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LegalLord
United States13779 Posts
On January 22 2015 21:51 [[Starlight]] wrote: And more members of the SC2 balance team weigh in.  Not exactly. Have you seen how small the siege tank range for SC2 is? There is something morally wrong with siege tanks that do not shoot across the screen. Additionally, I think an important balance patch is to make scarabs detonate when they dud. | ||
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duke91
Germany1458 Posts
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On January 22 2015 16:07 neobowman wrote: Hey man. I appreciate that you took the time to post this. Discussion on these ideas is what I want to encourage. I understand that a lot of my ideas are stupid. I'm by no means anywhere close to good at this game, but that's why I want other people to pitch in with their ideas so people can pool their cool thoughts. Hey, I just wanted to say that the tone of my last post was legitimately mean and I would like to apologize to you personally. I'm not gonna sit here and make any excuses for why I was so rude, but I don't know what I was thinking, but it's embarrassing to look at that and go "Wow, I was really rude to this guy." So I would like to say I'm sorry to you, and everyone who took the time to read that. Additionally, if anyone read through it and thought "Hey, this guy is an idiot! lololol" then I would ask you to kindly give neobowman a chance and hear him out and not be as disrespectful as I was.  | ||
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neobowman
Canada3324 Posts
On January 23 2015 02:14 ninazerg wrote: Hey, I just wanted to say that the tone of my last post was legitimately mean and I would like to apologize to you personally. I'm not gonna sit here and make any excuses for why I was so rude, but I don't know what I was thinking, but it's embarrassing to look at that and go "Wow, I was really rude to this guy." So I would like to say I'm sorry to you, and everyone who took the time to read that. Additionally, if anyone read through it and thought "Hey, this guy is an idiot! lololol" then I would ask you to kindly give neobowman a chance and hear him out and not be as disrespectful as I was. Thanks for taking the time to apologize. It is much appreciated =). I totally get the urge to try and make fun of silly design suggestions, which I'm sure a lot of my ideas are. And a lot of your suggestions are very insightful. Though I wasn't a fan of your tone, you brought a lot to the discussion and I think that's great. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On January 22 2015 23:20 LegalLord wrote: Not exactly. Have you seen how small the siege tank range for SC2 is? There is something morally wrong with siege tanks that do not shoot across the screen. LOLZ.  Didn't Total Annihilation (or another BW competitor) have a unit like that, i.e. one that could shoot all the way across the entire map? Yeah... hated that game. Additionally, I think an important balance patch is to make scarabs detonate when they dud. That would seem to make sense. Short-bus scarabs (fail scarabs, derp scarabs) should still do something. | ||
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Reif
3 Posts
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lemmata
468 Posts
On January 22 2015 14:41 ninazerg wrote: OR DID YOU EAT SOME WEIRD CHINESE TAKE-OUT AND THIS IS WHAT CAME OUT IN THE TOILET Where I live, it's usually Indian food. It doesn't even have to be weird. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On January 22 2015 23:43 duke91 wrote: Make queens broodling 125 energy, while decreasing its starting energy by 25. And maybe add +1 armor for queen or sth. Ppl always say, regarding making Queens more useful, "Broodling mana to 125!", but, I dunno. If you did that, then queens with the energy upgrade (& fully charged) could insta-kill two expensive units in the same battle... and queens don't cost that much. So to have a unit that costs no more than a mutalisk insta-kill two siege tanks, two high templar, or two ultras (though ZvZ doesn't often get to Hive tech) in the same battle, that seems a bit too good. I can understand why Bliz set Broodling mana cost to 150, as annoying as it is. Some ppl might then say, "Well, sci vessels can kill a lot of stuff too, irradiate is pretty imba", but vessels are a much more expensive unit than queens, and irradiate isn't an insta-kill. If you cast irradiate in a non-harass way, i.e. during a battle, the units you cast it on can often still do their thing before dying. Irradiated defilers will likely still get their plagues or swarms off, HTs will still fire off storms before keeling