I love how impatient the Twitch chat is to move onto something else; and I am here enjoying the fuck out of it this. UA-cam and Twitch are totally different vibes.
Just a note about the sentry discussion: the limiting factor on gateway unit power was primarily warp gate. Because of the lack of a high ground defender's advantage and warp gate's ability to negate rally time advantages on defense, gateway units have always had to suck. The sentry was overpowered as a band-aid to prevent people from just warp gate all-inning with zealots and stalkers. Imagine if, in brood war, the toss could drop a pylon by the front of your base and all the dragoons and zealots just spawned there from the gateways instead. Sentries at least had to build up energy for a while and weren't super useful if spawned directly on top of the enemy (at least that was the idea).
Sentry starts with 50 energy, and forcefield costs 50 energy. Essentially P could (and did) just spawn sentries one by one in your main using a warp-prism locking you outside with lilttle to no way of getting in there,
I actually don't like the visuals of SC2, but not because of the graphics themselves, just something about the art direction makes big units feel small while small units feel big.
Completely agreed about art direction. I don't know what it is, but BW tier 3 units looked huge compared to tier 1, and it makes sense. Also, there is something about the unit designs themselves. BW BCs and Carriers look like serious heavy duty capital ships. They look tough and menacing. SC2 BCs and Carriers look like children's toys.
it's because they are. Marauders are bigger than hellions and we are talking dude in a suit vs a car. Firebats weren't twice the size of marines in BW, but two marauders look like they can lift a siege tank. Big units like immortals and lurkers also don't have big foot prints. Carrier interceptors are one of the smallest units in the game while in BW, 12 carriers could make the screen virtually unreadable.
Worst part about this is the fact that this 'sc3/4' can be made as a mod in sc2 or heck even sc1, it's just that people won't give it much attention cause 'it's not official' despite it probably gonna have more love, care, attention, and actual insights put into making it.
I feel like they designed units starting with the question "what does it do" instead of "what is it" which fundamentally limits its role in the games. What the unit does, and thus what it's capable of, has already been decided by the designer.
Really surprised queens didn't make your list. They're so bad in such a fundamental, theoretical way. Even in Dune 2, the idea of air in RTS is you have this other dimension that challenges the opponent's composition. The air units are worse, but the opponent has to invest in units that can counter it. They need to scout to make sure they don't overbuild the anti-air. Air-to-ground beats ground-to-ground beats ground-to-air. Crisp scissors/paper/rock. So hey wouldn't it be cool if we just make Zerg's best anti-air unit something they _have_ to build as part of their macro, so they'll always have some investment in units that trade well against air? And let's also make it so Zerg has no way of punishing over-investment in air until you get corrupters and vipers. Queens also mess up the trade-off between greed and defence. As part of your greed, you get this unit that's actually a pretty decent defender. Why? Decisions have to be committal for strategy to matter. A common problem across SC2's unit design is the game wanted a roster of units that did something fresh and new. It's classic sequel sickness. The obvious ideas were obvious because they were good. The sequel wants new, so it ends up with bad. It's really hard to build a coherent balance out of all these support units that do lots of special stuff. If you know your opponent is going to build a whole army of casters and you can't hard-counter it, you know the unit design is broken in a really fundamental way. Same if you know they're going to turtle to air.
The SC 2 Evolution complete mod(SC1VSC2) custom models for the BW units look great. So just making new ones models for the old units would be great way to freshen up the look. The Oracle could probably be fixed by replacing pulsar beam with a powerful Dark Archon inspired ability that requires a dark shrine to research it.
i like widow mines tho. They add an element of rng that is much needed also good players are incredibly good at dragging or baiting mines so it increases the skill ceiling.
@@aaabatteries9948 I think it fails as a RNG, because you are pretty much guaranteed to break even when you use them in worker harass, with massive upside potential. There's no fail balancing potential with a widow mind drop. Like zerg can sacrifice eco for early lings and maybe get some damage or not. Terran doesn't really sacrifice anything.
I havnt played SC2 since WOL The Void Ray was completely cracked. I literally just proxy Stargated every single game and hit diamond in the first season. And I am absolutely trash.
@@natecw4164 Dude if Zerg had their Queen too far from their Extractor that I was charging up on it was just GG instantly. Protoss who went anything other than a quick Stalkers also dead. Even then a charged Ray could easly crack low numbers of stalkers. PvT I remember being the most annoying because most were going Bio early. The way i remember it I basically only "practiced" PvT for this reason. Because the proxy Stargate basically gave me positive win rate in the other two matchups.
I love the chatting/discussion type videos! I don’t agree with the takes here about making a SC3, but I think it would be cool if they grabbed the SC1 units, maybe some of the campaign units, and then once per year they took some units out, and cycled others in.
Im 100% on Artosis side. ive been begging every youtube channel and discord channel in sc2 about how we need to be more accepting of DRASTIC changes. every game does it dota, league, fortnite, apex, the list goes on and on and on. The only reason this game is hot dogshit is because its been the SAME EXACT GAME FOREVER. if i could get on and have new units, veterancy, fucking literally anything that mades the game feel cool and fresh. I would instantly be thrilled to redownload. But currently its.... ive done it all on all 3 races wtf can i possibly be missing? (aside from conquering the ladder and becoming the next serral.)
The list goes on and on but they are all Team games, « balanced »by the fact that there are a high pool of OP characters while we only have 3 races to manage. Indeed you are missing being the next Serral, sc2 is a competitive game by nature, what’s the point of 1v1 laddering beside becoming better and better? Should any sport try to copy Football because it’s the most practiced sport of the world? Or should each sport keeps it’s sets of rules that makes them unique even if it can’t please everyone? People have been hoping for years to have new RTS created, and now that it’s the case today and that it isn’t working as they wanted it to, they keep complaining over SC2, lol.
