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    Starcraft Need a light?

    July 06, 2020

    Starcraft Need a light?

    Need a light?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:12 PM PDT

    Every. Single. Time.

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 09:27 PM PDT

    Terran openers

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:59 PM PDT

    Such creativity at Dreamhack.

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:32 AM PDT

    Concrete has dried, any ideas for paint design?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 04:26 PM PDT

    Never trust a random

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 03:59 AM PDT

    Sen and his Wife have birthed their first child!

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:56 PM PDT

    Dreamhack 2020 Europe playoffs!

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:07 PM PDT

    Starcraft |BroodWar-Test001 by altjunior on DeviantArt

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 11:28 PM PDT

    The first ever edition of the monthly balance report is here

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:01 AM PDT

    [Old school] Parting's Sunchips ceremony after beating TY

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 12:37 PM PDT

    Map Makers, if you could make a map for only one matchup, what would you do differently and why?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:45 AM PDT

    Like if you could make a map where it would only ever be ZvT,ZvZ,PvZ,TvP, etc. What extra map features/designs would you include that would be super cool for that one match up but break the others so we never see them?

    submitted by /u/nocomment_95
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    Would you play a StarCraft rpg that was like World of Warcraft?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 02:55 PM PDT

    I haven't played any hardcore rpg games for over 8 years, but I always thought if they made a StarCraft rpg (like WOW) I would instantly be re-addicted.

    submitted by /u/TeKmInIbI
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    Painted with concrete

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 03:33 AM PDT

    ByuN and Maru: Spiritual Brothers of Starcraft

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:09 AM PDT

    What is the easiest race to learn the fundamentals of the game for Brood war?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 10:42 PM PDT

    Silky rushing & then dropping lurkers

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 05:25 AM PDT

    Would nerfing Warp Gate help fix Protoss?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 11:21 AM PDT

    TL;DR

    This post explores the idea that part of the problem with Protoss is that Warp Gate significantly mitigates defender's advantage, and that this makes Protoss difficult to balance in ways leading to very swingy play and some of the ongoing problems in Protoss matchups. I lay out the reasoning behind this argument and suggest two possible responses, including significantly increasing warp-in cooldown or moving Warp Gate up the Protoss tech tree.

    EDIT: I guess I was unclear. My overall argument is that Warp Gate is so strong that the rest of Protoss has to be weaker to compensate, making Protoss unstable and, currently, probably underpowered. The hope is that nerfing Warp Gate would open up room for other buffs without making Protoss OP.

    I don't think that any of these ideas are new, but I don't think I've seen them laid out together before. This is an exploratory write-up, not a certain declaration, and I happily invite disagreement, critique, and discussion.

    What's going on?

    Nobody needs me to tell them that there's something wrong with Protoss. PvP has been a, er, clown fiesta ever since the removal of the Mothership Core, and top Protosses consistently struggle against Zerg lategame. Moreover, Protoss seem to have difficulty winning major tournaments, and their deepest runs often come on the backs of gimmick builds (e.g. Zest at Katowice 2020). In recent months, even traditionally macro-focused Protosses like Stats and Trap have seemed to feel that mid-game all-ins are their best chance in PvP and PvZ. This leads to uninteresting games, and, recently, Protoss underperformance.

    Simultaneously, Protoss has over Starcraft 2's lifespan been more reviled in the community than have Zerg and Terran, and there have been many periods and instances where powerful Protoss timing attacks have seemed unstoppable. It sometimes seems that, regardless of Protoss's ultimate performance, the faction feels overpowered to play against.

    These phenomena no doubt have many causes. RTS meta is very complex, as is public perception thereof. I am willing to argue, however, that the design of Protoss makes it a very "swingy" faction, both in-game and in the meta. In individual matches, Protoss have access to many strategies that either win hard or lose hard based on build order picks and deception, while having fewer competitive "middle of the road" options to fight opponents toe-to-toe. In balance, this swinginess makes it very easy to make Protoss too powerful or too weak relative to other factions. In turn, I believe that Warp Gate may be a significant contributor to this swinginess due to its immense power.

