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Had this conversation with a friend just now, he does not play Starcraft but likes to talk about it and watch games.
I made some points that, in retrospect, I have not thought of them beforehand until now. So I want to share them with you.
In short:
How could a game dream to be easily balance-able, if it requires 100x more effort to dodge a storm than there is to cast it?
evanthebouncy (3:36): right and it's crazy strong
i mean it's risky as 1 fungal will absolutely ruin ur day
sc2 is just a broken game lawl
they'll never tweak it to make it work
it's like no matter how you want to stand a fork on its point
no amount of patching can make the fork stand on its point
gnolnait (3:37): lol what's the reason for the brokenness?
obviously summoned free units are op
but sc1 had
oh wait they didn't have anything of the sort
evanthebouncy (3:39): no it's not that it's
this whole idea of reduced micro
forcefield inhibits micro
on the zerg
fungal inhibits micro on the terran
it's more of "okay if I do this right there's NOTHING he can do to even it out"
gnolnait (3:40): no counterplay
evanthebouncy (3:40): so it doesn't matter if fungal does no damage even
as long as it ******* freeze unit in place
it will ALWAYS be the absolute counter
to mass air units
which stacks
and forcefield will always be the absolute counter
to mass ground units
it just is
before in sc1
gnolnait (3:41): well you got ultras that can crush fff
evanthebouncy (3:41): sure but how many units are on the ground
if u already have ultras out
they do suck 6 supplies
in any case
look how broken storm is
in sc1 it takes the same amount of effort to cast it, as there is to dodge it
in sc2 it is impossible to dodege it cuz you can spam 10 out in a second
gnolnait (3:43): yeah i see what you mean
evanthebouncy (3:43): so there's this balance of effort and reward
and in sc1 it is more closely matched
so people can actually engage in these kind of battles
now in sc2 it's more of
make the right uint and do the right thing
that's why it's fundimentally broken
cuz if u make the right unit and do the right thing
gnolnait (3:44): but both sides symmetrically have this offensice advantage
evanthebouncy (3:44): there really is no counter to it by playing better
no that's not how it is
both side has this magic unit
and they just chug them at each other
now think about how hard it is
to balance that
would u balance a ball on top of a hill (derivative of 0) or at a valley (derivative also 0)
just being equal doesn't matter
there is no good negative feedback to it
it's bound to end up in shthole
gnolnait (3:45): lol
evanthebouncy (3:45): in sc1 u can always
negative feedback with counterplay
now u can't
and ur forever stuck tweaking these small values
omg 30 damage to 25 dmg
omg more gas cost less mineral
that's not gonna cut it
period
....
....
evanthebouncy (3:54): air units stacking
fully stacking
w/o firing animation
gnolnait (3:54): no ******* airforce has like fifty jets flying vertically in a column
evanthebouncy (3:54): made sc1 great
but i mean
you can enforce formation in air
but i think air units are fun because they can be stacked
gnolnait (3:55): it worked in sc1 because of small control groups tho
one you have unlimited then you become dependent on having a critical mass of firepower
and also critically vulnerable to aoe
evanthebouncy (3:56): yepe that's a good point
gnolnait (3:56): in sc1 small control groups sort of enforced a spreading out
you never saw just these huge balls
Cheers'
 
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You could argue the effort to cast the storm includes avoiding being emp'd or sniped beforehand. I also think it's difficult to directly compare things like that.
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They could add a delay on storms before they start damage I guess.
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You guys know nothing about balance apparently. Firstly you state that Forcefields and Fungal inibits micro. Then you start whining about storm which actually requiers micro to dodge and then you say its to hard. Common guys, really?
Blizzard is one of the best in balancing their games, people whine about the small stuff at them. Look at other RTS, why are they not in eSports? Well, cause they are not properly balanced.
Starcraft 2 is NOT broken, it is properly balanced!
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An interesting topic.
I'd call Storm balanced because it takes TIME for it to exist in a game. A great way to demonstrate this would be for us to play a game. You only get Storm and I'll play normal. If you can get Storm before I can kill you then we can call Storm unbalanced. Actually, this is why Kal. Amulet was removed. It made it getting Storm too quick.
Asking, "Is Storm balanced vs XXX unit" isn't a fair question since you're not taking the rest of the game into account.
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i was voicing similar doubts on tl
Look at reaver drop, it requires an effort from both players, aggresive player will have to use shuttle and reaver micro to score kills, defending players will be capable of dodging scarab shots (fast drone transfer). So we have 2 mechanics that can nullify each other but the end effect always depends on who performs better based on their skill.
In sc2 there is no reaver drops but look at situation when you realized the opponent have 2 collosus in his army, which makes his army around 30% - 50 %more powerfull than before because you are stuck with roach/hydra. If protoss player uses decent FF and is around 20-30 food range below zerg he wins.
