PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
EDIT 1: I wanted to make this explicit: This isn't a complaint against Blizzard, or TeamLiquid, its a complaint against the community. Stop trolling, stop being stupid and most of all, STOP acting like you know everything. All of a sudden you will actually enjoy the game that you spent $60 on and tons of your time playing.
As I have said, I don't make this game, I don't pretend to, and I don't pretend to be the one-stop knowledge shop. Instead I come as a community member begging everyone else to get their act together before we all go down on a burning ship.
Idiots who don't know what they're talking about who QQ and whine is what ruins games. People who speak the truth don't ruin games at all. If they bring real problems to the developers attention, that's good, because it helps them fix problems.
If Blizzard hadn't patched StarCraft, it would still be an imbalanced piece of shit to this day.
Tl;dr
QQing is bad when you don't know what you're talking about. It's good when you're bringing up a real problem.
I support this post, people always want to blame someone/something else for when they lose, instead the answer is always themselves. If your winning, you aren't learning.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
I think theres a limit to the complaining that people should be doing, and from my perspective I think we have passed that limit by leaps and bounds.
Liquid`Tyler spoke about this on the last State of the Game and I think iNcontroL also did too and what they pretty much said is what the OP here is saying. Back in Brood War people did not expect Blizzard to do anything so they essentially took it upon themselves to figure out how to overcome the supposed deficiencies or the "imbalances"
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
Your missing the point; he is saying if we keep winning for patches sc2 will get nerfed to oblivion and eventually will be as easy to play as WoW: Cata is now (all based on numbers) Same thing with sc2 it will be nerfed to the point of if you scout 4 barracks you build 4 gateways. Very simple
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%,
Im sure we can all appreciate a game that is fair, if i said to you lets play a game of basket ball and at the end ill add on 15% points to my score because i picked the zerg jersey and you picked the toss jersey, im sure someone has the right to say something, especially when the winner of the game gets 80k and the loser gets 30k. My suggestion is to think about why people are complaining instead of telling them to stop in general. Blizzard said a lot of valuable information comes from the forms.
Isnt it ironic that you are complaining about complainers? lol
By the way i think snes was the best console ever created. for its time the games were unmatched.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
I think you are taking internet people too serious and need to take a leaf out of your own book. If you don't like these people, don't bother with them and don't complain. As you said, just play the game ^^
Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played.
So explain how you know the difference between things that "clearly" had to be patched and NPWing? Who should Blizzard consult to know what is NPWing and what is a legitimate issue?
However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was.
Which is fine. Unless of course you can't get 40 people together for raids, or would like to be able to venture out into the world without being ganked.
In short, if people aren't you.
Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
That's an odd contradiction. You trust that Blizzard knows what they want, but then you complain about Nerfs and Patches (the P in NPW). You know, the things that Blizzard makes. Whining doesn't get patches made; coders and designers at Blizzard get patches made.
Do you think that Blizzard will release a patch that has balance changes that they themselves don't agree with, but that they put in because of community outrage? Do you trust Blizzard or not?
Again most of this wasn't directed at TL, idk if anyone really reads the b.net forums, but they are soooo bad. Like whoa.
were you a pre-patch terran player?
Nope ^^ I've played protoss since Brood War.
If Blizzard hadn't patched StarCraft, it would still be an imbalanced piece of shit to this day.
This is truth, but the issue arises when people don't THINK that it is balanced because they really really really want to hydralisk rush someone or some non-sense.
QQing is bad when you don't know what you're talking about. It's good when you're bringing up a real problem.
EX-FUCKING-ACTLY. Its a shame because 99% of QQ'ers have NO IDEA WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.
And yes, I suppose I am QQing about QQers, but honestly I think that this IS a real problem.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
Your missing the point; he is saying if we keep winning for patches sc2 will get nerfed to oblivion and eventually will be as easy to play as WoW: Cata is now (all based on numbers) Same thing with sc2 it will be nerfed to the point of if you scout 4 barracks you build 4 gateways. Very simple
Except if WoW is anything to go by, Devs like Ghostcrawler have said over and over and over that QQ on the forum has virtually no effect on dictating balance changes. SC2 is much the same...