My wrong opinion about StarCraft is that they should patch it, balance it, and then leave it be. BW is so engaging to watch because the game I watch now is the same game I played as a kid. Same units, same abilities, same strengths and weaknesses. I don't watch SC2 anymore because I don't want to have to keep up with new units, redesigns, and meta changes that are due to imbalances that are waiting to be patched out. I say let's release SC3, get it right the first time, and leave it be like BW and let the meta game shift overtime. I don't want to "keep it fresh", just design a game that is good on its own like BW and doesn't need to be gradually Ship-of-Theseused into a new game like SC2.
It's actually kind of true and so what u get is a pretty op race in the low ranks and then a dog shit race at top pro level because protoss core units are crap and and all the imba splash units are useless because pros can easily dodge everything.
How about poorly designed mechanics? Mules, chrono boosted Probe production and spawning Drones from larva ejections from queens was the worst thing to happen to Starcraft. They basically had to waste time and money designing boring *ss units to harass workers because of it.
Swarm Host and Spider Mine made me completely quit SC2. I never played LotV until like 5 years after it came out and quit again. WoL was pretty fun… but once I bought HotS I realized Blizzard is on crack
After watching some Stormgate, I think that SC2 has WAY better units. The reaper and the adept are just so much more interesting than the dog and the hexen for example.
Give Voidrays some decent upgrades (sort of like banshees) like constant bigger beam and/or movement speed now it becomes viable again without promoting super early game cheese
Interesting video, and most I definitely agree with. But the two that sticks out to me are one I kinda think should be on the list and one on the list that maybe deserves to be there, but the reasons given seem strange to me. The one you missed to me is the warp prism. I kinda think the weak stats of Toss gates units have more to do with that ability to negate defenders advantage than anything the sentry was doing (at least after Ravagers). The one you added is the oracle. The argument that it is a totally harass unit doesn't really sound right to me. Between using revelation for scouting and some of the more interesting uses of stasis ward I've seen, I kinda think they're less an "only harass" unit than reapers.
WHAT!?!?!?!?! THIS is amazing, 100000000% Artosis read my comment some months back and it stuck! I don't care if you stole my idea ARTOSIS (you did tweak my idea a bit so I'm not going 100% credit just half), I just want sc2 better. SO keep preaching! I need 200 videos in the next 2 years and we can win SC2 Back!
For me, the 3 units with the worst designs from each race are Widow Mines, Ghosts, Liberators, Vipers, Swarm Hosts, Infestors, Tempests, Oracles and Disruptors.
And if you removed the sentry and buffed the stalkers and zealots Toss would be too strong with 4 gate pushes because of warpgate. I agree with some RT's takes but some others just make him sound like an old man reminiscing about the good ole days of Broodwar.
I don't like sc2 design on more levels than just ballance. The unit design in sc2 was always completely off from the beginning. The people who made it didn't understand the races at all. In Broodwar: Zerg units overall were always very flimsy and squishy and cheap with the exception of the ultralisk (of course). Air and ground units were a mix of super fast dying units to medium. That's what the race is supposed to feel like. Protoss was the opposite with all units being very beefy and expensive. Overall the unit beef was between strong to medium. Toss damage felt overall slow but impactful. The scout felt very robust. The squishiest feeling unit of toss was the reaver, which makes sense, because it looks heavilty armored but it's filled with explosives. Another squishy unit would be the high templar, which still is pretty tanky for what it is. And Terran was a mixed mostly medium beefy race. Bio was flimsy and cheap like zerg, but ranged. Mech was medium beefy with strong power and medium pricing. In SC2: SC2 completely crapped on that concept. They made units like the warp prism for toss completely making no sense to the feel of toss. Absolute amateurs at work at blizzard. I hated sc2 so much on release and I never will stop hating that absolute trainwreck. Absolute clowns!!!!
What if they add ALL of the units to the unit pool, from both sc1 and 2 and the campaigns, give players options to pick certain units with limits on number of unique units at given tiers (similar to Battle Aces)?
I think the sentry is so cool because you have influence over the map ! I would have liked if the husk of an Ultralisk would become a ramp if it lies next to a cliff ! this way Zerg could get their units in even if blocked by forcefields. How Is the counter everything unit "Ghost" a good design?
I hate the current swarm hosts too and as a zerg main I would be happy if it was just outright removed from the game, even with nothing to compensate for it. Every game vs swarm hosts players is cancer to me, no matter the match up or if I win or lose.
if zerospace and stormgate keep getting attention, that might be enough to encourage blizzard to make a new starcraft, the landscape for RTS is a little better than it was just a few years ago
The increase in starting workers is what finally drove me away from sc2. It changed the game at a fundamental level and I wasn't interested in finding out where it was going. Probably the single worst change ever in sc2.
Swarm Host is a cool idea & design, just poorly implemented. It should be overhauled. Maybe it should be a buff unit like the sentry guardian shield that increases dmg & regen, with a mana cost channeling effect. You'd bring a few with your army. But then it should probably be more expensive and shouldn't be invisible when burrowed.
The sentry is my favorite unit design. So exciting to use. Blink is also great. Liberators are a little off. Vipers also. Swarm hosts suck, Oracles suck, disrupters suck. Cyclone is the worst. Void Ray had a fun identity with the charging in the beginning but was overpowered, but instead of nerfing it they just ruined it. Also, warpgate is super fun.
