IskatuMesk SC2 Beta Coverage

[BahamutZERO]

on special request of BZ, I present to you a tale of swords and souls eternally retold

www.gameproc.com/sc2/SMesk_bzlulz1-muxed.mkv[url=http://]http://[/url][url=http://]http://[/url]

Thanks Isk, you da man

[IskatuMesk]

oh god Q sent me a hilarious 2v2 you guys are gonna love this

[chorale]

where where whereeeee

[IskatuMesk]

needs to be encoded and such, will be a little while.

[AA7Dragoon]

Mesk, after watching so many replies there are a couple questions I have:

1. Why doesn't everyone full mine the gas nodes once they put in an expansion?  Just about every game the player has a gas deficit with 2-3 expansions.  When you look at their bases, they're barely using any of their gas.  Considering how quickly these expansions die in the heat of the game, it makes sense to capitalize on those nodes as quickly as you can to suck all the gas out.  You're going to mine it out eventually so why not all at once so you can use it at critical times?

2. Why doesn't the Zerg research burrow and cock block expansions with one zergling?  I remember doing this in StarCraft 1.  In replays I've seen, the Zerg players like to take Overlords and spread creep all over the expansions; however, isn't it more cost effective and simple to throw out 4 zerglings and burrow every build point on the map?

[IskatuMesk]

1. I have no idea. First thing I do when I expand is grab gas usually, you see that in my FFA's because I'm always struggling for gas no matter what race I'm playing. I guess they're still stuck in the sc1 mindset.

2.) Burrow is pretty expensive now, overlord jizz doesn't need a research, only lair, and overlord speed is 50/50 which you're gonna get anyway. But I hear that people still do that a fair bit, I just don't see it for some reason.

[Lavarinth]

I agree that gas is a greater necessity in SC2. Not having played SC1 in a serious manner of us late led me to easily adopt to SC2's gas heavy mechanics, I always get them asap since in the end, I'm short on gas anyway.

Also, burrow may be expensive, and probably not as useful on 1v1, but I always get it in any other gameplay.

[IskatuMesk]

Due to disinterest in sc2 my coverage is now largely discontinued except for sporadic replay uploads. I will probably play again when 3v3/4v4 comes out but not before then.

My presence in the community overall is going to diminish as I had said it would when my coverage was discontinued. As of right now I'm not sure I even want to do podcasts anymore. I have no energy left.

[IskatuMesk]

Browder: He Who Fails at Game Design, the Easiest Thing Ever

It's a wonder how so many big-name developers like EA, GPG and Relic remain completely and blissfully terrible at designing RTS games, despite having a fundamental foundation as strong and infallible as Starcraft. Having pioneered professional gaming and remains to date the most played RTS in the world, with recent tournaments like the TSL boasting prize pools up to 20k USD, it's hard to imagine anyone making horrendous errors in making new games when you have such a stalwart example to go by. And, as we all know, few companies in the history of gaming have ever attempted to be original, so what's the problem?

People are idiots.

Idiots get into power because everyone else is, see above, also an idiot.

An RTS is not hard to design if you have any basic understanding of gaming. But none of the companies mentioned above have any understanding of gaming. Dawn of War is a total disaster, supreme commander has a microscopic skill ceiling and a community who whines that being able to dance your commander introduces too much micro into the game and you should be able to play with 20apm and have the game automate battles for you, and C&C... has always been epic fail.

Starcraft 2 is destined to follow this path unless dramatic change takes place. Dramatic change that, so far, Browder has been unwilling to make, despite his PR and boasts.

Right now, Starcraft 2's gameplay is a shallow counter-based disaster. The blame for this can be placed on three units in particular;

Immortals
Marauders
Roaches

A recent post on TL directed much of the hate for this stale metagame on Roaches. The logic is that the existence of Roaches demands the existence of Immortals and Marauders, which is pretty much what I said on the podcast a few times.

Roaches cost 1 supply, 75 minerals, and 25 gas. The same as a sc1 hydra. They do 22 damage when fully upgraded at a range, have a speed upgrade, 145 health, 2 armor without upgrades, and can be upgraded to heal faster and move underground.

Roaches are fucking stupid. But they are armored...