I don't agree. People complain all the time about everything. Due to being insecure, having too big of an ego, you name it.
All you're doing here is complain about complaining, in the end it's you who's not enjoying this because you feel just as 'annoyed' as the people that are complaining in the first place.
It's very simple: on the B.net forums you just set everyone on "ignore" that you think makes stupid posts. You make sure you never click a post that talks about imbalance etc..
Why am I writing this? Because I thought you were complaining about the patches too, but it seems your title is slightly misleading: You wrote just another whine-thread. Not about the game, but about the community. It's all the same. The game = the community. If you let your fun be ruined by people's (stupid) thoughts you are ruining your own pleasure in the game. Find the people that enjoy it on the same level as you and just relax.. ignore stupidity , let them be pissed at the game, they will keep playing and you will feel bad.
Trust blizzard that they won't be stupid about the patches, so far they've done a great job. Every patch means complaints, and so far most people are rather happy with 1.1.3 right? Cheers.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
I think theres a limit to the complaining that people should be doing, and from my perspective I think we have passed that limit by leaps and bounds.
Liquid`Tyler spoke about this on the last State of the Game and I think iNcontroL also did too and what they pretty much said is what the OP here is saying. Back in Brood War people did not expect Blizzard to do anything so they essentially took it upon themselves to figure out how to overcome the supposed deficiencies or the "imbalances"
I hate this argument.
Go play vanilla starcraft and figure out how to stop muta harass, instant reaver drops, or certain tank drops on LT then come back and tell me about how you can play around the games imbalances.
Certain things were addressed in the game, but once things were in a solid, stable state, only THEN did Blizzard find that they could sit back and watch people evolve past strong strategies.
Patches are moving at a good rate right now. And yes they should slow down in the future, but some things need to be addressed first.
There are legitimate concerns and then there are QQ. I think you are generalizing too much and grouping them together.
Case and point:
Queen + canceled hatchery spine crawler rush = legitimate issue that was fixed 2 pylon block against zerg = legitimate issue that is set to be fixed (of course, this brings about discussion of drone patrol and what the protoss can do to stop zerg's greedy builds, but I think everyone would agree that it is pretty stupid to lock someone inside the base like that.)
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
Your missing the point; he is saying if we keep winning for patches sc2 will get nerfed to oblivion and eventually will be as easy to play as WoW: Cata is now (all based on numbers) Same thing with sc2 it will be nerfed to the point of if you scout 4 barracks you build 4 gateways. Very simple
Except if WoW is anything to go by, Devs like Ghostcrawler have said over and over and over that QQ on the forum has virtually no effect on dictating balance changes. SC2 is much the same...
Do you believe everything people tell you? The forums have an effect on Blizzard, even subconsciously and maybe they themselves don't even realize it. If they read the forum (which they do) then it will have an effect.
That's an odd contradiction. You trust that Blizzard knows what they want, but then you complain about Nerfs and Patches (the P in NPW). You know, the things that Blizzard makes. Whining doesn't get patches made; coders and designers at Blizzard get patches made.
Blizzard makes video games. Not nerfs or patches. Nerfs and patches are updates to the games they have made based upon user experiences. When users don't give positive feedback, and simply generate bad vibes nothing good gets done.
Many people have attitudes that, 10 years ago, would have stifled the birth of eSports in the first place.
Maybe I am out of place saying these things, but it has been some of the biggest weight on my shoulders for a while now. I love eSports and don't want to see it fall victim to haters or dumbasses who's only goal is to ruin the fun for everyone else.
OP obviously played Protoss when beta started and switched to Terran.
Are you really gonna be naive enough to assume a game this complex is going to be perfectly balanced barely months after its release? Maybe you don't realize it, but patches aren't random changes that a developer makes after hours of calculations and theory crafting. The game is balanced almost entirely on the feedback of its players.
