Hero commanders are absurdly powerful. Kerrigan and Dehaka are obvious, but every hero is a pronounced power spike when they come out, and an anchor for the early game. If you really consider what a hero is in an RTS, it’s obvious that we’re looking at something kind of crazy:
A unit that could easily cost a few thousand minerals at the upper end, given for free…
…in the early game…
…and they’re replaced endlessly for free if you lose them.
Really, the only design element commanders have that comes close to comparing are top bar calldowns – top bar damage abilities coming third. It’s no surprise that the commanders that struggle the most / have ‘slow ramp’ problems, are deficient either in hero or calldowns. Karax and Artanis lack either. Even those with simply subpar ones suffer huge ramp problems, e.g., Swann and Vorazun.
What I really think is missing in Co-op are sufficiently bold designs that enable no hero, no calldown commanders to be really competitive.
There’s an exception of course: Abathur. He has a bold design element that makes ‘no hero, no calldown’ competitive: of course, it basically involves a minigame gating the fact that he does have heroes. Unsurprisingly, if you don’t push for Ultimate Evolutions, Abathur drops from strongest commander to chilling with Artanis.
But I think there are other ways to do this. Here’s just a few examples of types of design that should be no more ridiculous than getting Kerrigan at 4:00.
Beginning the game with a bunch of cash.
Dropping a strong regiment of free forces at some time, that aren’t replaced once lost.
…or they are replaced, endlessly. (Blending the hero concept into army play.)
A ‘first X units completely free’ or ‘first X units buy-one-get-one-free’ effect, which would boost rushing to high tier.
A recruitment effect dropping free forces as you win victories.
Outright stronger economies than baseline.
Top bar energy (e.g. Spear of Adun) that can be used to call in timed life versions of your normal forces. (Blending the calldown concept into army play.)
Some of these are implemented in some ways already (Raynor, Zagara, etc.), but I’d like to see bolder designs that allow for more strong commanders that just don’t need heroes or calldowns at all. Stetmann would be even cooler if he didn’t need or have Gary to carry him, and it’s not necessary for commanders that play like Artanis to have such an inferiority complex vs. Dehaka.
Anyone, what do others think? Would it be interesting to have more strong/aggressive commanders that don’t rely on heroes or calldowns? Would any of the above designs really suit some specific commander ideas? Are any actually somehow more broken than Kerrigan? : )
I think it would be interesting to have a commander who could only train basic units; but can use the biomass mechanic Dehaka and Abathur have to not improve a unit but unlock their roster, or unlock research for the units. Would make a different kind of tech tree.
I feel like this topic would be significantly more meaningful if 90% of it wasn’t WAAAAAAAA HEROES ARE TOO STRONG, MUH COMPETITIVE BALANCE thinly masked with some equally whiny suggestions.
I think the increase in hero units is simply cause it makes for a noticable difference in style.
Every new commander who didn’t rely on heroic units did have a bold design choice.
That said, I personally think a military escort like commander (think less swarny stukov) would be an interesting design choice. Basically, take the Ariel Hansen Escort mission and make it a commander.
I figured we have heroes or CDs because it makes the mode “fun”. Otherwise, I would’ve just continued with standard Vs. AI modes. I like how Karax’ “gimmick” is he can literally rain death from above. Stukov has unending hordes of lesser time duration units. His Apocalyse is a 3K hp CD with 5 armor, and good attack values. We have 4 Terran COs who can “insta-nuke”. And 2 COs can literally stop time.
Otherwise, the other variables include but not limited to variations in units and buildings.
For example, Abathur’s Queens are at full cost, but do NOT incur an “off creep” movement penalty, and can be upgraded to heal mech. Zagara’s Queens cost no gas, and only half of others (mins and supply)
Another would be how we have 3 different variations of Supply Depots… Raynor’s have no build time. They instantly get dropped, on-spot Swann’s are able to be “quick built” by piling on multiple SCVs to reduce their build time HH’s produce 16 supply each, and have double the hp at 800 Tychus has none if we’d want to stretch with that as a type.
•A unit that could easily cost a few thousand minerals at the upper end, given for free…
•…in the early game…
•…and they’re replaced endlessly for free if you lose them.