Its true that Zerg made a mistake of not scouting collosus tech, but should zerg lose the game because of it? Now we are in the part called "What mistakes should be game ending which not - in Starcraft game" The mistake of not seeing something coming was huge in BW but could be sometimes ommited with valiant effort, and proper use of more versatiled units. Every race had powefull units that could get many kills based on difference of perfomance, the state of "death ball" we know in sc2 was only really achieved in late game, and still required an effort to pull off.
Lets look at detection problem in BW. Dts were powerfull how? It doesnt make any sense! Terran has spider mines, turrets, free scans, zerg has overlords/spores!, pvp self explanatory. Well thats because even if detection ability was much more apparent for T/Z it was more a fact that Blizzard gave you a powerfull unit with theoretically easy counter but gave you tools to make an opening, a hole in defense in opponent, yes there were still build order losses but in most cases it was just a smart play. Bisu build revolved around using corsairs to take away OV's so dts can sneak in, it required a big effort from both sides, to achieve their own goals. DT drops vs terran, dodging turrets, biting mines(double edged sword can be used by your opponent), it again added a depth of actual execution not just doing the build.
Whats the current most hot topic? Snipe nerf, basically ghost in SC2 is equivalent of Science Vessel from BW, its use is almost similar meta-game wise (sorry for use of this word). Snipe is an Irradiate, period, and thats where the problem begins, 1 vessel was ok it could severely dmg a muta flock or detect lurkers OK, 12 vessels? It was scary, vessel cloud could slowly but steadily burn all zerg t3/spellcaster/lurkers, however there were few fail-proof mechanics, just as above examples, scourge could threaten vessels but could be repeled if terran was paying attention, plague was not insta kill but was very threateing later, and first and foremost NO smartcasting. Smartcasting and all the "old UI, terrible functions" were in fact a first link to balanced BW. Because all important, game changing actions were tied first and foremost to players manual abilities, having 10 vessels was meaningless if you couldnt cast from them fast, if you could not you would die to plague/scourge or simply your marine pack would be cought in swarm and destroyed.
And thats why we have a problem with Snipe, its essentialy a free ability that transforms ghost energy into dmg for zerg powerfull units, because its smart castable you can even use scroll mouse to achieve around 3k current apm, wheres decision making? Wheres prioritizing your task abilities, you just simply get ghost, keep them alive cast spells move back wait for energy and cast again.
The only thing that restricts Ghost from beeing insta win in late game, is that their occupy ground and all drawbacks it has, which mainly is STACKING(so lucky fungal or baneling can do something, maybe). So in fact it was blizzard mechanics that made ghost imba, smart cast is to much to have a powerfull snipe, and we will have to live with nerfed spellcasters. Probably in HOTS too. Or maybe we will have a non stackable abilities on spellcasters to fight smart casting.
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How could a game dream to be easily balance-able, if it requires 100x more effort to dodge a storm than there is to cast it?
Cost efficiency. Don't try to discuss balance with single abilities, they are worthless without context. With your argument a nuke would be overpowered, since it takes 10x as much effort finding that red dot and moving away from it, and that is obviously not true. (don't think I've seen one balance whine about a nuke)
And no game is easily balanceable  If it was easy most games would be balanced, and most of them are not.
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I don't disagree with your point. So let's just say, sure, ok, it's impossible to counter-micro once you get fungaled, or it's 100x harder to move out of storm than it is to cast it.
So the game doesn't revolve around this kind of micro at all. It's instead about setting up the positioning so that you minimize the damage you take from these spells, or you maximize the chance you can actually get them off. The concave, split, position of spellcasters, etc. matters a lot to determine the outcome of the fight. You have to ask yourself if should you really be fighting in this terrain, or with this split. Maybe you should have a drop/prism/ling runby elsewhere during the battle, or have another group running around elsewhere. Like sure it's annoying that players with "good micro" get unlucky and get these imba spells cast on them and then they lose. But I think sc2 isn't about this kind of BW micro as much as it is about setting up and arranging units pre-fight.
You can ask the same question about this kind of pre-fight positioning of units and spellcasters and such. Here I think the skill involved is about equal across the matchups.
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I feel like people don't understand what diversity is..
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On February 24 2012 22:12 Myrtroll wrote:Show nested quote +
How could a game dream to be easily balance-able, if it requires 100x more effort to dodge a storm than there is to cast it?
Cost efficiency. Don't try to discuss balance with single abilities, they are worthless without context. With your argument a nuke would be overpowered, since it takes 10x as much effort finding that red dot and moving away from it, and that is obviously not true. (don't think I've seen one balance whine about a nuke) And no game is easily balanceable If it was easy most games would be balanced, and most of them are not.
If you balance SC2 around cost efficiency the entartainmant value decrease, you will never have a powerfull ability on any unit simply based on the fact you have automated high efficiency as default. Thats why Blizzard wants mech so bad, so they can avoid the problem of low HP units dying to 3 automated storms.