over, etc. Irradiate's great vs low or medium hp non-spellcasters, but it doesn't have the 'boom, you're dead!" insta-kill goodness you get with broodling (though it does have splash). What queens probably need to get used more often is a more broadly effective and predictable Ensnare spell. Ensnare is actually better than ppl think (especially in combination with lurkers or scourge), but it has weird effects where it seems to act wildly differently on different units in terms of slowing their rate of fire. Which is bad because Ensnare is the queen's make-or-break spell, not only because it costs only 75 mana (potentially 3 castings in the same battle out of the same queen), but because a queen will be able to cast it looooong before it can build up the 150 mana (or even 125 proposed) to cast a broodling. Queens made only to cast broodling would just sit there a long time doing nothing (playing cards, lol) while waiting to become useful.  Queens are cool in one (underappreciated?) way already though... you can do fast aerial scouting with them before any other Zerg unit (they can come out earlier than muta/scourge/fast-lords), which is rather nice if you can't get into the enemy main via ground to see what's up, and your slow-lords have already been chased away by enemy fire. | ||
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DepressedOne
United States190 Posts
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darktreb
United States3017 Posts
On January 23 2015 07:23 DepressedOne wrote: upmagic, a really unorthodox Terran player used to go bio against Protoss every game. It was really strange because it would actually work half the time. He'd mix in a siege tank or two and a science vessel for EMP's and he'd do a lot of dropship harass. It made for some pretty creative and fun to watch play. That's a huge exaggeration. He may have gone bio more often but it was still pretty rare. No Terran could go bio against an equal level Protoss more than few games in a row before getting hard countered. Bio is easy to scout and easy to counter, but also highly effective when used at the right time - exactly why it's the niche change of pace strategy / cheese it is. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On January 23 2015 06:06 [[Starlight]] wrote: LOLZ. Didn't Total Annihilation (or another BW competitor) have a unit like that, i.e. one that could shoot all the way across the entire map? Yeah... hated that game. I actually really like TA. The long-range plasma cannon in TA can shoot pretty far, but if you're on a large enough map, it probably won't reach all the way across because the Core's LRPC shoots 10 screens and the Arm's shoots 8 screens. The 'rapid-fire' versions have shorter ranges, but they make attacking virtually impossible on the ground, because they'll take out a Krogoth in like 10 seconds. The nuclear missiles can hit anywhere, but they can't lock-on and there is a defense for them. In SupCom, the UEF has an artillery gun that can hit ANYWHERE, so if you don't have shields up everywhere, you're basically screwed, and even then, keeping your shields up is tenuous at best. On January 23 2015 02:23 neobowman wrote: Thanks for taking the time to apologize. It is much appreciated =). I totally get the urge to try and make fun of silly design suggestions, which I'm sure a lot of my ideas are. And a lot of your suggestions are very insightful. Though I wasn't a fan of your tone, you brought a lot to the discussion and I think that's great. I'm glad you accepted my apology, but I still feel bad and I would like to make it up to you somehow. | ||
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neobowman
Canada3324 Posts
On January 23 2015 08:21 ninazerg wrote: I'm glad you accepted my apology, but I still feel bad and I would like to make it up to you somehow. No worries man. Just keep in mind to be considerate when posting and all is cool =). | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On January 23 2015 08:21 ninazerg wrote: I actually really like TA. The long-range plasma cannon in TA can shoot pretty far, but if you're on a large enough map, it probably won't reach all the way across because the Core's LRPC shoots 10 screens and the Arm's shoots 8 screens. The 'rapid-fire' versions have shorter ranges, but they make attacking virtually impossible on the ground, because they'll take out a Krogoth in like 10 seconds. The nuclear missiles can hit anywhere, but they can't lock-on and there is a defense for them. In SupCom, the UEF has an artillery gun that can hit ANYWHERE, so if you don't have shields up everywhere, you're basically screwed, and even then, keeping your shields up is tenuous at best. TA always felt more like a