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United States15275 Posts
On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote:
I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough.
Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation.
The big issues I had in mind here were:
- The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
- The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
- A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
- Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
- Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
- The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
- Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
- Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
- Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
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On August 17 2013 18:46 ETisME wrote:
I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken. There was no way a zerg can break through a split map situation. Tech switch whatnot doesn't do anything when terran sitting behind with PFs, tanks and ghosts with bios. I will never forget that game between july zerg against Mvp because even if I am a Mvp fan, that game just looked damn stupid.
The mid game was in advantage for Terran at that time, hellions contain was extremely powerful, it lets terran grab a 3rd extremely safely with hellion banshee opening while zerg struggles to get a third up because of hellion runbys and banshee support.
The game was full of roach ling baneling all in, similar to what it is nowadays, you can see that in MMA vs DRG final, I think it was 3 or 4 games were won by that all in.
It wasn't until queen got range buff then zerg starts to have an "advantage" in mid game while in fact, it was still mainly 3 base vs 3 base and infestors were the only reason why zerg has a huge power over terran.
Snipe is actually buffed in TvP right now, it was pure EMP vs HT before.
As for why ghost disappeared in TvZ, it's because zerg gets better at dealing with cloak ghosts and ghosts are just too expensive to invest in.
learning how to deal with hellbat drop opening doesn't mean the strategy was any more balanced than it should be.
hellbat drops completely dominates other openings except those that are specific designed to deny hellbat drops, which is problematic because it becomes a complete poker style game play.
Those hellbat drops specific counter build are much inferior to standard openings.
The risk and reward for hellbat drops were way too uneven to call it a good strategy.
The forgg thingee was HUGELY over excited about, he was playing against EU terrans, hardly a lot of the better terrans in that record.
Not to mention if both players do hellbat drops, it just looks silly.
I don't mind it too too much in other matchups, it's TvT that it has ruined.
Even now we don't have any games that are on par with Flash vs Ryung game, with flanks over flanks over flanks and insane action everywhere.
I remember that MVP vs JULY game on metopolis and how a lot of people thought snipe was broken after that, enough for almost an instant nerf. What they ignored was the fact that before julys bane all in mvp dropped july and killed his spawning pool i believe his spire as well and drones, july was waiting for his upgrade timing to finish because he was about to bust and hesitated on defending the drop. As a result he lost his spawning pool as well as taking a lot of other extra damage. He couldn't remax after doing a huge bust since his spawning pool was dead, nonetheless the game went on with july crashing ultras into mvp and getting them sniped until MVP eventually won(julys creep spread was also really horrible by todays standards). I really don't know how people ignored such a huge factor that contributed to that games outcome yet the amount of whine was so great it literally changed the game.
Feel free to watch the vod and just look at the mistakes that happen then come back and with 100% honesty say the reason why MVP won was purely because snipe was OP. It would be the equivalent of a terran losing an upgrading engineering bay during a bust then later losing to ultra because he has no +3, followed by an instant halving / removal of chitenous plating.
Once an idea gets ingrained it doesn't really get questioned. It's like how once you lose a game of starcraft its very easy to dismiss the reason you lost on one variable, but there's so many that lead up to it. People don't remember all the stuff that led up to Julys loss, they just remember seeing all of july's ultras get popped off creep once he was already way behind.
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On August 18 2013 06:39 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote:
I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough. Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation. The big issues I had in mind here were: - The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
- The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
- A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
- Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
- Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
- The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
- Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
- Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
- Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
I see. I don't think that I agree with all of that. But, that doesn't matter and I don't want to derail the thread any further. I'd just like to say that the production/resource flaws I mentioned may be acceptable as they affect all races equally and can be compensated, as you say, by sufficient strategic and tactical depth. I am not so sure when it comes to some of the hard counters in the game, both units and abilities. These really have a limiting effect on the game and constrain player skill.
This leads me to the one thing that BW has that I think SC2 should strive towards. That is, even if outplayed, roughly equally skilled players still feel that there was something they could have done. There is little feeling of helplessness as can sometimes be in the case in SC2. I don't think SC2 should be taking too many lessons from BW as they are fundamentally different in some key areas, but allowing players to consistently feel that they were fairly outplayed by an equal opponent is one of them.
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yup ,blizzard nerfed the meta game hard with this one. i love your analogy to BW TvT and i think its super true.
i think the problem with hellbats is that they dont cost any vespene. add 50 vespene to hellbats and they look pretty balanced to me 
its ridiculous how blizzard totally crumbles to community complaining even tho hellbats weren't THAT op.
actually being able to be healed and repaired for 0 gas was kind of OP. i dont thin they should be able to be healed by medivaks either
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On August 18 2013 07:00 Nibbler89 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2013 18:46 ETisME wrote:
I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken. There was no way a zerg can break through a split map situation. Tech switch whatnot doesn't do anything when terran sitting behind with PFs, tanks and ghosts with bios. I will never forget that game between july zerg against Mvp because even if I am a Mvp fan, that game just looked damn stupid.