1. Sentry - ugly + weird abiltes 2. disruptors - ugly, stupid ability 3. Brood lord broodlings... 4. roaches - ads too much hp to zerg army + its not cool 5. Cyclone
Weird that carriers weren't mentioned; as a much more casual multiplayer person (mostly 2v2s, co-op, and campaign mods), carriers have a pretty negative impact on the game as I play it, and doesn't seem to have much impact at the pro-level. Also, as a more casual player, friendly reminder that the "gen-z" / casual people you're thinking of bringing up the playerbase numbers and creating the community, a lot of us actually _don't_ want the high-level balance as you're asking for it, instead we want fun / swingy mechanics, big comeback potential, and most importantly, good co-op/singleplayer content. I've called myself "casual" a few times now, but I have been playing sc2 for the majority of my life, contribute to campaign modding projects, and the main sc2 communities I'm a part of are campaign mod discord servers. All this combined means that I actually really like disruptors, because when I play multiplayer I'm the only one using them and so I'm the one doing the psychological damage lol.
I mean to be fair there's already a lot of modding going on so there's nothing original being discussed here that can't be observed from the already-existing mod wars currently playing out.
I think at this point we either need a bunch of complete redesigns of some of the poorly designed units, or just go absolutely nuts and make SC2 have seasons where each season you just totally mix up each of the races' tech trees and units using a bunch of units and buildings from the campaign/coop/current and just tweak/remove some of the egregious stuff. An SC2 where like every year or every 6mo you totally change all the races using existing assets would have way more interest from viewers. I haven't cared about SC2 tournaments in aaaagees but I still watch wacky content on youtube from individual creators. Once the game is "solved" it just becomes incredibly boring to watch as every pro match just feels like the same thing. SC2's competitive scene lasted so long in good part from having new units and major changes every few years with the expansions. So many pros these days know the game so well they're high GM with multiple races anyway. If you have a season were zerg is just shit and it's all about Terran and Protoss, the viewers don't really care as long as the games are fun to watch, and it'll be different next season anyway.
cyclone can be balanced by making a cd based targeting that increases the range... and the normal shooting range reduced and dmg values balanced, maybe he will attack the targets in front in flanked by other targets this way loses some of the potential of killing everything from max range.
you can probably make what they are suggesting without much effort in a mod in sc2 no one wants to see a sequel where the only difference is that the multiplayer has some units shifted around
you know what i hate in sc2? Abilities like EMP, feedback, and snipe. Oh you made spellcasters? lol now you can't use them or you have to do this obnoxious awkward range dance with your units to avoid them getting killed or having their mana all taken away. Literal rock-paper-scissors design, you just make 1 unit and it completely negates another unit from your opponent. At least in BW you had to go more out of your way to get feedback and EMP, and it obviously required more control from the enemy to pull off.
Worst unit design: the medivac boost. Sure it's fun to play, fun to watch, but its so fast, your opponent is out of position all the time regardless, coupled with scan there is noway to make a mistake. It also restrict unit design a lot for instance the hellbat was nerfed to the ground because people would medivac boost it and only in this way was it broken. Protoss players hate on the widows mine OS their mineral line, the mine is fine, the medivac boost is the problem.
As someone who just casually enjoys watching sc, I'm confused why arty had so much to say about Oracle yet banshee didn't get brought up at all. Aren't they functionally almost the same thing?
As a brood war player, who played a good bit of 2 earlier on, i am absolutely willing to play other rts, and would be interested in seeing a starcraft 3. However, the idea of “taking the best of brood war and 2 and combining them” holds no interest at all to me. If you list every difference between the two games and ask me to pick my favorite of the options for each list entry, i will pick the brood war option 100% of the time. I dont think 2 did a single thing better. It was, for me, as good or worse in every single category. If we made a game where for each game element we picked the better option between the brood war or 2 iteration, we would just recreate brood war. Thats just my opinion, but if youre trying to get the brood war hardcores to convert you’ll need better ideas than “2 but without its very worst units and with some nostalgia bait”. I dont need reavers in 2 i have them in brood war. I want 3 to take overall design inspiration more from brood war than 2, but to make itself as original as possible. And using the engine and graphics of 2 would be the correct choice from a business standpoint (its cheap to reuse and has mass appeal), but ill be honest thats a strike against it in my book because i like every visual element better in brood war, and i suspect some other brood war players agree.
I 100% agree with you. I played a ton of broodwar and also a modest amount of SC2 which I despise in every aspect. And not because it's not as good as broodwar, because broodwar can't be topped. Broodwar is just perfect and that is fine. The reasons I prefer broodwar as a spectator and player is that it is 2D. RTS is a very complex format unlike fighting games. Fighting games in 3D have more staying power than 2D fighting games for spectating. Because they have more depth and variation. But less than a good RTS. I say that as a huge third strike and virtua fighter fan. A 3D rts is just annoying to look at as a spectator. I want simple visual information and big variation in strategies and options. Because fights are long unlike in fighting games. An RTS should never be 3D ever! A huge problem I wrote a comment about in this thread but I will note here in short is how the devs of SC2 didn't understand the feel of the races at all and mishandled them completely. Toss must feel expensive and beefy overall, zerg must feel cheap and flimsy overall, terran must feel flimsy but mostly medium and cheap to medium priced overall. And the completely clueless SC2 devs made a unit like the WARP PRISM!!! To show off the completel lack of any understanding of StarCraft!
get rid of the viper. abduct and neural parasite are absolute trash. directly counters all massive/expensive units and pushes end game play away from end game units and back to early/mid game units, make bcs and carriers great again
the thing with reaver is the unit is already in the game they could just remove rupor and replace it reaver so easly and instanly protoss is 10x better at that point if we are trying shit on ptr just try that already nobody like ruptor and if dosn't work who care its ptr
We can throw in Reaper. I really dgaf, if a unit requires so much micro that only the top 7% of the population can actually make the unit viable after the 4 min mark, then its not a good unit design. Not sorry, not sorry.
