought is that in midgame they want it so Zerg will have to pick either disease or dark swarm or banelings or roaches or lings/mutas (and not a cost effective combo or at least not easily cost effective until your 2nd gas is well underway and 3rd coming up). And that they want Terran to go either marine + a couple of tanks or jackals or quick medivac (followed by quick marine shield upgrade?). Marine + tank good vs sunkens or roaches, but vulnerable to swarm + banelings. And marine + jackal good as containment or unit to unit battles, but not good for breaking sunkens. Marine + quick medivac is defensive early on (susceptible to ling + swarm or ling + disease timed attack?) but better vs mutas and better all around once you break out of your base (think typical 2007 BW TvZ maybe?). Maybe with the "free" bunkers with salvage, you can always go for a SCV+bunker rush and disrupt the Zerg early that way and then avoid being overly defensive. Bunkers may be slightly more useful vs Mutas with salvage there too.
Let's say the timing for an attempted dark swarm + banelings combo should be such that if you weren't fighting you can have 3 swarms to cast and 4 banelings at a "sweet spot". You can likely make a swarm line to any sieged tanks and take them out, but the Terran should be able to dance his marines out of the way. If you go for swarms vs marines, the Terran with good control groups can probably get out of the swarms before the banelings hit too many guys.
I hope some of that has merit... not entirely pleased with this post but I like thinking about what ifs.
Yeah, I still read the forum(s) but haven't been posting much... probably two reasons. Trying not too get too burnt out waiting for the game and also started playing some old / not so old school fighting games with friends so I can divert my gaming tensions that way. Speaking of which, for any Capcom fighter fans who want something fresh, check out Guilty Gear (not by Capcom) if you haven't... very solid game with a big cult following as I understand it! Also, I'm trying very hard not to take a vacation from work and spend a couple grand visiting Blizz's office in the hopes they'd let me touch the game for a minute or two. Man that is tempting!
On June 10 2008 05:27 FrozenArbiter wrote: Meh, just give medics a lower mana cap or a higher cost for heal (that way it wont hurt their other abilities). If you've ever played, say, nexus tvz you'll know how bad constant stimming is when your medics don't have a shitload of mana
Medics are not to strong, they are the wrong aproach. Simply nerfing them would either change nothing or turn them into "SCVs for infantry". They would need stronger and more important alternatives to to Heal to turn it optional. But in context to Marine Stimpacks there wouldn´t be any reason to ever stop healing. If say Stimpacks wouldn´t use HP that would remove the main justification for Heal (as under attack its wither no Damage or Death for marines in 70% of the scenarios not counting Stimdamage).
If Stimpacks were "outsourced" to Medics with mutual execlusivity you´d have to reevaluate each skirmish what to heal and what to stim, the better at avoiding damage you are the more marines you would be able to stim while "lazy" players could just set Heal on auto.
Sooooo, you mean stimpack would work sort of like bloodlust? Ok I could actually support this idea, it actually makes sense for medics to be handing out combat drugs.. That's a good thought man, really good.
EDIT: Only worry is wether or not this would make the micro less fun/harder (but not in a good way) :C
Also I'm really really hoping either restore or flare will be useful in SC2 (I like the idea of flare so much haha, said it a few times already but maybe it could blind area of effect for X seconds or blind buildings).
FA, lets put it this way as well... could you really have predicted each units "excitement" level prerelease of Starcraft1? Likewise how could you really say the same for SC2? While its clear the the reaver was a cool unit, the assumption is that units that we've seen or yet to have seen won't be as cool.. with such limited playtime if not none at all, and definitly none at the professional level.
The nerf to psi storm would also seem to boggle down the excitement. Seems like fights are headed toward a slower, more methodical pace which is nice from a strategy perspective but makes it much less interesting to watch and less skillful (more forgiving.) It's why WC3 is so boring to watch, because early game units take a year to die. I think after they nerfed the mothership they took the 'no super weapons' mentality too far, because it seems like things are far more predictable, which equates to less dynamic fights and a less interesting game overall.
I say all that as a precaution, not a description. I haven't played SC2 yet so I won't say that's how SC2 will be, but from the information pieced together that's the conclusion I came to.
If you were going to run with the idea of letting marines have self-heals, you could give them both an energy cost (which is really a shared cooldown, just less offensive sounding to purists) that prevents you from using the other until they'd regen'd their energy. fun with difficult choices!
although i do agree with you FA, overall the units are very very cool and the new features are great. but i don't any real crazyness going on early game like we had in the original SC.