technology-demonstrator (circa 1997) than a fully-realized game. I mean, Unit of the Week™? Yeah, that's gonna lead to some really great balancing, lol. And they went 3D too early, so a lot of units looked like a pair of polygons shooting at another pair of polygons. There were a few cool things in it, but I never could warm up to it overall. BW smacks TA's ass, gives it a c-note, and tells it go buy itself something pretty. On January 23 2015 02:23 neobowman wrote: Thanks for taking the time to apologize. It is much appreciated =). I totally get the urge to try and make fun of silly design suggestions, which I'm sure a lot of my ideas are. And a lot of your suggestions are very insightful. Though I wasn't a fan of your tone, you brought a lot to the discussion and I think that's great. I'm glad you accepted my apology, but I still feel bad and I would like to make it up to you somehow. Props to you on saying that to the OP. There are many twits on the 'net who aren't man/woman enough to admit when they've crossed the line and apologize. It's good that you're not one of those. | ||
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GeckoXp
Germany2016 Posts
On January 22 2015 14:41 ninazerg wrote: Protoss doesn't struggle in individual tournaments. Look through the defiler tournaments: http://defiler.ru/tourney/ and tell me which race is dramatically favored. first argument I read, first thing you basically just left here and hoped nobody would check I assume. Zerg is horribly favoured in there and it's not really a secret. The Top 10 basically features only Zerg and Terran. Protoss comes in at rank 14-16. Yet, there's Lancerx, who basically only one won gold in an international (Defiler) tournament. Then it's Dewalt (argueably the best PvZ foreign player in this time) and Tama next. One P isn't in, cause hack. Whaaaat. I mean it's pretty common knowledge that the past three or four years in foreign bw were ruled by Zerg. It's not argument in favour of balance changes or anything, but... you're just being silly here and you probably knew while typing. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On January 23 2015 06:54 Reif wrote: Did you know that Boxer changed from Protoss to Terran because of the patch that made the scarabs dumber? Yup. He says that in his autobiography, Crazy As Me. In a way, fail scarabs helped create the first bonjwa. | ||
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ninazerg
United States7291 Posts
On January 23 2015 09:31 GeckoXp wrote: first argument I read, first thing you basically just left here and hoped nobody would check I assume. Zerg is horribly favoured in there and it's not really a secret. The Top 10 basically features only Zerg and Terran. Protoss comes in at rank 14-16. Yet, there's Lancerx, who basically only one won gold in an international (Defiler) tournament. Then it's Dewalt (argueably the best PvZ foreign player in this time) and Tama next. One P isn't in, cause hack. Whaaaat. I mean it's pretty common knowledge that the past three or four years in foreign bw were ruled by Zerg. It's not argument in favour of balance changes or anything, but... you're just being silly here and you probably knew while typing. I think the results are kind of skewed because Sziky and Scan have won so many tours. I really don't think their wins are a matter of imbalance, but just shows how talented they are. But I meant all the tours on the list, not just the main ones. | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
On January 23 2015 07:23 DepressedOne wrote: upmagic, a really unorthodox Terran player used to go bio against Protoss every game. It was really strange because it would actually work half the time. He'd mix in a siege tank or two and a science vessel for EMP's and he'd do a lot of dropship harass. It made for some pretty creative and fun to watch play. Going through TLPD and scrolling through vods for like 2 minutes would be enough to show that you're really, really wrong. I'm not even going to because I've watched enough of Upmagic's games to know that he did not go bio against Protoss every game. It was a small minority. | ||
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hitthat
Poland2311 Posts
On January 23 2015 11:30 ninazerg wrote: I think the results are kind of skewed because Sziky and Scan have won so many tours. I really don't think their wins are a matter of imbalance, but just shows how talented they are. But I meant all the tours on the list, not just the main ones. And foreigners dont count anyway | ||
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SnowFantasy
4173 Posts
Let's discuss that. | ||
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LilClinkin
Australia667 Posts
