Balancing has hardly ever been the reason why a player fell off.
INnoVation's main strength wasn't hellbats. It was his main strength in TvT, and even there I'd argue there were better TvTers at that time to begin with (like Bomber or Maru). And he didn't fall off after the patch. He wasn't superdominant to begin with (Soulkey winning WCS season 1, Maru winning season 2; INnoVation only taking the season finals in that time periode, and no other title at all).
And same goes for others. Mvp/Nestea - dominant over various patches. Life being strong with BL/Infestor, in early HotS without it, and then bouncing back and forth. MC, amazing player regardless of the balance state. Sniper/Seed... falling off without any real updates happening.
People attribute far too much of an individuals performance to balance. INnoVation was the best Terran (shared with Taeja) at the end of WoL and the best Terran at the beginning of HotS. If the only reason for him falling off would be balance, then he could still be the best Terran, which he simply wasn't anymore towards the end of 2013. Not because "no more hellbat drops", but because other players simply got better and he didn't as much. These days, it looks like he could be coming back to the very top of Terrans. Not by some magic patch, but by him stepping up is game again.
On June 27 2014 22:42 TheCzarOfAll wrote: You can still have stars in a balanced game. The problem with hellbats was that EVERYBODY was abusing them and there was no inherent risk with going for them. Stars that abuse one thing that is imbalanced aren't stars at all. Think about Polt. He's been doing the same 1-2 builds for years with balanced units and is still winning tournaments. This is because he's an all-around solid player that found a solid build that compliments his style. He's a true superstar Terran. Being a star is based on being all-around solid and being charismatic.
First of all charisma is an attribute given to a group member by it''s members, charisma is something defined by the group and an intrinsic quality. Therefore, it is hard to inherently be charismatic. Where does Polt end up these days? Zerg has been knocking him out recently! Nevertheless, I like Polt and your opinions, I agree that you can have stars in a balanced game but there success tends to end after a period of time, further relative to other sports that is a short period of time!
Thank you for your input, indeed you can have stars, but by the time they get real stardom someone gets nerfed and then they end up not being such a star.
On June 27 2014 23:13 Dizmaul wrote: The thing that makes a game unbalanced should not be the game but the players skill. These supers stars of other sports are not abusing a unbalance in the game they are abusing the unbalance in there skill.
So there is no imbalance in the transfer policies in soccer???
On June 27 2014 23:40 ThomasjServo wrote: You know what other game is, to use your term, overly balanced but still has stars? Chess, which has been a non-traditional sport for much longer than any video game and still has had its stars. The analogy often used between Chess and Starcraft is apt for a number of reasons, in that strategically speaking you cannot employ certain strategies and expect to make forward progress in your ELO or ladder ranking respectively. So when you say:
I play a game for fun not to learn a whole load of strats before I can make it out of Bronze league!!
You are ignoring the fundamental premise of the entire game which is strategy. Now if you want to play for fun, and do wonky builds that is fine and well, I lost to mass Raven on Antiga Shipyard, and remember being rather pissed about it; but saying that a steeper learning curve is killing the game is a gross overstatement.
Bobby Fisher, to stretch the tired Chess analogy even further, thought that standard Chess had become stale as well, that the early game was almost completely sorted in terms of viable strategies and he opted to create a game called Chess, or Fisher960 (the two are used interchangeably at times) wherein the back row of pieces is completely random, and there are 960 possible combinations or orders of the back rank. Similar things have happened with the Arcade and Starbow.
There are many ways to skin a cat so to speak, or have fun with SC2. You seem to have a rather narrow scope of your options.
The issue with balancing is that it assumes that there should be equality between the races...
You ever sat on a three-legged stool where one leg is shorter than the other two, or all three were different lengths?
Your thoughts on Protoss are also about six months behind, and rather strange at that. I would say the focal point of balance of late has been the reemergence of Hellbats post Transformation Servos removal.
Protoss is also the least standard out of all the races...
Warp in not withstanding, mechanically Terran and Protoss are much more akin to one another than Zerg is to any of the other races.
As an avid chess player I can tell you playing as Black or White has immense repercussion for the game. In fact chess is quite imbalanced White has first move, the location of the Bishops and importance of this location vary as a function of Black or White.
When I said '
I play a game for fun not to learn a whole load of strats before I can make it out of Bronze league!!
' I was speaking as someone who is only interested in casual play, that is all, it was not my personal opinion, also should people be penalized for only being casual players?