DISCLAIMER: I hope it's at least readable, didn't have the time to really arrange the text in a comprehendable manner.
I really like the idea of Stimpack being a Medic's spell. How about it being AoE (small radius) as well?
As for reintroducing Medics and getting rid of Medivac while still making Reapers more useful, as intended by Blizzard: How about introducing a new upgrade for Medics? A global upgrade to Spotters - Medics with jetpacks and Drop Pod abilities.
Generally how I see Medics in SC2:
- Heal (not available when the to-be-healed units are under attack) making them work together with Marines well against Mutas, Roaches, or Speedlings. early-mid game.
- Stimpack (AoE, small radius, works for all infantry units, except for Reapers (?)) making them more mobile, and thus useful in Baneling/Swarm/Desease encounters
- Optic Flare (upgrade) - small radius AoE spell which makes ranged (and melee?) units nuable to attack for a short period of time - could make Medics viable vs. Protoss early on, OK vs. Terran (agressive Flare pushes instead of more defensive metal), and, obviously, more interesting in TvZ (e.g. vs. Hydras in midgame)
- Spotter global upgrade - gives Medics jetpacks, making them viable support units for Reapers (Blizzard's main concern) as well as interesting army harassment units coupled with Flare; gives Medics a Drop Pod spotting ability - useful for making M&M a viable reinforcement tool due to non-existent travel time, good harassment/defensive tool (Dropship harass into a fullscale attack; couple Medics in expansions + Drop Pod buildings close to Barracks)
So, to sum up, the mechanics/dynamics this changes introduce/retain are:
I. TvZ:
- M&M combo throughout the game - interesting decisions as regards Stimpack/Heal/Optic Flare use vs. different Zerg combos - Reaper/Spotter (jetpacked Medic) combo for harassment - in-battle reinforcements for the core army/harassment groups via Drop Pods (this way not only do Drop Pods not overlap with Reapers, but they also supplement them in a good way) - defensive capabilities of Drop Pods
II. TvP:
- M&M more viable early on (until Colossi/DTs/Storms kick in) due to Flare (vs. Stalker/Immortal opening) - Flare probably useful as support for metal (vs. Immortals e.g.)/vs. air units (to but some time to build adequate counters)/vs. Stalker/Colossus harassment - Drop Pods as a reinforcement tool
III. TvT:
- Flare & Stim probably viable as an agressive opening vs. somewhat passive metal - Flare probably useful as vs. Vkining on-Tank drops as a means of buying some time for the Tanks to unsiege - Drop Pod as a reinforcement tool
On June 10 2008 12:54 yangstuh wrote: FA, lets put it this way as well... could you really have predicted each units "excitement" level prerelease of Starcraft1? Likewise how could you really say the same for SC2? While its clear the the reaver was a cool unit, the assumption is that units that we've seen or yet to have seen won't be as cool.. with such limited playtime if not none at all, and definitly none at the professional level.
Well, I think it's clear that the reaver -> colossus is gonna be less exciting simply looking at the properties of the units In the same way I think it's pretty logical to assume the stalker is gonna be more exciting (perhaps dynamic is the better word) than the dragoon.
The medivac and, especially, the jackal are a bit harder to say, those are more "potential worries" or whatever you want to call them. The jackal might be totally fine, the medivac.. I dunno.
On June 10 2008 18:27 maybenexttime wrote: DISCLAIMER: I hope it's at least readable, didn't have the time to really arrange the text in a comprehendable manner.
I really like the idea of Stimpack being a Medic's spell. How about it being AoE (small radius) as well?
As for reintroducing Medics and getting rid of Medivac while still making Reapers more useful, as intended by Blizzard: How about introducing a new upgrade for Medics? A global upgrade to Spotters - Medics with jetpacks and Drop Pod abilities.
I really liked when blizzard announced medics could use a war3-style (mortar team) flare to spot up cliffs and shit, I think this and the jetpack upgrade is pretty interesting.
Generally how I see Medics in SC2:
- Heal (not available when the to-be-healed units are under attack) making them work together with Marines well against Mutas, Roaches, or Speedlings. early-mid game.
HMmmmmmmm, I dunno about not being able to heal while under attack.. I really dunno. Like, if marines weren't such fragile 40 hp units it could work, since you could run them back, but they die really really really fast when not healed.
