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Why do people keep comparing the evolution of BW with SC2? We live in a completely different gaming era.
People have been playing RTS games for over a decade now, and information spreads like wildfire regarding new gameplay tricks and build orders.
Naturally, SC2 gameplay is going to evolve a whole hell of a lot faster than it did for BW.
You can't just expect people to "adapt" to shit that is obviously OP, whether it's 2 proxy gateway rushes or mass reaper openings against Zerg, especially on smaller maps or close position on larger maps.
I'd also like to mention that anyone that thinks sieged tanks aren't OP in their current form are absolute morons.
I play random btw.
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On September 21 2010 04:39 Sybris wrote:
Scenario: Brood War before Bisu came along
You know why many people don't place Bisu in same boat with other "revolutionists" like Oov and sAviOr? Cause Bisu's revolution was one man revolution. sAviOr kept destroying other protosses as much as he used to for a year before finally going into slump and other Protosses kept dying to zergs left and right. Every single one of them. Except Bisu.
Also, he didn't popularize corsairs... reaver+corsair was popular strategy before Bisu's phenomena
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OP contradicts himself.
In Starcraft II, we are at the equivalent point in time where in SC spawning pools cost 100 minerals. The game needs to be patched at least a few times before we can scream, "but the metagameeeeee!"
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Main problem with this reason is how long do you wait? Lets say it takes a year for TvZ to become balanced. So for that year we have to pretty much wait to play the game without being frustrated? That's not healthy for the game. Its not as fun to play and definitely not as fun to watch, and if its not either of those then why play the game. If you can achieve balance and reduce 'downtime' then why not go for it? Also there can be matchups that are balanced, but aren't any fun to play (pvp and zvz mainly). Ling/bling has dominated zerg for quite some time and it very well could be the only viable strategy like ling muta scourge zvz in sc1. This is the main reason why i believe in sc2, because i thought it was going to get Blizzards full attention and that i wouldnt have to wait 8 years, or however old wc3 is.
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well, anyways, Blizzard can always revert some changes.
If they see that change X creates problems in match Y, then they can revert it.
the problem with these changes is that nobody can say for sure how matchups will evolve, which changes are ballanced/imballanced and so on ...........
the great thing about radical changes, is that if something bad comes up, then the progamers will abuse certain strategies/mechanics and it gets fixed. simple as that.
we should welcome these changes and take what is good from them.
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^ i like his opinion a lot
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Few points:
OP is very right, minimizing changes is very important both to keep the game "the same" and to promote strategic growth in place of simply giving up in anticipation of a patch.
Other folks are also very right -- right now balance is okay but it is quite apparent that there are a few rough spots especially regarding T and Z. I would agree that enough time has gone by to warrant a minor balance patch.
In regard to the "33% race representation" -- that isn't going to happen. Different races appeal to different people. More people want to play the shiny mastermind style race than the bugs. More noobies want to play humans. Thats just the way it is, and there isn't anything wrong with that.
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I really am not trying to come off saying that patches are always detrimental, but the game is so young and we haven't even had time to flesh out anything, and changes are coming and I like them for the most part but I think the game just needs time before people draw conclusions
On September 21 2010 05:00 Ndugu wrote:
OP contradicts himself.
In Starcraft II, we are at the equivalent point in time where in SC spawning pools cost 100 minerals. The game needs to be patched at least a few times before we can scream, "but the metagameeeeee!"
We're really not comparable in that way. Did SC have a huge scale worldwide beta? or was Blizzard really intent on stimulating good gameplay?
On September 21 2010 04:57 gozima wrote:
I'd also like to mention that anyone that thinks sieged tanks aren't OP in their current form are absolute morons.
I play random btw.
Are you serious? I really didn't want to bring up specifics about the game and your post is just a pool of arbitrary statements. Also, 'I play random btw.' what? you're actually a really modest guy?
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Well even Brood War got patched to fix balance issues in its early stages (go look up BW's history of patches). That's all the argument you need.
At this early stage of the game, changes are necessary so that the gameplay can evolve.
