PLEASE make the defeat condition 'The TEAM must have at least 1 structure'

Co-op Missions Discussion
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TL;DR: While I still support making the defeat condition the team losing all structures, a reasonable compromise that would accomplish Blizzard’s goals would be a 60-90 second timer for the player who lost all buildings to rebuild before a loss occurs. They must have a worker to rebuild, and the team lacking structures at any moment would still result in defeat. This would make the requirement both players have structures less capriciously punishing in rare situations where it would matter without any disadvantages.

I played coop since launch and had no idea this was even a defeat condition until it came up in a wheel of misfortune where we got propagators and I didn’t spread out buildings enough about 4 months back. I was counting on the fact my ally having buildings was good enough.

It’s incredibly stupid and unnecessary that BOTH players have to have structures to win. The defeat condition should simply be The team must have at least 1 structure , like it is in team games in ladder since release day 2010. I understand Blizzard wants some added incentives for cooperation but the disadvantages of having this mechanic vastly outweigh the advantages. Even in vs AI, the defeat condition is the team losing all structures. In team games, Blizzard had the wisdom to realize the defeat condition should be about the team, not the individual. Now that needs to be applied to Coop. Was this condition really in coop from the start?

This mechanic adds a totally unnecessary risk of defeat to brutations played with random partners. You could carry them the entire game, and then randomly lose at the end because they refused to follow instructions to build a few more buildings in obscure places. Painfully stupid. Utterly pointless. Bad design choice. This might be the most indefensible mechanic in all of coop mode.

There are already so many different defeat conditions in coop missions. So many different ways of losing mutations, especially with randoms. This is an extra middle finger to the player on top of all that and it’s extremely easy to fix.

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The weird part about the current loss condition is that certain commanders can’t be defeated at all due to having invulnerable buildings.

I disagree with the OP though. You should have to protect both players from losing all their buildings; it is COOP after all. They could even make it more difficult by requiring a Town Hall for both players to not be defeated and I’d consider it an improvement.

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Invulnerable structures don’t count. If all other structures are destroyed, you still lose the game.

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Invulnerable structures do count. It is a well known gimmick for commanders like fenix, swann, and zeratul to simply abandon their base and attack using guerrilla tactics on certain mutations.

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I generally think about this loss condition the same as about many campaign mission’s “hero X must survive”. As in, sure, you might be able to finish a mission on your own, but if your allied commander is killed, that’s still Amon’s win.

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I don’t think it needs changing, as

  • it requires you to defend your ally (it is coop after all),
  • presents a learning curve for that Mutator (well, lots of Mutations require you to learn and do stuff or else you die)
  • if changed it could open up abuse like destroying your ally’s base (even tho now you could destroy their base to end the game)
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Unless this has changed, I can confirm doesn’t work. I’ve lost games as Karax and Zeratul.

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[quote="SerasVII-2278, post:6, topic:1732, full:true"]
  • if changed it could open up abuse like destroying your ally’s base (even tho now you could destroy their base to end the game)
    [/quote]

This to me is the big point. I would fully expect such a change to open up a significant amount of abuse. As it stands right now, your ally cannot attack you until the end unless they want to carry you. :wink:

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Ah interesting, I wasn’t sure about Zeratul. I was only going off of what I learnt in 1 particularly weird game where my ally attacked my SCVs with his probes (I was Raynor, he was Zeratul) at the beginning of the game. I proceeded to destroy his base. I killed his base structures, but he did get up two monoliths in that game. The part I’m foggy about is whether or not he got them up before or after I killed his buildings.

But if you say it doesn’t work for Zeratul, I’ll have to take your word for it. Others have confirmed that it is true for Fenix and Swann. I myself have witnessed Fenix’s Purifier Conclave thingy forming a barrier over itself and Swann’s lazer drill auto-rebuilds. I don’t think anyone ever said that Karax has an immortal structure though.

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That’s exactly the nonsensical response I was expecting somebody to make. Both players having structures has virtually zero bearing on trolling. In fact, it makes it worse. If Blizzard primarily intended it as an anti-trolling measure, their logic is far more broken than I thought.

OBVIOUSLY, allies can just destroy unit producing structures to cripple their ally and be a troll but still win the game. IF their goal is to lose, then the defeat conditions don’t matter, killing allied structures (or even their own!!!) makes it even easier to lose.

Fixing this badly designed mechanic would not open up any meaningful amount of abuse. It would actually reduce it, making trolls job’s harder.

You’re already incentivized to defend your ally in coop. The punishment for not defending your ally is facing more enemies yourself, missing bonus objectives, and often losing the mission.

As for adding to the ‘learning curve’ for mutations, in practice it really just ends up being a cheap shot way to be robbed of a deserved win on rare occasions where it happens. Especially given the way coop works in practice, with almost everyone queuing with randoms. Queuing brutations alone I’m used to carrying my ally. Sometimes mutators are really unfair, I’ve never bothered to complain on the forums. But this mechanic is so arbitrary, unnecessary, deleterious and such an easy fix that it’s worth drawing attention to.