The step learning curve as you aptly put it is killing the game! Look at the amount of people watching LOL on Twitch now versus SC2 enough said.
As a chess player, Fischer960 is not popular.
But the way you play three different races is very different. i.e., hatch timings for zerg versus nexus, Zerg you must expand quicker. As opposed to relishing the difference balance is emphasized.
I wasnt talking about mechanics I was talking about all-in based strats.
I disagree with OP. I don't watch or enjoy SC2 anymore because I found the metagame to be boring, too much emphasis on timing attacks and surprise all-ins - not enough focus on outplaying your opponent in the traditional SC1 sense. I played Protoss and it's shitty when the optimal way to play the race is two base timing attacks. In my opinion, SC2 needs to incorporate more of a defenders advantage, and encourage more expanding.
On June 28 2014 01:21 radscorpion9 wrote: Its actually amusing at one point, after reading for a time, because he mentions people like pele being stars in soccer (or football for most people I suppose, I'm north american)...at that point the argument should have been relinquished. Soccer, a game where both sides are evenly balanced, and both sides play by the same rules. And there are still superstars, people who gain national and sometimes worldwide acclaim. You don't need to read anything else after that. The same is true for countless other games and sports.
Chess is perfectly balanced, you could not have a more even game besides who goes first (which is minor as best as we can tell). Yet you have superstars in chess that people love to watch, like Magnus Carlsen or Viswanathan Anand. Think of any number of other professional sports, there are stars everywhere. You can only conclude that the issue has nothing to do with over-balancing the game. Even at ideal balance levels it should be irrelevant if *every other* sport is any indication!
Anyway I think it would irritate everyone to no end to see the game being blatantly imbalanced in some way. I'd rather they try the opposite even if it makes the game a bit more boring.
Is the method of attaining players balanced? Soccer is super inbalanced, come on son.
Chess is not perfectly balanced, white moves first dictates how the game is played, Bishops on different places, better castling position for white. There are difference in chess, yet the strats embrace this, the game doesnt get patched.
On June 28 2014 00:47 Slayer91 wrote: its the same reason why nobody watches the world cup, soccer is a mirror matchup so its boring as shit and way too balanced so theres no stars
and clearly people doing well with a certain race suddenly is not due to imbalance but because they clearly are all working harder than the other races
have you ever considered over representation of a certain race or unit or build is due to their increased effectiveness shutting out the competition and not some kind of conspiracy by blizzard to nerf anything effective to the ground?
It must be an Irish thing, but you seem to get what I am talking about!
On June 28 2014 01:55 Big J wrote: Balancing has hardly ever been the reason why a player fell off.
INnoVation's main strength wasn't hellbats. It was his main strength in TvT, and even there I'd argue there were better TvTers at that time to begin with (like Bomber or Maru). And he didn't fall off after the patch. He wasn't superdominant to begin with (Soulkey winning WCS season 1, Maru winning season 2; INnoVation only taking the season finals in that time periode, and no other title at all).
And same goes for others. Mvp/Nestea - dominant over various patches. Life being strong with BL/Infestor, in early HotS without it, and then bouncing back and forth. MC, amazing player regardless of the balance state. Sniper/Seed... falling off without any real updates happening.
People attribute far too much of an individuals performance to balance. INnoVation was the best Terran (shared with Taeja) at the end of WoL and the best Terran at the beginning of HotS. If the only reason for him falling off would be balance, then he could still be the best Terran, which he simply wasn't anymore towards the end of 2013. Not because "no more hellbat drops", but because other players simply got better and he didn't as much. These days, it looks like he could be coming back to the very top of Terrans. Not by some magic patch, but by him stepping up is game again.
Funny cause your argument supports the idea that Blizzard should not balance, if it makes not difference whether you patch or not then why do it?
On June 28 2014 02:19 Salv wrote: I disagree with OP. I don't watch or enjoy SC2 anymore because I found the metagame to be boring, too much emphasis on timing attacks and surprise all-ins - not enough focus on outplaying your opponent in the traditional SC1 sense. I played Protoss and it's shitty when the optimal way to play the race is two base timing attacks. In my opinion, SC2 needs to incorporate more of a defenders advantage, and encourage more expanding.
On June 27 2014 22:56 Paljas wrote: can comfirm, i only watch sc2 with a laptop on a cemetery, otherwise it just doesnt have the right atmosphere
I was going to make a "nah, it's not dying, only shrinking to fit the current needs of the scene," comment, and then I scrolled down.
