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I wish to have a fair talk about balance, come intruige me on your views

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5 years ago
http://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/527584

During this replay there are many issues that i have problems with

1st
The decision to have perma stunning in the game is a flaw, the reason for this is at times certain units (the commander in my case) is meant to be a very powerful unit if used correctly

a proposed resolution
the way this could be fixed is, once a unit has been stunned a couple seconds should be given until the unit can be stunned again

number 2
commanders i beliebe should not be captureable, even if you want this to be the case as shown in this replay they should not be able to capture units that are in the air or being carried

number 3
units that are not of your own team should not be allowed to be picked up by an enemy player, i understand this was meant to be a cool decision but in that case if you want to keep it make there a limit to what can be picked up, for example, jugglebots, strider units and commanders should be off limit

number 4 terrain changing under units or structures that are not your own should be off limit, it can ruin units that are slow and it means that people can abuse mechanics that are put in the came such as the unit can no longer fire at units firing at them

These are just a few things that i have problems with, give me your views and other things that bug you, maybe we can have a civil descussion
+0 / -0

5 years ago
Please explain how any of what you just listed impacts balance.
+0 / -0
Commanders have never been treated all that specially in zero-k. Despite them being upgradable and feeling like a special unit, they're usually worse value for cost than something designed for the job.

They're one of the few units with a weapon and buildpower on the same chassis, and can do some things no other units can, but there's a vague design intention to make a superpowered commander an inefficient choice in most cases, so giving them special treatement would maybe go against that.

Point 1 - Stunning and other status effects are often aimed precisely at disabling heavy weight units, like commanders, heavy tanks, stuff like that. If you can no longer permanently stun a single heavy thing, how will the current system where stunning is a good counter to that sort of unit work? What should be changed to replace this?

Point 2 - I can see arguments both ways. I'd be fine with commanders not being capturable personally, though if they ever are it's because they're out of position. You can always destroy the capture rover to get the unit back, though, so I'd be fine with it remaining the way it is.

Point 3 - personally I agree, the various abduction strategies are a bit of a gimmick, don't usually seem to add that much, are -really- annoying to lose to, fairly easy to defend against if you know it's coming, and seem like just a holdover from TA or earlier games. I'd love to have any design intentions behind this explained to me though, if I'm missing some.

Point 4 - on the contrary, I love this feature, it's a natural extension of the ability to terraform. You already can't terraform out from under a building, but a mobile unit is fair game. It's often the only real defense many construction units have. While it needs a fair bit of micro, I appreciate that this is an area of considerable skill ceiling. It's limited in that it needs a builder unit (expensive and valuable, on the whole) very close to a source of danger. You can also counter it with your own builder units.
+1 / -0
5 years ago
Personally I have no problem with any of those things you mention.


1) Units that can stun are usually fragile and require close range. As such, they can be countered relatively easily by skirmishers or AA if you are referring to the paralysing drone. No unit should be "very powerful" without adequate support against units such as these.


2) Again, same thing. Dominatrixes actually have a time in which they can't capture a unit for a few seconds after a successful capture. Domis are also very fragile and relatively slow. With adequate support and counters dominatrixes can be dealt with.


3) It's fun to do this. Kidnapping is a high-risk, high-reward tactic. I don't see the need to destroy this tactic for being OP when it can easily be countered by a few units of AA and skirmishers to kill the stunners.


4) Again, doing this with constructors is also easily counterable. Constructors are fragile and have little in the way of defense. If you let a group of constructors get this close to your heavy units, honestly you deserve to have your unit trapped in a pit.

Not like the pit is irreversible. Just have your own constructors come in and lift it out.
+0 / -0
5 years ago
This really makes me want to watch the battle you linked. If everything you described happened there, it must have been a great one!
+1 / -0

5 years ago
I don't really see any reasons for the things you assert.

For instance, permastunning is by design. How useless would current units be if the stun was short-lived? Not only could they not kill anything, but anything they do successfully stun will soon wake up and kill them!

quote:

the reason for this is at times certain units (the commander in my case) is meant to be a very powerful unit if used correctly


QFT: "If used correctly". If your commander gets stun locked, you haven't used it correctly. Stunning is less powerful than killing, because you need to control the area for the stun to result in a kill. So if units that can kill are a commander one shot exist and you're not complaining about them (skuttle, ulti), it stands to reason that somewhere below them in cost there should be a balanced spot where a unit that can stun a com one shot can be placed: enter infiltrator (repeat reasoning for other sources of stun).

Essentially, all this stuff is frustrating because you have preconceived ideas that this sort of play is buggy or dishonest or w/e. But in ZK it's an intentional feature that rewards creativity and encourages diversity. At some point you'll terraform trap your first detri and win a game off the back of it, and it'll be glorious!
+2 / -0
quote:
The decision to have perma stunning in the game is a flaw, the reason for this is at times certain units (the commander in my case) is meant to be a very powerful unit if used correctly

Chain stunning is not really a problem is most cases because like AUrankSnuggleBass said its much more preffered to kill instead of stunning.

Consider this: Imp vs Snitch. Both are crawling bombs and both have relateively same area of effect.
A dozen of raiders go trough a choke point in a tight formation and you have your Snitch at the ready. Raiders close in and they just all blow up. If that was an Imp you would need some other unit to actually deal with said raiders.

Another scenario: Venom vs Reaver. You have 3 Glaives coming at you. Reaver will just kill them. On the other hand Venom will have to slowly grind them down with its meager damage or need assistance from other units just like in the last example.

quote:
commanders i beliebe should not be captureable, even if you want this to be the case as shown in this replay they should not be able to capture units that are in the air or being carried

This is an extremely rare occurance. In my 2000 (or more) hours over the span of last 5 years playing Zero-K I had my commander be captured by Domis once. In fact it happened a week ago or so.

quote:
units that are not of your own team should not be allowed to be picked up by an enemy player, i understand this was meant to be a cool decision but in that case if you want to keep it make there a limit to what can be picked up, for example, jugglebots, strider units and commanders should be off limit

Well let me make a compelling point on this (since you just say what should or should not be). In my opinion capturing commanders or other units like this is very much alike to aggresive reclaim from Supreme Commander and was specificaly disabled for Zero-K because it was deemed as too quirky. Same argument can be easily applied here as well. Your units CAN'T BE CAUPTURED BY ENEMY TRANSPORTS... if you keep them moving (same goes for your units for that fact). Imho this behaviour is generally highly unintuitive, obscure and kind of requires a moderate amount of babysitting. All of this ZK is supposed to stand against by design and yet this mechanic is still in the game.

quote:
number 4 terrain changing under units or structures that are not your own should be off limit, it can ruin units that are slow and it means that people can abuse mechanics that are put in the came such as the unit can no longer fire at units firing at them

I think that CArankTacoMan made a good point here. Big units are not all powerful - you gotta support them with AA, scouts, riots and constructors.
+2 / -0