Blizzard Reiterates: Mothership being crappy is a-ok

[Norfindel]

Clearly the joke went over your heads. You know, cause the Mothership is basically just the housing unit for Vortex, and all anyone ever gets the Mothership for is Vortex... yeah, you guys are sad.

Sorry, Demo, that's why they created those:

Example of use: good joke!!

[TheEconomist]

Clearly the joke went over your heads. You know, cause the Mothership is basically just the housing unit for Vortex, and all anyone ever gets the Mothership for is Vortex... yeah, you guys are sad.

DSuid likes to pretend his balance ideas are joke when someone confronts him about it He's done it to me a few times I can remember.

Not saying that post WASN'T a joke, I'm just saying I'm not sure if that post was.

[KneeofJustice]

This thread has some pretty awful suggestions in it.

In my opinion there are several favorable options in this poll.

1) Needs substantial changes: Here i would suggest being able to build more than one mothership, and nerfing the mothership accordingly. This is critical. With a more massable unit, you have more accessibility to the unit (both in terms of numbers and in terms of cost), not to mention strategies. Rebalancing the mothership around massability would be supported by a vast majority of people, at least in theory. It has been said since alpha that unique units have no place in this game.

2) Needs major overhaul: This to me includes things like completely redesigning the abilities of the mothership. Let me analyze the motherships abilities for a second.

>Vortex is a good ability, but it really does not synchronize well with the rest of the protoss army. The best example i can think of is carriers: a mothership + carrier army does not function well together when vortex is used because it sucks up the interceptors. This is problematic because they both come from the same structure! They are the peak of the toss air tech tree and they arent meant to be used in a combo? Thats awful game design. This ability needs to be scrapped or seriously redesigned. Even 3 carriers for support with your army and your mothership (which is a more likely scenario than mass carrier + ms) become completely useless.

>Mass recall is also quite stupid. The mothership is slow, fragile and weak. The last thing you want to do is send your MS on a raid by itself (ie, without the support of your army). This is just common sense. Dont cripple a potentially awesome ability by putting it on a slow, expensive, unique unit (PS: if you lose your MS on that attempted mass recall, you just lost 400/400 and have no backups...). Yes, there are defensive mass recalls, but seriously, this is a silly defense of the ability. Im not spending 400/400 to recall my army back to my base... i want to go attack with it! After spending an amount of money roughly equivalent to an expo, i want some offensive results!

>Cloaking field actually makes sense. I just wish cloaked buildings could be obtained by other means besides this hunk of (mother)shit.

Other problems: well, it can get feedbacked and EMP'd... making it utterly useless and seriously damaging it too. For a unique unit to get INSTANTLY nullified... thats also unforgivably stupid game design. Her abilities should be on cooldown or something.

3) Complete redesign into a different unit: Yes, this is what I voted for. Either the arbiter, or something else (i love the arby to death, but if its time has come, give us a worthy successor!) Scrap the MS to single player. It would allow you to actually have fun with cool abilities that are too OP for multiplayer. It would really allow blizzard to show us the ultimate protoss warship without being encumbered by the confines of balance.

The mothership is a disgrace to starcraft 2: another ugly pustule on the face of the game.

My personal response to Blizzard's quote is: if a unit ends up not having a role, then that's ok, as long as the game is balanced (see: scout). We cannot expect every unit to be used always. However, the thought of designing a unit almost guaranteed never to be seen above silver league as the highest tech, the most expensive unit, really makes my blood boil. KNOWINGLY (and somewhat proudly) creating a useless unit is inexcusable.

[Lupino]

It has been said since alpha that unique units have no place in this game.

This kind of view I've never understood, because it seems indicative of a mentality of "all I want is Starcraft 1 in 3D!" A sequel to a game should not just attempt to copy, but to build upon and expand from the original. The idea of one of the factions having a "unique" unit is...unique, and was a good idea in regards to improving upon the first game. Bonus points for fitting well within the Protoss racial characteristics of having powerful units, but with limited numbers.

If you can't see how a well placed vortex can make you win then I can't help you there... The mothership is well balanced and worth the cost. The arbiter was not balanced. In fact, the arbiter is one of the major reason why SC1 was so unbalanced at lower level for T in TvP. One recall in your base and you were pretty much dead or at least the 2 side were gonna base trade for sure. Yes, there were counter measures (mine your base so they'll recall on the mines and suffer a lot of damage, intercept with science vessel) but TvP was so APM intensive for T that at lower levels, you would probably lose anyways.

If the Mothership truly was worth its cost we would've seen it pop up in matches much more often by now. Even Blizzard recognizes that this isn't the case. As for Vortex, the times when a well-placed one can win you a battle are few and far between (outside something silly like Archon Toilet), never mind when it screws over your own forces more than theirs (as noted earlier, rendering Carriers even more useless). I doubt you could even find a replay where Vortex made the difference in a battle or match.