Now, I agree that people who don't know what they're talking about are useless when they complain but I find it completely ridiculous when top players who dedicate their life to the game like Idra, Ret, Nony, and Artosis + Show Spoiler +
one of those may or may not be a joke
give their feedback and address things that need to be fixed or are overpowered, and then clueless masses get on them about how they're wrong and how they're horrible and how there must be absolutely nothing wrong with the game.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
Your missing the point; he is saying if we keep winning for patches sc2 will get nerfed to oblivion and eventually will be as easy to play as WoW: Cata is now (all based on numbers) Same thing with sc2 it will be nerfed to the point of if you scout 4 barracks you build 4 gateways. Very simple
WoW insn't simple because players complained, infact most of the people (like me) who actually played it from the start hated the slow and inexorable march towards simplicity, though we did like seeing our numbers go up and up and up and up and up and up.
WoW got simpler because it got popular. The more people that play the game, the more reccommend it to friends and slowly the playerbase moves away from hardcore gamers to casuals, at that point the developer need to keep their subs coming in and thus must make the game appeal to new and casual players.
SC2 is simpler than SC1 because they knew it was going to be huge and they needed to cater to the people who aren't hardcore RTS gamers as well as the "pro's" and the harcore. Its a tough thing to balance all these concerns and simple fact is that 99% of players aren't in the "pro" backet, of that 99% the vast majority don't fit into the "hardcore" catagory, meaning ultimately the people who pay the bills at blizzard are the casuals, thats why WoW has gotten easier and why SC2 will be patched until its 150% balanced
Also I don't really see it as a problem. The Blizzard and other forms are likely to always have bitching, it's just the atmosphere of those forums. Meanwhile at places like TL players are expected to know they need to get better to win so we shouldn't expect much whining.
By and large that's also what's happening. Once they fixed Zerg and the other races found their new XvZ builds the amount of bitching has gone down dramatically. There's still a fair bit, the game is new and balance is still an open question, but it's dramatically less. Right now most of the whining seems to be isolated flare ups when something new comes along that seems dramatic.
When balance patches come out most people do bring up concerns/whine, but that's also to be expected. It's doubly so because often times people are whining for less dramatic changes than we're getting while often times accepting the more reasonable sounding ones.
Other than that the majority of whine I've seen lately has more to do with concern over how the game is going to play out. People want longer games and are worried about cheese being dominant. Seeing as this is mostly a spectator and non-competitive player concern (and to a lesser extent competitive player concern, but most good players just play the game as is), telling people to just play the game they've got doesn't make sense.
So whatever, I don't see the big issue. As the game settles, patches slow down, and people see more even win %s the whining has gone down dramatically. I think people are blowing the whining out of proportion because of the dark days for Zerg where there were legitimate* balance concerns and then the explosion afterwards where T & P were using outdated strategies and losing horribly to the new styles/powers of zerg. Yeah if people feel like something is imbalanced, they try to work through it and still can't THEN have a whole set of other players (including pro gamers) saying the same thing they're going to become very vocal. It's going to be even more so when the data (tournament results, ladder win %s, etc.) seems to back it up.
*In my eyes Blizzard is god over Starcraft 2. If they make a balance changes to help a race overall then I consider it fact that the race needed it. So I view the Zerg buffs and other changes to cement the fact that zerg as a race did have legitimate issues.
No offense OP but you are basicly complaining that ppl complain on the internet. btw, i love how you compare it with wow. If blizzard actually listened to the forums in wow you got no idea what it would look like now. The amount of crap suggestions supported by ppl there is hilarous. I am pretty sure blizzard kinda knows what they are doing to know to wich whine and complaints they listen to and wich they ignore.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
So you start out by saying, how people should just get better and make their race work, and then you go on saying that its the maps thats balanced wrong, like you know everything, and then start whinning over other people are whining.
Really it just seems like you're one of the other people that are whining, you are just whining over something else
You know, i just never whine about balance because i have total faith in blizzard's decision (yeah.. /o/) AND i think there's enough guys in the community to cry about imbalance whenever they can. But seriously without them ? where would the game be atm.
how could we ever limit the amount of whine necessary to balance the game?
is your solution "Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them." really ?