ROFL.
I mean, you can talk about whether the game is fun or not, and whether or not it is designed well or not (I have a good comparison to BW I always make that really sums up why I feel the two games are different), which has been done before to DEATH, but the game is still going strong.
Of COURSE it is shrinking - there are too many players and everything is so stacked, and other games are in the scene now competing for eyes and ears.
But dying? Nah I think that's too much. Giving into a bit of sensationalism. The game isn't dead until the last player drops dead of exhaustion! BW is a wonderful example of a game which is still going strong after so many years of time. I'm sure you can think of more than a few others ^^.
On June 28 2014 01:55 Big J wrote: Balancing has hardly ever been the reason why a player fell off.
INnoVation's main strength wasn't hellbats. It was his main strength in TvT, and even there I'd argue there were better TvTers at that time to begin with (like Bomber or Maru). And he didn't fall off after the patch. He wasn't superdominant to begin with (Soulkey winning WCS season 1, Maru winning season 2; INnoVation only taking the season finals in that time periode, and no other title at all).
And same goes for others. Mvp/Nestea - dominant over various patches. Life being strong with BL/Infestor, in early HotS without it, and then bouncing back and forth. MC, amazing player regardless of the balance state. Sniper/Seed... falling off without any real updates happening.
People attribute far too much of an individuals performance to balance. INnoVation was the best Terran (shared with Taeja) at the end of WoL and the best Terran at the beginning of HotS. If the only reason for him falling off would be balance, then he could still be the best Terran, which he simply wasn't anymore towards the end of 2013. Not because "no more hellbat drops", but because other players simply got better and he didn't as much. These days, it looks like he could be coming back to the very top of Terrans. Not by some magic patch, but by him stepping up is game again.
Funny cause your argument supports the idea that Blizzard should not balance, if it makes not difference whether you patch or not then why do it?
no it does not support it. It makes a difference for being the best player. It makes no difference for INnoVation being the best Terran. All the players that fell off didn't just fall off as the X-th best player, but also stoppped being the best player of their own race. Ergo the reason for them falling off cannot possible have been the balance change to begin with.
The chances to win as Zerg or Protoss should be equal. That's what balance is for. The chance that DIMAGA wins the GSL instead of soO doesn't change through that. So soO's stardom doesn't get influenced by it. What does change INnoVations stardom is when you don't buff Terran after months of being dominated by Zerg and Protoss.
I don't understand why it is always stated that chess is imbalanced. This is not the case because players always have to play both colors the same number of times in a tournament.
Likewise, the balance problem in StarCraft wouldn't exist if each player would have to play all 3 races in a matchup.
On June 27 2014 22:56 Paljas wrote: can comfirm, i only watch sc2 with a laptop on a cemetery, otherwise it just doesnt have the right atmosphere
I was going to make a "nah, it's not dying, only shrinking to fit the current needs of the scene," comment, and then I scrolled down.
ROFL.
I mean, you can talk about whether the game is fun or not, and whether or not it is designed well or not (I have a good comparison to BW I always make that really sums up why I feel the two games are different), which has been done before to DEATH, but the game is still going strong.
Of COURSE it is shrinking - there are too many players and everything is so stacked, and other games are in the scene now competing for eyes and ears.
But dying? Nah I think that's too much. Giving into a bit of sensationalism. The game isn't dead until the last player drops dead of exhaustion! BW is a wonderful example of a game which is still going strong after so many years of time. I'm sure you can think of more than a few others ^^.
I think it is dying in terms of new fans emerging. Professionals emerge yeah because it is a job for them. I mean genuinely new fanbase, not a small niche of passionate fans (which by the way I have no problem with at all, I am one)
On June 28 2014 02:44 urboss wrote: I don't understand why it is always stated that chess is imbalanced. This is not the case because players always have to play both colors the same number of times in a tournament.
Likewise, the balance problem in StarCraft wouldn't exist if each player would have to play all 3 races in a matchup.
Agreed, but the culture of specifying one race in SC and only playing them, de-facto leads to imbalance! Players should be more like Scarlett!!
On June 28 2014 01:55 Big J wrote: Balancing has hardly ever been the reason why a player fell off.
INnoVation's main strength wasn't hellbats. It was his main strength in TvT, and even there I'd argue there were better TvTers at that time to begin with (like Bomber or Maru). And he didn't fall off after the patch. He wasn't superdominant to begin with (Soulkey winning WCS season 1, Maru winning season 2; INnoVation only taking the season finals in that time periode, and no other title at all).