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if you feel like sc2 is a broken game, because the effort to defend / outmove things is so much harder then using it - realize that both sites feel the exact same, which makes it balanced.
and i have to tell you to try broodwar once... where nearly everything feels broken if u look at it like that, and its still one of the greatest games ever
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Why bother? I think majority of us know what each game (SCBW and SC2) are about and we've pretty much settle in to playing whatever we like. I gave a fair try at SC2 and I didn't find it as enjoyable as SCBW, so I'm still playing BW and I still watch all the SPL games (live on stream, if possible).
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Thankfully there are hundreds of other decisions to be made before it gets to that point, and even to avoid direct engagements all together once it has reached that point. On top of that, that situation arises in many other match-ups including TvT, where it's much easier to sit behind your tanks and pound a marine marauder ball with tank shells than it is to control your marines and marauders well enough to kill the meching player by spreading him out. There are other factors to playing these compositions than just the engagement.
If they goal was to have a game that was trivial to balance, we would just all play Terran, but the goal is to have an interesting and balanced game, and part of that interest is asymetric play.
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On the side, I feel you could've summed up the convo instead of copy/pastying it.
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You make some good points (and excellent article Eternal, I will fully read later), but I would say that one of the keys to SC2 play is not reaction, but prediction. Storms/Forcefields do limit micro, which is very frustrating, but expert players become experts by predicting those maneuvers. Know he has Storms/Fungals? Tempt him with a small group of rines and split the rest up, already have them in a concave if possible, etc etc. I think it's above what the normal player can really do (I get destroyed by storms/fungals constantly >.< but I love seeing the Pros "counter" Storms with EMPs and prediction.
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On February 25 2012 00:53 Vronti wrote:
You make some good points (and excellent article Eternal, I will fully read later), but I would say that one of the keys to SC2 play is not reaction, but prediction. Storms/Forcefields do limit micro, which is very frustrating, but expert players become experts by predicting those maneuvers. Know he has Storms/Fungals? Tempt him with a small group of rines and split the rest up, already have them in a concave if possible, etc etc. I think it's above what the normal player can really do (I get destroyed by storms/fungals constantly >.< but I love seeing the Pros "counter" Storms with EMPs and prediction.
Prediction is luck based. I don't want to play RTS poker.
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On February 25 2012 06:20 EternaLLegacy wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 00:53 Vronti wrote:
You make some good points (and excellent article Eternal, I will fully read later), but I would say that one of the keys to SC2 play is not reaction, but prediction. Storms/Forcefields do limit micro, which is very frustrating, but expert players become experts by predicting those maneuvers. Know he has Storms/Fungals? Tempt him with a small group of rines and split the rest up, already have them in a concave if possible, etc etc. I think it's above what the normal player can really do (I get destroyed by storms/fungals constantly >.< but I love seeing the Pros "counter" Storms with EMPs and prediction. Prediction is luck based. I don't want to play RTS poker.
Well... not entirely luck based. You can predict where he is going to FF/Storm based on how your unit is laid out. In sc1 you will instinctively try to spread the most clumped hydras anyways, and the famous boxer's dropship micro against dragoon is entirely predicting which target(tank/dropship) the dragoon will fire upon.
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On February 25 2012 13:18 evanthebouncy! wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 06:20 EternaLLegacy wrote:On February 25 2012 00:53 Vronti wrote:
You make some good points (and excellent article Eternal, I will fully read later), but I would say that one of the keys to SC2 play is not reaction, but prediction. Storms/Forcefields do limit micro, which is very frustrating, but expert players become experts by predicting those maneuvers. Know he has Storms/Fungals? Tempt him with a small group of rines and split the rest up, already have them in a concave if possible, etc etc. I think it's above what the normal player can really do (I get destroyed by storms/fungals constantly >.< but I love seeing the Pros "counter" Storms with EMPs and prediction. Prediction is luck based. I don't want to play RTS poker. Well... not entirely luck based. You can predict where he is going to FF/Storm based on how your unit is laid out. In sc1 you will instinctively try to spread the most clumped hydras anyways, and the famous boxer's dropship micro against dragoon is entirely predicting which target(tank/dropship) the dragoon will fire upon.
I disagree about casting storm being easier than dodging it because of what you wrote in this post.
It's just that people don't even try dodging and remember that SC2 storm is nothing compared to BW storm, this thing really rapes. Smartcasting allows for casting the storms much quicker but often there is not enough HTs to really cover the whole opponent's army and it's surroundings in case he dodges.
Also don't forget magic box casting from BW, this thing is damn easy as long as casters are in correct formation.
Hehe I had to correct some past tense sentences, BW is alive! Fuck yeah, watching it right now.
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EPT
