EPTOn February 04 2017 23:35 Bonyth wrote:
here is how I see it: http://screenshot.sh/n8c6eeqL4VyDw
here is how I see it: http://screenshot.sh/n8c6eeqL4VyDw
I love this graph.
[BW][Afreeca] Top 5 Players January 2017 - Page 7
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SCC-Faust
United States3736 Posts
I love this graph. | ||
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Djabanete
United States2786 Posts
On February 04 2017 15:55 Jealous wrote: This may have been the worst gaming analogy possible. Huh? I thought the HoMM3 analogy was very good. I've tried to imagine how to make a HoMM3 map that was balanced for all races and it would involve covering everything in swamps and putting swamp unit dwellings everywhere (so that one of the worst factions would have a chance versus the undead). It shows that if map designers have to routinely twist themselves into pretzels to make things fair, there is probably an inherent imbalance in the factions. The more twisty the pretzels, the bigger the imbalance. Like someone else said, if you doubled the DPS of tanks, you could still maybe make balanced BW maps (somehow?) by abusing every known terrain feature that benefits other races over Terrans. The fact that you could make balanced maps wouldn't mean the game was still balanced --- on the contrary, every person who loves the current BW balance (including me) would know the game had been broken. The quoted analogy does not show (nor attempt to show) that BW is imbalanced. It just shows that Statement A, "there's no such thing as inherent advantage because there's always maps," isn't the whole story. It might be more accurate to say Statement B: "there's no such thing as effective imbalance because any inherent imbalance is small enough that maps can take care of it." I'm guessing that Jae Zedong doesn't agree with B, but you can't blame him for disagreeing with A, which is too categorical. I think it's interesting that certain map features are necessary for effective racial balance, e.g., a natural expansion with only one entrance that's not too wide. If the game were perfectly balanced in a theoretical sense (which is likely an unattainable goal), you could play fair games on Blaze, Tears of the Protoss, or Crystallis. Although BW's balance is a great thing that I wouldn't change (and I know that very few people on here would), there are still some pretzels being made by the map designers... just not very twisty ones, like the ones HoMM3 would require. | ||
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JungleTerrain
Chile799 Posts
Take this with a grain of salt since I only play T and P, and don't really understand Zerg as well. I honestly feel like Zerg is the hardest race and actually requires the most multitasking, and potentially has the highest skill ceiling out of the 3 races. The reason I believe this is that Zerg economy is so flexible, it can switch from full econ mode to full army macro in an instant, army control is much harder too since on average Zerg units are worth less population (for example zerglings, 1 is worth .5 population). What this translates to is usually not enough hot keys to even be able to effectively control all the units the Zerg player produces. Also, Zerg have the most mobility out of the 3 races, which in my mind allows for the most opportunities for counter play. You have more outpositioning and flanking and harassing potential than T and P, but it requires a ton of multitasking to achieve. Also I feel like lurker and ling army movements are really difficult (maybe this is cuz I don't play Zerg :0)... having to balance zergling's mobility with lurkers' lack of it... just a pain. But when done right you can obliterate an entire army. Idk, you can argue that T has a higher skill ceiling for different reasons, the death ball, tanks op, and all that. My counter argument to T having a higher ceiling is that a Zerg, using superior mobility, has the ability to spread the Terran thin, and since Terran units become strong in bigger numbers (death balls), this would allow Zerg to win with what people would call "divide and conquer" tactics. This works in real warfare, and in BW as well. Obviously I'm not taking into account things such as outsmarting another player, countering builds, vision, information, denial of information, cheesy strategy, player "game sense", map balance, occasional luck, etc. that all fall outside the definition of pure mechanical skill. So maybe you can just disregard everything else I said lol. In the end, it comes down to the players, and assuming they aren't close to perfection, there is still more potential to increase "skill". Maybe I'm envisioning a level of skill that is even higher than the progamers (which might be impossible to get to). Maybe the term "skill" needs to be more properly defined, anyways. Maybe at the human skill ceiling (of the progamers), Terran comes out a little on top, but in actuality Zerg has the higher potential skill ceiling. Maybe I'm brushing up against balance here, although I don't intend to. These are just some of my thoughts. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On February 04 2017 20:20 Jae Zedong wrote: Check onlystar's history, literally 50% of his posts are "omg stahp having balance discussions". He's a frequent visitor of every balance thread made over the last several months. So much for leaving balance discussions alone  I know, right? He was so upset he even sent me a nasty PM, lol.  Do not understand ppl who get upset because a conversation is going on that they don't like. What is difficult about not clicking on a thread you dislike? Derp. I'm glad we're finally at a point where most of us realize we can't just put our head in the sand anymore and pretend everything's fine. Brood War is the best game ever but that doesn't mean it has perfect balance. Anyone denying that can go ahead with their canned responses about "Zurgs jest need 2 innovate!!!1!" and "just make absurd maps to comb over the real problem" and "look at these meaningless statistics I've contorted to align with my existing opinion". The mental gymnastics some people go to is amusing. I think some ppl get the wrong idea about balance discussions... they somehow think that anyone who acknowledges even slight imba is somehow blaming every loss they've ever had and every result of every pro game on said imba, when that is not the case at all.  And if most everyone acknowledged the slight imba, there'd probably be more of a chance of maps consistently being designed to minimize it (though that's very hard to do across multiple matchups, and isn't a full solution on its own). It would of course also be nice if Bliz did something on the unit stats side of things, but I'm not hopeful there. Probably the only balance change we'll ever see out of 'em is if they fix the valk sprite bug... which isn't a 'true' balance change, but would act like one in some situations, since valks firing is obviously a huge upgrade in effectiveness over not firing. But technically, it'd just be a bug fix.Too bad, though. Bliz got balance at least in the ballpark with 1.08, they likely wouldn't have to do all that much to reduce imba to the point where no one could reasonably complain about it anymore. (now cue another rage PM in my Inbox ) | ||