- Stimpack (AoE, small radius, works for all infantry units, except for Reapers (?)) making them more mobile, and thus useful in Baneling/Swarm/Desease encounters
Sounds potentially good :0 Or it could work like bloodlust in WC3 (ie autocast, then you choose between autocast stimpack or autocast heal).
- Optic Flare (upgrade) - small radius AoE spell which makes ranged (and melee?) units nuable to attack for a short period of time - could make Medics viable vs. Protoss early on, OK vs. Terran (agressive Flare pushes instead of more defensive metal), and, obviously, more interesting in TvZ (e.g. vs. Hydras in midgame)
Hmmm, I think AoE blind would be cooler, but this isn't bad I guess
- Spotter global upgrade - gives Medics jetpacks, making them viable support units for Reapers (Blizzard's main concern) as well as interesting army harassment units coupled with Flare; gives Medics a Drop Pod spotting ability - useful for making M&M a viable reinforcement tool due to non-existent travel time, good harassment/defensive tool (Dropship harass into a fullscale attack; couple Medics in expansions + Drop Pod buildings close to Barracks)
Hm, I'm not sure I get this part. You want to give the ghosts drop pod ability to the medic? Blizzard has currently taken it out of multiplayer, but I guess their reasoning (the ghost was stacked with abilities) might not apply to the medic :O Might be good! Also would like to see the WC3-flare return to the medics, using them to spot up cliffs for reapers would be good.
So, to sum up, the mechanics/dynamics this changes introduce/retain are:
I. TvZ:
- M&M combo throughout the game - interesting decisions as regards Stimpack/Heal/Optic Flare use vs. different Zerg combos - Reaper/Spotter (jetpacked Medic) combo for harassment - in-battle reinforcements for the core army/harassment groups via Drop Pods (this way not only do Drop Pods not overlap with Reapers, but they also supplement them in a good way) - defensive capabilities of Drop Pods
II. TvP:
- M&M more viable early on (until Colossi/DTs/Storms kick in) due to Flare (vs. Stalker/Immortal opening) - Flare probably useful as support for metal (vs. Immortals e.g.)/vs. air units (to but some time to build adequate counters)/vs. Stalker/Colossus harassment - Drop Pods as a reinforcement tool
III. TvT:
- Flare & Stim probably viable as an agressive opening vs. somewhat passive metal - Flare probably useful as vs. Vkining on-Tank drops as a means of buying some time for the Tanks to unsiege - Drop Pod as a reinforcement tool
<3 Sounds awesome.
On June 10 2008 19:58 CowGoMoo wrote: Why does everyone always assume Lurkers are tier3?
I really liked when blizzard announced medics could use a war3-style (mortar team) flare to spot up cliffs and shit, I think this and the jetpack upgrade is pretty interesting.
I liked that idea too, but afaik Reapers do not need vision of the high ground anymore in order for them to jump there. I also think the range of Medic's ability was limited as opposed to the Mortar Team.
HMmmmmmmm, I dunno about not being able to heal while under attack.. I really dunno. Like, if marines weren't such fragile 40 hp units it could work, since you could run them back, but they die really really really fast when not healed.
I guess you're right. This might require a little too much micro. I was mainly trying to address Unentschieden's concerns.
Sounds potentially good :0 Or it could work like bloodlust in WC3 (ie autocast, then you choose between autocast stimpack or autocast heal).
The thing is Terran bionic units are much more expandable than Orc units. Casting Stim on specific units in mid/late game could become a chore.
Hmmm, I think AoE blind would be cooler, but this isn't bad I guess
I see your point. Although the main issue with Blind in SC1 was the fact that you had to blind the entirety on enemy units in order for it to work. I guess its being an AoE spell could be enough, though.
Hm, I'm not sure I get this part. You want to give the ghosts drop pod ability to the medic? Blizzard has currently taken it out of multiplayer, but I guess their reasoning (the ghost was stacked with abilities) might not apply to the medic :O Might be good! Also would like to see the WC3-flare return to the medics, using them to spot up cliffs for reapers would be good.
Yes, that's what I meant. But they'd have to make sure Medic is not stacked with abilities either.
Many people have specutaled that the reason for their removing the Drop Pods was caused partly by the fact that Drop Pods kind of overlapped with Reapers as a harassment tool. Giving the Medics jetpacks & Drop Pods would help them keep up with Reapers and render them/Drop Pods as something that enhances Reapers' harassment capabilites instead of overlapping with them. That way you could bring couple Medics (Spotters) with your Reapers and call in the Drop Pods in case you decided you can actually take down that expansion altogether.
