EPTIn the community-derived ranking of Things That Matter™ the balance of Starcraft 2 seems to be at the forefront.
Why?
I don't play Starcraft 2 in order to get a sense of how well the game is balanced. I play Starcraft 2 in order to fucking win™. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but that's the goal.
Why do I care about winning? Tournaments award winning with increasingly large sums of money. They don't award balanced game play or game design. I also tend to have fun doing the things required to win. I can have fun in analyzing and discussing balance, but I don't care to do too much of it without getting paid. Nor does talking about the game I'd like to play further my goal of winning the game that's available to play.
Game balance is for game developers to worry about. I don't get awarded directly for figuring out of the game is balanced or not (though there is an indirect award in knowing what is over powered so you know what to get). I'm not on Blizzard's salary for game design, and most likely you are not either (unless of course some Blizzard employee winds up reading this -- unlikely). So why bend over backwards to argue with other would-be game designers about balance?
Maybe your computer or the game's installation on your computer (and all tournament computers) is broken in such a way you are only allowed to select a certain race. If that's not the case you likely swore some kind of cult-ish pact (similar to marriage?
) to only play that race. If you are not otherwise limited to only playing one race and you want to fucking win™ don't play a race that you think is broken. Why gimp yourself? You must have something to prove. Repeatedly I have heard Artosis describe how Idra tried playing Terran once and was instantly straight up destroying other high-level players. If that's the case why the hell doesn't Idra play Terran? Unless of course winning isn't his primary goal.For people who are caught up in balance, why don't we just play all competitions with everyone playing as Terran and the only unit they are allowed to make is SCVs. There's a true test of skill if I ever heard of one. Oh wait we don't do that because it isn't interesting. Of course we could just cut to the chase for everyone who wants to play their so-called broken race. All competitions now consist of a table, a ruler, and what you're packing between your legs (no you can't bring your own ruler). That's not particularly relevant to my interests either. Or all competitions now consist of who can perform the most stunningly masochistic acts. Mildly interesting, but not why I play Starcraft 2. Oh you're playing a broken race because you want to get better at the game? Okay, fair point, but save it for practice, otherwise see the table-ruler-pants competitions.
What makes Starcraft 2, and its predecessor, interesting and fun is that you and your opponent can have different ways of playing the game. Asymmetrical race design adds depth the game. Chess doesn't require balancing because everytime someone says "Rooks are OPPPPP!" someone else can point out "Hey you've got one too," (hopefully this doesn't happen too often). Starcraft 2 does require balancing because of its nature. None of this has been a plea for Blizzard to stop patching the game.
The reason I spent this time on expressing my thoughts is because I am increasingly often thinking "This place gets pretty clogged up with balance discussion." Nor is it only TL. I like to pass time in the Day[9] Daily IRC, but the same has occurred there more and more often.
As relevant to TL, I know it is a community that encompasses far more than Starcraft 2 discussion, but in the parts that do relate to Starcraft 2 discussion the balance talk can become overwhelming at times. Sometimes it simply derails a thread. None of this has stopped me from coming back to TL every day and many times a day. You might say I'm just talking about the community I'd like to be a part of instead of participating in the community that is available. I'm not asking the moderators to do more, they do more than enough as it is. I'm asking for you community members to take a step back, ask yourself why you are saying what you are saying, and think about if that really furthers your goals. If you're training for the table-ruler-pants competition, I hope your keyboard breaks.
Lest you should discard this because it comes from my fingertips, consider the following and somewhat lengthy quote from Day[9]:
+ Show Spoiler +
In Day[9] Daily #69 0:54-2:35 Sean "Day[9]" Plott said:
"...I think its Important that we all stop thinking like designers because that's what we've gotten to do for, you know, the last four or five years Starcraft 2's been in development. It gotten to be like 'Oh! Oh my god! They put this in!' Like, I heard people in the channel freaking out because Overlords don't have detection currently (or perhaps in some build they did. I'm currently unaware of this).... We are going to take off our Designer hats, and put away the Designer Bear skin-rug, and put out our How-do-we-win-in-this-game-? bear-skin rug. All we are going to be looking at what is the Right and Wrong thing to do. How are we going to think about strategy. What are all those sorts of considerations we are going to make. Lets not worry too much about whether anything is balanced or imbalanced... I think there's really an important point there because there's really only so many times that you can say, 'Oh, blah blah blah is imbalanced' before it subconsciously starts affecting your play. Like those people who say 'Oh, Protoss versus Zerg, it's imbalanced L-O-L!' and then they actually go Protoss versus Zerg and they start losing a lot. Rather than try to solve the problem, they just say 'Oh, pft, well its just this imbalance. I'll never overcome it.' Then they give up or start cursing themselves."
"...I think its Important that we all stop thinking like designers because that's what we've gotten to do for, you know, the last four or five years Starcraft 2's been in development. It gotten to be like 'Oh! Oh my god! They put this in!' Like, I heard people in the channel freaking out because Overlords don't have detection currently (or perhaps in some build they did. I'm currently unaware of this).... We are going to take off our Designer hats, and put away the Designer Bear skin-rug, and put out our How-do-we-win-in-this-game-? bear-skin rug. All we are going to be looking at what is the Right and Wrong thing to do. How are we going to think about strategy. What are all those sorts of considerations we are going to make. Lets not worry too much about whether anything is balanced or imbalanced... I think there's really an important point there because there's really only so many times that you can say, 'Oh, blah blah blah is imbalanced' before it subconsciously starts affecting your play. Like those people who say 'Oh, Protoss versus Zerg, it's imbalanced L-O-L!' and then they actually go Protoss versus Zerg and they start losing a lot. Rather than try to solve the problem, they just say 'Oh, pft, well its just this imbalance. I'll never overcome it.' Then they give up or start cursing themselves."