[Norfindel]

>Vortex is a good ability, but it really does not synchronize well with the rest of the protoss army. The best example i can think of is carriers: a mothership + carrier army does not function well together when vortex is used because it sucks up the interceptors.

This is so true. You could use Stasis and then attack safely, but you cannot do the same with Vortex.

>Mass recall is also quite stupid. The mothership is slow, fragile and weak. The last thing you want to do is send your MS on a raid by itself (ie, without the support of your army). This is just common sense.

I agree. The Arbiter was slow, but it was still fast enough for Recall to be useful. More importantly, it was much smaller, which makes it more difficult to see sneaking around, searching for a spot to Recall.

>Cloaking field actually makes sense. I just wish cloaked buildings could be obtained by other means besides this hunk of (mother)shit.

Still, that means that all damage is going to go against the MS. The Arbiter could be microed around your army to keep it safer. Even if it died, good micro caused the enemy units to take tons of damage while trying to kill the Arbiter.

Other problems: well, it can get feedbacked and EMP'd... making it utterly useless and seriously damaging it too. For a unique unit to get INSTANTLY nullified...

Yep. It's stupid. It's also stupid that it can cast roughly with the same frequency than any other caster, even if it's limited to one. It's stupid that it's a bad copy of an Arbiter, limited to only one per game, and slow as hell, in a game were every second counts. The same can be said about the Void Ray attack mechanic. A "wait under fire" mechanic in a game were every second counts, and units die very fast isn't a very good idea.

If they wanted to make the Mothership an icon of Protoss power, well, they utterly failed. To make a bad copy of an Arbiter, it would had been better to have the Arbiter. That unit was used by progamers, it's stupid to replace it with a unit that is useless most of the time for players of any skill. I can count the times i used it with the fingers from one hand, and it was really effective only once

[KneeofJustice]

This kind of view I've never understood, because it seems indicative of a mentality of "all I want is Starcraft 1 in 3D!" A sequel to a game should not just attempt to copy, but to build upon and expand from the original. The idea of one of the factions having a "unique" unit is...unique, and was a good idea in regards to improving upon the first game. Bonus points for fitting well within the Protoss racial characteristics of having powerful units, but with limited numbers.

Well, sit down here, young one, and let me explain it to you.

Firstly, i dont want SCBW in 3D (well, i do, but so does everyone right?)
Starcraft 2, however, is a different game, and as you say, it should attempt, not necessarily to copy, but to build upon, expand and improve on the original. So far we are in agreement, it sounds like. Now, my personal view is to take what was inferior in design (things like air units, mass zerg/terran detection etc) and improve them design-wise.

Now i could rant about SC2 all day, but the truth is, the flaw in your thinking lies in the fact that the best thing you can think of to support the existence of this hunk of lard is that it follows racial characteristics, which it doesnt necessarily. The protoss are generally about using smaller numbers of more expensive, but more powerful units/abilities to tilt the battlefield in their favor and gain victory through both high damage output (reavers, storms, dark templar) and high durability, albeit at a cost.

The mothership is unique. However, it is unique artificially. When i say this, i mean it has nothing to do with cost, or population, which are both rules of the game and always apply. Instead, it takes a unit and makes it an exception to the rule (like how the roach was supposed to be the only zerg unit to regen fast, or the immortal gets its own type of shield, or the VR has to charge up before attacking). Instead of cleverly balancing the unit around its cost (including tech/research), buildtime, population and abilities, blizzard decided to limit it to one (hello Age of Empires!). It doesnt matter that you can have 1600m/1600g and 4 nexii standing idle with free population. You cannot make more than 1. This is awful game design and improves nothing.

Let us go back in time to the era of broodwar, when kakaru flew through the skies and everyone had to split their workers. The arbiter was balanced around the fact that it was gas-heavy (350), tech heavy (extra building + upgrades for its abilities) and had a weak attack and a ton of health, while being fairly maneuverable. So potentially, yes, if you had tons of money and stargates, you could crank arbiters all day, and maybe gain an advantage. In real game situations, you could sometimes get 2. My maximum was 3 and it was awesome . You really dont need to make a unit "artificially unique" to make it rare, powerful and game-changing, but still balanced, and most of all fun.

Furthermore, the ability to produce multiple of this unit allowed you to spread your army out over multiple arbies (during a fight), have a fallback (if one got killed/emp'd) or to produce multiple arbies to get ahead if you had the funds.

Furthermore, the lower cost made teching to them a lot less risky because you could actually afford them in increments (100/350 now, then one upgrade, then the other) instead of making it a one time flat fee of 400/400 and praying you could hold out until your investment actualized. Oh, and in SC2, if your MS dies, you dont have one waiting in the wings. Your investment was only useful for that one mothership, not for any others.