On December 17 2010 01:34 Gulzt wrote: I don't agree. People complain all the time about everything. Due to being insecure, having too big of an ego, you name it.
All you're doing here is complain about complaining, in the end it's you who's not enjoying this because you feel just as 'annoyed' as the people that are complaining in the first place.
It's very simple: on the B.net forums you just set everyone on "ignore" that you think makes stupid posts. You make sure you never click a post that talks about imbalance etc..
Why am I writing this? Because I thought you were complaining about the patches too, but it seems your title is slightly misleading: You wrote just another whine-thread. Not about the game, but about the community. It's all the same. The game = the community. If you let your fun be ruined by people's (stupid) thoughts you are ruining your own pleasure in the game. Find the people that enjoy it on the same level as you and just relax.. ignore stupidity , let them be pissed at the game, they will keep playing and you will feel bad.
Trust blizzard that they won't be stupid about the patches, so far they've done a great job. Every patch means complaints, and so far most people are rather happy with 1.1.3 right? Cheers.
I completely agree with this. We all just need to trust blizzard. I come from WC3, and all the changes they made in that game were reasonable. No patch ever broke the game (except when they stopped caring about WC3 and now UDvOC is yeah...). Why kids think they know more about balancing a game than the game's creator baffles me. In the end, I'm sure the developers are smart enough to know what the right changes are.
On December 17 2010 01:38 MasterJack wrote: Blizzard have created the most successful PC franchise in the last decade. Their previous game started an e-sport craze in an entire country.
Until they mess up this track record with multi-crazy-patching-based-on-forum-posts, stop whining, as you suggest.
THIS is what I am driving at.
Blizzard fell to community pressure with WoW, and everyone who played for a long time knows it. They made it stupidly easy compared to what it was.
I don't want to see this happen with SC2, and I am genuinely worried because there aren't more than 10 non-QQ posts on the b.net forums, which Blizzard reads much more than TL I would assume.
If whiners keep this stuff up, then SC2 is only destined to fall to the same fate as WoW...
That's an odd contradiction. You trust that Blizzard knows what they want, but then you complain about Nerfs and Patches (the P in NPW). You know, the things that Blizzard makes. Whining doesn't get patches made; coders and designers at Blizzard get patches made.
Blizzard makes video games. Not nerfs or patches. Nerfs and patches are updates to the games they have made based upon user experiences. When users don't give positive feedback, and simply generate bad vibes nothing good gets done.
Many people have attitudes that, 10 years ago, would have stifled the birth of eSports in the first place..
Nerfs and patches are updates to the game made by Blizzard. The content of "nerfs and patches" is the content that they wish to create. That content is made by whatever scheme Blizzard intends to use.
People have whinned until they were blue in the fingers for things in WoW that have never materialized. The simple fact is this: Blizzard isn't listening. Or at least, they're not making decisions solely or even primarily based on what people on a forum are saying.
If you don't like where WoW has gone, then point your finger at the responsible party: Blizzard Entertainment. They made the patches. They made the decisions you don't like. It is their fault.
In short, I don't buy your premise or your evidence.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
OMFG pls stop comparing it to chess!!!!
Chess is over 1500 years old, the original game looks and plays nothing like the one we now play.... chess has been developed by millions of people over 2 millenia. Not to mention that Chess, while being extremely complex and taking years to master, is not 1% as complicted in terms of balance as SC2.
In chess both sides have the same amount of pieces, they have infact the exact same pieces, which can move in set ways on a set board.
If chess came with three different piece sets (that can all move differently from the other sets) and ten different board configurations then you could compare it.
The only comparison between Chess and SC2 is in the mind, the mentality of the players, beyond that its like comparing chalk and cheese.... please stop it
On December 17 2010 01:38 MasterJack wrote: Blizzard have created the most successful PC franchise in the last decade. Their previous game started an e-sport craze in an entire country.
Until they mess up this track record with multi-crazy-patching-based-on-forum-posts, stop whining, as you suggest.
