Sort of in reference to this thread (annoying mutators/mutation combos), but it got me thinking about which mutators I actually like playing…OK maybe not LIKE playing, but think they are a well-designed mutator that adds to the game and isn’t an auto-lose for some commanders
Good Mutators -
Avenger
Heroes from the Storm
Void Rifts
Void Reanimator
Darkness
Alien Incubation
Outbreak
Aggressive Deployment
Power Overwhelming
Purifier Beam
Speed Freaks
Transmutation
Walking Infested
Shortsighted
Slim Pickings
Going Nuclear (was torn between this category and the ignorable category)
Eminent Domain
Just Die
Awful Mutators -
Blizzard
Fear
Fatal Attraction
Polarity
Propagators
Scorched Earth
Self Destruction
Temporal Field
Time Warp
Twister
Kill Bots
Vertigo
Laser Drill
Lava Burst
Missile Command
Moment of Silence
Black Death
Double Edge
Mag-nificent
Minesweeper
Largely Ignorable Unless Combined With Other Mutators and Thus Aren’t That Good IMO -
Barrier
Concussive Attacks
Evasive Maneuvers
Hardened Will
Inspiration
Life Leech
Long Range
Microtransactions
Mineral Shield
Mutual Assured Destruction
Photon Overload
Diffusion
Any disagreements? Some of these might need a different category - something like “requires slight attention but otherwise doesn’t change game play.” Orbital Strike would be an example. But I decided that was close enough to “largely ignorable.” The main difference between Orbital Strike and Mineral Shield in terms of attention is how a moment of inattention can mess you up - but neither is going to change tactics in any meaningful way.
Edits: couple of misnames. Apparently I was also looking at a bad list that didn’t have several of the mutators.
Lol at Slim Pickings being on the good mutation list.
It’s awful but there’s always that one guy who goes “it’s actually a buff to income if you play optimally, perhaps you should try a lower difficulty.”
I liked Avenger, Heroes from the Storm, and Transmutation since they buff enemy units or are buffed enemy units. The Polarity and Just Die combo I found to be a lot of fun to play in public queue and makes it feel like coop (although most people hate it for that exact reason).
Outbreak could be a better mutator if Aberrations hit earlier. Missions are generally ended or secured before they spawn.
Chaos Studios used to be a really good mutation until they added Propagators into its pool.
Wait wait wait I’m not saying I like playing it. But I think it’s a decently designed mutator in the sense that 1) it demands a different style of play, and 2) it’s doesn’t insta-gimp any particular commander.
The “largely ignorable” category is filled with stuff that doesn’t change game play or tactics especially, it just makes it marginally harder. I don’t think those are very interesting.
Individually, I find many of them alright. Some like the HotS, Poop, Just Die, etc. is unique on their own. The interaction is generally where they start having problems. I say it again, they are just not optimized enough.
There is no fun in a repeated giving us Polarity + Just Die weekly for example. Something like Short-sighted + Darkness also makes no sense. Or when you get a bunch of game-lagging ones. Or any of the known bugged combo.
There are clear categories for mutators, and they should be adding different layers of game-mechanic.
I believe you meant mutators? Mutations are the weekly events where a mission is pre-chosen, along with 2 to 3 mutators.
That aside, I generally don’t enjoy Polarity, Propagators, and HotS. However, there was a Mutation with Polarity, your supply is shared and cut in half, and perhaps another Mutator, on Vermillion Problem. That one was surprisingly doable.
My Fenix ally just set out without me, but I was able to mop up units with Karax’ Orbital Strikes. Later on as my SoA energy would get lot, I made Sentinels for sustained damage. More later on, I needed AA, and set up cannons and told my ally to just lure enemy units he couldn’t attack to there. This was much more mellow since the even though the enemies guarding the objectives are affected by Polarity, the crystals can be picked up by anybody. I also noticed the enemy waves weren’t “crazy on crack” hard.
I like most of the ones on your good list. Anything with more enemies or stronger enemies is good. Heroes is my favorite. I also like a lot of the enhancements to enemy behavior, like barrier and life leech. They incentivize some strategical adjustment, but they don’t just obsolete half or your units, or force you to babysit every single second of every single encounter.
I hate anything that turns basic, boring functions into a constant chore. Map-covering mods like nuclear/blizzard/minesweeper/lava/magmines are the worst. As if anyone thinks moving from point A to point B is a really fun thing that should be the focus of a game. That’s called Frogger, and people were bored of it in 1983. I want to play Starcraft, not a sh**ty stone-age arcade game.
Self destruction and scorched earth also restrict basic movement in a way that takes a lot of fun out of the game, although not as bad. Fatal attraction is awful for the same reason, although much worse. Mineral shields are just kind of annoying: mostly ignorable, but microing for the right to mine minerals definitely doesn’t add to the fun. On that note, slim pickings is an instant quit game.
Shortsighted turns the basic task of vision into a permanent chore, and places severe limitations on your strategy. It needs to be like an 8-10 point mutator. Although really, it needs to not exist.
Polarity goes without saying. It’s like the Piers Morgan of mutators: literally nobody likes it, and we’re all confused how it can possibly still be around.
Microtransactions is uniquely terrible. It’s a massive hacksaw that amputates gameplay and incentivizes you to play like a compete noob. I think they just added it because they thought it was a clever name.