Aside from that, there would be different reason for mixing in some Medics in your army/harassment groups/expo defences, as mentioned before.
Quick post - I didn't read most of the thread, but let the colossus have a brief start-up or charging time during which it will not fire and remain locked on a point rather than on its target, i.e. it loses tracking for the first second before beginning to sweep automatically towards targeted enemies (with its lasers). Micro can now save peons by dancing them around the beam, as with running around lurker spikes. :< Also, give the colossi a speed upgrade, for more intensity. x3 Idk, that's all for now~
On June 10 2008 05:30 inlagdsil wrote: You guys may laugh at this idea, but what if marines could heal on their own? They would have energy or a timer like stalkers, and after you upgrade "self-heal", they could restore HP with the touch of a hotkey. This creates timing issues, like do you upgrade stim or heal first. It is also less powerful than medics, because you can no longer create a wall in front of your marines.
I really like this idea. It seems that Blizz wants to make marines actually damaged in battle and have to heal later on. Hovering medivacs over your main army will most likely lead to the opponent sniping them so long as they have some anti air. Just look at how easy it is to scourge vessels when the marines are preoccupied. I think a self-heal "shot" or something fills the role better than medivac and fits in perfectly with the marine.
On June 11 2008 06:39 naventus wrote: Why take what was good originally (stim on marine, medic heal) and make it into a clumsy system where medic stims...
I like flare on medic- what if it could reveal cloaked units in a very small area nearby (smaller than comsat)?
I agree with you on stim part, but flare revealing cloaked units would make cloaked units worthless.
The thing is Terran bionic units are much more expandable than Orc units. Casting Stim on specific units in mid/late game could become a chore.
Ye but it would be on autocast I dunno, might not be great, since the army will be moving at different speeds from unit to unit lol.
Well auto cast in War3 usually has conditions. Bloodlust won't be cast until nearby friendly units engage the enemy. Slow for humans won't be cast unless an enemy attacks a nearby friendly unit, etc.
The thing I don't like about the idea of stim on medics is that they are already rather passive units, basically a moving buff for your marines that gives them health regen. Adding stim to that would only make them even more so, which makes for an incredibly bland unit.
On June 10 2008 05:30 inlagdsil wrote: You guys may laugh at this idea, but what if marines could heal on their own? They would have energy or a timer like stalkers, and after you upgrade "self-heal", they could restore HP with the touch of a hotkey. This creates timing issues, like do you upgrade stim or heal first. It is also less powerful than medics, because you can no longer create a wall in front of your marines.
I really like this idea. It seems that Blizz wants to make marines actually damaged in battle and have to heal later on. Hovering medivacs over your main army will most likely lead to the opponent sniping them so long as they have some anti air. Just look at how easy it is to scourge vessels when the marines are preoccupied. I think a self-heal "shot" or something fills the role better than medivac and fits in perfectly with the marine.
On June 11 2008 06:39 naventus wrote: Why take what was good originally (stim on marine, medic heal) and make it into a clumsy system where medic stims...
I like flare on medic- what if it could reveal cloaked units in a very small area nearby (smaller than comsat)?
I agree with you on stim part, but flare revealing cloaked units would make cloaked units worthless.
cloaked units are already worthless because of scan besides which that would make flare overlap with comsat, no thx
ideas for the medic that i like: - cliffjumping upgrade... however I was thinking, how could we make ghosts better combined with ghosts as well. So how about this: you have a choice ingame, pick one or the other. if you research one you can't go back and research the other. Cliffjumping medics, or cloakable medics. cloakable medics + ghost + optical flare could lead to some interesting things. - a stim/heal toggle autocast (stim would damage the units over time instead of in jumps and stim would instantly stop once switched off). in team games, stim could be maybe castable on allied zealots and lings? medics won't all several cast stim on one target unless force-clicked to. multistimming only hurts more. in addition with focus-casting in cases of extreme emergency where you only have medics, maybe allow stim to be casted on enemy units to damage them? - restoration should return but make it smartcast. this is like the only spell that would benefit from smartcast, because restoration was too much of a pain in the ass to deal with otherwise, it never got used because of that. this would also maybe help vs. tier 2 plague. maybe up the mana cost, but make the research cheaper. - optic flare should do the following: reveal sight uphill, blind 1 unit that's directly hit, and other units in a small small radius (think sc1 EMP) around it have decreased sight range. blinding will be stronger in SC2 because units firing do not reveal themselves. also, make it properly work against detectors instead of this thing where sometimes if another unit gives sight but not detection you still get detection. The AOE should disable detection too, so if they stack their obs then they're fucked, they should spread their obs. - give the medic or the medivac dmatrix pleaseeeeeeeeee i want dmatrix back so bad
blinding will be stronger in SC2 because units firing do not reveal themselves.The AOE should disable detection too, so if they stack their obs then they're fucked, they should spread their obs.
