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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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Obviously a terran
User was warned for this post
User was temp banned for this post.
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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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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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Patches are necessary but overall its the mappool that has to be changed. Blizzard is known for making bad maps (look at the BW "ladder" maps). All the current maps favor Terran because the maps are real small and bases are easy to hold (Terran being the best race for defense). Zerg is really suffering since they need room to move around and bases that are not next to the opponent (1base zerg < 1base terran).
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Valhalla18444 Posts
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability.
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I agree with the op. He is not saying never patch the game. But instead wait and do small patches infrequently. Seeing those "leaked" patch notes that had so many changes, and seeing some of the other predictions about non-announced changes made my head spin. Yes I do agree that the game needs a few things changed, notice how that says few and not lots. If they do any other changes other then what was announced in the blog post Im going to be pretty upset. Its gonna take over a month before we understand the changes that this upcoming patch is going to create, and its gonna take even more time for people to figure out how to use these changes to their advantage.
tl:dr patching is going to change a lot more things then just the surface changes, and we need time to figure out all the repercussions
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Yes I completely agree that the game and the play-style need to evolve. But it is always nice to have a patch.
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On September 21 2010 05:41 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability.
i dont play WoW but i assume they did such things to keep players interested with more dynamic changes?
I hope for sc2 they just plan to find a good equilibrium point and leave it at that and only patch if necessary.
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I agree that players come up with new ways to deal with things, but sometimes there needs to be balance change when its much easier for a player to do one thing, and its much harder for a player to defend it
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On September 21 2010 05:41 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability.
As of right now, and the last half of beta, they have sadly been going that route, also the command and conquer route of patching. What I mean by that is, they take whatever is whined about the most for a short period of time, and assume/deduce that whatever that is must be imbalanced because "everyone" says it is, and they patch the game, making it an entirely new game every time.
It's the worst way to patch an RTS.
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I have to disagree with OP
T has to many viable options in tvz... It's as simple as that
It's not just one opening zergs are having problems with
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how many patches did it take to get bw to the point of savior vs bisu? as i recall 1.08 was the patch that fundamentally altered sc;bw as we all knew it
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By this logic Blizzard should have just released SC2 with everything the same as it was in Alpha. It would be hilariously unbalanced (think movable cannons).
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Not patching for a year would kill the game.
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From a PvT perspective, imo Battlecruisers NEED to be patched.
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On September 21 2010 05:44 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 05:41 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability. As of right now, and the last half of beta, they have sadly been going that route, also the command and conquer route of patching. What I mean by that is, they take whatever is whined about the most for a short period of time, and assume/deduce that whatever that is must be imbalanced because "everyone" says it is, and they patch the game, making it an entirely new game every time. It's the worst way to patch an RTS.
i disagree.
beta patches dont count.
1.1 only has minor changes which are justified.
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Well, this has merit but in my opinion it is not 100% true. Sure games evolve over time and new tricks are being discovered still but alot of the "tricks" from broodwar were simply bugs in the game engine that were not able to be patched out.
When I first saw the magic box back in beta I was stunned that something like that was in the game. I was scared to even use it because I know Blizzard has the tools to take something like that out now. (Glad they kept that in by the way.) There are a few tricks like this but they are few and far between. Look at Voidray "Fazing" that was patched so quick your head actually spun a bit. Which can hinder creativity, (granted fazing made voidrays godmode but still.)
But some changes need to be made. This game will never be balanced fully if you keep waiting for some miracle player to find a miracle glitch and never patch what is actually imbalanced.
You bring up the reaper opening as an example. Sure Zergs are getting good at stopping it but it give the Terran WAY too much of an advantage. They can expand easilly because the reaper is ridiculously cheap and they can tech swap into the reaper's counter faster than anyone can scout. With mules they can afford to cut workers and can rebuild an army just as fast as Zerg or Protoss thanks to add-on swapping.
The reaper opening is so much more than "oh dang they counter zerglings" it gives the Terran a free expansion while denying the Zerg by building barracks that you will build anyway.
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i really hope there are more changes then the 3-5 posted in the SR1 seriously.
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I actually enjoyed reading the OP, but to be honest, there isn't alot of openings in sc2 since its so fast paces and openings like 4 warpgate \ 5rax builds ruins alot of creativity. Zerg has to go certain units to hold it off. If you try and rush for other units to "create" an original opening you'll get mauled by these derpaderp 1 base plays.
