Current state of metagame.

I think this summery highlights the biggest problem for me with the current balance, everything is about t2. Unless you considerably out play your opponent, the only way to win is getting t2 stuff. If your late at building t2 then its an almost impossible task to come back.

Exactly. And that's a very important point.

I respect the opinion of top players as Matizpl, and I can probably only dream to get one day the same skills set as they do. What ever build you could give to them, they will be able to push to the extreme.

Unfortunately the majority of us isn't minimally close to how top players play the game. In my case, I feel that there is only one way to have a chance, and that's to rush T2.

T2 has an overwhelming economy and T1 is powerless against Nukes, Catapults and units like Vanguards and Shellers. Also T1 air has no chance against its T2 equivalent.

For an average player, who just can't keep the same pace of Matizpl or other excellent players, there is really no alternative. For us T1 is useless 'cos we simply lack the ability to keep scouting as they do and the timing to step up into T2 is really critical for getting it right.

It really is a shame because the game was more enjoyable when it was simpler.

Having some pale defenses at least against Nukes and Catapults in T1 would already help. Also, T2 air could be limited to air support (Air to ground) where T1 is for Air dominance. That way a fleet of T1 fighters wouldn't be invalidated by one single T2 fighter. That would already make the game easier for the average player. Together with a nerf to T2 eco.

So, ultimately I do not agree with Matizpl. The actual state of the game is not optimal and it doesn't go in the right direction.

I think you guys have good points here when you say it's too hard for the weaker players to use everything the game gives you. I've just never seen an RTS where less skilled players ever do anything besides amass one type of unit and throw it at the other base. If someone can solve that problem, they will win the Internet.

I agree very much with this.

I dislike the tech race. It's boring to play.

It also means it's almost impossible to recover from a mistake. Or if your opponent makes one good move and snipes an early fabber, or snipes your first advanced factory, or any number of incredibly small events, and you might as well self destruct your commander.

I had the idea one time, to have weaponized units that auto-target one specific type of other unit, senor units that specifically have a type of senory and range (like vision, radar, etc.), and units with higher healths but no vision or weapon.

Bet you would have to build multiple unit types then.

But yeah, that was a crummy idea mostly. Still useful idea outside of it's own vacuum.

State one RTS were that is no the case. You HAVE to suffer from early losses. Anything else would make not sense.

If you only use t2 you are gonna lose. Hard. Never gonna be able to expand anywhere, falling behind extremely very fast. Not to mention that t2 in itself is not exactly just "one thing", but many things and at the same time fighting with t1 continues in some places that are not yet reached by t2. You need t1 to get early map control which is absolutely mandatory to win the t2 war. Yes t1 could be more important, but it IS used.

This is a result of the player having to build his army himself. It's the most basic thing there is in ALL TA style RTS. If you can make a far bigger army you win 95%. That's it. Nothing is ever gonna change that without massively going in the gameplay direction of Starcraft and even there the best most important thing to be a good player is to be able to build up as fast as possible even under constant harrass.

Strategy and tactics come in the moment 2 players meet who are roughly at the same level of "building skills". That's okay, since we are all humans we roughly end up at the same level of that skill.

This isn't science, but I have an interesting anecdote to add here.

I played a game against Murcanic recently where I bombed almost all of his fabbers early on and then played a pretty standard game from that point on. He managed to come back and harass all of my expansions at once with large t1 forces while keeping my main base pinned down. I couldn't get t2 eco up because he kept me under so much pressure and killed it every time I made some. I ended up losing against an almost entirely t1 force.

Admittedly, Murcanic is just a better player than me and can focus on more things at once. It's possible that my strategy was stronger but my execution was bad enough to lose to something that is considered underpowered, but I think there's more to it than that.

When you're starting a new expansion, you need to start with either a factory, defenses, or resources. If you start with resources, you will get raided as soon as someone like Murcanic scouts you. If you make a factory, you've made something that takes longer to kill and can help build up the expansion faster, but it is undefended and can also be raided. Building turrets first sounds like the safe way to go, but you can't really stay ahead economically if you are making defenses before eco. Even without a patch, we might be headed back to a new meta where t1 gets used more for raiding and defending expansions and around the edges of a base. I suspect that if we had t1 units strong enough to go straight in and kill a main base we would go back to the game we used to have where people complained about how easy rushing was.

I wouldn't use the term weaker. Even if it's so, it is inelegant to depict as utterly inferior the 90 percent (likely higher) of the players. If PA has to sell, it has to speak with the majority of the players, and those do not play as Matizpl or Godde, or anyone in the Top Ten. The average player deserves a game that he can play, 'cos he will pay good money on it. Or he paid already, but we know that once you've paid, you're become irrelevant

Now Uber has no more than three weeks to find a solution. I really hope they will. It should feel like a nightmare.

You are giving to much credit to a title
Also I believe Matiz speaks mostly from expirience with 1vs1 games on small planets

And just because things work out for people that know the game inside out it doesn't mean there are no issues.
The t1 AA bot being more effective then t2 flak for example is not something logical and makes learning the game for new players a steeper curve.
Also I would not be suprised if the T1 aa bot gets a nerf next patch.

Well, I really wanted to use the rest of the t1 unit roster but it seems to be boiled down to just doxes/engineers/ Scouts/bombers/fighters to counter turret play… which isn’t countering but dealing with the circumstances of turrets being prevalent.


T1 should be able to deal with T1 turrets, defenses shouldn't over kill T1 armies, but assist a defender in destroying an invading army.

You mention t1 is not useless, but you only mention 5(fighter/bomber/air scout/dox/fabricator) out of the 5 bots 5 tank 4 air T1 units (14 total units).