    I will, for the purposes of this argument, be rejecting out of hand the idea that Protoss have weird or bad games because professional Protoss players are just worse than those of other factions. This seems to me on the face implausible—why should one-third of Starcraft pros, who practice just as hard as their compatriots, simply be worse players? Second, it is not the sort of claim that can be empirically proven or disproven, given that 1) the main measure of skill, i.e. results, is significantly affected by faction design and balance; 2) other quantitative measures of skill, including APM, floated minerals, and supply blocks, fail to capture much of the decision-making, map awareness, and multitasking components of skill, i.e., the important ones; and 3) player and audience perception is a fuzzy and ambiguous way to measure the latter. Third, even if professional Protosses were as a group worse than players of other factions, it would still be unhealthy for the competitive scene for Protoss to be unviable; and we would also need to consider why Protoss players tended to be worse, whether because the design of the faction is not conducive to development of important skills or because it is unattractive to talented players. In short, I do not think that whether professional Protoss players possess equal skill to professional Zerg and Terran players is a useful question for purposes of game balance and design, and I furthermore see no reason to presume that they don't.

    Warp Gate, Defender's Advantage, and the Distribution of Protoss Power

    RTS gameplay tends to adhere to a few essential norms. The player who can build a bigger economy has a production advantage. Powerful units are slow and clunky, and weaker units are fast and maneuverable. A defender has an advantage over an aggressor due to easier reinforcement and static defense. Defender's advantage is very important for producing longer, interesting games, for incentivizing and rewarding investment in economic development at the expense of immediate army power, and for making the game feel fair. Warp Gate significantly mitigates defender's advantage by allowing the Protoss player to reinforce with Gateway units across the map, with predictable effects.

    By mitigating defender's advantage, Warp Gate significantly improves the power and sustainability of Protoss attacks. A Protoss player can continually reinforce on their opponent's side of the map, with no travel time offering the opponent a local production advantage or the opportunity to intercept reinforcements. On its face, this means that a successful Protoss attack with Warp Prism is likely to deal more damage than a successful Zerg or Terran attack of similar starting magnitude. This not only feels bad to play against as Zerg or Terran, but incentivizes Protoss players toward aggression.

    In order to compensate for the strength of Warp Gate, Gateway units must be made weaker. As Gateway is the first tier of Protoss tech, this means that basic Protoss units cannot generally compete in a head-to-head fight against similarly costed basic Terran or Zerg units. The importance of Warp Gate can be felt in the importance of the Warp Prism, and the fact that a Protoss push is generally over if it is killed. The weakness of Gateway units means that T1 Protoss aggression must take advantage of Warp Gate and/or some form of mind-games or strategic or tactical gambling to succeed.

    Gateway units' relative weakness has important effects throughout the game. First and most obviously, it means that many Gateway units scale poorly. Marines, Marauders, Zerglings, and Banelings remain powerful fighting units into lategame. Zealots, Stalkers, Adepts, and even Sentries, less so. Second, it means that higher-tech Protoss units must be correspondingly stronger, and that Protoss must rely more heavily on tech units. Immortals, Disruptors, and Psi Storm, for example, might not need to be so powerful if they weren't picking up the slack for the Gateway. But such powerful units and abilities don't feel great to play against, and must have weaknesses to compensate for their strengths. Many Protoss tech units—e.g. Dark Templar, Disruptors, Oracles, and Colossi—are conditionally very powerful, capable of dealing immense damage or doing very little with limited middle ground. Even Immortals, with their large bonus vs. Armored, may fall into this category. I don't think that this design can be fully explained by the weakness of Gateway tech, but I think that it's a factor.

    The strength of Protoss tech units, combined with the structure of the Protoss tech tree, also incentivizes gimmick tech rushes. The power of midgame Protoss tech units may even mean that endgame Protoss units, including the Carrier, Tempest, and Mothership, must be less powerful to avoid making Protoss endgame too strong.