For some COs, the hero IS a big part of their identity and balance. Also, losing one can be painful, even if they’re only out of commission for 1 minute to 3. Considering Coop games last anywhere from 15 minutes to 35 minutes, with average playtime being 25 min., and the hero is typically out of commission the first 3… a minute is a lot right there.
Huh, interesting, I didn’t expect such hostility from you – and can’t imagine it’s called for. So I cut out a bit about how much I like many hero commanders. Many of them are extremely well designed and a lot of fun. I just want to stress that they are very dramatically designed, compared to the relative caution in macro advantages doled out.
I certainly don’t care about ‘competitive balance’, and just today have argued that commanders don’t all need to be equal. But I’d like to see Stetmanns designed that don’t feel they need to give us a hero, or commanders with high-effort snowballing like Dehaka who are battlefield commanders – who live or die by their army.
Lastly, I honestly can’t even imagine what a ‘whiny suggestion’ is? Suggestions aren’t whines. If you’d be happier if I made clear what I thought was obvious, that I am immensely positive about this game’s design, well, I am. Doesn’t mean there aren’t some cool, more dramatic designs to grant hero-like power/time curves / snowballing in different ways.
That quote alone makes up a good % of players who main said commanders with and for their Hero units. It’s PvE, let them be op I say. Anything around that can just be considered a Commanders unique kit. Don’t take me seriously tho, I’m an adaptive player that find more ways to have fun than most. But it is general knowledge that a lot of people come to CO-OP to be happy, destructive, absurdly powerful players, sharing that experience with another person.
So I think I took for granted that it was obvious I wasn’t suggesting anything was wrong with hero design. We were just talking in another thread about you feeling Karax badly needed another revamp, right? I’m posting this actually right on the back of that, to suggest that heroes and calldowns grant power spikes that it is possible to mimic other ways, and that it’s good to explore this.
I’m not disagreeing, lol, I’m generalizing and agreeing actually. Don’t mind me, I’m running on ‘high’ flier miles atm. (enter coffee holding overlord emote here)
Yeah, I’ve seen variations on that idea suggested here and there for a while, and I really like the idea. Snowballing mechanics are a lot of fun and can really reward mastery. And it’d thematically make a really cool ‘veteran commander’ to salvage, adapt and level-up an elite squad in the field.
Really, every commander has a lot of bold design choices – it’s what makes Co-op such a rich landscape vs. ladder. But I think there is a bit of a conservative streak with macro/army-based advantages, vs. the really dramatic things can we do with heroes and calldowns. First Hyperion calldown can clear the ‘last’ two slivers in Scythe of Amon, right? It takes skill, but it can be done, and that’s amazing.
My favourite idea for revamping Artanis was removing Orbital Strike and giving him the ability to spend Spear of Adun energy to warp in temporary ‘shades’. It’d be a toggle top bar: when on, his building warp-ins cost no money, supply or charges, but cost energy instead and the units are timed life. You’d be able to power spike a scary army at 2:00 with Zealots, 2:30 with Dragoons, or a bit later with Tempests, by burning SoA energy with mastery, and achieve the same kind of crazy things as Abathurs and Raynors, but while still using your army.
(The other nice feature that has with Artanis is it allows his power field + warp-in speed boost to be relevant at max supply. Kind of a shame he loses power on reaching the endgame!)
To directly target your post (not in a Cryswar type of way, or the way I seem to be known for), my gaming community members all love co-op, specifically how each commander is individual of the one next to it. They all have top bar abilities of some sort more or less, and their kit is fun and flexible.
You know how daily players and vets tend to get in co-op right? If they use a commander long enough they will begin defending them to their grave even when compared to stronger commanders. Stukov is hella strong even without a hero unit and before this fateful patch there were a very noticeable ton of Stukov players. Vorazun is still a top tier commander because her units are ruthless as they are op, not to mention her top bar abilities that support her.
I get what you are going for and wish to see. But no hero, no calldowns seem hard for any player to imagine right now because of how they’ve adjust to co-op and the general idea of staying within co-op boundaries without getting too far out of it. By boundaries I mean how everyone is used to top bar abilities at least of some form, and the base ground requirements to getting each one up tuned to follow like normal SC2. Which is why I think starting with a strong regiment or a bunch of cash kinda takes away from the ‘built up/into’ setting that we are all used to.