Let's be honest the game is really shallow right now. If you open the larva units tab, you can see there's much room for improvement, there's like 6 or 7 unit slots ready to be designed. I'm not saying they should design 6 new more units for each race but, maybe 3 for each race would refresh things up a bit. Also why the hell do they take SOooo long to patch the game? Specially in an era where data and communication is broad and instant around the world, the game should be changed CONSTANTLY every 2 months at a minimum.
Because in this era companies want to make more profits, and SC2 can’t bring that. As much as I love this game which is my favourite of all time, it’s something we have to accept.
To me the SC2 queen is a terribly designed unit. I feel like it was designed to be a macro aid, but it's also one of the best units in the game. It feels anti-hype. There's nothing cool about zerg shutting down harass because they mass queens every game because it's the best unit.
broodwar had units thay had alot of singular use case scenarios. maybe void ray critique is a little personal there. you were not exactly going firebats against air units, RTS need a little, and I mean little rock paper scissors. I also think that these guys are out of touch with average players and more in line with Pro or top tier play.
If they aren't working on SC3 already, they should just do a SC2 remaster/reboot thing that does what you guys suggest for a sequel. They just did the WC battle chest, so maybe it's in the cards.
SC3 will never happen. Blizz made more money from ONE WoW skin than they did with SC2 and unfortunately money is all that matters to AAA studios these days. The passion is gone. Only reason they remade SC1 and WC3 was to make a quick buck - I bet less than 10 people worked on those projects. ua-cam.com/video/IHZru-6M8BY/v-deo.html
The hard counter design ruin almost every unit in SC2. Hard counters and overly specialized units like harassment units. SC had it right in BW. Just have cleanly designed units that can work in many scenarios based on micro. SC2 is awful because there are FEW core solid units, and then everything else is a niche one dimensional unit. Engineering, music, visual design, all top notch. But whoever called the shots in mechanics and unit design, big thumbs down.
I would still play on the old engine. I dont think you could keep enough of the old design elements to satisfy me (art and control group unit limits come to mind) and still call it the “new engine “
How do you not mention the queen the worst designed unit of all time. Also creep is so poorly designed. Free to spread, invisible, and gives vision, AND gives speed
Arty should go through the unit list for each race in SC1 and SC2 and list out which ones would make the cut in a "best of both worlds" "SC3" version.
this is hype I'm boosting this comment
@@siennas254lets fucking go
Yep
That should and will result in a sc1 units only list.
The way the oracle flies where it slides, not immediately turning when you click somewhere else, is awesome.
I love how impatient the Twitch chat is to move onto something else; and I am here enjoying the fuck out of it this. UA-cam and Twitch are totally different vibes.
tbh arty has one of the most toxic chat i seen on twitch
twitch chat having to sit with their own thoughts for 14 mins and wildly sh*tting their pants will never not be funny
Just a note about the sentry discussion: the limiting factor on gateway unit power was primarily warp gate. Because of the lack of a high ground defender's advantage and warp gate's ability to negate rally time advantages on defense, gateway units have always had to suck. The sentry was overpowered as a band-aid to prevent people from just warp gate all-inning with zealots and stalkers. Imagine if, in brood war, the toss could drop a pylon by the front of your base and all the dragoons and zealots just spawned there from the gateways instead.
Sentries at least had to build up energy for a while and weren't super useful if spawned directly on top of the enemy (at least that was the idea).
Sentry starts with 50 energy, and forcefield costs 50 energy. Essentially P could (and did) just spawn sentries one by one in your main using a warp-prism locking you outside with lilttle to no way of getting in there,
a tier list of design for all units between sc1 and 2 would go crazy
I actually don't like the visuals of SC2, but not because of the graphics themselves, just something about the art direction makes big units feel small while small units feel big.
Completely agreed about art direction. I don't know what it is, but BW tier 3 units looked huge compared to tier 1, and it makes sense. Also, there is something about the unit designs themselves. BW BCs and Carriers look like serious heavy duty capital ships. They look tough and menacing. SC2 BCs and Carriers look like children's toys.
yeah they kinda look like Lego, but the art/detail itself is excellent.
it's because they are. Marauders are bigger than hellions and we are talking dude in a suit vs a car. Firebats weren't twice the size of marines in BW, but two marauders look like they can lift a siege tank. Big units like immortals and lurkers also don't have big foot prints. Carrier interceptors are one of the smallest units in the game while in BW, 12 carriers could make the screen virtually unreadable.
Its so cartoonish. Bw feels so much more real and serious
Worst part about this is the fact that this 'sc3/4' can be made as a mod in sc2 or heck even sc1, it's just that people won't give it much attention cause 'it's not official' despite it probably gonna have more love, care, attention, and actual insights put into making it.
I feel like they designed units starting with the question "what does it do" instead of "what is it" which fundamentally limits its role in the games. What the unit does, and thus what it's capable of, has already been decided by the designer.
Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. That's exactly how it feels.
this has been how blizzard designs for over a decade and it's why their games have downspiralled
well said
you just described functional programming vs object oriented programming in a nutshell, lol
Really surprised queens didn't make your list. They're so bad in such a fundamental, theoretical way.
Even in Dune 2, the idea of air in RTS is you have this other dimension that challenges the opponent's composition. The air units are worse, but the opponent has to invest in units that can counter it. They need to scout to make sure they don't overbuild the anti-air. Air-to-ground beats ground-to-ground beats ground-to-air. Crisp scissors/paper/rock.
So hey wouldn't it be cool if we just make Zerg's best anti-air unit something they _have_ to build as part of their macro, so they'll always have some investment in units that trade well against air? And let's also make it so Zerg has no way of punishing over-investment in air until you get corrupters and vipers.
Queens also mess up the trade-off between greed and defence. As part of your greed, you get this unit that's actually a pretty decent defender. Why? Decisions have to be committal for strategy to matter.
A common problem across SC2's unit design is the game wanted a roster of units that did something fresh and new. It's classic sequel sickness. The obvious ideas were obvious because they were good. The sequel wants new, so it ends up with bad.
It's really hard to build a coherent balance out of all these support units that do lots of special stuff. If you know your opponent is going to build a whole army of casters and you can't hard-counter it, you know the unit design is broken in a really fundamental way. Same if you know they're going to turtle to air.
The SC 2 Evolution complete mod(SC1VSC2) custom models for the BW units look great. So just making new ones models for the old units would be great way to freshen up the look.
The Oracle could probably be fixed by replacing pulsar beam with a powerful Dark Archon inspired ability that requires a dark shrine to research it.
SC1 units are in the stock map editor.
Missed widow mines! I think widow mines are probably the actual worst unit. I have never enjoyed seeing a widow mine.
i like widow mines tho. They add an element of rng that is much needed also good players are incredibly good at dragging or baiting mines so it increases the skill ceiling.
Nah widow mines are great
@@aaabatteries9948 I think it fails as a RNG, because you are pretty much guaranteed to break even when you use them in worker harass, with massive upside potential. There's no fail balancing potential with a widow mind drop. Like zerg can sacrifice eco for early lings and maybe get some damage or not. Terran doesn't really sacrifice anything.
@@sambobly for an actual reason? Rainbows are great too, but they might not be good for the game.
Widowmines are a fun unit. They are great for spectators, fun to use and fun to counter. Love them
I havnt played SC2 since WOL The Void Ray was completely cracked. I literally just proxy Stargated every single game and hit diamond in the first season. And I am absolutely trash.
Oh man... When you could charge them up on rocks and then come in fully charged... God those were broken but super fun times! 😂
@@natecw4164 Dude if Zerg had their Queen too far from their Extractor that I was charging up on it was just GG instantly.
Protoss who went anything other than a quick Stalkers also dead. Even then a charged Ray could easly crack low numbers of stalkers. PvT I remember being the most annoying because most were going Bio early.
The way i remember it I basically only "practiced" PvT for this reason. Because the proxy Stargate basically gave me positive win rate in the other two matchups.
it was so frustrating in wol how marines were meant to counter it but if you charge up on a building they basically don't counter it any more
People can still hit Diamond just doing dumb cheeses over and over.
Those people that made those mods for brood war units being in SC2 could easily do this to test to see how itd actually work out
I love the chatting/discussion type videos! I don’t agree with the takes here about making a SC3, but I think it would be cool if they grabbed the SC1 units, maybe some of the campaign units, and then once per year they took some units out, and cycled others in.
I love this new format.
If you look at what Microsoft did with AoM Retold, I wouldn't put it past them to make a Starcraft 2 Reborn as you describe and actually make it good.
Noob option: also the ghost. It would make sense for the raven to have EMP.
It's far better to time gate OP tactics to the mid or even late game, which an incentive to playing tall instead of expanding wide for timing attacks.
Im 100% on Artosis side. ive been begging every youtube channel and discord channel in sc2 about how we need to be more accepting of DRASTIC changes. every game does it dota, league, fortnite, apex, the list goes on and on and on. The only reason this game is hot dogshit is because its been the SAME EXACT GAME FOREVER. if i could get on and have new units, veterancy, fucking literally anything that mades the game feel cool and fresh. I would instantly be thrilled to redownload. But currently its.... ive done it all on all 3 races wtf can i possibly be missing? (aside from conquering the ladder and becoming the next serral.)
The list goes on and on but they are all Team games, « balanced »by the fact that there are a high pool of OP characters while we only have 3 races to manage.
Indeed you are missing being the next Serral, sc2 is a competitive game by nature, what’s the point of 1v1 laddering beside becoming better and better? Should any sport try to copy Football because it’s the most practiced sport of the world? Or should each sport keeps it’s sets of rules that makes them unique even if it can’t please everyone? People have been hoping for years to have new RTS created, and now that it’s the case today and that it isn’t working as they wanted it to, they keep complaining over SC2, lol.
Arty should actually just make a sick mod that has all this stuff.
they could just add SC:EVO to the ladder and call it SC3
My wrong opinion about StarCraft is that they should patch it, balance it, and then leave it be. BW is so engaging to watch because the game I watch now is the same game I played as a kid. Same units, same abilities, same strengths and weaknesses. I don't watch SC2 anymore because I don't want to have to keep up with new units, redesigns, and meta changes that are due to imbalances that are waiting to be patched out.
I say let's release SC3, get it right the first time, and leave it be like BW and let the meta game shift overtime. I don't want to "keep it fresh", just design a game that is good on its own like BW and doesn't need to be gradually Ship-of-Theseused into a new game like SC2.