Blind already does this. You can blind lurkers and then kill them with marines and the lurkers won't attack back.
also, make it properly work against detectors instead of this thing where sometimes if another unit gives sight but not detection you still get detection.
what are you talking about? a blind detector does not give detection regardless of another unit giving it vision of an area.
OP is true, i hate games like Dawn of War where you get a real massive expensive thing but all it does is repeatedly shoot lasers. units like reaver, vulture and lurker is what made sc so great, they can turn the whole game around in a second, whether they succeed or fail. That is why we still play...
blinding will be stronger in SC2 because units firing do not reveal themselves.The AOE should disable detection too, so if they stack their obs then they're fucked, they should spread their obs.
Blind already does this. You can blind lurkers and then kill them with marines and the lurkers won't attack back.
also, make it properly work against detectors instead of this thing where sometimes if another unit gives sight but not detection you still get detection.
what are you talking about? a blind detector does not give detection regardless of another unit giving it vision of an area.
wait, somebody's tried using optic flare in SC1 other than boxer? :o
They should include both the reaver and the Collosus in the robotics because they are really interesting to use , but should add something to the Terran and zerg of course .
And for the mediavac why don't they include both the medics and an upgrade to the dropship to heal too .... It seems a bit stupid to want just a medic and you have to tech to a starport for the mediavac .
Jackal seems ok thought knowing that they included mines to the Nomad . You don't know how Jackal can be microed so it might turn out better then the vultures or atleast as fun .
Medivac is a stupid idea and I don't understand why people are being too nice about it. It should be dropped completely because it demonstrates just again the the ignorance and bliss of the new developement team behind SC2.
I whole heartily agree. I was thinking the same thing. With the reaver or spider mines there is that little bit of chance involved. It is not a sure bet, and that is what makes excitement. I'm sure could argue how with that "luck" you can trump skill, but if you open up yourself for that attack its your own fault. Besides, there is the skill of running spider mines into your opponent and placement/pickup of reavers.
The reaver is like the home run of baseball or hail mary pass of american football. It simply must be put back in the game. We will all lose a little something if it isn't.
I don't get why everyone is yelling and screaming about the medivac. Why don't we do this: Put medics back into the game, and allow medics to heal from the drop ships too? That way, you can heal your marines without fear of getting your dropship killed, but you can still use your medics with reapers since your medics in the dropship can heal them even if they go over cliffs.
Colossus looks cool and has a cool attack. But to me, it seems like an attack-move unit. Ok fine. Not an attack-move unit. An attack-hold unit. Nothing special about that.
So, from WWI it seems like the medivac performed pretty well as a medic replacement. Not really heard any complaints at all and the new units seem to lead to an exciting game.
Heard some complaints about the colossus (about it being boring to micro) and the jackal. Would be very interesting to hear some more about these two units from anyone who went.
On July 05 2008 22:15 FrozenArbiter wrote: So, from WWI it seems like the medivac performed pretty well as a medic replacement. Not really heard any complaints at all and the new units seem to lead to an exciting game.
Heard some complaints about the colossus (about it being boring to micro) and the jackal. Would be very interesting to hear some more about these two units from anyone who went.
I've also read bad things about the Reaper... I'm not sure how it could be improved either, unless you gave reapers the firebat attack and then bring vultures back in place of jackals. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good way to fix those issues to me.
Wait until you see the game to say if its gonna be exciting or not. Hell, medics weren't even in until the expansion. There are also many elements being added such as the gas mechanics, more cliff use, yellow crystals, zerg creep usage, Queen, mothership, thor rebuilding, forcefield, and anti gravity. And, as far as I know the templars still have psi storm and the terrans still haves mines so it doesn't really seem like too much is being lost or not added for what is lost.
