Mutator changes

Co-op Missions Discussion
1

I enjoy Brutal+, but there are just too many mutators that basically make it so you can’t really “play” the game.

Fatal Attraction, Moment of Silence, and Fear come to mind.

One of the biggest issues with mutators is that one mutator might be nothing for one commander to handle, but can completely take another commander out of the game. Tychus vs Fatal Attraction, for example. It’s not that the mutator is hard or impossible. It’s that it’s 0% fun and it is literally removing playing the game… from the game.

But I also don’t get why so many mutators have to be so extreme. Concussive Attacks last SIXTY SECONDS? The massive damage on all types of mines? The frequency of nukes, kill bots, and lava bursts?

Here’s my list of changes I’d like to see for certain mutators.

Blizzard - Should not hurt structures.

Concussive Attacks - Shorten duration.

Fatal Attraction - After being pulled units should be immune from being pulled again for at least a couple of seconds.

Fear - Either reduce the chance to be feared or the duration.

Going Nuclear - Nukes are a little too common for what they can potentially do. If you’d like some PTSD in your life, do Going Nuclear + Mag-nificent on Malwarfare.

Kill Bots - Spawn rate is too frequent. Also consider the supply cost of the unit they kill affecting how many points they score, even if it means increasing how many points they need a bit.

Lava Burst - Either slightly reduce the damage or the spawn rate/number of spawns. Make them not spawn on buildings.

Mag-nificent - Should not trigger Fatal Attraction.

Mineral Shields - Should not trigger Fatal Attraction.

Minesweeper - Should not trigger Fatal Attraction. Could probably use a bit less mines overall, but I think a big problem with them is the RNG of the locations. Sometimes there’s tons of them between you and your first objective or expansion in the early game and it causes too much of an impact. So perhaps reduce the amount of potential spawns in the early game.

Missile Command - Could maybe wait 1 or 2 minutes before starting.

Moment of Silence - Reduce the duration or radius.

I love the idea of mutators, things that alter the way you have to play the mission, and figuring out the best way to deal with them (mind you, I mean figuring out the best way to deal with them with the commander I randomed, NOT retrying with a better-suited commander for the mission/mutators). And I like the concept of basically every mutator. But I feel like some of them are taken to the extreme. Like there’s just no reason for Concussive Attacks to last a whole minute, or for there to be 4 nukes going off on my screen at once.

A few other notes:
-It feels like several mutators as well as Brutal+ tiers still need their numerical values adjusted. I hate that I need to play higher tiers of Brutal+ to play against Heroes From the Storm, one of the coolest mutators IMO.

-I also think the minimum number of mutators should just be abolished. For example, if not for the minimum requirement of 2 mutators it would be possible to have Kill Bots as a mutator in Brutal+1, by itself. I think that would be fine.

-Aurana’s transport should not be attacked by Kill Bots or any of the mines either. I think this is an issue with Harvesting Bots as well?

-There are too many mutators that make building static defenses anywhere outside of your main base/expansion literally impossible. Going Nuclear, Lava Bursts, Blizzard, Orbital Strike, and Purifier Beam, but there are others that have very easy potential to devastate them as well: Double Edged, Scorched Earth, Propagators, Polarity, Shortsighted, Long Range, Self Destruction, Mutually Assured Destruction, Heroes From the Storm, Time Warp, and Temporal Field. As stated above, it’s removing too much gameplay from the game and that doesn’t feel good. But what’s the right solution? I think it’s okay to have a few mutators that make using static defense unwise, such as nukes. Blizzard should absolutely not affect buildings. Other mutators like Lava Bursts and Temporal Fields I think it would be OK to make completely prevent spawning on top of buildings since it will technically make it more difficult for your units to move around due to less available space. Orbital Strike and Purifier Beam would probably be too weird if they ignored buildings IMO, but buildings could also take reduced damage from such mutators. It’s not about making the damage negligible, it should totally still be harassive, just not completely game removing devastating. Most of the other mutators are fine and should continue to affect structures, it’s just the total amount of mutators that make static defenses potentially useless is too high.