And same goes for others. Mvp/Nestea - dominant over various patches. Life being strong with BL/Infestor, in early HotS without it, and then bouncing back and forth. MC, amazing player regardless of the balance state. Sniper/Seed... falling off without any real updates happening.
People attribute far too much of an individuals performance to balance. INnoVation was the best Terran (shared with Taeja) at the end of WoL and the best Terran at the beginning of HotS. If the only reason for him falling off would be balance, then he could still be the best Terran, which he simply wasn't anymore towards the end of 2013. Not because "no more hellbat drops", but because other players simply got better and he didn't as much. These days, it looks like he could be coming back to the very top of Terrans. Not by some magic patch, but by him stepping up is game again.
Funny cause your argument supports the idea that Blizzard should not balance, if it makes not difference whether you patch or not then why do it?
no it does not support it. It makes a difference for being the best player. It makes no difference for INnoVation being the best Terran. All the players that fell off didn't just fall off as the X-th best player, but also stoppped being the best player of their own race. Ergo the reason for them falling off cannot possible have been the balance change to begin with.
The chances to win as Zerg or Protoss should be equal. That's what balance is for. The chance that DIMAGA wins the GSL instead of soO doesn't change through that. So soO's stardom doesn't get influenced by it. What does change INnoVations stardom is when you don't buff Terran after months of being dominated by Zerg and Protoss.
So if balance doesnt effect how the best players of each race play, then why balance???
Why should the chance of Zerg beating Protoss be equal they are two different races? So what happens the people who play Zerg come up with really good ways of beating Protoss? They get patched? For instance, I have heard commentators like Tod saying that if Protoss comes out with a new build everyone will do it, whereas when it comes to Terran people do not do the same. This suggests there are cultural norms within each race and one norm is more adaptive than another. Thus, one race more likely to win than another!
On June 27 2014 23:22 Nebuchad wrote: "The issue with balancing is that it assumes that there should be equality between the races"
Genius.
Thanks, I think maybe instead of striving for equality Blizzard could enhance the differences and try to make the differences comparable to a certain extent.
On June 28 2014 01:55 Big J wrote: Balancing has hardly ever been the reason why a player fell off.
INnoVation's main strength wasn't hellbats. It was his main strength in TvT, and even there I'd argue there were better TvTers at that time to begin with (like Bomber or Maru). And he didn't fall off after the patch. He wasn't superdominant to begin with (Soulkey winning WCS season 1, Maru winning season 2; INnoVation only taking the season finals in that time periode, and no other title at all).
And same goes for others. Mvp/Nestea - dominant over various patches. Life being strong with BL/Infestor, in early HotS without it, and then bouncing back and forth. MC, amazing player regardless of the balance state. Sniper/Seed... falling off without any real updates happening.
People attribute far too much of an individuals performance to balance. INnoVation was the best Terran (shared with Taeja) at the end of WoL and the best Terran at the beginning of HotS. If the only reason for him falling off would be balance, then he could still be the best Terran, which he simply wasn't anymore towards the end of 2013. Not because "no more hellbat drops", but because other players simply got better and he didn't as much. These days, it looks like he could be coming back to the very top of Terrans. Not by some magic patch, but by him stepping up is game again.
Funny cause your argument supports the idea that Blizzard should not balance, if it makes not difference whether you patch or not then why do it?
no it does not support it. It makes a difference for being the best player. It makes no difference for INnoVation being the best Terran. All the players that fell off didn't just fall off as the X-th best player, but also stoppped being the best player of their own race. Ergo the reason for them falling off cannot possible have been the balance change to begin with.
The chances to win as Zerg or Protoss should be equal. That's what balance is for. The chance that DIMAGA wins the GSL instead of soO doesn't change through that. So soO's stardom doesn't get influenced by it. What does change INnoVations stardom is when you don't buff Terran after months of being dominated by Zerg and Protoss.
So if balance doesnt effect how the best players of each race play, then why balance???
Why should the chance of Zerg beating Protoss be equal they are two different races? So what happens the people who play Zerg come up with really good ways of beating Protoss? They get patched? For instance, I have heard commentators like Tod saying that if Protoss comes out with a new build everyone will do it, whereas when it comes to Terran people do not do the same. This suggests there are cultural norms within each race and one norm is more adaptive than another. Thus, one race more likely to win than another!
EPT