The mid game was in advantage for Terran at that time, hellions contain was extremely powerful, it lets terran grab a 3rd extremely safely with hellion banshee opening while zerg struggles to get a third up because of hellion runbys and banshee support.
The game was full of roach ling baneling all in, similar to what it is nowadays, you can see that in MMA vs DRG final, I think it was 3 or 4 games were won by that all in.
It wasn't until queen got range buff then zerg starts to have an "advantage" in mid game while in fact, it was still mainly 3 base vs 3 base and infestors were the only reason why zerg has a huge power over terran.
Snipe is actually buffed in TvP right now, it was pure EMP vs HT before.
As for why ghost disappeared in TvZ, it's because zerg gets better at dealing with cloak ghosts and ghosts are just too expensive to invest in.
learning how to deal with hellbat drop opening doesn't mean the strategy was any more balanced than it should be.
hellbat drops completely dominates other openings except those that are specific designed to deny hellbat drops, which is problematic because it becomes a complete poker style game play.
Those hellbat drops specific counter build are much inferior to standard openings.
The risk and reward for hellbat drops were way too uneven to call it a good strategy.
The forgg thingee was HUGELY over excited about, he was playing against EU terrans, hardly a lot of the better terrans in that record.
Not to mention if both players do hellbat drops, it just looks silly.
I don't mind it too too much in other matchups, it's TvT that it has ruined.
Even now we don't have any games that are on par with Flash vs Ryung game, with flanks over flanks over flanks and insane action everywhere. I remember that MVP vs JULY game on metopolis and how a lot of people thought snipe was broken after that, enough for almost an instant nerf. What they ignored was the fact that before julys bane all in mvp dropped july and killed his spawning pool i believe his spire as well and drones, july was waiting for his upgrade timing to finish because he was about to bust and hesitated on defending the drop. As a result he lost his spawning pool as well as taking a lot of other extra damage. He couldn't remax after doing a huge bust since his spawning pool was dead, nonetheless the game went on with july crashing ultras into mvp and getting them sniped until MVP eventually won(julys creep spread was also really horrible by todays standards). I really don't know how people ignored such a huge factor that contributed to that games outcome yet the amount of whine was so great it literally changed the game. Feel free to watch the vod and just look at the mistakes that happen then come back and with 100% honesty say the reason why MVP won was purely because snipe was OP. It would be the equivalent of a terran losing an upgrading engineering bay during a bust then later losing to ultra because he has no +3, followed by an instant halving / removal of chitenous plating. Once an idea gets ingrained it doesn't really get questioned. It's like how once you lose a game of starcraft its very easy to dismiss the reason you lost on one variable, but there's so many that lead up to it. People don't remember all the stuff that led up to Julys loss, they just remember seeing all of july's ultras get popped off creep once he was already way behind.
Snipe was OP. It's not even questionable.
The biggest problem is how cost efficient it is to just turtle up for snipes, sitting behind PFs and just drop and nukes all game until zerg runs dry.
because other than broodlords, there are no way any other zerg composition can break that kind of turtling PFs with bio and tank support, even without snipes
Maps like shakuras is the perfect map to show case this. Terran always win split map games, snipes killed every hive tech units without a single unit loss as long as the terran turle behind the PFs
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I think the nerf was necessary. As much as I understand that those hellbat drops were integrated into the meta, it was a bad thing to have. Too many games were essentially decided early because of hellbat drops, others were lengthened by the fact that one of the players had to fight an uphill battle. We were robbed from proper games by a gimmicky hat trick.
As much as people like to babble about balance when the game is clearly fairly well balanced, I prefer to talk about how fun the game is (or could be). In other words: good riddance. Hellbats are a boring unit to watch.
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Nerf to hellbat drops were necessary imo. It gave terran players too much time to transition, which terran players didn't need anyway. All that time goes to preparing a timing push that will instantly kill the opponent.
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On August 18 2013 06:39 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote:
I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough. Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation. The big issues I had in mind here were: - The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
- The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
- A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
- Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
- Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
- The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
- Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
- Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
- Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
I was going to post that in the just released 4M strategy guide but decided that it wasn't the proper place to do so. After the Hellbat nerf this problem became even more clear.
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On August 17 2013 22:04 CosmicSpiral wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2013 17:10 Entirety wrote:On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote:
The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game. The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better" Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable! The main mistake Blizzard makes in these decisions is assuming the unit itself is the cause of the problem instead of looking at the game as a whole. If they did that they would realize that these problems are systemic issues stemming from design flaws.
Had to plus 1 this part of your post--
@op I came in here prepared to strongly disagree. I still do. While I really like some of the point you made, I could never get past the effort/reward tradeoff of the hellbat drop. They were mindless to execute and could decimate a mineral line in the blink of an eye. Furthermore even putting in a reasonabe effort to stop the drops with turrets and unit positioning often didnt stop you from losing a lot of workers. It was a dynamic where there was no reason to not be doing these drops, which led to infuriating gameplay.
from a spectator standpoint I admit that I just read the Op again and I agree. Blizzard, in my mind, has once again made a borderline retarded, knee jerk reaction to something that they perceived to be a problem. But from a diamond level terran standpoint I have to be happy about these changes.
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EPT