I notice you put emphasis on microing units, which is something I wish we didn’t have to worry about because was more macro based and losing 1 or 2 units was no big deal. Turns out it is.

You mention microing units again to counter the Vanguard, again, this is me just nitpicking the meta more than your advise that the way we beat vanguards is to micro armies.

The problem I have with vanguards is that they chew through T1 like its nobodies business, A leveler or sheller will die if encountering T1 in the battle field, but a vanguard will steam roll if two armies collide. No other unit does this.

As much as I want to adapt to the "meta", frankly, it isn't the metagame I would have much enjoyment playing. Again, my opinions are on the "meta" and not on your advice, hopefully the next patch will do something to make T1 not disappear .

Yeah "weaker" was a really impolite way to say it, but the truth is that some players are just better at winning than others. We do have a lot of people waiting on the sidelines for the balance to become something they are happier with before they start to practice really hard, so we're going to have a lot more competitive players soon.

The biggest problem I see with lower levels of play is the failure to expand. I think a lot of the time people just don't know how important it is, so maybe a better tutorial will help the game a lot. It's just going to be hard to make the game fun for people when both players in a game play a base vs. base strategy. It's certainly not optimal, but it doesn't seem to wrong when everybody is doing it.

Maybe we need a whole thread just for brainstorming ways that the game can gently encourage players to expand and fight smaller skirmishes over resources instead of go straight in the front door. Right now it's something you need to do, but the game isn't so gentle about letting you know that. Either nobody does this and the balance seems broken, or someone else does it to you and you just get frustrated.

While I agree with the rest of your post this part I cannot. No metagame? Nukes and T2 are the metagame. Nukes will be getting a direct and an indirect nerf if the current experimental state holds up but T2 will remain dominant in late game.

But the part I really disagree is that there are no unit combos. Spinners and Gil-e are one. So are tanks + combat fabbers, which can significant increase the longevity of your tanks. Peregrines and Kestrels are another. Sunfish and Stingrays. Vanguards and Shellers. There are a lot of unit combos, but units aren't specifically designed around combos, like some of the starcraft units are.

I never said you shouldn't suffer from early losses.

I just think it's dumb that if one of your first 5 fabbers gets destroyed by your first bomber then you've most likely already lost the match.

I know it's possible for players to come back, but it is extremely difficult.

If there is no room for recovery from small mistakes, then the game looses all of its fun for the vast majority of the playerbase. Most players are just for having fun, not for the competitive scene.

Matiz, I agree with all of your points.

Turrets in and of themselves are not OP. Really, in high level competitive play, I've never had to build lots of turrets. My enemies who do find themselves WAY behind, because I'll use the metal he spent on turrets to get an adv radar sat above his base. That doesn't discount the early game - I usually build a few x2 turrets to defend expansions from small dox groups.

But the current price of turrets does not discourage their use early game to defend against t1 units. That is, I would rather have ten engineers building energy behind my base to DEFEND IT with quick towers than anything else. No need to have units on all sides, no need to be watchful, nothing. Just see the blips, put up a wall and some lasers, and those units are toast. All of that takes seconds. It has little effect on their economy in the long run. They spend 1k metal on the walls and the turret, I spend 3k metal on my army of tanks that just got massacred. Which, by the way, I sent into a massive *weakspot.*

The only thing remotely broken about patch is:

Orbital synergy with the rest of the game
Peregrines
-->Flak<--
Nuclear Binary-ness
Turret Prices.

If turret prices are fixed and peregrines were removed, we could release the game and everything would be AWESOME. (except for the unit cannon).

1 engineer dead in 5 is not a "most likely already lost". You really only have lost most likely if you lose 50%+ of your engineers at minute 4 or 5. And losing half of the workforce you build up during 5min of gameplay is not a small mistake, but a horribly big one.

s

The early game in PA is quite punishing, especially for small planets.
If you take down my T2, I lose the game immediately. It's over. All you have to do is keep up the pressure and I'll never be able to recover.
Bomber snipes on fabbers are simple to recover from IF you are ALSO harassing your enemy. There should be some give and take.

You suffer early losses, Colin. You did both in the old tanky patch and these recent ones. What Brian is getting at is how hard it is to recover.

In my opinion, this is a direct result of the lethalness of t2 air. You can (by the 7 minute mark) apply devastating force to the core of your enemy. If they do not build an excessive amount of AA (trashing their eco while doing so) or build t2 air themselves, and FASTER than you, they LOSE everything.

In the other patches, you could get t2 vehicles or bots up before your opponent - and it wouldn't matter in the long run if your eco was trashed while doing it. Your opponent would start to outproduce you, his armies would win more engagements, and your eco would get worse. It was a BALANCE. You had to balance your eco, defend the front, and get T2 up at just the right time so you could do all those other things without interruption.

The biggest factor that makes T1 units overshadowed by T2 is unit formations. If we could blob up doxes like we could before it'd be better (easier to storm turrets).

Besides, too much micro/macro (aka an APM floor) to balance is bad. I construe APM floor from the perscribed uses of T1 doxes. It for sure gives StarCraft a huge barrier to entry.

A t2 factory is worth 5k+ mass and has a considerable amount of hitpoints. Losing that factory at minute 9 or so means you lose a central tech structure that cost you a few minutes of buildtime. That's not a small mistake or the result of harrasment, but rather a direct "You probably could have lost your commander instead from that attack"

If you don't harrass and your opponent is successfully harrassing you should lose.

This has nothing to do with small mistakes.

I'm not so sure about that, because a single sheller would kill a whole army of blobbed doxes.

I was thinking solely of T1 vs. Turrets, opposed to T2 vs. Turrets. You're right though.