Lastly, in terms of role, arbiters provided a function that benefited the entire protoss army. It cloaked units, helping tip the scales towards protoss armies lategame and forcing mobile detection from terran. It ensured protection of your fragile units when assaulting tank lines and was able to keep up with most units with reasonable micro.

Recall allowed the protoss to threaten doom drops otherwise denied to them by the fact that the shuttle had awful carrying capacity relative to unit size. It gave toss mobility (yes, actual mobility, unlike the mothershit) late game where before, the toss was usually threatened by the more mobile zerg or the impenetrable terran line. Recall + cloak meshed well together too.

Stasis allowed protoss to eliminate half an army (for real though!) in order to make your units more effective momentarily (actually, longer than vortex too, i think). The ability to produce more than one arbiter allowed for *gasp* more than one stasis at a time, which meant that you could potentially eliminate groups of units on multiple fronts, which is something you sure as hell cannot do with the mothership, no matter how big the maps get.

Now fast forward through the primordial mists of the broodwar era to now. The mothership is an awkward unit that has no real role. It is too expensive, too slow and its abilities are not its own, stolen shamelessly from the arbiter. It is unsure of itself because it has no role. It nullifies its own allies: a late-game logical tech choice (carrier) and is so slow it cannot threaten mass recall without becoming a large [RAPE ME!] target for a vigilant enemy. Its cloaking is awesome, of course, but 400/400 for a cloaking field generator, or a base defense unit is an insult to us all.

Ghosts and High templars have a field day when they see the MS because 1 EMP or feedback not only significantly damages the mothership, but also completely shuts down your 1 time 400/400 investment. And because youre artificially limited to one, you cannot back it up with a buddy, even if you have the funds.

So now that my hands are bleeding from this epic post that no one will read, please do tell me how the mothership is an improvement. And if you mention anything to do with lore or racial traits, i will be most displeased. Thank you (anyone) for reading.

[Todie]

Lupino only implied that the basic idea of a one-of unit isnt necessarily a bad one. and this i have agreed with all along.

its sad though, to see we've come to the point where blizzard officially chickens out of overhauling the unit into something useful..

its easy to agree with everything you said kneeofjustice. well put. the question is, what now?

... in the name of balance we probably cant expect more than minor tweaks to the unit before an expack that overhauls the metagame in general is released.. and seeing as they are contempt doing nothing atm, some sort of community outcry would be required to make anything happen.

its most interesting to think of the options for the longer run though: a big overhaul while several other big things are changing anyway. i for one, would want the MS to actually add some mobility rather than take it away. keeping the one-per-player limit if possible.

[sandwich_bird]

If the Mothership truly was worth its cost we would've seen it pop up in matches much more often by now.

That is not necessarily true. It took years for players to realize that vultures where good in Starcraft 1. In any case, from my experience, the mothership pop up all the time in games that last to late game. Sure, this is mostly in team games but still. Each time I saw it in play, the vortex changed the outcome of most battles. I mean 400/400 to cloak your entire army and have the ability to split the enemy army is worth it. Of course you won't go buy one if you're army is not already complete but if two 200 supply army are gonna duke it out, I'd rather have a vortex than 2 colossi 4 zealots or whatever else you'd make with the resources.

Even Blizzard recognizes that this isn't the case.

Nope. They said it was possibly the case.

There are some units that just aren't going to be used at "high" levels of play and the Mothership is probably one of them. We currently don't have any plans to change this unit.

As for Vortex, the times when a well-placed one can win you a battle are few and far between (outside something silly like Archon Toilet), never mind when it screws over your own forces more than theirs (as noted earlier, rendering Carriers even more useless). I doubt you could even find a replay where Vortex made the difference in a battle or match.

I doubt you could find a replay that a well-placed vortex did not change the outcomes of a battle.

[Blasterion]

It just came to mind maybe Mothership was never designed to be an offensive unit people just been trying to use it as one.
Perhaps the entire role of a Mothership is to defend an undefended expansion.
Let's view the abilities abit
Cloaking Field-Hides the Expansion, well the mothership is there kind of defeating the purpose kind of not.

Vortex- Great for buying some time for your troops to come fight off the enemy that's harrassing the said expo

Recall-Bring your troop back to defend the expo, to escape battlefield etc.

Something similar to a high tech queen used for more defensive purposes than offensive

[Blazur]

It just came to mind maybe Mothership was never designed to be an offensive unit people just been trying to use it as one.

Perhaps, and that may be where everybody's frustration stems from. Considering it's the pinnacle of Protoss technology and requires the biggest investment for pre-requisites, it's unfortunate to know that the highest tier of Protoss weaponry is in fact a unit that only excels at defense and can not be a crippling powerhouse.