As a disclaimer, I think that starcraft is currently pretty balanced. I think most complaints come from certain styles being/appearing somewhat easier to play rather than being unduly hard to beat. I also play all 3 races at a similar level.
I watch more than I play these days, but it seems to me that one area where there is a big advantage is late game terran ghost compositions. The ghost feels to me a little too versatile, as it is really effective against all the zerg late game heavy hitters. However, the ghost definitely has a critical role in the midgame to counter any ultralisk pushes, and prevent early lurkers from stifling all terran offensive. Against protoss, it is also essential to prevent huge quantities of psionic storm landing.
Here is the change I propose:
Increase the supply cost of the ghost from 2 to 3.
With a change like this, the ghost keeps all its utility in the midgame, and most of it for the late game. It still can counter all spellcasters and snipe big zerg units. But, the raw auto attack damage output both to ling/bane as well snipes to lurker or brood lord compositions would hit a lower ceiling in games that go the distance. I think this would improve the game by forcing the ghost to be produced a bit more judiciously as army supplies rise, because it’s supply could produce more potential firepower in the form of other units.
Overall, I think the ghost functioning more as a tactical unit using emp to hinder spellcasters and snipes more to punish zerg overextensions and retreats would be better for the game. 20+ ghost armies would limit the amount of total firepower in an army, and make it more possible to be overrun.
I agree with you.
PvT is Ghost in his role.
TvZ Ghost is not a good design. Ghost is fast (3.94) is too tanky (100Hp). with snip ability and aa to all round vs zerg.
Compared to the other units path see factory/ starport units Ghost should be 4-sup.
3 would possibly be a good start.
other options would be (small steps ):
aa(nerf / remove/ change type/ only gtg or gta);
gas cost change (150/125 → 125/150)
balance betwee speed/ HP (only one)
→ mobility nerf 3,94 ->3,84/ 3,7;
→ Hp nerf 100-> 90/85;
Sc2 Forum: “Mass spellcaster is bad game design” a few years ago.
now 15+ Ghost, is fine is only in one match up… interesting.
I doubt that either Ghost’s speed or health is an issue in TvZ.
The main problem with Ghost is Steady-Targeting. The spell can stack without penalty, so its design is bad if the goal is to avoid mass-caster armies. The spell may also be too strong in terms of damage output, but on the flipside, it also becomes completely useless or unusable in a number of situations.
That is absolutely ridiculous. There is no way that an individual Ghost is as valuable as a Viper. It makes more sense to nerf or replace Steady-Targeting to keep the Ghost as a 2-supply unit than it does to nerf it so heavily in TvP and TvT where it isn’t problematic.
Any significant nerf to Ghost would mean that Terran would never win a TvZ game that went into lategame, or at the very least - not without camping behing a wall of PF.
Wouldn’t ~1h long game when Terran sits behind wall of PF be fun?=)
Um, that’s just not true, Zerg do A LOT of mid game pushes with Roaches, not to mention Muta play.
Just watch how Dark plays.
making Ghost cost 3 supply would devolve this match-up to “Tower Defense”. Sound more like “static” than “dynamic” to me.
The ONLY issue with Ghost is that it - to some degree given perfect reaction time and flawless micro - can counter unit that its supposed to counter Ghost which is Infestor.
This mechanic can be changed by either increasing range of Fungal or making it rooting units again (2nd one is better because we don’t need “1 unit kills everything” kind of things) BUT such change would mean that Terran army would become even less mobile than it is or in other words, we would have Tower Defense.
The problem with Zerg is that its army moves a lot faster and doesn’t need to siege which makes it almost impossible for Terran army to move out in case when Zerg and Terran are more or less on equal footing.
When you think about it Terran army needs something like Force Field… and maybe recall… sigh…
The whole point of Steady Targeting is to be able to kill units that otherwise could not be killed by Terran army, or at the very least can not be killed quickly enough.
It takes 3 snipes to kill an Ultra and 2 snipes to kill Brood Lord or Corruptor. If these units are not dead in a ~1.5 seconds after Zerg commits to attack you have dead Terran army and a GG out of Terran no matter his economy (terran can’t instantly remax like Zerg).
Making Fungal a root removes any counter-play from it after the first one lands (a problem that it had previously).
Increasing Fungal’s range is also problematic. The ability of Infestor compositions (particularly BL+infestor) to zone enemy armies out of range basically forces the other factions to have longer-ranged tools in order to compete with it–Tempests, Vikings, Liberators, Thors, etc. Increasing Fungal’s range could create a ripple effect where the range of the longest-ranged units in the game must also be increased.
Frankly, if the Ghost is a problem, it is best to change the Ghost. Unfortunately, I don’t know the best solution for that, just that steady-targeting is the best thing to tweak.
It counters literally every zerg unit except the zergling/baneling, and vs those it is a soft-counter that can go either way depending on unit interactions. The movement speed of the ghost is the biggest issue, but I’d say the cost of late game detection is too high for zerg. You either have to suicide infestors by throwing out blind fungals in the hopes of catching the ghosts, or you have to make overseers and siege them (where they are easily sniped). So the issue is that Zerg has to spend tons of gas just to be able to see the ghosts, not to mention actually killing the ghosts.