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Your comparing the evolution that occurred after several years and several patches to convey that a 2month old game with 0 patches needs 0 patches? I'm not sure I follow?
I mean sure, the WoW Arena or GW methods aren't ideal for RTS, but that seems to be a different argument to me.
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I agree with the OP, but I think you're misinterpreting the patch notes
These aren't gamebreaking, and their reasonings behind each change in the situation report sound extremely reasonable to me.
For instance, they said they're finding reapers a bit too effective, especially early-game. So they're increasing the build time. They are NOT breaking the unit. The reaper is still the same unit.
I won't go into too much detail, but I don't think blizzard is overdoing it with this patch. The reaper is still the same unit, the bunker rush is now easier to deal with, but is STILL the same building. Tanks are the only unit getting a major change, but it's definitely for the better to define their role as a supportive armored-unit counter. I can see what you're afraid of, but I'm not afraid of it THIS patch
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Yeah you're right, Blizzard's changes are really subtle and clever and I like them - I'm more focusing more on the proposed balance changes you read/hear all the time and why I dislike them
On September 21 2010 05:52 Motiva wrote:
Your comparing the evolution that occurred after several years and several patches to convey that a 2month old game with 0 patches needs 0 patches? I'm not sure I follow?
then read it again, please
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On September 21 2010 05:48 in7e.sCream wrote:
i really hope there are more changes then the 3-5 posted in the SR1 seriously.
This. The game is not balanced and I think that patching a lot now will be good for SC2 in the long run.
Some patches will fail but it can be reversed with the next patch. Besides, we won't have stability until a while after the last expansion so might as well patch away now 
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Completely agree with the OP. Except we do need better maps and tanks need to overkill.
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Rather than nerfing things like bunkers, zealots, etc. they should have re-buffed spine crawlers, especially the uproot/rooting times.
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On September 21 2010 05:41 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability.
I think its unfair to both the teams to do this comparison, seing as wow has more classes, more spells, and had more matchups that needed to be sorted. They basically took a step back and told the community they had to start focusing on 3v3s because 2v2 and 5v5 was so badly broken. Also the fact that there is PvP and PvE item adds an even bigger problem to the mix. I've played it at a fairly high level, and some items that is a must in PvE totally breaks PvP. There are so much more to consider, and when you nerf something in Arena, suddenly something else becomes overpowered. And I mean in a huge state not a small tweek like sc1 \ sc2 seems to need. Even maps are in the mix of balancing when arena, there is just so much shit that they basically have to shift what compos are good.
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You patch a game when it needs to be balanced. I'm pretty sure Blizzard knows more about the game then some random people on TL. 0_o
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On September 21 2010 05:54 0neder wrote:
Completely agree with the OP. Except we do need better maps and tanks need to overkill.
No to the tanks, but definitely 100% yes. Maps are really also a main balance concern. A lot of em are very small, which makes some match-ups/styles extremely too good on those maps. Mainly steppes of war is the map that makes the game entirely different from other maps.
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i REALLY REALLY REALLY dislike constant patches or expansions/content... it RUINED world of warcraft and i don't want it to get into this game just to keep us playing longer and grinding for more hours... i like a game thats a GAME and set in stone and you play it and get better to get better at that game not to have to change everything you did in order to evolve into the new changes... everyone knows in SF2 Guile is OP but today when i play it he's still OP lol
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As Protoss, tanks on any kind of enclosed choke just rapes my zealot pushing. It basically forces me to go immortal or voidray to break into the base. Im all for the change to make zealots more effective at breaking lines.
Zealots do school tanks when they are isolated, but they kill zealots in 3 shots currently, and when the AI pathing makes units clump together you can easily lose 1500 minerals worth of zealots to 1 volley from 3 tanks.
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Show nested quote +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?
When you don't wanna talk about specifics (which is all you should talk about when discussing imbalances imo) consider this: imbalances do exist! And SC2 is currently considered imbalanced. It might not be as obvious in rts than in rpg, but i personally have no doubt that it's there.
I switched from Z to random cuz of 1.0 tanks btw. :-p
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On September 21 2010 05:56 TheAngelofDeath wrote:
You patch a game when it needs to be balanced. I'm pretty sure Blizzard knows more about the game then some random people on TL. 0_o
There are probably people on TL who have been playing longer than some Devs at Blizzard. This is not the 100% full team from 1998, same name, new face.
Blizzard is really, really smart. but they are really, really clueless sometimes too.
Edit to clarify that I agree with you.