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I agree, they need to adjust each mutator more appropriately. It’s a perfectly doable way to balance the game a bit towards fun with difficulty side, rather than grind with tedium side.

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The whole idea behind brutal+ and the higher difficulties is just stupid and lazy to begin with

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So true. I’ve said this many times, but if the mutator that makes you lose money with any action you take appears, I AM OUT. No questions asked. That mutator is ridiculous.

These mutators are hilariously painful. It’s hilarious just watching your army just sit around while they get blasted apart by the enemy. It’s painful that you literally can’t do anything about it. And I know what you mean about the commander counters. Fatal attraction and fear are basically free losses for Zagara. Your light units won’t even be able to fight if they are just running around in fear.

AMEN. You are basically slowed PERPETUALLY with concussive attacks. Mines are stupid period. The nukes? EVERYWHERE. Kill bots? You get like 2 every second! How is a commander like Tychus supposed to deal with that??

I think blizzard is fine in that regard. I’ve never had it kill a structure. It’s just a minor nuisance.

AMEN

THIS PART. You basically need a Zagara or Stukov to trade out with those kill bots. It’s almost unplayable otherwise.

Another one of those hilariously painful experiences. You laugh at how stupid it is, and you cringe at how devastating it is to your army, and even mineral line.

It’s an issue with a lot of things. Those neutral objectives get blasted down really hard by mutators. It’s painful.

I think brutal+1-6 needs to be recategorized entirely. Whoever developed it was clearly not in the right state of mind to make so many poor choices.

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5

Play Maguro’s mutators!! This isn’t a solution for any the problems you’ve pointed out (I agree all btw), but with Maguro’s you can at least get a chance to experience what mutators could’ve been. Every one I’ve tried out so far makes for an incredibly challenging but not idiotic game.

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Malwarfare - Unused Suppression Towers should not count as buildings. Stop using this map for unlimited poops, reanimators, and kill bots.

Afraid of the Dark - Increase townhall structure vision range by 1 so the far mineral fields are all visible to workers. Also rework the whole thing to make it less of a lag-fest.

Black Death - Remove Black Death from units when Death Recalled by Vorazun.
Diffusion - Just delete this. It just lags everyone because of all the damage spreading calculation the one Starcraft CPU core has to do. Or find a way to make this use other CPU cores.
Fatal Attraction - I don’t actually know how to fix this without just removing it from the game.
Gift Exchange - Remove Overcharged Shuttles and Naughty List Cleared from list of gifts. Also make the first gifts spawn within 50 radius of player 1’s base instead of literally the back of the enemy’s base.
Transmutation - Make infested civilians and broodlings not count toward transmutation. Also, allow Abathur to switch off his locust spawns. Seriously.
Void Reanimators - Give them a minimap marker.
Void Rifts - Make the first spawns at 3:30 instead of 2:20, and make it not behind the enemy base.

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That awkward moment when everyone hates mutators and agrees that their interaction is even worse.

Meanwhile at coop dev headquarters:
“Add more mutators, it’s what the people wants, I just know it!”

Rip

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That’s an unintended and inevitable consequence of co-op commander design. Each commander is designed to be different, everyone having their own strengths, weaknesses and playstyles.

If you want to balance mutators to a point where any commander can handle any mutator you will end up with boring and unchallenging mutations.

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9

Thats perfectly OK for weekly mutations but completely ruins Brutal+.

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That’s the end result of the poor design choice of making Brutal+ what it is.

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11

Indeed.
What I can think of is further decreasing mutators total value for Brutal+1, so the abyss between regular Brutal and +1 is not so big. And adjusting +2 to +6 accordingly so whole range of difficulties to select stays the same, just moves up in numbers.
And probably open +2 and maybe +3 to public queue so armchair grandmasters won’t complain.

12

Why would that be?

Custom mutation can have up to 10 mutators. And it is the foundation of brutal+ system.

What possible harm can nerfing 90% of the mutators appropriately do? And why can’t the same arbitrary difficulty be readjusted by adding more “now nerfed mutators” to compensate? And how would that make anything unchallenging?

