StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[WB]

So essentially you give up nothing but resources to spam nukes now when previously you gave up ComSat and supply for a nuke, if you really think reavers were too slow you don't know how to use them.

The tradeoff for a nuke wasn't worth it back then, its a really cool mechanic and im glad they're encouraging its use. Again, the only reason it was THAT effective is because the protoss player never dealt with it, for which he had no excuse (theres what, 2 spots the ghost uses? observer them both. One phoenix would have solved his problem (use the gravity thingy on the ghost).

I'm not saying Reavers "were" too slow, I'm saying concerning Starcraft 2:

I love the reaver, but it really has no place in SC2. The game moves a lot faster and reavers are too goddamn slow to be of any use.

Please read my posts before you let nostalgia bloodlust you, ok? For fucks sake my username is the Protoss Reaver hero, I don't hate the reaver.

[Mucky]

if you really think reavers were too slow you don't know how to use them.

Let's face it, if you need to use a Shuttle to make Reavers useful, that is a pretty huge failure from a design standpoint.

Stupid argument. Unprotected tanks and lurkers fail similarly. Just because a unit can't do everything on its own doesn't mean it was designed poorly.

The REAL reason why the reaver fails is because of horrendous scarab AI that causes them to dud frequently when you try to shoot a cluster of SCVs. Another reason is that each scarab counts as a unit on the map (just like an interceptor), which means in big games even a dozen reavers will max the map out quickly.

[UntamedLoli]

Lol nostalgia, I'll be suprised enough if anything top tier gets used in real gameplay in SC2 or there will still be completely pointless to build units.

[IskatuMesk]

I love the reaver, but it really has no place in SC2. The game moves a lot faster and reavers are too goddamn slow to be of any use. Colossi are much more effective anyway.

Man, I've seen some pretty horrible logic come out of you but this one takes the cake.

In fact, your whole post is a disaster.

[WB]

I love the reaver, but it really has no place in SC2. The game moves a lot faster and reavers are too goddamn slow to be of any use. Colossi are much more effective anyway.

Man, I've seen some pretty horrible logic come out of you but this one takes the cake.

In fact, your whole post is a disaster.

And your posts are as terrible and empty as always.

[IskatuMesk]

I love the reaver, but it really has no place in SC2. The game moves a lot faster and reavers are too goddamn slow to be of any use. Colossi are much more effective anyway.

Man, I've seen some pretty horrible logic come out of you but this one takes the cake.

In fact, your whole post is a disaster.

And your posts are as terrible and empty as always.

A stinging comeback! Oh, my heart's all aflutter.

Try harder buddy, maybe someday someone will take you seriously.

I always thought reavers were there so people in impossible maps could kill each other.

Reavers are one of the most pivotal units in the Protoss arsenal. Especially in PvP, next to Arbiters. Good reaver control makes or breaks a protoss player.

The reaver is special because it's High Risk High Reward. It requires a considerable amount of skill to handle the reaver/shuttle combo and of course, as mucky said, you have the scarab dud problem which is because they are ground units.

Another unit that falls into high risk high reward is the Spider Mine. But the Reaver is the best example of providing strategic and tactical depth using synergy (Shuttle) and giving the player considerable power (A reaver can decimate a player's economy in a single hit) but with a considerable risk involved (Yes, the reaver is slow, that's the entire point hur hurr derp).

The colossus is more effective, yes. That's why it's a terrible unit. It's too effective. It takes no skill to use. Placing your reaver, shooting at the right target from the right angle, avoiding letting your shuttle get raped, it's all part of the game. The colossus, well, you just walk up and watch it kill everything. It's a boring unit to watch and to use. It's like, giving your batter too much sugar ruins the flavor. The Colossus is too powerful and because it replaces the Reaver's role, which was a High Risk High Reward unit, you are taking something away from the protoss gameplay and replacing it with something unintuitive and very stale. Most people who see the Colossus will go "Oh hey, a giant robot!" and give no further thought to it because there is nothing impressive about the gameplay elements it brings to the table.

In order to achieve that amazing spectator sport that Blizzard wants so badly, they need units like the Reaver. It's not about nostalgia; I couldn't care less if the keep the reaver in its current incarnation or not. I didn't cry when they axed the wraith or even my beloved devourer and defiler. But I do care about what the new units do to the metagame and to the overall prose of the races. And from my eyes, the Colossus adds nothing but takes away a lot.

[WB]

A much better argument for it, well done.

I completely agree that the colossus they had at blizzcon is way too damn overpowered and because of this its very boring, but I'll have to disagree with the risk/reward. Colossi is the most vulnerable unit in the game, EVERYTHING in the game can shoot it, it isn't very fast, its a very high tier unit, it costs a lot of money, and it takes forever to build. It is risky to even get one, it is risky to put it out in the field because it is the most vulnerable unit in the game. Its a different kind of risk, and I don't think its a better risk than the kind you have to deal with Reavers. I love Reavers, seeing them in action is usually a high point in a game, I just don't think it would work out in SC2. I'd rather them make the colossus more compelling than change the reaver because then I don't think it will provide the same kind of high points as it did in SC2.

They can fix the colossus, and we've seen some variations of it from the screenshots (we've seen like 4 different beam types goddammit).

I personally think the first version we saw when they announced the game has been the coolest, because it involved direct player action to maximize damage, so a good player would make it more affective than just attack-moving it like its current form.