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On September 21 2010 05:53 Sybris wrote:Yeah you're right, Blizzard's changes are really subtle and clever and I like them - I'm more focusing more on the proposed balance changes you read/hear all the time and why I dislike them Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 05:52 Motiva wrote:
Your comparing the evolution that occurred after several years and several patches to convey that a 2month old game with 0 patches needs 0 patches? I'm not sure I follow?
then read it again, please
I'm sorry, but after relooking over it, I'm afraid I still completely disagree if my assumption that your not talking about blizzard trying to create a cyclic metagame or something like GW. I agree that the constant flavor of the week tweak would be detrimental.
However, I feel that your just assuming that this certain element of depth will come to the top. (also, I mean if one race required 4apm and another 1000s but a 50% winrate occured on ladder is that balanced?) I mean there are much greater questions that come into the argument than winrates and openings. I do feel that Blizzard can sometimes undermine strategic depth, but I feel like the title "patching is a bad idea" is absolutely horrible, and saying something like "patching is a bad idea sometimes" is no different than the argument that "Patching is sometimes good" It's just moot.
That said, you mention proposed balance changes that you read and hear about all the time... I wasn't aware blizzard was in the business of proposing changes, like they need permission. I disagree with the notion that because they post a teaser of possible changes to come once, that we're reading/hearing about them all the time... If your talking about users posting their opinions, well then, so what? I don't remember who said it, but blizzard uses almost exclusively math for balance?
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I'm a Zerg player and I support this message. It's too early to start making any sort of changes to this game. Look how "imba" ZvT mech was. When was the last time you saw a pure mech game? Look how "imba" void ray rushing was. I never see anybody rush to void rays anymore.
The game is already evolving and changing -- and it's doing it extremely rapidly compared to BW. In BW, races were underpowered for YEARS without any intervention by Blizzard (beyond small tweaks to the cost of the spawning pool and academy before BW).
We, as players, really need to keep this in perspective: the game has been out, literally, for only 2 months. I'd prefer it if Blizzard waited at least until after Blizzcon to start considering buffing/nerfing units and build times.
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it's funny when people suggest the problem is zerg isn't played to its potential
that's certainly true but no one is playing terran or protoss to their full potential either and zerg has far fewer options
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On September 21 2010 04:43 natewOw wrote:It's flawed. Patches happen because there are irreconcilable issues in the gameplay. Allowing these issues to persist causes games to die.
This...
Your SF4 example is a little confusing because it goes against everything you've said here. Your right, street fighter was patched very little, but it was patched.... In its second release there were quite a few large balance changes.
This is the first balance patch since beta so it cant be the regularity of the patching that has you worried.
Patching is what the community wants, and the game is young, this is the time to patch. The game will have years upon years of gameplay evolution. A patch may not speed up the evolution of the game, but it will give it different branches in which it can evolve... and people who dislike going up against a terran now will dislike going up against a terran just as much post-patch :p
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On September 21 2010 05:54 avilo wrote:
Rather than nerfing things like bunkers, zealots, etc. they should have re-buffed spine crawlers, especially the uproot/rooting times.
HALLELUJAH!
I can't believe someone actually finally realized how completely retarded the spine crawler root time nerf was. Just reduce build time by like 10 seconds and BAM problem solved.
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I think the OP seems to imply "Blizzard, leave the game alone! DON'T Patch!". However, I think I do get your message.
We shouldn't expect Blizzard to cave in immediately to patch and balance changes. I wouldn't expect them to and they shouldn't. People when discussing balance threads are talking about imbalances present, but they are frustrated. A person who faces 5 rax reaper again and again and finds it very hard to counter, with seemingly no hope to counter it will vent his frustration when talking about balance calling for massive changes even if small changes are warranted.
They will get upset that their messages aren't being listened to fast enough. Even if there is a glaring imbalance (5 rax does not COMPLETELY break SC2, but does break it a bit). We shouldn't say BLIZZARD DO THIS NOW!!!, but neither should we advocate leaving the game alone. In retrospect, the approach Blizzard is taking is very good. They are waiting a few months rather a few weeks, and making small changes. They will gradually lead the game to a good balance for players to start off from.
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On September 21 2010 06:05 Toxigen wrote:
We, as players, really need to keep this in perspective: the game has been out, literally, for only 2 months. I'd prefer it if Blizzard waited at least until after Blizzcon to start considering buffing/nerfing units and build times.
