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 Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 3:52 pm
So, as most of you know, I lurk the Blizzard Starcraft 2 forums. And, again as most of you know, those forums are rife with complaints, asinine posts, douchebags and general jackassery. However, recently I have noticed a new point being made that I think warrants at least a small bit of discussion and/or theory crafting (whatever the hell that is). Obviously not in those forums because, well lets face it, you wouldn't be able to find an intelligent conversation in there even if Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein were part of the userbase that frequently posts.
Now, I would like to take a moment to remind you all that this is NOT a balance or QQ thread. So I don't want any of that to be discussed here unless it's absolutely necessary. Starting along those paths will kill any meaningful discussion.
So the point I've been noticing is how the various roles of Terran units and abilities overlap. It's no secret that Terran has the most units in the game and you'd think that with that many options there wouldn't be a whole lot of redundancy. But at the end of the day we only see one of two builds from Terran players*: Either MMM or Marine/Tank/Medivac. Are you starting to see the trend? Even if the opposing player brings out their entire arsenal, very rarely is anything else required from the Terran.
I don't play Terran (although I did when the game first came out). You all know that. So I'm not qualified to speak on exactly what units overlap with others and how. However, there is one example that should be readily apparent to everyone: The Raven. The Raven is arguably one of the best casters in the game and yet it is very rarely utilized. It's not perfect, it has its drawbacks like every other unit but, in my experiences using it, the benefits far outweigh the limitations of the unit. Yes, it is a little gas expensive, but the Raven provides mobile detection and some great options to harass. Sneak in behind an enemy base and lay down a couple automated turrets behind the mineral line and you cause huge economic damage even if you never actually kill a worker just because your opponent will have to remove his miners from the mineral line for at least three minutes (or until the turrets are dealt with). An upgrade further increases the amount of time a turret can stay deployed. Point Defense Drone ensures that your units cannot be fired upon by ranged units. While I can't comment too much on the utility of HSM, I can say that one HSM in the middle of a larva batch will kill them all. Not to mention the assortment of upgrades the Raven has access to. So if the Raven has so much good in it, why is it never used? One word: Scan.
Scan is a Terran ability available to the player the moment an Orbital Uplink is completed. Not only does it provide on-demand detection, it also disperses a portion of the fog of war anywhere on the map, cannot be stopped by your opponent and does not cost you any money, making it essentially free.** If we look at it like that, why would we ever use a Raven? And that's where we come to the crux of the matter. Scan may not be able to harass your opponent's mineral line and it may not be able to be able to protect your army from incoming fire but it does provide instant detection anytime, anywhere. That, by itself, is the single reason you never see Ravens on the battlefield. Their utility is largely unexplored simply because Terrans don't need to invest in that kind of mobile detection the way Protoss does in the Observer or Zerg does in the Overseer.
So the question becomes: How do we make the Raven a more necessary unit like the Observer and Overseer? Simple really. Remove the ability to detect from Scan. With that simple change you open up an avenue of new strategies because players will be forced to use a unit they haven't experimented with much. Games will become less predictable and a little more fun. New strategies will be discovered that don't require Medivac drops but offer the same amount of harassment.
Now this is the point where a lot of players would cry that this breaks Terran, this leaves them vulnerable. To which I have to respond, "How?" If I, as a Zerg player, want to keep Dark Templar out of my base I need to build a Spore Crawler or an Overseer so I can see them coming. I don't have the luxury of being able to wait until my base is taking damage and grab some instant detection through an ability like Scan. Now like I said, this isn't a balance discussion, so I don't want you thinking that's what my point was. My point was, "If I have to suffer and deal with the problems that arise from my neglect to create proper detection and I do just fine, how does that break you?" Removing the ability to detect from Scan does not break the race or the game, it just mixes up the dynamic a little bit.
Now this is where I open the floor to discussion. Please remember to keep all talks of balance to an absolute minimum as that is not the purpose of this thread. Also, try to look at this discussion with an open mind as (I believe) I have. This discussion is not about a Zerg player trying to balance Terran so as to make the Zerg's game more powerful. This is simply a proposed change to maybe add more fun, more options and less monotony to the game (because you can't argue that MMM and MTM isn't completely predictable and boring).
*Most of the time, and I only speak from my experiences.
