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Both change for the change's sake and not changing for not changing's sake are wrong approaches. If you have a change in mind, think would this be better for Starcraft, if the answer is yes, then we should find an opportuned time for the change (after Blizzcon in most cases.) There are both players who thrive in mastery, when the game sees little changes and players who thrive when many changes are happening. It's wrong to only cater to one of these types of players.
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I don't care about elegance, I want to play a game where you don't simply die to retarded stuff like 1 widowmine at your mineral line that will shoot twice before detection is done.
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Nice, 2:55 oracle in the terran base. "gg" if you reaper expand. Oh wait, thats fair. mines arent fair ofcourse.
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It s just a test so we ll see how it ends up. I was really excited about the eco change in the beta but then they scrapped it and it caused me to stop sc2 altogether shortly afte release. I hope they wont do the same this time but at any case I think it s a bit late and there is a risk or further breaking (what s left of) the scene. Especially after sc:r, that s a bold move.
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I dont quite understand what is not simple with these changes to those units?
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On August 18 2017 08:03 Pokebunny wrote:- Mines now are invisible only before they shoot, but after they shoot, they're visible despite still being burrowed
- Cyclone Lock On fires faster, but only for the first few attacks
- The High Templar can now attack, because just casting spells wasn't enough
- The Observer now has an active ability
- Infestor spells function differently on creep and off creep
You missed the most inelegant hack, disruptor nova has a 2 second cooldown when unloading from a prism. This is a totally made up rule that appears nowhere else in the game, it should not be added regardless of balance. They must find another way to balance this.
Regarding your list: Mines: Maybe if they look half-burrowed after firing, it would be fine. Cyclone: The change is perfectly fine. It's a spell, it can do damage how it wants. HT: Sentries are casters that have an attack. This is fine. Observer: I somewhat agree that this is not elegant. Infestor: This doesn't break any established rules. It is fine.
Regarding on-creep and off-creep interactions: Having the creep speed bonus be the same for every zerg units except 2, the queen and the swarm host, is very inelegant. They should be given the same creep speed bonus plus a passive that increases their on-creep speed bonus with the number chosen to match their current movement speed.
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On August 18 2017 20:12 raff100 wrote: I agree with you in part, I dont' want SC2 to turn into a moba, that needs a major update at least once every year to keep the game "fresh", however, there is something big that you are missing: SC2 must be untouched only if its design is fun, which is the main goal of every videogame. You make the reference on two units, tankivac and reaper, that you maybe consider rewarding to master, but you can just surf a bit through the bnet forums, TL or reddit and you'll find that most of the community absolutely hated those things, not because they were "just a bit too good" ,but because they were , according to most of us, just terrible designed. And now that Blizzard finally started to listen to us, we need to support their job. I don't care about pros because ,if the game is fun , new players will take their place anyway I agree on tankivacs and reapers but what about ghosts, Infestors or vipers? Is there really a need to change them? I think those units are currently working really well.
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On August 18 2017 20:42 Kingsky wrote: I personally wonder why can't we have race specific balance? I.E an upgrade that does bonus damage to SHIELDS for mutalisks or a protoss upgrade that grants bonus disrupter damage on creep?
Or something like photon cannons make marines fire slower?
Its also kind of difficult to keep track of if there are too many of these units, like "ok, these stalkers will deal extra damage to marines, but since the marines reduce the movement speed of adepts it should be ok with marauder support, considering adepts reduce healing received from medivacs but medivacs reduce the damage of adepts by 50%. Maybe I win."
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United States12181 Posts
Reavers have an artificial cooldown when dropping from Shuttles in BW too. The Disruptor/Warp Prism interaction is no different and isn't something to get worked up about.
The history of Starcraft 2 is one of chasing balance numbers. Certain strategies were not in line with others or had no counterplay for same-skill opponents, so they were changed. That's why we have a lot of seemingly weird exceptions and one-offs like Massive units being able to destroy Force Fields (and Ravager Corrosive Bile too), Ultralisks gaining a hidden Frenzy modifier that makes them immune to Neural Parasite, Massive units being immune to Concussive Shells, and so on. "Massive units cannot be slowed" sounds like an overarching rule change, until you realize that Concussive Shells are the only thing in the game that slows and they only attack ground units, and Ultralisks were the main target of that change (it had only a minor impact on the Thor matchup and moderate impact on the Colossus matchup). All of that makes the numbers look good on paper, but the per-unit interactions require a lot to keep in mind.