Personally I think co-op’s player base is far above stable and in the digits where such a hop or implementation is not needed. Not that I don’t like, I find something to like in each persons ideas, but that if we actually did something like this we might inadvertently negatively impact our co-op players. Pretty soon everyone will want all the commanders to be tailored towards this type of play or similar. Blizzards toughest job is to try to keep every Commander within a similar scope of each other, at least keeping sc2’s current system in mind.
I like these ideas but I feel as tho they don’t really scream ‘Star Craft Co op’ to me, like if I was to log in one day and find a patch for em. Blizzard usually moves at small pokes here and there due to how dependent the community is over co-op. With how this new Blizzard Dev is behaving I would more so believe that we are ages from any broad-idea implementations.
Yeah, bit of a shame but I’ve noticed a bunch of the really creative types didn’t make the transition to the new forums. There’s been some really interesting theoretical commanders suggested.
I completely agree with you, different powerful abilities like a hero or cooldown very much help set coop apart from PvP.
Personally, heroes are some of the highlights for many a commander. Without them there wouldn’t be much to set many of them apart from each other.
I am not exactly a math and balance champion, but having crazy powers and nice upgrades is the hallmark of most PvE games because the opponent is a computer and the players need to have incentive to play for fun and not wander off. In Starcraft and Starcraft II it’s a built-in part of the game, whether you’re controlling Vulture Raynor in the start of SCI or lvl 70 Kerrigan at the end of her campaign in SCII. Some people may not agree with the powerful add-on abilities and hero units, but it’s kinda a part of SC already, and I would argue it always was.
Also… beating Brutal in something like Campaign is quite the achievement, whereas Brutal in coop is standard play.
Beating Brutal in Campaign, while an achievement, can be nervewracking, require a lot of time, especially in lesser players, and there are literally guides (lengthy guides) on the internet to how to go about doing it.
I think coop is to chill and have fun. Beating a Brutal Campaign match by the skin of your teeth in the last second because the Mutalisks didn’t quite manage to destroy your flying and fleeing Command Center as your last remaining unit before the holdout timer ran out (yes, this happened to me) might be bad for player retention among those interested in more relaxed play.
I just hope to God they don’t nerf Tychus. I really like the character concept, but a lot of people feel he’s OP, that his Medivacs provide too much power, and so on. For a person like me, that’s not great at SC but loves the story and the characters, he’s the perfect commander. Unless he gets nerfed to hell, and to be honest not sure what I’ll do then.
Just a comment on that, Heart of the Swarm is the easiest brutal campaign bar none. Most any vet will agree. The comps do not change drastically like they do in any other campaign.
Granted, this is before I met you guys and learned that Raynor needs to build four orbital commands and eight Barracks, and pump out giant armies before going anywhere.
I COULD probably beat Brutal now that I know stuff like that, but I don’t like the high stress.
No kidding, I don’t think he’s really even all that overpowered. He’s just got a really quick power spike in a game, he doesn’t reach as high a level as lots of commanders by the end game.
Besides, nothing wrong with having really strong setups. Just so long as it doesn’t get Zeratul cannon strong.
The idea of exploring a non-hero based, less top bar dependent commander sounds like an interesting take. Not a new concept but as always seem to be hijacked into a crazed “Waaa? No hero? Bad design” cliche.
Well, to be fair, there are several Commanders who had a hero unit in Campaign which the devs left out of coop in favor of a non-hero approach: Artanis, Raynor, Stetmann, Swann, Kerax, Stukov, etc etc etc.
They could have made those commanders with a hero unit but chose not to; in Stet’s case, his hero unit is not present but they made Gary/Super Gary instead.
Regarding top-bar abilities, that seems necessary, especially with a non-hero commander, to assign him or her special powers that compensate for the fact that there’s no special hero unit. Or, it might become like SCI, where the unique units look just like zerglings or tanks, just with higher health, attack power and defense.
You suggest stuff like free units and extra resources, but I am concerned that’s not going to provide the sort of lasting replay value a hero unit or top bar with several abilities will. Getting a few free units is not as WOW as being able to stop time or call in a giant battlecruiser that blows everything up and can zip around the map.