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..most of the time. Now I get the feeling most people will just assume that I'm a budding Terran superstar who doesn't want to have his winrate decrease which I could preemptively counter by saying I'm a Zerg player. But the reality is - it doesn't fucking matter, that's not what this is about.
What I want to convey is that patching detracts for the depth of the gameplay. Why? because rather than people coming up with creative solutions to problems, we get these easy quick-fix changes so the strategies used never get time to develop - the game just keeps changing flavour with every patch. What's worse is how common these proposed changes appear at lower levels, obviously I'm not a quotation database but it's funny how many threads I've read where people bitch about the game and how it should be changed as an alternative to simply playing better.
Scenario: Brood War before Bisu came along when Savior and friends were destroying everyone with his 3 Hatch Lair style in ZvP. I don't have any statistics but I'm sure a lot of Protosses know this was a pretty harsh time. Protoss would stick to their +1 Zealot rushes but they couldn't do a thing because Zerg would get the Mutalisks to hold off the attack and harass, then get the Lurkers which screwed up their tech and attack timings even more, so by the time they felt comfortable moving out Zerg was perfectly setup. Terrible summary but you get the idea, Protosses were in a pretty icky situation and from searching they were a fair share of PvZ imba threads/posts, but what's great is that rather than the solution being some bumpy patch, the game actually evolved when Bisu came along and popularised the Corsair opening and the matchup took an entirely new route. Take a look at some of the write-ups on how genius Bisu's revolution was, because those innovations were a huge part of Starcraft's longevity and its fun. It was around this time that most of the popular Zerg builds (4 hatch +1 carapace, 3 hatch muta/lurker) stopped working - a sure sign that the game was evolving. A more recent example is Fantasy's mech play, which I personally found super sexy and genius. For reference, my favourite game of the Bisu vs Savior series:
+ Show Spoiler +
So how does this relate? The mass reaper style TvZ seems the point of convergence for most of the imbalance bitching these days - but just take a step back and look, people are 10x more comfortable dealing with it than they were when it first really picked up popularity (the IEM tournament I think) because Zergs have a way better feel for the timings and know just exactly what they can get away with drone-wise. It's still a really potent opening but definitely in the coming months people will get better and better and holding it off (patch or not).. or perhaps we'll find a Zerg Revolutionist and thus a new reign of alleged imbalance will start! can't wait. But seriously, there will be just one streamed series where Zergs will watch it and think 'wow, we can actually do this' and new things will happen
A pretty interesting, relating story I heard on Weapon of Choice was where I believe DJWheat said how he didn't enjoy SF4 when it first was released, the gameplay was slow/imbalanced or something and the whole thing was just drab, but after a year when he tuned into a huge tournament the game had evolved tremendously and was actually awesome to watch. Keep in mind SF4 had very limited patching.
As I said at the beginning, patching is a bad idea most of the time. Play unpatched SC where a spawning pool costs 100 minerals - yeah stuff does need to be patched from time to time. But the Reaper openings, Zealot rushes and Tank damage nerfs are still grey areas to me, but kudos to Blizzard for waiting this long and not making any sudden shifts to gameplays, and keeping the changes relatively small. I also didn't mention this previously but, I feel this exact same way about people who say the SC2 gameplay is drab and the lacks the spark of BW, July wasn't muta microing from the start mate, though I get the feeling a lot of them are just being stubborn elitists haha
All in all, I really feel Starcraft 2 needs a year or so!
Pretty interested in what you guys think about this line of reasoning
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Nice post.
I think they should keep patches small and relatively 'weak', so they can change the bigger problems all around, but without killing creativity with something like reducing Hatch build time, Increasing Probe train time, give scvs 6 minerals to carry etc;)
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Belgium71 Posts
Obviously a terran
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Pretty interested in what you guys think about this line of reasoning
It's flawed.
Patches happen because there are irreconcilable issues in the gameplay. Allowing these issues to persist causes games to die.
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I tend to agree but it doesn't seem like Blizzard is making any major changes which is good.
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Are you for real. Both ZvP and ZvT is broken, zerg cant win tournaments. Its not a strategic problem where "if only zerg could come up with X" they would counter whatever. Its a fundamental imbalance and if they would not patch it, nobody would care to play zerg in tournaments.