Marauders do 10+10 damage, have 125 life (!!!!!!!), can be healed, can stim, and slow their targets. Marauders annihilate roaches. They cost 2 supply. Marauders are an attack-move unit that can kill pretty much anything in the game. They utterly annihilate Utralisks, who have had their base damage reduced from sc1, they are moderately effective against Hydras since their nerf, and protoss need Immortals or Colossi to effectively kill them - if they don't have dropships. Terrans commonly spam M&M&M for two reasons;

Marauders are insanely overpowered.
Metal costs even more supply (3 for Orcas, 3 for tanks?!)

Let's consider Terran's options for a moment.

Bionic

Without a doubt the most effective way to play terran is to spam M&M&M and attack-move. If things get dicey, you can kite extremely easily with marauders and stim and kill most units in the game without too much effort. Ghosts compliment your army against toss and instantly shut down any high templar he has unless he's really quick on feedback.

Metal

Hellions are useless outside killing workers, something they can't do very well without a 150/150 upgrade. Vultures are useful off the bat, costing 25 less minerals, and can get mines that makes them effective against nearly any unit and adds a ton of tactical and positional value. Vultures are integral to Terran metal play in sc1, while in sc2 Hellions are just an afterthought or used as a rush opening that translates into either Orcas or back into bionic. It very rarely does any damage since the upgrade is so expensive to get, but is necessary for Hellions to do vulture-level damage.

Tanks cost 3 supply. wat

Thors got nerfed vs everything but Mutas, which they effectively hard counter now even more than before. Otherwise, they aren't effective against much besides small numbers of units because of their slow attack speed. They are useful for cockblocking dudes. They're also 300/200/6 or something.

Banshees cost 3 fucking supply and are insanely expensive, limiting them almost exclusively to harassment, just like the Hellion. They are completely cost ineffective for use anywhere else, because they are squishy as fuck and don't do enough damage. By the time you get cloaking, you're behind if you've made a ton of banshees because of their ludicrous gas cost.

You can't effectively go metal against anything. You can try, and tanks do do a lot of damage, but nothing in metal is cost effective. Vikings are stomped by anything on the ground, so they don't really count.

Fixes

Tanks need to cost 2 supply, marauders 1 supply, banshees 2, Thors 3-4. Thors need armor, Marauders need their health halved at the very least and cost reduced and their attack changed. There needs to be something interesting about them. Because they are amongst the most boring units in the entire game. There's nothing noteworthy about Marauders or Marauder play. It's the same stupid shit every time. They add nothing to the game.

Marauders exist because Roaches exist. Roaches are not inheritly overpowered, because Marauders are overpowered. Thus, this balances out Roaches (to a degree, Metal is still fucked vs zerg without Ravens), but makes Marauders effective against everything else as well because herp a derp derp they're overpowered.

Hellions need to be more useful, as do Banshees. They need to become a core part of Terran gameplay and be cost effective as well as useful outside of harassment. Hellions need mines or something to make them effective without changing their attack or damage type. Banshees just need to cost a lot less or be more durable or something. 3 supply is ludicrous and needs to be fixed.

Terran units cost too much supply and overall Terran armies are extremely small. They play too similar to Protoss because M&M&M is too strong. Positional value is totally gone and every game degrades to attack-moves into each other's army with a few EMP's thrown around. Boring as fuck to watch, boring as fuck to play.

Protoss

I hate the Colossus. I hate it with all my heart. But Browder is so attached to having a unit from C&C3 that he most certainly is not going to remove it. The Colossus takes away a ton of gameplay value from the protoss and adds nothing in return. The Protoss suffered a huge blow from the loss of the Reaver, a key mechanical unit that played an important role in every matchup and added an extra level of excitement and skill possibilities. The colossus attack-moves and walks up and down cliffs. Yay.

But the Colossus is not the key problem with the protoss. Overall, the Protoss are most complete race so far, but their options are very limited. Storm got nerfed for some unknown reason, making Templar tech even more useless. Somehow, Browder felt that because WoW players can't defend against a 10 minute DT rush that DT's should be made even more expensive and thus even more useless.

Templar tech obviously needs something, but it's the Protoss air force that is seriously fucked up.

Carriers are awesome, but they're also apeshit expensive. Void Rays, on the other hand, are apeshit expensive and virtually useless except against BC's or buildings or queens. Their base damage is paltry, their bonus damage is not effective by upgrades, and they are very expensive. Phoenixes are useful against Banshees and Mutalisks early on, but the latter easily overwhelms them when numbers stack up due to splash.