There are lots of things about the ghost that can be criticized. People didn’t like burrow-fungal because it gave no warning, but what do you think cloaked-snipe is? I had some broods in a game awhile back that just died. No warning at all. You look away for a second and your entire army is gone. There was no warning on the minimap at all.
Terrans complain about banelings killing a small cluster of marines when the terran looks away. Terrans complain about burrow-fungal because it gives no warning. Terrans complain about having to ration scans but what about zerg that has to ration suicide-infestors which give 1/1000th as much detection coverage.
It’s pretty obvious that Terran is the “newb” race that has literally zero strategic complexity whatsoever. Every single game condition that a terran runs into can be fixed by fast reactions – casting a scan or dropping a supply drop or stimming some marines.
If you nerf Ghost than it won’t be able to counter Zerg T3 and we will be back in an era of 3 base all-ins.
Counter-play is to not get hit (manevour, EMP).
Or kill units that can kill you first (which is why I suggested practically removing damage together with full root or range/radius buff).
But yes, its a tough nut to crack.
Would be ideal to make Terran have FF or time warp (I mean they have beeen studing destroyed toss tech for decades now), BUT the problem is that FF is needed to Protoss too…
i genuinely believe that Ghost snipe should be reverted to its old form - less dmg but instant and no cancel if ghost is hit.
See, the problem with steady targeting is what i call stupid dependency - if snipe is successfull, terran player is rewarded with massive dmg - 170. But if the snipe is canceled for whatever reason (damage, no vision, out of range) then all of a sudden ghost deals no damage and its standard attack is useless for late game units like ultras, lurkers or brood lords and all of a sudden terran has 2 supply of a unit that can’t really add any value to the rest of the army.
That’s half right. Terran is incentivized to attack into zerg during the midgame, where terran is favored. The game then switches to being zerg favored, with one exception: the terran’s defensive mechanics drastically outweigh zergs advantages. The result is that terrans get to roll the dice on many attempts to win, but if they roll badly they just turtle up, so there’s no risk. Zerg on the other hand gets to roll dice to decide if they lose, and if they get lucky then the game goes on with a chance that they might win later on.
If an attack has a 10% chance to outright win the game, then it should have a 10% chance to outright lose the game. Right now it’s a 10% chance to win, 1-2% chance to lose, and 89% chance that the game goes on (with more chances to win).
I remember the days when a terran could not defend his third against counter attacks unless he kept his hellions alive. Diving your hellions into mineral lines was risky. Now there is very little risk to do it, but it’s an instant win if you kill enough drones. The same was true with banshees and roaches. If he didn’t preserve his banshee, you could just run over his third with roaches.
Terran can YOLO units at the zerg with no risk that the zerg can counter attack and win the game. That’s the fundamental issue that is created by terran’s absurd defensive capabilities. He doesn’t need the hellions and banshees for defense of his third because the siege tank eviscerates zerg units like a slab of butter dropped into a blender.
Taking a step back and looking at things from a game-design perspective, I think that much of what people complain about when it comes to the game boils down to how much better defensive play is compared to offensive, and this doesn’t just come down to defenders’ advantage, but mainly the spells each race has access to.
The most complained spells - Abduct, Snipe, EMP are best used not for making a big push and putting on pressure, but for kiting backwards and picking off units while making sure that the bulk of your opponent’s army doesn’t want to engage into yours with area denial via deathball and positioning.
Compare this to Brood war, where Defensive Matrix, Dark Swarm, Psistorm, Stasis are all extremely powerful abilities which are best utilized to complement a full-on push.
Nobody complains about blinding cloud, or about storm or anti-armor missile. But everyone hated seeker missiles and infested terrans and swarm hosts. All in all, I think SC2 suffers from an underlying design philosophy problem and even if we fix abduct and snipe, the general lack of OFFENSIVE abilities that are used EXCLUSIVELY with a push (as opposed to these energy based abilities used to chip away at units for free).
I disagree, zerg is already outmassing terran and has the edge because of it on large maps like altitude. By doing what you suggest, it would make it appear even more.
Also I don’t consider your statement logical, because you claim all 3 races are balanced, and yet you want to nerf one.
Perphaps terran is too ghost dependent, and when he loses bunch of them he becomes vunerable, but when he manages to keep them alive they are extremely efficient.
If it’s the case I would suggest making ghost cheaper and quicker too produce but take from him sniping ability, and make a new unit without emp but with sniping.
Then we achieve same amount of units, therefore firepower, we keep crucial balance keeping terran abilities, and one unit is no longer extremely decisive.
It would be cool to have a unit “sniper”.
It’s a general rule of game development to try and have as few units with overlapping roles as possible. I think switching steady targeting for snipe is an interesting change, but it would be overkill, some tweaking is in order to be sure.