Microtransactions barely matters. Just stop spamming commands like a lunatic for the first 10m. Most commanders are floating enough minerals by then that microtransactions won’t affect anything.
Some of my disagreements (not all of them though) / additional comments:
Good:
Laser Drill: Have to push bases aggressively
Polarity: Maybe I’m a masochist
Props: monkaS, but in a good way, and it keeps you on your toes.
Scorched Earth, self destruction: Just some extra dps you gotta micro around, but not map warping.
Just Die!: 2x the lives, 2x the fun.
Diffusion: gotta social distance while you kill.
Awful (but could be good with tweaks):
Fatal attraction: nothing like loosing control of your army for half the mission
Concussive attacks: 60 seconds?
Fear: Give us some way of being immune to fear, or lowering the chance for fear. Like for every + attack or armor upgrade it lowers the chance for fear (makes sense right? You get stronger and less scared).
Awful (please remove):
Micro transactions: all aspects of Starcraft reward fast and precise (issuing several small precise movements for precision control) play except this.
Fatal attraction: because we know you aren’t going to tweak it blizzard.
Ignorable (mostly):
Time warp, Temporal field: takes a little bit of micro to avoid, but it usually doesn’t kill you if you get stuck for a little bit.
“I don’t know how I feel about this” mutations:
Double-edge: ehh… it’s not that fun, it cripples some commanders, but I just don’t know what I would do to it to keep it unique and in the game. I guess I always just live with it when it shows up, but I almost never get excited about it. There has to be a way to make it more fun.
I don’t understand why do people call this mutator wrong? It is Heroes from the Storm.
There are several mutators that are only very bad when paired with certain ones, from the ones you menationed amongst awful: Fear, Fatal attraction, Propagators, Laser drill, Missile command, Moment of silence.
Scorched earth, Twister, Temporal field, Time warp are definitelly amongst the good ones for me.
If Void rifts spawned first at 4 minutes it would be much more friendly. If aggressive deployment respected the safe zones, it wouldn’t be much of an issue.
Slim pickings is not that bad on certain maps, but with other mutators like minesweeper, it is absolutely horrible.
Concussive attack is very annoying with its 1 minute effect. I’ve already suggested somewhere else to reduce it to for example 20 sec.
Im not sure if i like them but i want some fun challenges on various commanders, but i hate hard counters that make you or a certain ally useless. Like for instance there was a game where we had a fear mutator with Double edged alongside nuclear strikes. We went to go do it and it was just the worst god awful experience ever.
We thought that it would only apply to enemy units, so we went out to expand our base and i went to go build a muscle hideout so i could build my healers. Instead we had to stop as the turret i was using to open up the expansion otked itself in a single second and one second of firing with tychus and he went from 600 -> 100 hp. I had to constantly spam s to keep the turret from auto firing and tried to force a salvage while keeping tychus from seppuking while the turret burned to death during the 5 second salvage and my partner, a zeratul self detonated into thin air one shotting himself attacking a rock. We tried to rebuild and we had fear zerglings come near. i tried to drop the healing drone while my healer got feared by zerglings and in a attempt to save them, dropped a shredder grenade on the 20 zergings. Tychus blew up 600-> 0 hp in one hit, alongside my dead ally who died killing rocks. We both left the game.
i mean i get a further challenge, but that was just dumb. There was a another 9 games, but i distinctly remember those modifier being a piece of crap, and other games with fear where my allies were raynors and just gave up after a while of their marines spending the whole entire game stunned. I eventually just used turrets and tanks and just medivaced my units away every bad stun, but i don’t recall having fun with it.
Honestly i don’t really enjoy mutators that much, it just seems like they’re either dead set, either they’re ignorable, or inconviences / anti quality of life things like hiding the map or reducing the range. Or they keep you from sastifying moments. Like setting up a massive bomb only for it to only do 10 damage since a infested on dead of night unburrowed itself next to a 6000 hp heroic mutator mob.
I get that they don’t want gameplay to feel stale, but sometimes i wish there were some upsides like a kiss and curse, or instead of punishing the player, maybe some benign neutral/double edged mutators that smart players could take advantage of, like how Sc1 had like operation Cwal that made all your research fast, but the enemies as well. Or say making double edged hit the enemy back as well for 50%. And maybe having a limit cap or only doing the base damage for a aoe and removing rocks from the limit? you shouldn’t DIE because you weren’t supposed to know that the rocks reflected damage with hero units that two shot themselves. That’s not fun, it’s just stupid and a leave game and rejoin moment. I get that you don’t want to feel bored with a easy game, but some mutations feel like it’s honestly a less enjoyable player experience. Or sometimes im like 500 kills to 100 and my other ally got hard shut down by a mutator and couldn’t do anything but calldowns. That’s not fun, that’s just stupid and we’re only doing it for the xp. Why on earth does it start with 3? why not do two lvls and keep it to 1 mutator for brutal+ and 2 for ++ and 3 for +++ etc and so on?
Fixed the list. Indeed “infestor” is not a mutator; I was probably thinking of walking infested.
And agreed; several of the “ignorable” list ones become awful when combined in certain ways. I also personally hate all of the map effect-type mutators that make it impossible to reinforce my armies. Like I can’t just move units from place to place. Every group must be babysat.
This is a really important distinction that people keep flubbing. I mean, partially Blizzard’s fault for being unimaginative with their naming scheme, but still.
. It would be silly and fun haha.