THIS is what I am driving at.
Blizzard fell to community pressure with WoW, and everyone who played for a long time knows it. They made it stupidly easy compared to what it was.
I don't want to see this happen with SC2, and I am genuinely worried because there aren't more than 10 non-QQ posts on the b.net forums, which Blizzard reads much more than TL I would assume.
If whiners keep this stuff up, then SC2 is only destined to fall to the same fate as WoW...
They made WoW into what it always was. People complaining about what WoW has become generally fall flat without much merit, so it's a pretty bad comparison and saying they caved to crowd pressure is meaningless. The complaints about PvP or easy to obtain gear sound to me like someone complaining about 4v4 balance being ruined in a patch. The way I see what's happened to WoW is simple. They tried to branch out into more areas to provide a wide variety of gameplay to its users, then realized that they couldn't possibly support and balance all the different aspects of the game so they've receded back a bit and are focusing on making the core experiences the best they can be.
On a side note I LOVE the complaints around PvP gear from WoW people. Anyone who actually values even the slightest bit of PvP should 100% be ecstatic anytime the best gear becomes easier to obtain because it levels the playing field. Anyone who doesn't is not a competitive gamer and shouldn't be commenting at all on competitive gaming in any way shape or form.
Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
I think theres a limit to the complaining that people should be doing, and from my perspective I think we have passed that limit by leaps and bounds.
Liquid`Tyler spoke about this on the last State of the Game and I think iNcontroL also did too and what they pretty much said is what the OP here is saying. Back in Brood War people did not expect Blizzard to do anything so they essentially took it upon themselves to figure out how to overcome the supposed deficiencies or the "imbalances"
That comment by Tyler really struck home with me. Back in the day people used to blame players first, rarely maps, and never imbalance. It was amazing to see someone hold the trophy and 99.99% of the credit being given to him. These days it just spawns discussion of imbalance and maps. It seems the player often comes third in importance. I don't like that
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Seriously.
Blizzard has said time and time again that they hold back on balance changes to make sure they're not solving flavour-of-the-week problems that can just as easily be solved by the metagame.
Thanks for your dissertation whining about whining you have changed my outlook on the issue of whether or not people whining is annoying with your insight and capital-lettered curse words. You should submit that for publishing.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
OMFG pls stop comparing it to chess!!!!
Chess is over 1500 years old, the original game looks and plays nothing like the one we now play.... chess has been developed by millions of people over 2 millenia. Not to mention that Chess, while being extremely complex and taking years to master, is not 1% as complicted in terms of balance as SC2.
In chess both sides have the same amount of pieces, they have infact the exact same pieces, which can move in set ways on a set board.
If chess came with three different piece sets (that can all move differently from the other sets) and ten different board configurations then you could compare it.
The only comparison between Chess and SC2 is in the mind, the mentality of the players, beyond that its like comparing chalk and cheese.... please stop it
There are plenty of other games that involve the same idea. You don't see Football coaches complaining that the Offensive line has one more tackle than the defensive line. They just play the game.
If they keep patching, it will never be balanced, because the meta-game will never settle into a standard form. A fluid meta-game is equivalent to an imbalanced game.
That comment by Tyler really struck home with me. Back in the day people used to blame players first, rarely maps, and never imbalance. It was amazing to see someone hold the trophy and 99.99% of the credit being given to him. These days it just spawns discussion of imbalance and maps. It seems the player often comes third in importance. I don't like that
What time are you referring to when you say "back in the day"?
Because pre 2000 StarCraft was pretty broken and everyone knew it. When a Terran or even Protoss beat a Zerg, he got way more respect than when a Zerg beat a Zerg...
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
Lol what a terrible example. Both players in chess have access to the exact same pieces, how would saying "knight OP" make any sense?
I remember when starcraft used to be about someone winning, checking reps and fixing their mistakes.
Everyone just yells nerf and buff all the time, it's funny how not a lot of people want to create new STRATEGIES, in a REAL TIME STRATEGY game.