    PvP Consequences

    Warp Gate affects PvP in two important ways. First, its significant mitigation of defender's advantage destabilizes the match-up, as illustrated by the rise in proxy play and rushes after the removal of the Mothership Core; and the recent attempt to bolt on a more artificial defender's advantage via Battery Overcharge. Second, the relative weakness of Gateway units relative to Protoss tech units makes tech rushes disproportionately powerful. These factors make early aggression more likely to kill in PvP, contributing significantly to the proxy-ridden hellscape that this matchup has become.

    I'm not sure how Adepts fit into this, or whether they're just another factor. It seems to some extent that the swingy nature of Protoss play comes more broadly from the faction's being given lots of cool abilities which have to be made only conditionally powerful if they're not to be overpowered.

    PvZ Consequences

    I'm not sure how to trace out the effects of Warp Gate in PvZ. Certainly it makes mid-game Protoss pushes more powerful, which may sometimes help to mask or displace problems with PvZ lategame (see, again, Zest at Katowice 2020). The relative weakness of Gateway units may constrain Protoss answers to Zerg lategame compositions and reduce the power of lategame Protoss harassment. Last, again, the importance and strength of T2 Protoss units may contribute to the weakness of Protoss T3, though this is extremely speculative. There are other factors at play here, including the nature of Zerg production, map awareness using creep and Overlords, and the design of specific units.

    What can be done?

    Based on the arguments I've laid, out, I find it plausible that the present implementation of Warp Gate is a significant contributor to the volatility of PvP, the importance of mid-game all-ins in PvZ, and the overall swinginess and gimmick-orientation of Protoss as a faction. Based on the present state of these matchups, I think that Protoss could do with more solid macro-oriented options and fewer gimmicks. It seems to me that it will be difficult to design and balance these without significantly nerfing Warp Gate, and thus changing the overall design of Protoss.

    I do not want to suggest that Warp Gate be removed entirely. This would require an even more immense redesign of the faction; and Warp Gate can in principle be an interesting ability and lead to interesting play. I would like to explore two possible nerfs to Warp Gate, both of which would open up space to move more of the Protoss army's strength into Gateway units (and potentially out of T2 tech units).

    First, the cooldown of Warp Gates could be significantly increased. At present, Warp Gate cooldown is tuned to make Warp Gates more productive than ordinary Gateways. If this relationship were altered—say, if warping in a Stalker began a cooldown of twice the Gateway build time of a Stalker—use of Warp Gates would be a production sacrifice. Full production using Warp Gates would require more Gateways than full production without it. A longer-cooldown Warp Gate would do less to mitigate defender's advantage, while still permitting Warp-Gate-based gambits and late-game Warp Prism harassment.

    Second, Warp Gate could be moved up the Protoss tech tree, perhaps placed on the Twilight Council. The upgrade could be gated behind existence of a Templar Archives or Dark Shrine, or given a high cost in resources, time, or both. This may seem a little extreme, but it would make Warp Gate more of a mid-to-late-game power spike than a central part of all Protoss strategy. This would again leave open the possibility of lategame Warp Gate usage while leaving space to improve the power of Gateway units.

    I think that's all I wanted to say. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about anyway. Lemme know what you think!

    submitted by /u/Komoini
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    Something tells me this ain't right

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 02:25 PM PDT

    What's a good mouse for Starcraft?

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 09:13 PM PDT

    I remember someone recommended a Logitec mouse, but I can't remember the model if my life depended on it

    submitted by /u/Yossi25
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    ESL Open Cup #26 Asia is live!

    Posted: 06 Jul 2020 02:02 AM PDT

    Keep in mind this guy lost to someone with a 31% win rate PvT..........so I'm not going to say he's wrong

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:00 AM PDT

    Returning player, coming back after a 9 year break. Whats new

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:28 PM PDT

    Hey everyone, title is basically what I'm asking. When I used to play I would win purely out of game knowledge and counters due to my basically non-existent mechanics. So, what major things have happened. I heard that in terms of Zerg vs. Protoss, zerg is no longer the favored side in 1v1s.

    submitted by /u/auspexuser
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    Wings of Liberty Main Theme

    Posted: 05 Jul 2020 08:42 AM PDT
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