As far as starcraft 2 in general, I do think the terrans are somewhat on the losing edge in terms of castable things and such, but thats understandable in differentiating the races. The Protoss units should cast the most using their higher technology, the terran being the "ground and pound" type should mostly just have big guns, and the zerg being a large, fast force with elements added to make it seem more menacing and insect like(the Queen and the enhancements to creep).
On July 05 2008 22:15 FrozenArbiter wrote: So, from WWI it seems like the medivac performed pretty well as a medic replacement. Not really heard any complaints at all and the new units seem to lead to an exciting game.
Heard some complaints about the colossus (about it being boring to micro) and the jackal. Would be very interesting to hear some more about these two units from anyone who went.
I've also read bad things about the Reaper... I'm not sure how it could be improved either, unless you gave reapers the firebat attack and then bring vultures back in place of jackals. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good way to fix those issues to me.
I thought so too, before, but I'm not sure anymore cause I can kind of see the point in trying to replace as many units as possible to create new interesting combinations etc. Just needs to make sure the unit is as interesting as what's being replaced.
But yeah I've also heard the reaper was pretty useless which is sad, I like that unit
On July 05 2008 22:15 FrozenArbiter wrote: So, from WWI it seems like the medivac performed pretty well as a medic replacement. Not really heard any complaints at all and the new units seem to lead to an exciting game.
Heard some complaints about the colossus (about it being boring to micro) and the jackal. Would be very interesting to hear some more about these two units from anyone who went.
I've also read bad things about the Reaper... I'm not sure how it could be improved either, unless you gave reapers the firebat attack and then bring vultures back in place of jackals. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good way to fix those issues to me.
I thought so too, before, but I'm not sure anymore cause I can kind of see the point in trying to replace as many units as possible to create new interesting combinations etc. Just needs to make sure the unit is as interesting as what's being replaced.
But yeah I've also heard the reaper was pretty useless which is sad, I like that unit
Well, the issue is that the Reaper is basically a marine. Except it can jump cliffs and does less damage. It's like the Valkyrie. A Goliath that can fly but it's less cost-effective. (At least this is what I've been told in IRC by people that were at WWI). They're in overlapping roles.
And the Jackal isn't like what I imagined, it's this weird firebat/vulture hybrid. Which makes about as much sense as a giving SCVs yamato. I imagined it being a Vulture with a very lurker-like longer range and AOE style, nearly instant attack. Instead it's got the firebat flames except they reach the target slower. And patrol micro is impossible. And it doesn't have spidermines.
So to me, giving the Reaps the Firebat attack fixes the problems with the reaper. As a ranged instant-hit ranged weapon harass / special-ish unit it's overlapping with the Ghost and Marine at the moment. Or maybe a rocket-launcher toting Reaper would be good (but if it's an AOE, watch out for overlap with the Marauder). Or perhaps some more unique energy weapon of some kind, like the wraith/bc laser. To be honest dual pistols just looks and sounds ridiculous anyway. Once you have the different weapon, that helps fit its own role more. Currently the only thing reapers are better than marines at as I understand correctly is fighting vs. lings. Well, a firebat attack would make this still be the case.
For example: With an attack like the wraith laser (probably buffed a little bit), with a similar rate of fire, unit dancing would be much more possible, allowing that mobility to be taken advantage of. With damage concentrated into shorter bursts they'd be more useful as harass units as well. With whatever damage bonus is appropriate to make them better against immortals, workers, lings, zealots, hts, dts, hydras, marines, infestors, ghosts and other reapers they'd be much more useful than before.
To clarify, I'm all for reaper-> flamethrower, I was talking about rolling back the jackal into the vulture.
I think I'd rather see something new in that case (don't like the jackal either tho, it seems really weird to revert to wheels after having hoverbikes).
On July 05 2008 22:15 FrozenArbiter wrote: So, from WWI it seems like the medivac performed pretty well as a medic replacement. Not really heard any complaints at all and the new units seem to lead to an exciting game.
Heard some complaints about the colossus (about it being boring to micro) and the jackal. Would be very interesting to hear some more about these two units from anyone who went.
I've also read bad things about the Reaper... I'm not sure how it could be improved either, unless you gave reapers the firebat attack and then bring vultures back in place of jackals. Actually, that sounds like a pretty good way to fix those issues to me.
I thought so too, before, but I'm not sure anymore cause I can kind of see the point in trying to replace as many units as possible to create new interesting combinations etc. Just needs to make sure the unit is as interesting as what's being replaced.