The other side of it is the balance team (especially David Kim) really liked the idea of out-controlling your opponent. In BW, this was simple stuff like Patrol micro or Muta stacking or worker drilling. In SC2, now that everything moves more fluidly, they had to apply a bunch of differentiators to nearly every unit in the game. Vikings have an air-ground transformation and you can use that to dodge threats. Hellions have a Hellbat transformation and you can use that to suit your tanking or close-quarters AoE needs. Reapers have a bomb that you can use to displace enemies and score more kills. Almost everything in the game does a little extra something unique to itself that lets you outplay the opponent. In BW it was much more sweeping. If you can stack Mutas, you can stack Wraiths. If you can moving shot with Wraiths, you can moving shot with Corsairs, Scouts, Vultures, and Mutas. In SC2 you have to learn race-specific, unit-specific strategies and there's very little carryover.
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I don't rly get this... there is nothing for like 2 months from the and community is "omg omg mainterance mode, we done boys gg..." than we have a patch which tweaks (i really want to use the f word here, but BigFan is watching me) and the reaction is "changes for sake of changes are bad...."
And there is me sitting what the **** is going on? I mean we had mainterance mode in hots and wol for a long time and you saw hot it went... from exodus to even bigger exodus of players, and it doesn't even sound good on the paper... "Oh hey man lets play this RTS... WHICH HAVEN'T BEEN PATCHED IN YEARS, bcs community is pissed about pretty much everything at this point... lets have some fun ^.^/" I mean that's a nogo for most ppl I know right there...
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On August 18 2017 22:43 xTJx wrote: I don't care about elegance, I want to play a game where you don't simply die to retarded stuff like 1 widowmine at your mineral line that will shoot twice before detection is done.
I have this feeling, that elegance and simplicity correlates with "good design" though. Think of it like this: If you build a house and it is crappy, you need to fix, add and alter things very often making it very complicated in the end. If you build a house and its good. You don't need to fix it as often and it remains simple. Both houses serve the same purposes in the end.
It's the same with programming and maintenance. Ideally you want simple code which is easy to maintain and not patch things up on the fly every time.
And also what makes a good theory in science. If a theory is simple and explains a lot of things it's better than a theory which is complicated, has a lot of exceptions/interpretations and explains little (aka religion). E.g.:Newton's law is so genius, because it is so simple and explains a lot.
In the end you are right though. If the game is elegant, but not fun, then it also doesn't help. It has to be both: simple and fun. My opinion would be: SCII does need changes, but why not try to change it to something which is also more elegant and simple at the same time?
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On August 19 2017 04:11 PharaphobiaSC wrote: I don't rly get this... there is nothing for like 2 months from the and community is "omg omg mainterance mode, we done boys gg..." than we have a patch which tweaks (i really want to use the f word here, but BigFan is watching me) and the reaction is "changes for sake of changes are bad...."
And there is me sitting what the **** is going on? I mean we had mainterance mode in hots and wol for a long time and you saw hot it went... from exodus to even bigger exodus of players, and it doesn't even sound good on the paper... "Oh hey man lets play this RTS... WHICH HAVEN'T BEEN PATCHED IN YEARS, bcs community is pissed about pretty much everything at this point... lets have some fun ^.^/" I mean that's a nogo for most ppl I know right there... Implying that constant patches attract more players when there's absolutely zero evidence for that.
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In my opinion all of these changes appear to serve two major purposes:
- Increase the diversity of viable strategies
- Make the game less punishing and increasing comeback potential
Changes such as allowing mules to mine gas, and the new raven abilities, appear to increase strategic diversity (namely, improving the viability of mech). Most of the other changes seem to be about making the game less punishing, especially for Protoss. I would actually argue that the majority of these changes go in the direction of making the game simpler for players.
- MSC Removal - The Mothership Core is an exceptionally complicated unit that has (in my opinion) far too much importance placed onto it. The positioning of this one unit can either deny attacks completely, or cause you to lose games. Pylon overcharge also means that for the early game the placement of every single pylon has to be considered with respect to potential defense. This unit can also be used offensively, which basically gives Protoss players a very risky option to send it out of their base and further increases the coinflip aspect of the game.