I like how every protoss unit is overpowered glue trying to keep the poorly designed race together.
It's actually kind of true and so what u get is a pretty op race in the low ranks and then a dog shit race at top pro level because protoss core units are crap and and all the imba splash units are useless because pros can easily dodge everything.
Ta hell I saw the fat stache Arty for a second 😂
How about poorly designed mechanics? Mules, chrono boosted Probe production and spawning Drones from larva ejections from queens was the worst thing to happen to Starcraft.
They basically had to waste time and money designing boring *ss units to harass workers because of it.
Swarm Host and Spider Mine made me completely quit SC2. I never played LotV until like 5 years after it came out and quit again. WoL was pretty fun… but once I bought HotS I realized Blizzard is on crack
After watching some Stormgate, I think that SC2 has WAY better units. The reaper and the adept are just so much more interesting than the dog and the hexen for example.
Give Voidrays some decent upgrades (sort of like banshees) like constant bigger beam and/or movement speed now it becomes viable again without promoting super early game cheese
the voidray speed buff was pretty good, maybe put it in the fleet beacon
I'd love for them to release brood war in the starcraft II engine.
I wouldnt be mad about it, like to each their own, but i wouldnt play that version over brood war in its original engine.
Interesting video, and most I definitely agree with. But the two that sticks out to me are one I kinda think should be on the list and one on the list that maybe deserves to be there, but the reasons given seem strange to me. The one you missed to me is the warp prism. I kinda think the weak stats of Toss gates units have more to do with that ability to negate defenders advantage than anything the sentry was doing (at least after Ravagers). The one you added is the oracle. The argument that it is a totally harass unit doesn't really sound right to me. Between using revelation for scouting and some of the more interesting uses of stasis ward I've seen, I kinda think they're less an "only harass" unit than reapers.
the worst units in any game are those that require way less or no control of the user to be super effective against the defending player
Maybe not turn SC3 into BW on SC2 engine straight up, but great points and I agree wholeheartedly.
WHAT!?!?!?!?! THIS is amazing, 100000000% Artosis read my comment some months back and it stuck! I don't care if you stole my idea ARTOSIS (you did tweak my idea a bit so I'm not going 100% credit just half), I just want sc2 better. SO keep preaching! I need 200 videos in the next 2 years and we can win SC2 Back!
For me, the 3 units with the worst designs from each race are Widow Mines, Ghosts, Liberators, Vipers, Swarm Hosts, Infestors, Tempests, Oracles and Disruptors.
What I hate about the Oracle is that it essentially does the same things as the sentry, as a caster (recon + split army).
The sentry was needed in WOL because stalkers and zealots were weak and protoss would have died easy in the early game.
This is what happens when you cut the tried and true Dragoon from multiplayer.
I dont even play toss but it pissed me off they made zealots so weak compared to BW
And if you removed the sentry and buffed the stalkers and zealots Toss would be too strong with 4 gate pushes because of warpgate. I agree with some RT's takes but some others just make him sound like an old man reminiscing about the good ole days of Broodwar.
@@mikael7084 Zealots are OP in BW lmao.
Stalkers and zealots were weak BECAUSE of the sentry
I don't like sc2 design on more levels than just ballance. The unit design in sc2 was always completely off from the beginning. The people who made it didn't understand the races at all.
In Broodwar:
Zerg units overall were always very flimsy and squishy and cheap with the exception of the ultralisk (of course). Air and ground units were a mix of super fast dying units to medium. That's what the race is supposed to feel like.
Protoss was the opposite with all units being very beefy and expensive. Overall the unit beef was between strong to medium. Toss damage felt overall slow but impactful. The scout felt very robust. The squishiest feeling unit of toss was the reaver, which makes sense, because it looks heavilty armored but it's filled with explosives. Another squishy unit would be the high templar, which still is pretty tanky for what it is.
And Terran was a mixed mostly medium beefy race. Bio was flimsy and cheap like zerg, but ranged. Mech was medium beefy with strong power and medium pricing.
In SC2:
SC2 completely crapped on that concept. They made units like the warp prism for toss completely making no sense to the feel of toss. Absolute amateurs at work at blizzard. I hated sc2 so much on release and I never will stop hating that absolute trainwreck. Absolute clowns!!!!
Add the Queen to this list please!
What if they add ALL of the units to the unit pool, from both sc1 and 2 and the campaigns, give players options to pick certain units with limits on number of unique units at given tiers (similar to Battle Aces)?
I think the sentry is so cool because you have influence over the map !
I would have liked if the husk of an Ultralisk would become a ramp if it lies next to a cliff ! this way Zerg could get their units in even if blocked by forcefields.
How Is the counter everything unit "Ghost" a good design?
niiiice more of these please, love the nerd chats
Banshees are also only used for harrassment and they are completely fine.
I don't think I have heard anyone complain about the oracle in years
He didn't mention banshees because he forgot. Nobody ever used them in years past bronze
Banshees had a much better defined role before the liberator. It might of seen a bit more play if it was 2 supply instead of 3.
@@zxomegaxz5548 What is their defined role? Not being particularly good against anything while also being expensive?
banshees can kill roaches and small volume of marines
I hate the current swarm hosts too and as a zerg main I would be happy if it was just outright removed from the game, even with nothing to compensate for it. Every game vs swarm hosts players is cancer to me, no matter the match up or if I win or lose.