I've seen a few games with very strong Phoenix play, but in all instances the Zerg player could get a spore colony and totally shut down the Phoenixes and then take the game. Phoenixes are only strong when the opposing player is a clueless idiot. Otherwise they are a total waste of money except for very, very rare circumstances where you can use gravity lift to pick off casters. Killing queens is cost ineffective - Yes, they cost 150 minerals, but the Zerg isn't spending 250 gas to get a second queen (Phoenix + Stargate) nor is he losing time and tech investment by doing so. For 75+75 he can totally shut down your phoenix harass and you, sir, are dead. Almost all zerg go into fast lair now as well, which means hydras. Which means early air is not really viable anymore.

Protoss are more tricky to troubleshoot than Terrans. Stalkers got nerfed vs armored units and slightly buffed vs light units, but they're still ineffective (and not supposed to be) core units. Zealots get trashed by almost everything in the game except for lings because lings do significantly less DPS in sc2 than in sc1, while HP values have sky rocketed.

Almost all toss open with fast robo. From there on, you can get the observer to scout a wall, or the immortal, or go for fast colossi. That is the ideal tech decision. Sometimes protoss will go toss and very rarely will they win, but that was pre-nerf. Fast robo is the smarter and more cost effective decision.

Protoss are effectively screwed if they choose the other two of their tech options. Unlike Terran or Zerg, they need to tech, and if they make the wrong decision they are punished severely by massive hard counters (EMP, Roaches, Hydras). All protoss are thus inclined to make Colossi which are insanely strong, or Immortals to act as ludicrous hard counters.

While Carriers are still great units, they are too expensive to consider in the grand scheme of things. I love early Carriers but most people are too stupid to tech past tier 2 in a 40 minute game. Seriously, watch pro games - people never fucking tech, ever. It's always M&M&M, it's always Colossi or Templar, it's always roach/hydra/infestor and sometimes mustaches.

There is no diversity in the game.

A part of this problem largely lays on the Zerg lacking a second caster and several combat units, making them totally reliant on Roach/Hydra and sometimes Banelings. Zerg will sometimes open fast muta, but people have adapted to that and static D got its needed buffs. Zerg will almost always go into Roach/Hydra/Infestor no matter their opening. But at the same time, they don't have much choice.

Mustaches got nerfed in the wrong location, and they're very easy to counter. They also cost 4 supply and a ton of money into hive and greater spire.

Corrupters are practically useless as AA except vs carriers and bcs. They have a hard time killing Colossi despite Colossi being massive - you need a lot of Corrupters, which means you need a lot of gas, which means you die.

Banelings are great vs marines and Zealots. Cost ineffective late-game. They did get a buff, but it was minor in the grand scheme of things.

Ultras are practically useless. Yes, they do a lot of damage with cleave, but they are armored, so they take 50 damage from unupgraded Immortals, 20 from Marauders, who have 125 health, and are still expensive as shit, and their base damage is less than SC2. They are in dire need of more base damage.

And... that's it. Tier 3 is Mustaches or Ultralisks. No Defiler, no Devourers... that's it. Most zerg only get hive for upgrades and that's it.

People whine about sc2 being too much like sc1 if they add lurkers blah blah well you know what fuck you, the zerg need lurkers and a tier 3 caster, and the Overseer needs to do something besides just spawn changelings. Roaches need to be halved in health and had their damage reduced and maybe given back some of their base regen they had in alpha so they are actually unique and have character. Then you can nerf the Immortal and Marauder and bring back harmony to the universe. Then, whoa, Ultras become viable, Tanks don't die instantly, you have other options!

The problem is of course that Browder is a C&C designer. He was raised on the concept of hard counters and hasn't realized that the reason the C&C games were all failures and died out without any professional scenes is because their gameplay was wretched. The only reason SC2 has anything right now is solely because of the Blizzard logo. If another company was making a game it'd receive no more attention than RA2.

It's not fucking hard to design a RTS in a way that makes it dynamic and interesting to play, but only if you have a shred of common sense and can think clearly. The desire to out-do SC1 and make everything Faster, More Intense! has backfired gloriously. Numbers are fucking flying everywhere just like d2 LOD, just like Wow Lick King, just like every other game that tries to out-do itself and runs into clusterfucks with opposing extremes of circumstancial and relative attributes.