As long as this mechanic stays in, it’s a major black mark against coop, just knowing it’s there diminishes my enthusiasm for coop. And I’ve been playing sc2 since release in 2010, and since coop release in 2015. It’s baffling that somebody at Blizzard actually sat down at thought ‘hmm, let’s change the underlying defeat logic away from team games and the editor default, and make both players have to have structures! Sure, other gametypes are cooperative too, but lets make a higher level of cooperation’. And they actually thought THIS would be the way to do that, not creating punishments for force attacking allies too much, not the de facto disadvantages of not having an ally, not giving the player who lost his structures the option of allowing the game to continue, or any other options they could’ve chosen. It’s indefensible because it’s objectively terrible at accomplishing any of the stated goals. It’s also nonsensical. If you’re fighting Amon’s forces and destroy all the Protoss structures on a map where you fight all 3 races, you don’t automatically win. But if he destroys all one of your sides’ buildings, both of you lose.

There shouldn’t be any compromise on this point, but if there had to be, maybe forcing the player who lost all his buildings to leave the game would work. That way, the remaining player wouldn’t have any assistance from his ally’s top panel abilities. Additionally, the stockpiled resources of the no-buildings player could be confiscated, to make the penalty harsher.

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Imagine, for a moment, if Blizzard added 3 player coop. There’s no way in hell people would stand by a requirement that ALL 3 players have structures. EVEN MORE true if there was 4 player coop. There’s already 3 player vs AI. That doesn’t have any stupid ‘your allies must have buildings’ defeat conditions. Neither does 2vAI. Why? Because it would be so obviously stupid and pointless. It’s a team game, and a team victory. Coop is a team game and should be a team victory. You can look back at Warcraft 3 and Broodwar and see the same thing. Nobody was so foolish as to think you should be punished because your allies screwed up. Everybody understood you had a strong incentive to keep your allies alive without resorting an ineffective and counterproductive gimmick that actually enables trolling.

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Why not? If Blizzard made a 3 person Co-op they’d have to make enough room for everyone’s buildings. And I don’t think most players dislike having buildings? I’m not really sure what you’re arguing with that. The point is, this isn’t something that ever happens, since if a player is overrun they usually just quit. If you’re ally gets destroyed they do the same amount of damage to you as if they don’t push objectives in time or missing attack waves. So how is this any different or worse? Meanwhile, if you changed it, you would ABSOLUTELY get speed runners taking advantage of it. It would make Brutal a crapshoot

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Another idea (would be a huge improvement!!) would be to provide a window for new structures to be built before ending the game, with the game ending immediately only if no workers were alive. A bit like Warcraft 3 did when a main building was lost, the player had a countdown before their structures were revealed to the enemy. Except this would be to avoid losing outright. Blizzard has so many more sensible options then the current implementation, they just need to pick one.

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This is as much of a problem as the rare troll attacking their ally. It’s frustrating when it happens but not nearly frequent enough to be “fixed”.

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You could be on to something there. The player has x amount of time to rebuild or the team forfeits. That has merit.

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Players like having buildings, but they like being in the game and winning even more. The current implementation stops that if anybody loses all their buildings. This is bad in 2 player coop but would be EXPONENTIALLY worse in 3 or 4 player coop.

It’s not a situation that happens very often, which is why it hasn’t been fixed yet. But it should be.

If allies are destroyed, they don’t help push the objectives, and this is an incentive to keep them alive. But if they do lose all their structures, you should have a CHANCE of winning on your own. The current implementation takes that away.

I’m not sure what you mean about speedrunners. It would make doing speed solos easier, I’ve been doing those and finding clever spots to hide Raynor CCs. But a way in which something isn’t bad isn’t actually a defensible reason to keep it.

Maybe the real reason Blizzard wants this is to stop ‘homeless’ strategies, like Swann having a drill and Karax having no buildings on dead of night. These builds are legit exploits of intended game mechanics. This is the closest thing to a defensible explanation. But if there was a timer, it would still kill those or make them nearly impossible.

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You’re suppose to be defending and supporting your ally, just like they support and defend you too. The only place this should realistically rise up, is on Mutations.

You’ve likely got bigger issues going on if your ally is being destroying and you cannot help them in a base that’s shared together, including Expos.

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What I mean is this: if you make this change, then queuing Brutal becomes an arms race between you and your ally. One will get troops first, kill the other’s buildings, and move on. You can’t make a drastic change like this without some kind of safeguard.

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You’ve likely got bigger issues going on, but not necessarily. Sometimes you are moments away from victory and somebody loses their last building. Yes, things aren’t great, but you shouldn’t have lost immediately. If it transitioned to a 60 or 90 second rebuild timer it would be far more reasonable.

There already is no safeguard. Your ally built a starting depot. You built a pylon. You can now freely teamkill each other, leaving that one building behind. As long as the winner defends that building, which is only difficult on brutations, they can win solo. (except on L&L and Chain, where teamkilling guarantees basically guarantees a loss.) There’s no need to worry about removing a nonexistent safeguard.

Besides, teamkilling is damned rare, at least on Brutal.

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I guess it would depend which one is more rare, and I’d wager they both are damn rare, so really it just doesn’t matter which way around it is, as it’s a tiny issue one way or another.

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