Forcefield should have been a mothership ability.
if zerospace and stormgate keep getting attention, that might be enough to encourage blizzard to make a new starcraft, the landscape for RTS is a little better than it was just a few years ago
The increase in starting workers is what finally drove me away from sc2. It changed the game at a fundamental level and I wasn't interested in finding out where it was going. Probably the single worst change ever in sc2.
Swarm Host is a cool idea & design, just poorly implemented. It should be overhauled. Maybe it should be a buff unit like the sentry guardian shield that increases dmg & regen, with a mana cost channeling effect. You'd bring a few with your army. But then it should probably be more expensive and shouldn't be invisible when burrowed.
SC3 needs a solid player vs AI. and completely agree on F2P
The sentry is my favorite unit design. So exciting to use. Blink is also great.
Liberators are a little off. Vipers also.
Swarm hosts suck, Oracles suck, disrupters suck.
Cyclone is the worst.
Void Ray had a fun identity with the charging in the beginning but was overpowered, but instead of nerfing it they just ruined it.
Also, warpgate is super fun.
1. Sentry - ugly + weird abiltes
2. disruptors - ugly, stupid ability
3. Brood lord broodlings...
4. roaches - ads too much hp to zerg army + its not cool
5. Cyclone
Weird that carriers weren't mentioned; as a much more casual multiplayer person (mostly 2v2s, co-op, and campaign mods), carriers have a pretty negative impact on the game as I play it, and doesn't seem to have much impact at the pro-level.
Also, as a more casual player, friendly reminder that the "gen-z" / casual people you're thinking of bringing up the playerbase numbers and creating the community, a lot of us actually _don't_ want the high-level balance as you're asking for it, instead we want fun / swingy mechanics, big comeback potential, and most importantly, good co-op/singleplayer content. I've called myself "casual" a few times now, but I have been playing sc2 for the majority of my life, contribute to campaign modding projects, and the main sc2 communities I'm a part of are campaign mod discord servers.
All this combined means that I actually really like disruptors, because when I play multiplayer I'm the only one using them and so I'm the one doing the psychological damage lol.
Sc2 terrans would cry a river against dark swarm
Artosis: What if you could ban a unit before your match starts (not mining related)?
artosis + noregret podcast revival?
Personally I like the Oracle and feel like it's still under utilized. Stasis is absurdly useful and allows for some real creativity.
you know Sc2 dev teak has changed when they didn't put diamondback in MP but cyclone into lotv MP
I’m really enjoying these game design videos you’ve been putting out
人菜瘾大
Liberators should not attack air.
Swarmhost locusts should not fly.
Reaper should not heal.
Who's the guy sitting there with Jake the snake?
I mean to be fair there's already a lot of modding going on so there's nothing original being discussed here that can't be observed from the already-existing mod wars currently playing out.
I think at this point we either need a bunch of complete redesigns of some of the poorly designed units, or just go absolutely nuts and make SC2 have seasons where each season you just totally mix up each of the races' tech trees and units using a bunch of units and buildings from the campaign/coop/current and just tweak/remove some of the egregious stuff.
An SC2 where like every year or every 6mo you totally change all the races using existing assets would have way more interest from viewers. I haven't cared about SC2 tournaments in aaaagees but I still watch wacky content on youtube from individual creators. Once the game is "solved" it just becomes incredibly boring to watch as every pro match just feels like the same thing.
SC2's competitive scene lasted so long in good part from having new units and major changes every few years with the expansions.
So many pros these days know the game so well they're high GM with multiple races anyway. If you have a season were zerg is just shit and it's all about Terran and Protoss, the viewers don't really care as long as the games are fun to watch, and it'll be different next season anyway.
cyclone can be balanced by making a cd based targeting that increases the range... and the normal shooting range reduced and dmg values balanced, maybe he will attack the targets in front in flanked by other targets this way loses some of the potential of killing everything from max range.
You guys didn't mention the prime reason ppl don't like SC2: the army blobs. It's my biggest turnoff.
Marine.
you can probably make what they are suggesting without much effort in a mod in sc2
no one wants to see a sequel where the only difference is that the multiplayer has some units shifted around
I dont think shoving old units in is the way forward. SC3 should have new ideas with some older ones.
you know what i hate in sc2? Abilities like EMP, feedback, and snipe. Oh you made spellcasters? lol now you can't use them or you have to do this obnoxious awkward range dance with your units to avoid them getting killed or having their mana all taken away. Literal rock-paper-scissors design, you just make 1 unit and it completely negates another unit from your opponent. At least in BW you had to go more out of your way to get feedback and EMP, and it obviously required more control from the enemy to pull off.
I am going to make Artosiscraft 2.5.
JAKE!!!!!!!!!
If oracle is problematic, then reaper is too. The other ones are on point. I stopped playing purely because of disruptors
Worst unit design: the medivac boost. Sure it's fun to play, fun to watch, but its so fast, your opponent is out of position all the time regardless, coupled with scan there is noway to make a mistake. It also restrict unit design a lot for instance the hellbat was nerfed to the ground because people would medivac boost it and only in this way was it broken. Protoss players hate on the widows mine OS their mineral line, the mine is fine, the medivac boost is the problem.
the worst units in the game are those, which are not used after start, like reaper or banshees.
If you could somehow pitch this, that would be amazing.