(capitalized for emphasis)
If something is so game breaking no one can win against it or defend it without some unreal conditions, then it warrants patching and inspection. Otherwise it's all moot.
dude, why are you so angry? really what does it effect you if people complain about balance or not? if you took your own advice and played the freaking game then you wouldn't even notice the NPW and you would be free. furthermore if you take your point about just play the game no matter what the balance state is just like boxer did then again, why do you care if blizz patches or not - make do with what there is. you're complaining that the patches might do to sc2 what it did to wow and take skill out of the game? well i don't play low-skill games like wow but i'm just gonna say your analysis here is shallow and lacking evidence or examples so i'm just dismissing it, even if this game were perfectly balanced with equivalent exacting races there would still be skill required because macro is hard and micro is harder.
a good balance situation improves the legitimacy of e-sports and keeps people playing the game. imbalance exists, it fundamentally has to with asymmetrical races, but hopefully it can be minimized so that all the races are competitive at the highest levels and nobody feels like they're wasting their time pouring hours into an underpowered race wanting to be a good player.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
Lol what a terrible example. Both players in chess have access to the exact same pieces, how would saying "knight OP" make any sense?
its not proven yet if chess is balanced or not. but nobody cares.
.............It's not whining or complaining. It's discussing how this units is bad or good. As zerg, you would know that hydra low hp + slow movement speed is not a good unit for your army but you still need to use this units for some situation. It's the truth that best zerg units are lings/roaches because they are cost effective. .......Patches is fun because people will explore new way to play the game instead of playing the same freaking thing over and over again. I would give you an example right now that all high lvl terran use reapers vs zerg and destroy zerg in the beginning of the game. Or someone massing voidray in 2v2 with flex vain upgrade. .......Personally I think the thread creator should grown up and let Blizz decide what is best for the community. The developer knows a lot more than any of you guys because they have data while you don't. Not only winning rate data but other facts as well.
On December 17 2010 01:23 navara wrote: are you complaining ? .. i think if we are it's because we care.
I think theres a limit to the complaining that people should be doing, and from my perspective I think we have passed that limit by leaps and bounds.
Liquid`Tyler spoke about this on the last State of the Game and I think iNcontroL also did too and what they pretty much said is what the OP here is saying. Back in Brood War people did not expect Blizzard to do anything so they essentially took it upon themselves to figure out how to overcome the supposed deficiencies or the "imbalances"
That comment by Tyler really struck home with me. Back in the day people used to blame players first, rarely maps, and never imbalance. It was amazing to see someone hold the trophy and 99.99% of the credit being given to him. These days it just spawns discussion of imbalance and maps. It seems the player often comes third in importance. I don't like that
This. It is so freaking annoying to see Fruitdealer/Nestea and I'm sure the next GSL winner take the 87k only to that some random forum posters starting a "zerg/protoss/terran is op" thread, taking the credit away. That also goes for the random matches with people posting "He would never win if the maps wouldnt be so imba" or something like that.
I want the days back when we credited a win to the player itself and blamed only him for losing. I know people have a different mentallity for starcraft 2 and that the game is quite new and probably will be patched in the future but can't we just play the game. Lets overcome the obstacles ourselves and not always go cry to blizzard.
Even now when I'm writing this I know that when MC or Rain wins the LR thread will go crazy like always with people arguing how the race that lost is UP and the other OP.
I came into this thread intending to agree with the OP, but soon realized he was just an angry hypocrite. It is entirely possible that, in a game as complex as starcraft, there are, indeed, racial imbalances. It is also possible that said imbalanced might have workarounds that people just need to discover, whether it be simply using a different playstyle on a particular map, or learning to adapt.
I agree with what I thought the point of the thread was going to be: people who let their mindset devolve into "my race is UP" or "X race is OP" lose the ability to see their own mistakes and improve. Day9 has mentioned this numerous times.
Also, the OP made some terrible, terrible statements about the state of World of Warcraft. More people play and are happy with the current state of world of warcraft than ever before, and you're basically alone in a room of a handful of elitists like yourself if you think 40man vanilla raiding is better than raiding now.