But yeah I've also heard the reaper was pretty useless which is sad, I like that unit
Well, the issue is that the Reaper is basically a marine. Except it can jump cliffs and does less damage. It's like the Valkyrie. A Goliath that can fly but it's less cost-effective. (At least this is what I've been told in IRC by people that were at WWI). They're in overlapping roles.
And the Jackal isn't like what I imagined, it's this weird firebat/vulture hybrid. Which makes about as much sense as a giving SCVs yamato. I imagined it being a Vulture with a very lurker-like longer range and AOE style, nearly instant attack. Instead it's got the firebat flames except they reach the target slower. And patrol micro is impossible. And it doesn't have spidermines.
So now instead of just planting mines, they have to be microed more to do the same (and possibly even more) damage. And opponent isn't blocked in his base before he gets any detection.
So to me, giving the Reaps the Firebat attack fixes the problems with the reaper. As a ranged instant-hit ranged weapon harass / special-ish unit it's overlapping with the Ghost and Marine at the moment. Or maybe a rocket-launcher toting Reaper would be good (but if it's an AOE, watch out for overlap with the Marauder). Or perhaps some more unique energy weapon of some kind, like the wraith/bc laser. To be honest dual pistols just looks and sounds ridiculous anyway. Once you have the different weapon, that helps fit its own role more. Currently the only thing reapers are better than marines at as I understand correctly is fighting vs. lings. Well, a firebat attack would make this still be the case.
For example: With an attack like the wraith laser (probably buffed a little bit), with a similar rate of fire, unit dancing would be much more possible, allowing that mobility to be taken advantage of. With damage concentrated into shorter bursts they'd be more useful as harass units as well. With whatever damage bonus is appropriate to make them better against immortals, workers, lings, zealots, hts, dts, hydras, marines, infestors, ghosts and other reapers they'd be much more useful than before.
As I don't like Reaper's weapon and his current place in tech tree, can't charges (exploding faster?) do as AoE damage? Their cooldown is 30seconds so it's not like Reaper is one attack unit as it dies to anything, when using this pistols only.
What's more if this description is true, it would be great too see mines / charges being attached to anything, from workers to Ultras/Colossi/Thors ... made me remember Luke detonating robots during battle on the ice planet in Star Wars and Diego doing similar thing to bug in Starship Troopers x)
Something I started thinking about, at random, today was those classic games (mostly PvP and PvT) where both players are out of minerals and units and it's just like a couple of scvs / vultures vs a reaver with a limited number of scarabs.
If they don't bring back the reaver, I would love for the ammo-that-costs-resources concept to be brought back in some other form.
On July 21 2008 08:17 FrozenArbiter wrote: Something I started thinking about, at random, today was those classic games (mostly PvP and PvT) where both players are out of minerals and units and it's just like a couple of scvs / vultures vs a reaver with a limited number of scarabs.
If they don't bring back the reaver, I would love for the ammo-that-costs-resources concept to be brought back in some other form.
What about making Mothership spells cost resources and energy boost time of "preparing" the spells?
For example preparing Time Bomb would last 100seconds and cost some amount of resources but could fastened down to 50seconds by spending 50-100 energy?
You realize the only reason the Reaver is the most exciting unit to watch is because it's the only unit whose attack fails randomly, right? It's the same reason the World Series of Poker is exciting... the luck factor.
The attack of the reaver is definitely far more interesting than collosus, main reason I support it. If collosus launched scarabs though, that'd be cool too!
I just wish so many units didnt have the same attack in SC2. SC1's attacks seemed much more inspired.
On July 06 2008 07:13 FrozenArbiter wrote: To clarify, I'm all for reaper-> flamethrower, I was talking about rolling back the jackal into the vulture.
I think I'd rather see something new in that case (don't like the jackal either tho, it seems really weird to revert to wheels after having hoverbikes).
Wheels are so C&C, Dune. Maybe not the vulture but some kind of landspeeder.
Nice vid. I still miss reavers... and it has nothing to do with their buggy attack missing (that just irritates rather than excites me). They are just fun to use and watch is about as simple and clear as can be said.
IMO, the reaver is a big loss for its excitement, skill level/micro purposes.
However.
These things cannot be judged until the game is released, simply because we don't know how to micro the new units. I don't follow the development completely, but I'm betting that there will be new micro techniques that people will have to learn, just like the last game.