As someone who just casually enjoys watching sc, I'm confused why arty had so much to say about Oracle yet banshee didn't get brought up at all. Aren't they functionally almost the same thing?
so the queen is not a badly designed unit, ok interesting
As a brood war player, who played a good bit of 2 earlier on, i am absolutely willing to play other rts, and would be interested in seeing a starcraft 3. However, the idea of “taking the best of brood war and 2 and combining them” holds no interest at all to me. If you list every difference between the two games and ask me to pick my favorite of the options for each list entry, i will pick the brood war option 100% of the time. I dont think 2 did a single thing better. It was, for me, as good or worse in every single category. If we made a game where for each game element we picked the better option between the brood war or 2 iteration, we would just recreate brood war. Thats just my opinion, but if youre trying to get the brood war hardcores to convert you’ll need better ideas than “2 but without its very worst units and with some nostalgia bait”. I dont need reavers in 2 i have them in brood war. I want 3 to take overall design inspiration more from brood war than 2, but to make itself as original as possible. And using the engine and graphics of 2 would be the correct choice from a business standpoint (its cheap to reuse and has mass appeal), but ill be honest thats a strike against it in my book because i like every visual element better in brood war, and i suspect some other brood war players agree.
I 100% agree with you. I played a ton of broodwar and also a modest amount of SC2 which I despise in every aspect. And not because it's not as good as broodwar, because broodwar can't be topped. Broodwar is just perfect and that is fine.
The reasons I prefer broodwar as a spectator and player is that it is 2D. RTS is a very complex format unlike fighting games. Fighting games in 3D have more staying power than 2D fighting games for spectating. Because they have more depth and variation. But less than a good RTS. I say that as a huge third strike and virtua fighter fan. A 3D rts is just annoying to look at as a spectator. I want simple visual information and big variation in strategies and options. Because fights are long unlike in fighting games. An RTS should never be 3D ever!
A huge problem I wrote a comment about in this thread but I will note here in short is how the devs of SC2 didn't understand the feel of the races at all and mishandled them completely. Toss must feel expensive and beefy overall, zerg must feel cheap and flimsy overall, terran must feel flimsy but mostly medium and cheap to medium priced overall. And the completely clueless SC2 devs made a unit like the WARP PRISM!!! To show off the completel lack of any understanding of StarCraft!
get rid of the viper. abduct and neural parasite are absolute trash. directly counters all massive/expensive units and pushes end game play away from end game units and back to early/mid game units, make bcs and carriers great again
the thing with reaver is the unit is already in the game they could just remove rupor and replace it reaver so easly and instanly protoss is 10x better at that point if we are trying shit on ptr just try that already nobody like ruptor and if dosn't work who care its ptr
WoL was peak SC2 fight me
We can throw in Reaper. I really dgaf, if a unit requires so much micro that only the top 7% of the population can actually make the unit viable after the 4 min mark, then its not a good unit design. Not sorry, not sorry.
not widow mine?
Let's be honest the game is really shallow right now. If you open the larva units tab, you can see there's much room for improvement, there's like 6 or 7 unit slots ready to be designed. I'm not saying they should design 6 new more units for each race but, maybe 3 for each race would refresh things up a bit. Also why the hell do they take SOooo long to patch the game? Specially in an era where data and communication is broad and instant around the world, the game should be changed CONSTANTLY every 2 months at a minimum.
Because in this era companies want to make more profits, and SC2 can’t bring that. As much as I love this game which is my favourite of all time, it’s something we have to accept.
To me the SC2 queen is a terribly designed unit. I feel like it was designed to be a macro aid, but it's also one of the best units in the game. It feels anti-hype. There's nothing cool about zerg shutting down harass because they mass queens every game because it's the best unit.
I who'd say most of the dlc units are bad and made the game worse. Only somewhat good is shield battery and hellbat.
broodwar had units thay had alot of singular use case scenarios. maybe void ray critique is a little personal there. you were not exactly going firebats against air units, RTS need a little, and I mean little rock paper scissors. I also think that these guys are out of touch with average players and more in line with Pro or top tier play.
If they aren't working on SC3 already, they should just do a SC2 remaster/reboot thing that does what you guys suggest for a sequel. They just did the WC battle chest, so maybe it's in the cards.
SC3 will never happen. Blizz made more money from ONE WoW skin than they did with SC2 and unfortunately money is all that matters to AAA studios these days. The passion is gone. Only reason they remade SC1 and WC3 was to make a quick buck - I bet less than 10 people worked on those projects.
ua-cam.com/video/IHZru-6M8BY/v-deo.html
Butts
remove bitter old men :D
Widow mine is pretty bad too
I agree with fat mizkif
The hard counter design ruin almost every unit in SC2. Hard counters and overly specialized units like harassment units.
SC had it right in BW. Just have cleanly designed units that can work in many scenarios based on micro.
SC2 is awful because there are FEW core solid units, and then everything else is a niche one dimensional unit.
Engineering, music, visual design, all top notch. But whoever called the shots in mechanics and unit design, big thumbs down.
Sorry but who is the person on the right? He knows his shit 👌
that's why I don't play anymore, because these dog crap units are here to stay
Or maybe because ur a crybaby who cant win the big ones. 😂
@@pinroshan020 your mom won my big one last night
The ONLY 2 good units in SC2 made was the Phoenix & Stalker Literally every other Unit They made CHEAPENED the game.
Forcefields were the reason i quit sc2 back in hots. ZvP was so fucking boring to play because of it, loved zvz and zvt tho.
No fun allow.
Blizzard should do with bw what valve did at the beginning with dota 2 and remake the old game exactly the same in the new engine
I would still play on the old engine. I dont think you could keep enough of the old design elements to satisfy me (art and control group unit limits come to mind) and still call it the “new engine “
and take off harriasing units!
How do you not mention the queen the worst designed unit of all time. Also creep is so poorly designed. Free to spread, invisible, and gives vision, AND gives speed