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JungleTerrain
Chile799 Posts
On February 05 2017 04:27 [[Starlight]] wrote: It would of course also be nice if Bliz did something on the unit stats side of things, but I'm not hopeful there. Probably the only balance change we'll ever see out of 'em is if they fix the valk sprite bug... which isn't a 'true' balance change, but would act like one in some situations, since valks firing is obviously a huge upgrade in effectiveness over not firing. But technically, it'd just be a bug fix.If you really wanted to try out just unit stat changes, you can literally just make a UMS map that plays as a Melee or 1v1 map, and change the stats of whatever units you want. I know before people also had some discussion on starting queen energy or w/e, this can also possibly be mimicked in a UMS map, possibly using locations centered on queens with certain conditions, some hyper triggers to make it run smoothly, or maybe just changing the max energy on units so that they start at the same percentage of total energy, but at a higher numerical value of energy. Of course that would allow units to hold way more spells for broodling, ensnare, etc. so might not be indicative of balance. Anyways, this is a way you can see what increasing mutalisk damage to 10 instead of 9 would mean, or maybe giving lings an extra 3 hp, or even adjusting build times. My point is, you can mimic what a blizzard balance patch would look like. On top of that, you can make the map an observer/player map so people can watch. I have an unprotected version of Fighting Spirit, and I could do something with that. Idk could be fun! | ||
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iopq
United States1011 Posts
On February 04 2017 23:40 Jae Zedong wrote: What does this tell us about BW? It tells us that for anyone in this forum, balance will hardly matter because we're not good enough. But when you look at players as good as Flash, Jaedong, Stork, that's when those things become apparent. And what's even funnier is that ex-pros are a lot more willing to talk about these problems than foreign chobos who pros could beat with one hand. That's not true, even at my level (C on iccup) I ran into the issue that it's much harder to play ZvT on FS than ZvP. That is despite having so much more practice in ZvT due to having only T practice partners. This is because you can get a third base up against a 2 base Protoss right away, but you are not guaranteed that against a Terran. It's an uphill battle from the very start. On February 04 2017 23:40 Jae Zedong wrote: What we need in the immediate future is better maps to mask the problem. It's not a perfect solution but it might be all we're going to get for now. And I have the perfect slogan for this project: We Shall Overcomb™ Sure, just give a back expansion that has nothing but a gas in it. I mean, that would benefit Zerg in TvZ, and Protoss in PvZ (infinity storms/reavers/corsairs) It would WORK, but that's an ugly solution. | ||
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classicyellow83
United States2393 Posts
On February 01 2017 17:35 SCC-Faust wrote: I long for the day where Flash and Last are not top 2. Both Flash and Last seem to be playing better in Feb. than January. | ||
Peeano
Netherlands5189 Posts
On February 05 2017 23:44 classicyellow83 wrote: Both Flash and Last seem to be playing better in Feb. than January. January still plays BW? | ||
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shall_burn
252 Posts
January retired something like 5 days ago. | ||
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CUTtheCBC
Canada91 Posts
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aedeph
104 Posts
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okum
France5778 Posts
On February 06 2017 00:27 shall_burn wrote: January retired something like 5 days ago. These "retirements" are never permanent. I expect January to make a comeback within a year. | ||
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TAKK.borg
Croatia93 Posts
On February 06 2017 20:47 okum wrote: These "retirements" are never permanent. I expect January to make a comeback within a year. Me too, the old BW legend comes back next year for sure! | ||
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Jae Zedong
407 Posts
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AdelSC123
France362 Posts
She dominates FlaSh at potential of being best waifu | ||
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JungleTerrain
Chile799 Posts
On February 05 2017 23:19 iopq wrote: Sure, just give a back expansion that has nothing but a gas in it. I mean, that would benefit Zerg in TvZ, and Protoss in PvZ (infinity storms/reavers/corsairs) It would WORK, but that's an ugly solution. This is an interesting point from a mapmaker's perspective... Lol @ January | ||
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SCC-Faust
United States3736 Posts
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FlaShFTW
United States10239 Posts
On February 07 2017 03:09 SCC-Faust wrote: Why don't we just add two geysers in the main and start the races out with more workers so Zerg doesn't have to ramp up so hard to get an economy going in ZvT and Protoss isn't forced to do the monotonous fast expand to even try to compete with Zerg in PvZ? This. This is a solid meme. So if people feel like gas is the real issue, yeah honestly, let's try to get map makers to toss another gas inside the mains. Hell, do what Vampire did with the double gas system with the same amount of minerals. Yeah, strategies are massively changed and even Terran strategies are also changed, but we can see how the meta shapes out. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Vampire for those who want to take a look at the map. We can start with just adding a geyser to the main mineral line, or we could go with the idea of an extra gas geyser somewhere else in the base which is better for Zergs since Terran and Protoss are most likely not going to just spend 400 minerals to get a 3rd gas while Zergs can use their macro hatch as the gas collector. Would be very interesting. | ||
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jonich0n
United States1982 Posts
Pretty impressed with Rain. Just needs to figure out Last and Flash a bit and could be a PvT monster yet. | ||
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Terrorbladder
2719 Posts
Second is Zerg. What we're seeing as the domination of Terran followed by Zerg on the top, is the reflection of the fact that Terran scales the most with mechanical micro+macromanagement | ||
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