The REAL lesson to take away from World of Warcraft balancing is that it's almost always better to buff something underpowered than to nerf something overpowered, as far as player psychology goes.
For example, Africa is known for having a large amount of natural resources and its countries potentially are going to become a major economic powerhouses in the world if they make use of their resources effectively. But as we all know, they can't do that, and we other countries can't hang around forever to wait for them to rise by themselves. That's why we help them, by providing technology, human resources, health care,..... When they rise, they might be too op, but that's the future, other countries will nerf them later.
It's the same in this game. Since the game is so new, a particular race can be potentially strong though people haven't discovered the potential yet. But how long will it take for us to discover that? 6 months? 5 years? We can't hang around a game that long just to wait for some random guys. Patching is just a process to balance the game short-term, no matter how short it might seem, so that people have interest to play the game.
On December 17 2010 01:35 SubtleArt wrote: OP obviously played Protoss when beta started and switched to Terran..
I like how this is the first thing stated. I think comments like this are pointless and only make the problem worse. It becomes a "us vs them" mentality and people don't want their race to be nerfed so they complain. The goal should be "Lets have a balanced game where player skill determines the outcome of the match" instead of "lets complain to buff my race so I can do better".
On December 17 2010 01:35 SubtleArt wrote:Are you really gonna be naive enough to assume a game this complex is going to be perfectly balanced barely months after its release? Maybe you don't realize it, but patches aren't random changes that a developer makes after hours of calculations and theory crafting. The game is balanced almost entirely on the feedback of its players.
SC2 was in development for a LONG time and is based largely off of SC1 so I think there has been a very long time in terms of balance development and game development. I think the game is 95% balanced and as do many pros (incontrol, nony, tyler come to mind)
On December 17 2010 01:35 SubtleArt wrote:ow, I agree that people who don't know what they're talking about are useless when they complain but I find it completely ridiculous when top players who dedicate their life to the game like Idra, Ret, Nony, and Artosis + Show Spoiler +
one of those may or may not be a joke
give their feedback and address things that need to be fixed or are overpowered, and then clueless masses get on them about how they're wrong and how they're horrible and how there must be absolutely nothing wrong with the game.
I agree with this, I think imbalances don't really reveal themselves until you get to the extreme higher levels of play where players are both playing at a very high level and the deciding factor in the outcome of the game becomes something other than player skill/decisions. Also many people watch replays and come to grossly incorrect assumptions such as the reason why they lost.
I don't think there is anything in the actual gameplay/units that is "broken" or game changing. The maps are the only thing I have a problem with (as the OP said)
On December 17 2010 02:12 canikizu wrote: For example, Africa is known for having a large amount of natural resources and its countries potentially are going to become a major economic powerhouses in the world if they make use of their resources effectively. But as we all know, they can't do that, and we other countries can't hang around forever to wait for them to rise by themselves. That's why we help them, by providing technology, human resources, health care,..... When they rise, they might be too op, but that's the future, other countries will nerf them later.
It's the same in this game. Since the game is so new, a particular race can be potentially strong though people haven't discovered the potential yet. But how long will it take for us to discover that? 6 months? 5 years? We can't hang around a game that long just to wait for some random guys. Patching is just a process to balance the game short-term, no matter how short it might seem, so that people have interest to play the game.
Have you never heard of Brood War? New strategies are still being discovered right now, 10 years later, and it is still more popular than SC2 in Korea.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
IIRC, Go has adjusted the handicap points granted to the second player (komi) several times, and in fact, did not exist until 20th century despite the age of the game.
OP, you seem to assume that the game developers are perfect designers, and that the voice from the community isn't needed, and will only ruin the game. However, that is false for three reasons.
1. the game developers in blizzard are not perfect, and they know they aren't .that is why they want to hear the voice from everyone. that is why there is PTR. That is why David Kim reads TL. That is why there is a forum for balance issues in Battle.net.