All of the beautiful things in this world (including BW) exist as the result of imbalance. If everything was perfectly balanced, then not much would happen...for instance, if blood pressure values in your body were equal everywhere, there would be no blood flow. There is a reason coin flipping is not played as a professional sport, precisely because it is so perfectly balanced and player skill has no determination on outcome. For BW to function as a 'balanced' competitive game there needs to exist a state that for any strategy, given both players of an equal skill level, there is a valid counter-strategy that can be executed to win. The success rate of the individual strategy does not have to be 50%. All that needs to be 50% is the total sum of wins if all possible strategy selections from player A were pitted against all possible strategy selections from player B. In fact, individual strategies that have a success rate of 50% are bad because choosing them is tantamount to flipping a coin. If all individual strategies had a 50% to succeed, the meta-game would be non-existent. I will define strategy as including (but not limited to) the following: build order, economic management, unit selection, unit tactics and most importantly player skill. Note that this definition accounts for how differences in player skill will have a direct impact on the likely-hood that any given strategy will succeed. Hence, better-skilled players are able to choose from a wider variety of strategies and are more capable of making those strategies work against their opponents (better micro, mechanics etc.). Taking this to its logical conclusion, a skilled player (let's call him Bob) will theoretically defeat a lesser skilled opponent more than 50% of the time if we randomly pitted all of his strategies against all of his opponents strategies, which is exactly what you want in a competitive game. Using proper application of strategy selection against his opponent (ie. applying meta-game), Bob could boost his win chances towards 100% by selecting only those strategies which will always beat his opponent: For example, if his opponent was an ultra-newbie, 4-pooling could be considered a 100% successful strategy (ie. it will win no matter what his opponent chooses to do, because his opponent lacks to skill to execute a strategy that beats the 4-pool). If Bob were to play some one of equal skill, only then would you want to see win-rates approach 50% when strategies from both players were randomly selected and pitted against one another. This can lead to development of an interesting and dynamic meta-game, where for instance an individual strategy in Bob's repertoire may win against 80% of his opponents strategies (let's call this strategy X). If Bob applies meta-game correctly whereas his opponent only randomly selects strategies, then Bob can actually boost his win% to 80% by always choosing strategy X. However, if Bob's opponent also starts to apply meta-game, they will predict Bob using strategy X often, and will exploit this knowledge by carefully selecting from the 20% of strategies that counter X. Bob will realize he is being exploited, and will use strategy X less often. The net effect will be to bring the win-rates back down to 50:50. The alternative to an exciting meta-game featuring seemingly imbalanced strategies such as X is to have a dull and boring 50% win-rate for Bob and his opponent, where meta-game is essentially non-existent because all strategies are only 50% to succeed against all other strategies. This might be because the game was designed with lots of hard counters which mitigate the potential for player skill to make a difference. Here, what Bob and his opponent may as well do is engage in a professional game of coin flipping. Finally, if Bob were to play some one of significantly greater skill, you would want to see his win-rate decline below 50% when all of his strategies are randomly selected and pitted against his opponent. With proper application of meta-game, Bob's win rate should approach 0% regardless of what Bob chooses to do, as his opponent carefully selects only those strategies that defeat Bob regardless of what Bob does. For instance, if Bob played Flash, Flash would choose safe openers which carry him into the mid- and late- game, allowing his mechanics to shine and ultimately crush Bob regardless of what Bob chooses to do. Flash could choose to be risky and open double CC first, but why should he open himself to unnecessary risk? Bob might 4-pool and win. tl:dr: Assymetry is GOOD. Balance whiners may as well sit on a see-saw with some one of equal weight and bet on coin flips. | ||
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EPT