- New Nexus Abilities - While these are essentially the same band-aid that has been applied to Protoss since HoTS, it is a mechanic that is much more consistent and predictable than the mothership core.
- Widow Mines - While the theoretical complexity of the widow mine has been increased, due to it now having two separate states (armed and hidden, reloading and visible), the practical aspect of this change is that a player will no longer have to scramble to assemble detection while painstakingly ensuring that only a single worker dies to each volley in order to maintain the ability to mine with minimal damage. This change puts the onus on the mine user to actively manage mines if they want to produce additional value beyond the first shot, instead of the other player. I think this is perhaps a little bit more fair.
- Raven - I will admit that I'm not thrilled about these changes. Pinning the viability of mech on a fragile spellcaster with strange abilities isn't my idea of fun.
- Cyclone - I don't really think this change affects the complexity of the unit very much. I think of it more as a basic damage buff especially since there's not a practical way to compensate for the fact that the initial shots come out more quickly without breaking the lock-on, which is what you would already do if you didn't want to get hit.
- High Templar - Arguing that the Templar's auto attack makes it a more complicated unit is a little bit disingenuous in my opinion, because the change was specifically added to remove the need to baby this unit during large engagements.
- Observer & Overseer Ability - Again, these units have technically gained an ability, but the practical effect of having this ability is that it becomes unnecessary to individually account for these units when moving large unit groups (especially if you push F2 a lot). If you are already a player that is well practiced in observer or overseer management, then there isn't a need for you to ever use this "active ability," as PokeBunny calls it.
- Fungal - Pretty much agree with OP's position.
I will admit that I am not particularly happy with the overall complexity of SC2. However, I think the punishing aspect of it which can cause you to lose in two seconds is worse. And for that reason I'm happy with the changes since they appear to move away from that.
Some of these changes introduce complexity, but some of these changes also remove complexity as well. I don't think this patch would be particularly egregious in terms of moving the game in a direction where the player is casting more active abilities than they already do.
EDIT:
On the subject of changes for the sake of changes:
Starcraft 2 as a game is still in active development as Blizzard tries to find new ways to attract players and monetize the game with micro-transactions. I think it's a little bit foolish to believe that they won't try to improve the multiplayer experience. The attitude the community has in believing that no new players will come to the game is unnecessarily pessimistic, but you also have to look at it in terms of retaining the people who do play the game already. If Blizzard thinks they can find a cost-effective way to make the game more fun for its player base, then they will attempt to do so. And one obvious way is balance updates and unit re-design. The truth is that large balance updates such as the one from last year and the one they're proposing now do generate interest and will cause old players to come back and try the new mechanics. I realize this may be frustrating for high-level players that have spent a lot of time specifically practicing with a singular style of play. However, the truth is that super hardcore players are not the ones paying the bills. And to Blizzard's credit, they have had a relatively light touch with respect to updating the balance and design of the game compared to studios that manage other highly competitive eSport titles.
As a final note, if you were to ask me what the best possible direction for SC2 would be in it's current state. I would be a proponent of attempting to trim the fat. Choose one or two units from every race that can be removed from the game and re-balance from there.
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I neither agree or disagree with the OP. However, I think complexity is not a bad thing. SC2 is a very complex and difficult game. In order of mastering it (or simply playing it at a decent level), you have to practice a bit and learn over time. To me personally, playing SC2 is never boring because it is so complex as there are many different strategies and styles you can try out. It is certainly not one of those games which you click some buttons and that is it. So, simplicity may be appealing to general public in term of being easier to play but overall does it really make the game better? I think not.
On the second point of being elegant, game design is not graphic design or architecture. So elegance is not required. Perhaps, the word "logic" may be a better term. As long as the unit is designed with a goal and purpose in mind, I think that is good enough. It may have a bit too many "abilities" but in the end it is up to players to choose which ability to use more often than the others.
Personally, all proposed changes are fine except the default cloaked ghost (it is a no-no for me). However, I guess we will have to see the changes in action in order to judge them accordingly.
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However, I think complexity is not a bad thing. SC2 is a very complex and difficult game.
