im suprised KESPA / BW scene never simply got together under one unified body and decided to "patch" the game themselves
it would be easy, simply create custom maps with the stats changed and release your own balance changes as time comes.
I see good reasons why this never happened, however I also think it would be so easy to do (simply design maps, have teams download and practice with them, and have those special maps played in tournaments) that im surprised it never happened. its not like blizzard is a god at a balance, maybe a unified esport governing agency in korea could have balanced it better, and honestly it would cost nothing in terms of paying money to blizzard, its all free in the game however the agency would need to pay their own balancing team to do it most likely so there would be some cost
i know im speaking of something crazy, im just saying im surprised nothing like that ever happened
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The scout is one of those things that doesn't see much playtime, but that has a large effect on the game. As people have said, the scout essentially invalidates opposing capital ship play in PvP and PvT, dictating the pace and form of the matchup. It's one of those units that doesn't need a buff, and is perfectly effective not being used at all.
If it is nerfed significantly, on certain maps, we may see Carrier play or Cattlebruiser play, which is not fun to watch since the superior range of these units force drawn out stalemate situations.
If it is buffed significantly (so that it outdps's the wraith's ground attack per cost), Protoss will simply be too powerful. While it still wouldn't have much of an effect in PvP or PvT compared to the current metagame, PvZ could totally break.
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On October 30 2011 17:14 roymarthyup wrote:
im suprised KESPA / BW scene never simply got together under one unified body and decided to "patch" the game themselves
it would be easy, simply create custom maps with the stats changed and release your own balance changes as time comes.
I see good reasons why this never happened, however I also think it would be so easy to do (simply design maps, have teams download and practice with them, and have those special maps played in tournaments) that im surprised it never happened. its not like blizzard is a god at a balance, maybe a unified esport governing agency in korea could have balanced it better, and honestly it would cost nothing in terms of paying money to blizzard, its all free in the game however the agency would need to pay their own balancing team to do it most likely so there would be some cost
i know im speaking of something crazy, im just saying im surprised nothing like that ever happened
Its because there isn't any need to do that, when you can just balance the game with maps.
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On October 30 2011 15:04 Nemesis wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2011 11:49 dhe95 wrote:On October 30 2011 11:43 djbhINDI wrote:On October 30 2011 11:28 dhe95 wrote:On October 30 2011 09:29 lbmaian wrote:On October 30 2011 07:46 koreasilver wrote:
You're just not getting it. Not only that, you seem to have a complete misunderstanding of the history of balancing for BW so your accusation is baseless and meaningless. You're being way too defensive, and we're talking about a nebulous topic called "game design", so I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I just find having under-utilized units in some match-ups or stages to be "inelegant" game design. Examples of such units: BW scout, WC3 footman (at least early versions), SC2 reaper. It has nothing to do with balance. To contrive an extreme example, consider a strategy game with 3 races. Race A has two types of units: units that are only good against race B, and units that are only good against race C. To me, this is completely bad game design. With regards to BW balance, I do know that BW has primarily been balanced with maps, player skill, and the "metagame". I'm only stating the obvious: that Blizzard won't bother tweaking a game that it stopped actively supporting years ago. But if for some reason, Blizzard found some business need to create an expansion or something similarly drastic for BW, Blizzard would try to redesign and tweak units to fix such flaws. For example, in one of the later WC3 patches, Blizzard buffed the footman's defend so that it would remain more viable in later stages of the game (which is not to say they were successful). Of course, this will never happen, so the point is moot. LilClinkin, of course buffing the scout, in the absence of any other change, could imbalance the game - I never proposed that. And I'm not comparing BW to SC2 balance or gameplay at all - I'm only mentioning SC2 here as another RTS example. Units are under-utilized because there are better alternatives. And if you want every unit to be the same in terms of usability, then we will either see armies consisting of one of every unit, or armies consisting of only one unit, which is also inelegant game design. Also, any RTS is not completely figured out, and never will be. There's no way to tell if a certain unit although underused today, will be the staple of a matchup tomorrow. There's no definite proof of whether a unit genuinely sucks or if people haven't figured out how to use it. Just look at queens in BW, they were rarely used until recently. Ghosts in SC2 were rarely used until recently. Since all the races are different, people need time to adapt to any changes in the game. It can take a long time for people to adapt to small changes, and forcing a patch is just going to start the process all over again from the beginning. Are you seriously suggesting that a game which requires unique strategies to deal with two radically different enemies is BAD? SERIOUSLY? It makes perfect sense that you would have to adopt a completely different strategy to cope with the all-overwhelming macro of the zerg and the high tech and damage units of the protoss. Your opinion that not having one cookie-cutter strategy to deal with both enemies seems anti-starcraft. No, I am suggesting that having all units completely even to a point where any unit can be used or a small amount of every unit used in conjunction is bad. For example, going only zerglings sucks, but add in some lurkers and defilers and you have a great army. Building 5 of every unit sucks, but having a good balance of lurkers and hydras for example is good, which is why blizzard not constantly applying balance patches in BW was a good thing. Keeping things the way it is gives time to let people create different strategies instead of changing everything so often as to hinder the development of new strategies. This, and it is fine having units that are situational. For example, devourers are rarely used but they basically serve a similar purpose to scout that is to fight vs heavy air. Devourers are only used in either late-game zvz, against bc zvt, against carriers zvp, for light air threats scourge are quite efficient(if microed carefully) at taking them out. The concept of devourers are still really needed though, because without devourers, it would make it a lot harder to combat those specific situations. Having every unit usable in every situation is what I would actually say bad design. It just makes the units generic. And no changing the scout right now is bad, it will mess too much with the current mu unpredictably. But yes, I would agree that the concept of scouts could've been better as they are pretty much the most useless unit in the game. Then again, we said that about queens a couple of years ago, and now they are being used against mech zvt.
I agree, having every unit be viable in any situation is bad.
But my ideal RTS game would have units that are unique, yet are viable in situations that collectively happen at least 5% of the time, and all matchups are balanced and interesting to watch and play. I understand that because the metagame evolves, that 5% will constantly be changing, so it then comes to whether the developer is convinced that it needs tweaking, or waiting and hoping for the unit to become viable over time (the latter obviously being the BW mindset).
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EPT
