A few times since Legacy of the Void we have seen big balance changes that reworked entire units to make them viable.
This paired with Legacy of the Voids big changes we really saw interesting changes.
But I think one major issue that currently is there in starcraft 2 balance is some key issues that certain races run into and I think one major problem here is simply upgrades and buildings.
Starcraft 1 and brood war had a very large design philosophy that entailed that almost all units had one building tied to them and upgrades accompanying them.
In starcraft 2 many buildings got dropped and the game became faster paced especially with regards to what units you could get.
With each new expansion we saw more units added to an already quite limited amount of buildings. Factories started with 3 units to train and now have 5/6. Starports from 4 to 5. Stargates from 3 to 5, gateways from 5 to 6 etc.
All are mostly unlocked relatively together. Tech lab on factory gets you cyclones and siege tanks. Cyber core gets you sentries, stalkers and adepts.
But now to get to the point. Personally there is a lot of room with experimentation and balance testing with the test map that blizzard releases. The last two from July and then that leading to the one from August were good tests to see what works and what might be a bit too op.
What I would like to test are major changes with regards to buildings and upgrades.
Currently only Protoss really lacks upgrades. How many ability upgrades do protoss have compared to Terran or Zeef? Let’s look at barracks vs gateway basic units.
Gateway gets 3 unique researches in the council for 3 different units from the 4.
Barracks gets 3 as well. 1.5 for both Marine and Marauder. With reaper lacking.
Stargate is probably the worst offender vs Starport with Fleet Beacon and Starport Techlab or even Fusion Core. 1 upgrade for all 5 units.
Now some might say well Protoss lost or doesn’t have as much upgrades because of Balance with regards to just general balance and the Death Ball.
But I feel many of the current issues with protoss stem from this lack of upgrades. Carriers are either too good or not useful. What about giving them an upgrade to make them go further into late game while still being viable earlier.
These are balance decisions to consider. And even though Terran has enough upgrades it still is interesting to see abilities with such heavy impact like tactical jump for battlecruisers to be accessible immediately and not locked behind research. It’s not like battlecruisers are useless without them.
Now to get to the other proposed thing to consider. Buildings. I think the game would be easier to balance if new tech buildings would be considered, both to delay units or to give them upgrades earlier on or to give them more powerful upgrades.
All in all this would slow down the game a bit in regards to quickly gaining more and more powerful units, unlocking more harassment options and gaining strong upgrades.
Here are some concrete proposals:
A new building for protoss Stargate units. This would be a cheaper to get fleet beacon with abilities catered to Phoenix, Oracle and Void Ray. Void Ray can be locked behind this new tech building.
Potentially nerfing these units and giving them an upgrade to bring them back to their current power level.
PROs: Tells enemy players how commited on stargate their oponnent is. Allows for easier balance of these units.
Fleet Beacon would remain, but would be closer akin to Fusion Core and potentially have one or two new upgrades for tempest and carrier respectively.
A further thing I would like the Dev team to test is moving warp gate research to twilight council to increase the length of the early game and or an upgrade at the robotics bay unlocking warp mode for prisms.
For Terran I propose the reintroduction of the Starcraft Science Facility. It would require the Starport and unlock the Raven and have some raven upgrades. Together with the nerf to Warp Prisms I would also like to consider nerfs to the Medivac. I think the best balance would be to make the healing locked behind the science facility and thus delaying the full potential of the Medivac. Now this would really nerf Bio with lack of healing so maybe the medic could be reintroduced copied from brood war instead of campaign. It could have abilities once more such as restoration and optical flare. This would give Terran an early game support unit similar to Queens and Sentries. The medivac would thus early on be used for drops primarily and with the science lab it would gain healing. The fusion core would be locked behind the science facility and it would delay early battlecruisers. Again this would give the enemy a scouting opportunity to see if the enemy is going for battlecruisers or ravens.
For Zerg I think potentially delaying ravages behind an upgrade for the roach Warren or lair makes sense. Personally I would be in favor of a ravager Warren as it would split the resources for a Zerg player to go for lair or ravagers.
With infestors I would like to remove their infested terrans and moving them potentially to be trained either at a new building infested barracks or trained at the infestation pit. They could cost a reasonable amount of minerals and it would finally solve the issue of free units.
In return the infestor could gain an antiair ability like snare or a modified dark swarm protecting against air attacks.
Mutalisks are another issue. They are hurt by the fact that they are mostly used for harass and thus can become useless later on in the game. Starcraft had a solution and made it so that Mutalisks could mutate into guardians and later devourers. I think allowing Mutalisks to transform into brood lords makes more sense and would allow for early game Mutalisk harass to transition into broodlord.
The game would be stuck longer on a gateway vs barracks early factory vs hatchery, early lair time and I think this is perfect especially with the addition of all new early game units since wings of liberty.
I would like to hear what other people think of testing such changes. If they are completely insane or if people have ideas on how it could work better etc.