The main issue that I think people have with strategic complexity is the relative unimportance of positioning that comes about as a result. It's way more important to have exactly the right unit composition and to cast all of your spells than it is to control a part of the map or set up that perfect flank. It also makes it harder to find reliable macro builds, which in turn makes it harder to practice hardening those builds as well. To be frank, there are a LOT of ways to lose early in Starcraft 2 and it's pretty unreasonable to think you can be aware of them all.
This isn't to say that one design philosophy is better than another. However, I think many players would prefer if positioning and battle management were at least a little more important compared to what the game currently feels like where you are always frantically searching for the next trick that will keep you alive.
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On August 19 2017 04:02 Excalibur_Z wrote: Reavers have an artificial cooldown when dropping from Shuttles in BW too. The Disruptor/Warp Prism interaction is no different and isn't something to get worked up about.
The history of Starcraft 2 is one of chasing balance numbers. Certain strategies were not in line with others or had no counterplay for same-skill opponents, so they were changed. That's why we have a lot of seemingly weird exceptions and one-offs like Massive units being able to destroy Force Fields (and Ravager Corrosive Bile too), Ultralisks gaining a hidden Frenzy modifier that makes them immune to Neural Parasite, Massive units being immune to Concussive Shells, and so on. "Massive units cannot be slowed" sounds like an overarching rule change, until you realize that Concussive Shells are the only thing in the game that slows and they only attack ground units, and Ultralisks were the main target of that change (it had only a minor impact on the Thor matchup and moderate impact on the Colossus matchup). All of that makes the numbers look good on paper, but the per-unit interactions require a lot to keep in mind.
The other side of it is the balance team (especially David Kim) really liked the idea of out-controlling your opponent. In BW, this was simple stuff like Patrol micro or Muta stacking or worker drilling. In SC2, now that everything moves more fluidly, they had to apply a bunch of differentiators to nearly every unit in the game. Vikings have an air-ground transformation and you can use that to dodge threats. Hellions have a Hellbat transformation and you can use that to suit your tanking or close-quarters AoE needs. Reapers have a bomb that you can use to displace enemies and score more kills. Almost everything in the game does a little extra something unique to itself that lets you outplay the opponent. In BW it was much more sweeping. If you can stack Mutas, you can stack Wraiths. If you can moving shot with Wraiths, you can moving shot with Corsairs, Scouts, Vultures, and Mutas. In SC2 you have to learn race-specific, unit-specific strategies and there's very little carryover. this is a good historical perspective, thx 4 posting. I'm not sure if the evolution from BW/WC3 to SC2 is just DK though. SC2 is now on its 4th multiplayer designer. Due to so many ex-C&Cers on the RTS team i think we've got a game that is about 3/4 Starcraft and 1/4 Red Alert. RA2 and RA3 are my 2 favourite non-Blizz RTS games... so for me .. its great.
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Historically the bullshit started with HOTS. In WOL there was very little niche, extremely specific changes because design was good overall. On the top of my head i can only think about the snipe nerfed with low base damage +X vs psionic, or the ultralisk frenzy. But overall they made "sense". There were "consistent". You can "get" why an ultralisk would be immune to movement-limiting things. You can "get" why snipe deals more damage to casters.
Then came HOTS, with bad designs. Bad designs that needed to be solved with changes that were inconsistent and going against the "general rules". The best exemple is hellbats and medivacs. 2 hellbats per medivacs goes against the base rule that the room units occupy in transport ships is determined by their supply.
Then the devs went further and further with this lazy (yeah, it's laziness) way of doing things, adding +15 dmg vs bio to spores instead of noticing that mutas with a speed buff plus an insane regen buff would dictate a lot of changes not to be gamebreaking.
At the end of the day the new patch has 3 major good ideas (remove MSC, semi-reverse the economy and the disruptor nerf), some half assed decent ideas (cyclone AA upgrade that nowhere good enough, SH movespeed nerf that doesn't address the underlying problems of the units, etc.) and A WHOLE LOT of terrible ones (terrible raven redesign, hysterically bad widow mine nerf, stupid way of buffing the stalker instead of changing the adept, colossus change, etc.)