**Does not cost you money. I will however recognize that using Scan means you have one less MULE on the field, which is a huge boon to your economy.
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:11 pm
Ill tell you why the raven is never used. Its damn expensive , needs a tech lab , and for god sake it moves like a queen off creep, and we can all argue meta game is "boring" Muta ling Bling , Marine tank medivac, toss gateway play. so I don't see how that was really a point >>
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:19 pm
lol Did you double post? xD
What if we could fix that? Considering all the upgrades it takes to bring out its full potential I certainly wouldn't have a problem with a price decrease. As for the speed, the speed is fine. The stats pages says the Raven has a speed of 2. That's much better than the Queen. Besides, not all of Terran army units should be the same speed (I forget how many but I think it's like 8 of the 13 have the exact same speed).
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 5:27 pm
Mmm no i changed my mind on what to say so instead of editing i delete cause im like that ohhh yea. Honestly though if you wanted a way to make people want to use them making heat seeker missile get slightly faster over time or something might help to make it something other than the "kill carrier" spell
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 6:31 pm
Well that just improves one aspect but still doesn't offer much incentive to use the unit to begin with.
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:32 pm
Lulz when I looked at the patch notes toady damn there some insane stuff there ........Like missile being faster >.>, and immortal range to 6 jesus buff !
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Primity Aurora Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:36 pm
the additional 5 seconds to Barracks is totally unnecessary and will only serve to ******** with Terran timings. but to stay on topic I guess I'll have to make an argumentative post.
Jubeiz is correct in most, if not all aspects. Ravens are extremely expensive, costing 200 gas, it uses a tech lab on a Starport, and with 2.25 movespeed, it is as slow as a Hydralisk off creep, or a default speed Zealot. Terran's complete reliance on the Medivac completely outweighs the resource required for Ravens, despite how good the unit may seem.
Blizzard has stated in a recent interview that they're trying to remedy these types of scenarios where units are only situationally useful, such as the Corrupter for example:Blizzard There are some easy things we can do and there are some hard things. If we study the game, for example, you would say that the corruptor is lame. Don't get us wrong; they're useful. If there are a lot of colossi, you need corruptors. If there are dark templars, you need overseers. They have a battle function for a situation, but what new battle strategies and tactics do they add in the game? Compare the two to the mutalisks; a player can raid, harass. They can get board control; they can decimate opponents without antiair. Party, right? Having those guys around changes the match. Corruptors? Meh. You build colossi, I build corruptors; end of story. this includes the Raven, which inevitably falls under the same archetype of Overseers above, although made extremely less useful due to Immortal's correct argument in stating that scans are simply better.
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:15 pm
Patch notes? They just come out today? o.O
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Primity Aurora Vice Captain
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:33 pm
i would've posted the patch notes earlier but I was feeling far too lazy to do so. a few hours later I've now upgraded from "far too lazy" to simply "lazy." which means I suppose I should go ahead and post those notes now. neutral
some Vice Captain I am. mad D
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Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 10:37 pm
Sausage: I'm confused. Are you agree with me or not? Also, did you miss that I am willing to concede some tweaking to the Raven to make it more viable? If we lowered their gas amount by 50 I do think that would be fair. Obviously we don't want to cut it too much because the unit already is great. As for speed, I saw a thread on the SC2 forums that pointed out the speeds of all the Terran units. The vast majority of them all had the same speed and because of that I am wary of making the Raven another of them. It just seems wrong to me that they shouldn't have to worry about unit positioning when making an attack. As for your point on Medivacs, they should have to choose between getting X unit over Y unit just like everyone else so that point gets no sympathy from me (and I say this because I'm not sure what point you're trying to get me to see. I've seen Terrans go complete bio and never build a single Medivac and still win so I'm not seeing this "complete reliance").
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:32 am
In the end its just really Medivacs are a much better investment, and if i went bio without them i would get shut down so hard.
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 1:18 pm
making a raven feels like a waste of starport that could be making 2x of viking or medivac instead with a reactor.
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 5:04 pm
Wouldn't it be a serious pain in the a** for them to get mobile detection if they didn't have scan then? Like Bi Dent said, Ravens are super expensive and observers and overseers only cost 50 gas.
...I kind of wish they'd make Reapers useful again, even though they were horribly annoying.
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Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:51 pm
Price decrease, people. I have said as much.
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