Beta: "the game's not even out yet"
Last month: "the game's only been out for a month"
This month: "the game's only been out for 2 months"
2 years from now: "the game's only been out for 26 months, it took BW 23435 years for herp to derp"
The overwhelming consensus is that the game needs at least minor patches, and a change to the map pool. Waiting for Zergs to become superior players and learn to do cutesy moves to even have a chance isn't the way to fix the problem.
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Zerg is a fucking joke right now. We need a patch asap tbh -.-
If you dont patch the game, P and T simply will get stronger vs Z, I'm pretty sure about that.
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i disagree in this case. its not just that reaper vs zerg is effective. its that terran units are on a whole super effective, have the best range, most attack air and ground, emp, sensor tower, siege tanks are the best ground to ground, vikings are the best air to air no contest, PFs, autorepair, ravens stop all zerg anti air... the list can go on.
there's no way to deny that blizz spent the most time on terran (for the campaign obviously) but it also shows in multiplayer. there are definitely some protoss fans at blizz, you can see the sexy units they made (colossus, void, mommaship) but zerg was most definitely an after thought (the new infestor and roach just don't do it for me, hydras are total shit, i'd take a 2 food guardians over 4 food broods any day). banelings are decent but only because if you didn't have them, terran would just walk all over you with marines.
basically terrans have every advantage in the game and can deal with any threat very very effectively, whereas other races have to out expand, out macro, use difficult tactics, have higher apm...
i think its summarized nicely by the fact that 2 stimmed + shielded marines (100min) are stronger than 1 hydra (100min 50 gas), can move faster, and 100 marines beats 50 hydras just the same.
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On September 21 2010 06:08 konicki wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 04:43 natewOw wrote: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. This... Your SF4 example is a little confusing because it goes against everything you've said here. Your right, street fighter was patched very little, but it was patched.... In its second release there were quite a few large balance changes. This is the first balance patch since beta so it cant be the regularity of the patching that has you worried. Patching is what the community wants, and the game is young, this is the time to patch. The game will have years upon years of gameplay evolution. A patch may not speed up the evolution of the game, but it will give it different branches in which it can evolve... and people who dislike going up against a terran now will dislike going up against a terran just as much post-patch :p
You're saying there are 'irreconcilable issues in the gameplay' then? and I'm not saying this upcoming patch is a complete error either
and I think people are getting the idea I'm completely dismissing the idea that patching the game can help, which is untrue, but after 2 months some people want radical changes because a strategy and race is dominant? please
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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
1. You don't know what changes are all being made so you can't say it's minor
2. A year? Are you kidding me? In a year we'll all be thinking about Heart of the Swarm for god's sake.
3. It doesn't take nearly that long to spot problems if you're intelligent. Relying on revolutions in the meta game is cute, because it pretends like a game can be balanced without being balanced
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this thread should be thrown in a garbage can
how could it be more obvious that zerg is underpowered
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12:34 in the video...When you see it you will shit bricks
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Now I know this is not the same type of game or anything but if anyone played Age of Conan you can see how terribly terribly damaging it can be to let things go unpatched and say that they are fine.
The class Tempest of Seth as they were called could take on a 4 to 5 man group and come out with half their hp left.
I get the feeling this is how most zerg feel at the moment.
That's why I think there should be some form of patching.
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My take is that balance this early in the life of a game is about more than just which race is overpowered, it is also about gameplay balance.
Maybe the ZvT imbalance is completely overblown, lets assume for a moment that ZvT is perfectly balanced the way it is. I would still argue that a patch is needed, because the reaper opening is overpowered. There is simply no reason to do anything but the reaper opening if you are Terran, except to trick a zerg who is expecting reapers. Everything a zerg does revolves around the expectation of reapers. This is not good for a competitive game.
Especially note that this is an early game balance issue, where balance is so much trickier and more important. Sure, zergs can do a lot of creative stuff in the midgame, but most TvZ's i have seen end up in a crippled zerg on the same number of bases as terran. That is a different issue than PvZ in BW where P's were losing in the midgame.
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Wait a moment, i just reliased, that they patching in the middle of GSL
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On September 21 2010 06:05 Toxigen wrote: I never see anybody rush to void rays anymore.
Are you serious? I dunno about 1v1 but above 2player games it's still all the rage. I think i even saw it in GSL recently...
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On September 21 2010 06:16 bulge wrote:
i think its summarized nicely by the fact that 2 stimmed + shielded marines (100min) are stronger than 1 hydra (100min 50 gas), can move faster, and 100 marines beats 50 hydras just the same.
this is asinine. you can't just make blanket statements of "wow, this unit is so much better this unit" in a vacuum and expect them to have any validity or pertinence to balance issues.