What do you think some genious zerg can come up with to counter whatever is going on atm? They are allready using all the units that are avaiable to them in different situations. If zerg has a unit that can scout and find out what terrans are doing behind there wall before you can get overlord speed or overseer I would love to know.
Problem is there is only couple opening choices for zerg against P/T, where terran has a million things he can do, and if you cant scout it, you will be blind guessing and thereby putting yourself behind in alot of situations.
There aint gonna be some undiscovered counter to reaper the way it is, because there is three units that you can make before it hits your base, and all of them get owned by reaper speed/range.
Sc2 is getting figured out alot faster then sc bw because its not that different, and alot of the fundamentals transfer over.
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back in bw's starting days, esports and gaming as a whole wasnt that much big i guess. if there were things like muta micro ( not simply pushing stop ) they would have been already discovered i think.
just my opinion, but you have to watch differently at this when you compare evolution of BW in comparison to SC2
maybe iam wrong, but if you look at the scene... there are BIG MONEY TOURNYS right from the start of sc2, even before. yeah it shouldnt affect balancing that much but if you look at the "Altitude TL Open" for example, in wich FOUR Terrans made it into the top four, there is balancing needed.
on the other hand, i think the hole Z-Situation is more of a design-flaw, not a balance one. I dont like to see how zergs only abled to stay in their base - yeah zergs can be aggressive if they baneling bust and go all in but come on, thats retarded.
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On September 21 2010 04:39 Sybris wrote:
What I want to convey is that patching detracts for the depth of the gameplay. Why? because rather than people coming up with creative solutions to problems, we get these easy quick-fix changes so the strategies used never get time to develop - the game just keeps changing flavour with every patch. What's worse is how common these proposed changes appear at lower levels, obviously I'm not a quotation database but it's funny how many threads I've read where people bitch about the game and how it should be changed as an alternative to simply playing better.
There is really a limited amount of strategies Zerg can do, honestly. Having the least amount of attacking units does that.
Not to mention Zerg have an even more limited openers, since they have to react to the person they play against simply to stay in the game.
Most Pro's admit that Zerg is the weakest.
Yes, there needs to be a patch.
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patching is definitely necessary at this point its pretty clear that terran is stronger then the other races atm just from tournament statistics and you may say oh people just haven't found ways to beat them yet, that is flawed and you really cannont compare sc2 evolution of gameplay to bw, we have learned a lot from sc and sc2 game play is changing really really fast but terrans are still on top.
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Not bad for a second post. I think giving the game a bit more time isn't a bad idea at all, but Blizzard probably knows better than we do about the logistics.
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You compare SC 2 to Brood Wars. Sorry man, that comparison aint gonna work. I played Starcraft 1 from release to 2000. And we were happy about every patch that came until BW was released because it dealt with severe balance issues. We were heavily tired of 1 hatch muta/hydra plays. We were really tired of Reaver pops and so on. The list is long - anyone played SC1 1.00 with the 150-50 Dragon price with 5 range with upgrade or the sunkens of 1.00 who lost to a single zealot or two? Yes, I'm an old man now days - but still the boring strategies and features needs to go away.
These early patches shouldn't be so radical - but there are boring strategies in the early stages of the game and patching these fast are very welcome to evolve the strategies.
For instance, if they nerf 4 warp gate strategies i will miss it about as much as i missed the 1 hatch hydra plays from 1.00. The strategy would probably have been dropped later on - but it was boring as hell and the early patches promoted a better gameplay.
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You can't really compare a patch that was made like 3+ years into the game and after an expansion to one where the game just game out.
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Doesn't mean a solution does exist.
And if Bisu never came along Protoss still would have been in the dark. Would you really have the game stay this way for 7+ years if there was a solution but just never was found, if it could just as easily be patched and more balanced for the 7 years? Don't get me wrong, I understand that there may be "creative ways around it," but I also fail to see what a patch destroys when it's released wtihin the first 2 months of the game.
Maybe there is some build order solution, but what exactly does this patch cause that is so detrimental to the game...?
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Patches have their place in the game. What you discribed is player innovation which will always be there.