Not everything is black and white. Either impossibly hard or face roll easy. Even current broken system isn’t like that. It is the range that’s the issue currently. I can think of nothing more appropriate than to reduce that range. Ya kno, since it’s their broken system that placed everyone into these crappy range of “highly difficult brutal+ than is far more tedious than a brutal 4+” kind of situation.

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Maguro Map wrote a solution for this. You can see the note here
https://www.maguro.one/2017/08/fatal-attraction-and-propagators.html
Even though it’s not a completely solution but still pretty good.

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Nerfing things can lead to easier gameplay which can lead to boring gameplay. You would be doing the game and the players a disservice by not providing an adequate challenge.

Adjustments where appropriate is fine, just don’t go heavy with it.

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That’s a lot of assumptions there.

  1. Assuming first off they will even do anything
  2. Assuming they’ll over nerf everything
  3. Assuming that the post nerf reaction is negative
  4. Assuming coop is dead as a result
  5. Assuming they can’t buff after they nerf

I get you are cautioning but that’s quite the leap.

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I 100% agree, and feel like my suggestions aligned appropriately.

I don’t believe this at all. Yes, every mutator should be able to be dealt with by any commander. It’s when you combine multiple mutators with map, enemy comp, and commander synergy that things should start to get tricky. I’m not sure how being able to actually play the game is removing difficulty or fun. Limiting available options, thus removing gameplay from the game, is not fun or challenging to me. Fun and challenging is figuring out how to deal with the circumstances with the commander I rolled.

I should clarify that I am talking about Brutal+, and not the weekly mutation. Being able to see the mutators beforehand is a totally different game.

1 Like
17

The worst that can happen in this scenario is that certain mutators end up being nerfed to a point where they no longer represent the challenge they are supposed to be.

How low would Propagators need to be nerfed so that even Stukov’s Infested can handle them?

How much easier would it be if defensive structures don’t need to worry about getting destroyed by Lava Bursts or Blizzards?

If anything, that’s what Brutal+ should allow players to do first. The system selects and shows the mutators then your choice for commander if you decide to play it.

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I don’t think anyone wants to see mutators nerfed to the point they become pointless. However, in your example, Propagators (which wasn’t on my list so don’t know why it’s an example) wouldn’t be countered by Stukov’s Infested, they are countered by Diamondbacks and Tanks. Meaning he already has a way to counter them, so using him as an example is moot. The only change I’d make to Propagators is reducing their frequency or count. But again, wasn’t on my list cause I think it’s mostly fine.

You should instead look at my list again and see which of the proposed changes would cause a commander to trivialize the mutator.

I’ve seen this suggestion before, I think there may have even been a point where I suggested it myself, where you enter a lobby with your partner that shows the mutators so you can choose your commander/master.

Thing is, I’m on the fence about it now because I’m worried that it will turn into just choosing the same commander every time for certain mutators. It’s fine for the weekly mutation, but for everyday gameplay? I feel like choosing the best counter for everything will get boring fast.

You did just remind me of another post I’ve been meaning to make though regarding Mastery, I should do that now.

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It’s really not that complicated. Give Poops a 1-2sec cooldown between each propagation. So it would still make mass units like Stukov’s infested poor but not entirely “touch and game over”.

I would say not much at all. Workers are still units with low HP and mediocre movement. They will still die to mutators even if structures are immune.

None of these are that crazy of a change. And that’s coming from me, just another coop player. Where this decision would/should be made from general player consensus and dev team discussion (ie. multiple ppl). I’m sure it won’t be that bad.

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Yes but that’s if you even get that far. Until then, you would be wholly reliant on your partner.

Lava Burst for one. That laughs in Karax’s face, your change would flip it the other way. Zeratul would have no trouble against Blizzard.

The thing with co-op devs making mutator changes is that they typically make trims around the edges but they otherwise work as they always have. They would only make changes if it severely affects gameplay like Blizzard previously damaged expansions such that you couldn’t use them.

While it would make it easier for Stukov, the knock-on effect is that it will also make it easier for those that can handle Props well enough already.