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Haha not really relevant to anything but I lost to the op in this thread in altitude cos i cancelled my core at the last second. I had no idea how the match would have been but I definitely shot myself in the leg. I lol'd anyways
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On September 21 2010 06:29 Darksoldierr wrote:
Wait a moment, i just reliased, that they patching in the middle of GSL
It will always be the middle of GSL, now if they had a LAN version they could potentially use an old patch, but GSL doesn't end, one season leads right into the next.
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On September 21 2010 06:27 imperator-xy wrote:
this thread should be thrown in a garbage can
how could it be more obvious that zerg is underpowered
For the sake of free debate it's ok I guess but eh, not everyone can tell how stupid some things are in the game :/
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of course it takes time to discover new things but since everybody already has seen evolution in bw it does not take that long. they should not patch everytime someone cries because of losing and as it seems blizzard does not do so...thats good
but currently there is a certain trend where terrans are way above all the others. it started around iem(i assume that) and since then many tournaments are ending in tvt finals and so on
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On September 21 2010 06:05 Toxigen wrote: I never see anybody rush to void rays anymore.
IdrA would like a word with you
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i think it was on weapon of choice that someone said balancing is 95% math 5% feedback
not saying people shouldn't discuss their opinions on balancing but really when it comes down to it, its mostly math
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On September 21 2010 06:32 radar14 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 06:16 bulge wrote:
i think its summarized nicely by the fact that 2 stimmed + shielded marines (100min) are stronger than 1 hydra (100min 50 gas), can move faster, and 100 marines beats 50 hydras just the same. this is asinine. you can't just make blanket statements of "wow, this unit is so much better this unit" in a vacuum and expect them to have any validity or pertinence to balance issues.
Certainly, but this is one case where the more context you add the worse Hydras are.  Then again they do okay in ZvP, it's just ZvT where Roach/Hydra comps get steamrolled.
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ITT: Zerg players flame the OP because they're obviously better players than us T and P and they know every imbalance in the game.
Good read OP.
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Pretty much completely disagree. In fact Blizzard really should be patching more frequently, in my opinion. Not patching a game that has obvious balance issues simply leads to loss of interest in the game. Starcraft 2 actually has an incredible amount of leeway in this regard since, essentially, there is a ready-made professional level of play with players who are literally dedicating their lives to the game. These people have a lot invested in the game so it's not easy to just drop it -- But if Starcraft 2 didn't have this built-in safety net it wouldn't be nearly the same.
Compare this to other games that don't have Starcraft's cachet -- A game that's imbalanced out of the gate, with one character / faction / strategy / playstyle which has substantially greater chance of success than another? Either it will simply be abandoned due to loss of interest, won't develop a competitive community due to the glaring problems, or its competitive community will rely on arbitrary rulesets (Street Fighter 2 example: No Akuma) to balance the game. Left 4 Dead is a good example of a game which had great potential, but the developer's resistance to actually addressing the problems of the game resulted in hemorrhaging players constantly. Today it's got a negligible competitive community that relies totally on custom rules to make the game worth playing.
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Hyrule19030 Posts
In the first couple years of BW, there were many game breaking patches.
Please stop whining, OP.
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. Left 4 Dead is a good example of a game which had great potential, but the developer's resistance to actually addressing the problems of the game resulted in hemorrhaging players constantly. Today it's got a negligible competitive community that relies totally on custom rules to make the game worth playing.
L4D was never made to be professional level competitive. It's a co-op zombie shooter for christsake.
And thousands of people still constantly play it.
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On September 21 2010 06:55 Bags wrote:Show nested quote +. Left 4 Dead is a good example of a game which had great potential, but the developer's resistance to actually addressing the problems of the game resulted in hemorrhaging players constantly. Today it's got a negligible competitive community that relies totally on custom rules to make the game worth playing. L4D was never made to be professional level competitive. It's a co-op zombie shooter for christsake.
What he's saying is true though. Tons of people love it, it has HUGE potential, and Valve sorta didn't care about the competitive scene much.
I'm still sad there's not a pro Team Fortress 2 scene... that plays it like its TF2.