The buff to static D was a step in the right direction but I feel that as a whole, Browder has no idea how to balance the game. I was hoping Blizzard would listen more to the community, but for now, Marauders and Roaches remain virtually untouched, and it seems unlikely they will tone down Immortals. Perhaps they are uncertain how to approach this situation, in which case I'd suggest a total overhaul of the unit stats. That sounds like a ton of work, but it really isn't if you know what you're doing. Once you have a strong understanding of the game you can safely do some massive stat reductions and overhauls and still keep things in the general gist of what you want. Besides, this is fucking beta - that's what a beta's for, is to make dramatic changes before release.

SC2 needs a ton of dramatic changes to even begin to approach SC1. The fact that I of all people can compete at a platinum level is pathetic and a testimony to how easy it is to play the game once you know the counters. The gameplay is shallow and the metagame is already stale. To this day, sc1 evolves.

Yes, it took a long time for SC1 to reach that pinnacle. But sc1 wasn't built with hugely fundamental flaws, sc1 wasn't built to try to out-do a prequel. Browder is trying too hard to make sc2 more bombastic and the game is suffering heavily from the d2 curse of too many numbers.

I have no desire to ever play this game in melee again until it undergoes a significant overhaul, something I hope Blizzard considers before release.

[Xenon]

Sometimes protoss will go toss

That rhymes, and you know it rhymes! I'm guessing you meant Templar?

Anyway, nice read. Let's hope they actually pay attention. What I'm worried about is that they might be reluctant to make major changes because that could require reworking some of the campaign missions they've already completed.

[IskatuMesk]

Yeah I meant Templar. I do that a lot.

Campaign data is totally independent of the MP data so that's no excuse.

[Xenon]

Yeah, but sometimes they use the campaign missions to show the roles of the various units (like showing off the Corsair's disruption web in that one BW mission). I guess that staying close to the multiplayer isn't foremost in their priorities this time, considering firebats, wraiths, and all sorts of weird upgrades are in the campaign anyway.

Hmm... go toss... maybe "space goat paladins" could be "Goatoss"... mumble mumble... 

[IskatuMesk]

No, they're using the missions/tutorials to do that from what I hear.

Missions as in the challenge thingy.

[chorale]

Making a game is a complex thing for those who may think " i know better than all other". Having work myself in the industrie for Ubisoft, i can tell.

However it is also true that the most difficult thing in making any game is to fine tuning it so that the maximum of thing will be working perfectly and equilibred in a fair way. However making a game perfect is impossible and it is bound to have bug when it will be released.

I am a super fan of starcraft 1 and cannot wait for Sc2. but i am also a fan of C&C and all RTS in general, C&C and blizzard game being only a small part of the game i play in RTS style.

Through i agree with some of what Mesk is saying, i also don't agree to burn in flame sc2. and i don't care who is coming from another game or whatever.

Blizzard is betting HUGE on this game cause all the gamer who knew/know Sc1 will have big expectation. You have to trust blizzard to not waste this because it will hurt them so much that they cannot fail. I am NOT expecting a perfect game when they will release it, but i DO expect plenty of patch to balance thing even further.

When i worked at ubisoft, we could spend at least a FULL year just calibrating the game, Before and after it's release. The only mistake Blizzard did was to announce the game too early, now they are forced to release it even it is not perfect, but you know, that's the beauty of game on PC. you can patch them.

I don't know about overpowered stuff and i have to believe Mesk on that, but what i am saying is that we must not judge too early.

[UntamedLoli]

I can look at TL for 5 minutes and already find evidence of the retarded shit going on with SC2.

On March 16 2010 06:23 Razamataz wrote:
If this has been answered before I am sorry, but does anyone know why the lurker was removed? I heard it was because "no one was using them" but that does not seem like much of a reason. Anyone have more concrete insight?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



That's the reason.

For some reason they made lurkers T3 (but gave them siege tank range) and for some reason were surprised when every one chose Broodlords or ultralisks instead of lurkers. They've talked about "working" on lurkers (and another unit that was removed, but I can't recall what it was) and putting them back into the game once they've been polished a little.

Zerg are really missing out on lurkers, scourge, and defilers though.

Really? how do you not figure out that a superior unit in the same tier as a weaker one that everyone will use the stronger unit.

EDIT: lol, Planetary Fortress does 1.5x its damage to its minimum radius instead of 1x and the Seeker Missile's minimum radius overlaps the medium radius.