[IskatuMesk]

I agree that the first version was the best. It seems that after that they tried to compensate for the loss of the reaver's ability to gib worker lines by giving the colossus an instant line attack.

In most games I've seen of sc2, the colossus pretty much decimates most units it comes across. The only thing I've seen really stand toe-to-toe with them is the Thor, but that's probably because very few people have used air units. I am sure that beta will see a lot of changes to both the Colossus and the Thor.

[Negi]

My problem with the colossus is:
The reaver was really the only protoss unit in sc1 with an attack that really "fucked shit up".  It was a heavy artillery unit and fulfilled that role pretty excellently (modulo software bugs).  The question is: Why did the entire protoss mechanical unit lineup just disappear into thin air?  

Let's see:
Dragoon - no
Reaver - no
Shuttle - no
Observer - yes
Scout - no
Carrier - yes
Arbiter - no
Corsair - no

That is, all protoss technology, save the carrier and observer, is gone.  

So what's the new lineup for these units?
Dragoon - Kind of covered by Stalker and Immortal, but each of these units has fixed hard counters, making them unsuitable for as general purposes as the dragoon.

Reaver - Colossus and Warp Ray?  The Colossus is great against small shitty units but fails against buildings and the like, for which you use warp rays.  I think that a single good unit has been split into several subpar units in this case.

Scout - The only ship covering this role is the phoenix, so the corsair and scout have been effectively merged.  However, the new unit doesn't have the splash of the corsair or the overall usefulness of the scout.  

Shuttle - Doesn't matter, troop transport

Arbiter- Removed, and its abilities spread between phase prism and mothership: that is, the arbiter has been replaced by a unit with no attack and the slowest unit in the game.

Corsair - Phoenix is clearly shittier as an AA unit than the corsair.  The corsair would rock the phoenix's socks.  

One shouldn't fix what isn't broken.  Expand the number of units in the race, think very carefully about what made the original game good.  Add new mechanics, try to make the game deeper, but don't change all of the units that your fans have grown so attached to over the past eleven years.  Introduce "upgraded versions" of older units or something.  Perhaps instead of completely replacing the dragoon, allow the player to build a dragoon and then choose to specialize it when necessary, like a guardian or a lurker.  Hard counters also ruin the whole point of the game.  Instead of playing the game and developing an intuitive strategy yourself, you're shoehorned into a rock-paper-scissor match with the winner decided by micro and APM.  That's not interesting, and it's not even fun.

The reason starcraft was such a good game was that balance didn't come at the price of freedom.  There's no single exclusive counter that will immediately turn the tide of battle (excluding firebat vs zergling, etc).  You can usually make do with some kind of esoteric combination of units based on what's available and what you already have.  The units in starcraft fall into very loose classes, and much of the interesting gameplay comes from unit traits that don't fall into strict categories.  See, for example, the carrier and the battlecruiser.  They're both capital-class ships, but they're useful in different situations and don't really share the same counters.  They don't just fall under "heavily-armored capital ships."  There's nuance there that I just don't see in SC2.  

Also, the naming is really absolute shit.  The new protoss units sound like terran units, and the new terran units sound like more new terran units.  

I feel like a lot of people who were instrumental in the creation of SC1 have left blizzard, and blizz has replaced them with cheap substitutes like Dustin Browder. 

[Mucky]

Scout - The only ship covering this role is the phoenix, so the corsair and scout have been effectively merged.  However, the new unit doesn't have the splash of the corsair or the overall uselessness of the scout.

Fixed.

Scouts fucking sucked.

[Rocco]

The only things scouts were good for was their anti-air damage. But, you might as well just save the fucking 300 minerals (?) and 150 gas and fucking use high temps to storm for that cost.

[AA7Dragoon]

Scouts were terrible units, Negi.  What are you talking about?

StarCraft 2 is going to be fine.  We are all going to buy it and love it.  The balance is going to be different, but the play value will remain the same.

[Negi]

Fine, the scout sucked, but I'm not getting excited for SC2 because when I got excited for Only Built For Cuban Linx 2, Eight Diagrams and Blackout 2, they all ended up being pretty shitty compared to the originals.  So if I  assume SC2 will suck, and it ends up being good, I'll be pleasantly surprised.

[IskatuMesk]

I'm actually kind of liking the phoenix/warp ray combo. Gravity lift or whatever could prove to be very hilarious if used right. Overload seems pretty OP at the moment, too, especially against poor zerg who lack scourge to immediately deal with air threats.

Scouts were amazing in the hands of my retarded AI that could scout rush you before you even had an armory up with like 20 scouts.

[WB]

I'm actually kind of liking the phoenix/warp ray combo. Gravity lift or whatever could prove to be very hilarious if used right. Overload seems pretty OP at the moment, too, especially against poor zerg who lack scourge to immediately deal with air threats.

Scouts were amazing in the hands of my retarded AI that could scout rush you before you even had an armory up with like 20 scouts.

Whats overload? I don't think the phoenix has that anymore. Zerg don't have scourge anymore, but queens can shoo away most units early game, then you have hydra/corrupter as your mainstay Anti air, but phoenix if done quick establish complete air dominance for protoss in PvZ since they move so goddamn fast. Its just the corsair with a different name, different ability.

Perhaps Negi, you dont see the nuance because you havent played it?