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On September 21 2010 06:49 archon256 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 06:32 radar14 wrote:On September 21 2010 06:16 bulge wrote:
i think its summarized nicely by the fact that 2 stimmed + shielded marines (100min) are stronger than 1 hydra (100min 50 gas), can move faster, and 100 marines beats 50 hydras just the same. this is asinine. you can't just make blanket statements of "wow, this unit is so much better this unit" in a vacuum and expect them to have any validity or pertinence to balance issues. Certainly, but this is one case where the more context you add the worse Hydras are. Then again they do okay in ZvP, it's just ZvT where Roach/Hydra comps get steamrolled.
Rolled by... what? It's sitautional and Roach Hydra can definitely work fine in ZvT, although Ling/Roach/Hydra/Infestor is almost always better.
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TF2 = crazy random crits.
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On September 21 2010 05:44 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 05:41 FakeSteve[TPR] wrote:
i just hope they don't take the wow arena route, patching every couple of months and shifting the balance all over the place. rts games need stability. As of right now, and the last half of beta, they have sadly been going that route, also the command and conquer route of patching. What I mean by that is, they take whatever is whined about the most for a short period of time, and assume/deduce that whatever that is must be imbalanced because "everyone" says it is, and they patch the game, making it an entirely new game every time. It's the worst way to patch an RTS.
u do understand the reason they released so many patch's in beta was completely because IT WAS BETA and thats WHAT BETA IS FOR. when u have a game where so much money is on the line in tournaments and there may be a balance issue they MUST fix it if they wont the game to be as successful as bw was.
im also pretty sure the fact that they "listen" to ppl's whine" is more a reflection that they understand the value of the publics opinion. If u combine the statistics and player opinion as well as pro's views on the game state im pretty sure thats the correct approach.
because this ISNT BETA im pretty sure they are going to take a much slower approach to patching which it looks like they are already doing.
all i've gathered from OP is the fact that blizzard is already doing what he is talking about. they are taking there time. they arent making huge changes. the only thing i think blizzard has failed to do is give enough race depth to the ZERG. i know they have stated that they wont release the game until it is ready..... but i think they completely did. i cant wait for heart of the swarm!!! :D
the younger sc2 is the more likely there are major imbalances especially if an experienced company like blizzard is doing the patchs. so it makes total sense to patch it after 2 months.
the changes they are making arent all that big according to the patch notes its just minor things. i will agree that some of the changes in beta were HUGE and they did change the game. but in my opinion the changes they are making in this patch are NOT.
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BW is an expansion, effectively a "patched" version of SC. you cant compare it to sc2.
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This is essentially an example of 'use more nydus worms' reasoning.
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knowing the game isnt balanced demotivates me to dig deep into bos variations and complex corner cutting in specific scenarios knowing it will be all for nothing upon a new patch
im glad they are patching and that it took a while for them, but i hope they wont patch it every 2 month in the future, hopefully they wont have to patch more than 1 time every 4 month
frequent patches rewards more a player who can see broad strokes how to figure out the best simplest gameplay where u can chunk in alot of improvising and sudden adaptments while no patches or new maps rewards players who - as i said before, goes into detail which personally i like more
1.1 patch will be good but it will take a few weeks before we can see what it really does. most times nerfing a unit doesnt make that unit change more than an unchanged unit ^^
the only thing i feel extra weird in this patch is the bc nerf, i think it was uncalled for
On September 21 2010 06:45 Ordained wrote:Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 06:05 Toxigen wrote: I never see anybody rush to void rays anymore. IdrA would like a word with you
lol :D
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On September 21 2010 07:07 MorroW wrote:knowing the game isnt balanced demotivates me to dig deep into bos variations and complex corner cutting in specific scenarios knowing it will be all for nothing upon a new patch im glad they are patching and that it took a while for them, but i hope they wont patch it every 2 month in the future, hopefully they wont have to patch more than 1 time every 4 month frequent patches rewards more a player who can see broad strokes how to figure out the best simplest gameplay where u can chunk in alot of improvising and sudden adaptments while no patches or new maps rewards players who - as i said before, goes into detail which personally i like more 1.1 patch will be good but it will take a few weeks before we can see what it really does. most times nerfing a unit doesnt make that unit change more than an unchanged unit ^^ the only thing i feel extra weird in this patch is the bc nerf, i think it was uncalled for Show nested quote +On September 21 2010 06:45 Ordained wrote:On September 21 2010 06:05 Toxigen wrote: I never see anybody rush to void rays anymore. IdrA would like a word with you lol :D
Hey Morrow, i just wanted to say i respect your honest posts.
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Kennigit
Canada19447 Posts
I cannot in good conscious allow this thread to remain open.
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EPT