The reason for patches is because the developers have an idea how they want the game to flow and feel. When it is not meeting their liking they can patch and tweak certain aspects so it is more to their liking.
So patches and player innovation are really 2 completely different things.
You talk in your post as if BW did not have any balance patches, it had plenty at first, then left alone as player innovation and maps took over the job of balancing.
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While the point you're trying to make isn't invalid, it is more for a game that has been out and has been seen to be balanced for a while, with a few meta-game shifts.
With SC2, we won't see a gameplay that everyone is as happy as they were for BW's balance until about a year after shadows of the void, or whatever the protoss expansion is called comes out. Each expand will bring new concepts and units to the multiplayer requiring more balance patches.
After a year or 2 of that expansion being out, when we have about a 33% representation of races on average, then we can start being happy with the actual balance and instead purely focus on meta-game shifts.
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On September 21 2010 04:39 Sybris wrote:
What I want to convey is that patching detracts for the depth of the gameplay. Why? because rather than people coming up with creative solutions to problems, we get these easy quick-fix changes so the strategies used never get time to develop - the game just keeps changing flavour with every patch. What's worse is how common these proposed changes appear at lower levels, obviously I'm not a quotation database but it's funny how many threads I've read where people bitch about the game and how it should be changed as an alternative to simply playing better.
I think you have the wrong idea about patching. Patching isn't about "easy quick-fix changes", it's about fixing completely game-breaking issues.
Blizz doesn't just implement quick-fix changes, at least not in starcraft (I've never played WoW).
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On September 21 2010 04:39 Sybris wrote:
All in all, I really feel Starcraft 2 needs a year or so!
Pretty interested in what you guys think about this line of reasoning
You realize before broodwar there was starcraft, and it was very much unbalanced and even at the start of broodwar it wasnt "perfect". Broodwar didnt become the game it is now in one patch. it was progressive work, and the progresse for starcraft 2 is starting tomorrow.
Also, these change are not reaction of what happened in the last month, they where testing some of that stuff before the game was released. We got a taste of those at the end of the beta when they put in some stuff that was suposed to be for internal testing only.
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While I do agree on the concept of deeper gameplay, I can't honestly think of anything that could give Zerg "an edge" in the current state of the game, no matter how bizarre it might be.
To be honest, I think Zerg's problems lies a lot more in the broken gameplay mechanics than actual balance between units.
Imbalances should occur in the top level of gameplay - "oh shoot, a Terran can get just a liiittle too many reapers", or whatever.
The current problem with "balance", and what most people are whining about, is not actually a balance problem - Zerg is definitely capable of stopping an MM ball, for instance.
The problem is that Zerg, as a race, is just not near as polished as the Terrans.
While we're seeing new Terran shiny tactics pretty much since release (helloo bunkers, for instance), I haven't personally seen anything for Zerg that makes me say: "Oh my god, this tact changes everything! MM is a totally horrible opener now!"
If a tactic is easy to pull off, very hard and micro intensive to counter, it becomes a problem, especially in lower ranked matches.
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The patch will change gameplay in a big way from such small changes. I think hydras will have a first-coming in TvZ since release. Just thinkin. I'm a bit more interested in the patch and features change. What features are they talking about??
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It's very dangerous to compare sc2 to sc1 history. Both because sc2 has all the experience of and thinking behind strategy that sc1 had and the fact that the korean bw scene moved very slowly.
People like to give raise bw progamers to the skies and think that they were/are the perfect gamers in every sense. That is not true. The korean BW scene was largely full of people copying and copying builds. It relied on just getting as good mechanics as possible and doing what everyone else allready does. This is why these young kids were so successful in sc1, they only needed great mechanics and a good understanding of current trends. Only a few players through the years have been considered as truly creative minds.
Now in sc2 the player age is alot higher and the mechanical "skillcap" is alot lower which makes it more focused on strategy. The sc2 scene is moving 10 times faster than the BW scene did post 2005 atleast.
Also to people saying "the game has only been out for 2 months". That may be true but the 6 month beta fleshed out a lot of the viable strategy even before game release so in fact strategy has been developed for almost 3 quarters of a year.
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