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Why are you so afraid of the game being patched? Patching the game will most likely get the game to a state closer to total balance than further away from it and if a patch fails by giving a race an unfair advantage then the changes can always be removed in the next patch. When the first patch gets out I guess more than 1000000 games will have been played. Don't you think they should be able to draw some conclusions on the balance issue after such an amount of games?
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No matter how you would compare BW to SC2, no matter what it may be, you can't just rely on spontaneous ideas to come out of no where and change the game.
If patching detracts depth of gameplay, look at BW (since we're using the same resource) and patch what was it, 1.08? If that patch didn't happen
StarCraft could possibly be dead.
and if I recalled from people and whatnot, that patch was a major balance patch and whatnot that helped fixed the game.
Honestly, Is this coming patch going to help us? We don't fucking know. We can't possibly know
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I call it spontaneous strat? Because those strategies did come outta nowhere during the metagame. We come up with iunno, fast forge into sairs or some shit. Fast forge sairs beating us? we came back with 2 hatch drone rush. It's nothing but a stair of counters really and they don't happen so often either.
When will we? when we roll with the times for so long that when we look back and compare the time then to the time back then and see how things changed.
There's alot to say in this but it's entirely a topic on its own.
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sometimes, there just arnt any magical or creative solutions that can be discovered that will fix a problem, which is the case currently.
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On September 21 2010 04:42 FantaFunL wrote:
Obviously a terran
User was warned for this post
made me lol but... dont judge them...
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do you know company of heroes? they had exact that mindset and didn't patch the game for about a year (until the next expansion came) but after half a year it simply wasn't fun anymore to play when you clearly see the imbalances (and if you played Company of Heroes/Opposing fronts you know there were imbalances).
Creativity and game evolving can't compensate everything.
I think a patch is needed and BW also had major balance patches and the rest of balance did the korean map makers.
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I could not disagree more with the OP. People already mentioned how SC2 will "evolve" much much faster than SC1: screenshots vs VODs, streams, casts etc. Remember that there were no replays in the beginning of SC1.
Secondly, I think blizzard should patch even more. Small changes in short intervals (~a small balance patch every three to four weeks). With nicely commented patchnotes á la guildwars. "We thought x is to weak so we tweaked blablabla text text text". That way people would understand why the changes happened and more importantly people would not be that afraid of patches. At the moment terran players are doing everything they can to stop balance changes, because they are afraid that they get overnerfed and have to play that way for the next X months.
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Brood war was patched after release bro. lets be happy that zerg is getting buffed.... hopefully?
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Good game designers strive to eliminate "dominant" strategies from their games because doing so makes the games more fun by increasing the variety of gameplay. That is what good balance patches do, and therefore they are worthwhile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_dominance
Sure, players aren't forced to use dominant strategies, but if they are maximizing their winning chances, it never makes sense not to choose these strategies (5 rax reaper versus Zerg).
Playing and watching a game where a small number of strategies are obviously superior than the others available is very boring and decreases the popularity of the game. That is why patches are important, as often times game designers cannot anticipate which strategies are too strong until players discover them.
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Yes people will learn an adapt. But this does not mean that we can't identify imbalances or that they do not exist. The Dev team is doing everything they can to let the metagame evolve as to not overnerf or nerf the wrong units. Given the playerbase, 1 month should be more than enough time to allow for a variety of builds and counters to develop.
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This is a really great post and analysis. One thing to consider, though, is that even if Blizzard doesn't really patch and gameplay evolves with great depth, suddenly they'll drop an expansion which'll screw everything up, creating new balances, imbalances, and strategies that obsolete the older ones. And then we'll have some time to try to develop a little depth in HotS, and right when we're starting to get there bam, in comes yet another expansion. I get the feeling that the "real" balance--the final "end" balance where the patches and unit additions stop and real, true depth can develop--will only come after the final expansion, and maybe a balance patch or two after that, and that's still 3 years down the line 
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Reading this post really just reminds me of when morrow said in the IEM - "i uh open up with a reaper build which i believe is imbalanced"
for him to say that its imbalanced and he just used it in a tournament in front of thousands of people, theres something wrong with it.
and you say we will evolve, just like 10000 other people. just give it time. it will evolve.
thats not how a game works, and what are zergs supposed to do? is there some special unit only you know about?
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EPT