I just hope they start realizing that changing things to be healthy and fair is more important than changing things to be fun. - revert economy - remove MSC - slightly buff the stalker damage to 12/14 and removing the adept shade but increase its shields a lot - have a 150/150 upgrade that give cyclone AA a moderate boost (and not a ridiculously low one) - buff the infested terran the way they want to - nerf the disruptor the way they want to
That would be awesome and the rest can be discussed.
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Let's be careful that stating this patch overcomplicates things. Removing things like the MSC simplifies things. Also the Widow Mine isn't anymore complicated than it was before for the player to control, and it is easier to counter. That overall is a simplification.
And while I do agree about ability overload talked about the shoehorning of strategy here... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2/525868-saving-sc2-the-removal-of-power-without-gameplay
Photon Overcharge was so powerful at halting early aggression that it became part of the equation that led the early game at a high level to become dull and stale. It pigeon holed defensive strategy for Protoss, removing the flexibility of being able to use the same units for defense as offense, and gave free expansions which increased the pace of the game.
Blizzard then tried to add excitement to the early game with new “harass” units, made specifically for killing workers. Again, the problem with this approach is that it pigeon holed strategy: nothing outside of a small number of specific harass plays were effective early at a high level. And once defending those early harass strategies was figured out, the game got stale again. Precisely carving out a role for units and abilities is lazy game design that does not encourage strategy, innovation, or mastery. ...this patch seems like the first step in the other direction to me. Less complication, less ability overload, and it should really open things up when versatile units like the Stalker get a buff and simplify the game (less shoehorning).
This is the first patch I've seen that actually makes sense from a game design perspective and is literally 90% of what I've been clamoring for.
I can't wait.
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On August 19 2017 04:02 Excalibur_Z wrote: Reavers have an artificial cooldown when dropping from Shuttles in BW too. The Disruptor/Warp Prism interaction is no different and isn't something to get worked up about.
The history of Starcraft 2 is one of chasing balance numbers. Certain strategies were not in line with others or had no counterplay for same-skill opponents, so they were changed. That's why we have a lot of seemingly weird exceptions and one-offs like Massive units being able to destroy Force Fields (and Ravager Corrosive Bile too), Ultralisks gaining a hidden Frenzy modifier that makes them immune to Neural Parasite, Massive units being immune to Concussive Shells, and so on. "Massive units cannot be slowed" sounds like an overarching rule change, until you realize that Concussive Shells are the only thing in the game that slows and they only attack ground units, and Ultralisks were the main target of that change (it had only a minor impact on the Thor matchup and moderate impact on the Colossus matchup). All of that makes the numbers look good on paper, but the per-unit interactions require a lot to keep in mind.
The other side of it is the balance team (especially David Kim) really liked the idea of out-controlling your opponent. In BW, this was simple stuff like Patrol micro or Muta stacking or worker drilling. In SC2, now that everything moves more fluidly, they had to apply a bunch of differentiators to nearly every unit in the game. Vikings have an air-ground transformation and you can use that to dodge threats. Hellions have a Hellbat transformation and you can use that to suit your tanking or close-quarters AoE needs. Reapers have a bomb that you can use to displace enemies and score more kills. Almost everything in the game does a little extra something unique to itself that lets you outplay the opponent. In BW it was much more sweeping. If you can stack Mutas, you can stack Wraiths. If you can moving shot with Wraiths, you can moving shot with Corsairs, Scouts, Vultures, and Mutas. In SC2 you have to learn race-specific, unit-specific strategies and there's very little carryover. Those cases you mentioned are of general rules being applied, even if there is only one unit in the set of things they apply to.
That is different from this disruptor-warp prism interaction. It's not a general rule, it's an ad hoc rule that specifically applies to one unit interaction only. Why doesn't the warp prism put all abilities on a 2 second cooldown? That would be a general rule that isn't so inelegant as this.
An alternative: disruptors have a 2 second cast time (like yamato), and balance around that.
Another alternative: The warp prisms load/unload ability increases the cooldown on all energy costing abilities by 2 seconds (this would be stated on the tooltip), and the HT and sentry gets a passive ability that prevents its abilities from having their cooldowns increased.
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And speaking of inelegant changes, what is this?
"MULEs will now be able to mine Vespene gas at a rate higher than SCV’s but lose efficiency if more than one MULE is assigned per refinery."
Can someone explain? To my knowledge normal workers don't mine like this.
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