2. this game belongs to the people who buy it. Of course we want to win. Of course we get frustrated when we lose, and of course one of the reasons/excuses for losing is imbalanced. But we have the right to complain. Hell, we even have the right to complain and rant UNREASONABLY. It is up to the designers to see if our arguments/rants/complaints are reasonable or not and take action accordingly. It is natural that people want their race to be good, thats the human nature. think about it in the big political context. Different class want the maximum benefit to their class, regardless of others.
3. NPW does not break the game. It makes the game more popular in a sense. Every game has patches, every game has nerfs. Think SC1 and the many patches and nerfs happened through the 12 years. It is a challenge for the designers to make the game "balanced". However, the definition of balanced is not really a state where everyone is content. It is a state where the most number of players will be able to accept it.
On December 17 2010 02:21 Logican wrote: OP, you seem to assume that the game developers are perfect designers, and that the voice from the community isn't needed, and will only ruin the game. However, that is false for three reasons.
1. the game developers in blizzard are not perfect, and they know they aren't .that is why they want to hear the voice from everyone. that is why there is PTR. That is why David Kim reads TL. That is why there is a forum for balance issues in Battle.net.
2. this game belongs to the people who buy it. Of course we want to win. Of course we get frustrated when we lose, and of course one of the reasons/excuses for losing is imbalanced. But we have the right to complain. Hell, we even have the right to complain and rant UNREASONABLY. It is up to the designers to see if our arguments/rants/complaints are reasonable or not and take action accordingly. It is natural that people want their race to be good, thats the human nature. think about it in the big political context. Different class want the maximum benefit to their class, regardless of others.
3. NPW does not break the game. It makes the game more popular in a sense. Every game has patches, every game has nerfs. Think SC1 and the many patches and nerfs happened through the 12 years. It is a challenge for the designers to make the game "balanced". However, the definition of balanced is not really a state where everyone is content. It is a state where the most number of players will be able to accept it.
1. Blizzard devolepers aren't perfect but so aren't we. That means when we moan and complain there is just more flawed opinions. Let's give the ball to blizzard and we can figure out the solutions on our own.
2. People love statistics so I will just throw that out there. 99% of games you lose is because you aren't a perfect player and have something to improve. That 1% might be imbalance but you're much better with perfecting rest of your play than cry about that 1%. Yes it is human nature to want the best for them/their race and that is one of my point why blizzard shouldn't listen to people. Most of us are selfish and we want that our race has the "kill opponent" button.
3. As you put it, NPW is not breaking the game but it is making our lifes miserable. I almost hope blizzard wouldn't give us the beta and just said this is what you get. Go play.
To be honest I'm not seeing that this whining is ever going to stop. Maybe someday when blizzard stops making patches and people will just have to accept the game as it is or not play it. Unfortunately that day isn't coming anytime soon. Also I just want to point out I don't want blizzard to stop caring and patching the game, I just want the whining to stop and if it means no more patches ever, I will take it.
On December 17 2010 02:12 Carl_Sagan wrote: I came into this thread intending to agree with the OP, but soon realized he was just an angry hypocrite. It is entirely possible that, in a game as complex as starcraft, there are, indeed, racial imbalances. It is also possible that said imbalanced might have workarounds that people just need to discover, whether it be simply using a different playstyle on a particular map, or learning to adapt.
I agree with what I thought the point of the thread was going to be: people who let their mindset devolve into "my race is UP" or "X race is OP" lose the ability to see their own mistakes and improve. Day9 has mentioned this numerous times.
Also, the OP made some terrible, terrible statements about the state of World of Warcraft. More people play and are happy with the current state of world of warcraft than ever before, and you're basically alone in a room of a handful of elitists like yourself if you think 40man vanilla raiding is better than raiding now.
The REAL lesson to take away from World of Warcraft balancing is that it's almost always better to buff something underpowered than to nerf something overpowered, as far as player psychology goes.
Can you teach me to make an apple pie from scratch ?
I would say NPW doesn't ruin the game, rather, it ruins the forums. It's a pet peeve of mine that I can't follow live report threads anymore without being annoyed at the complaints directed towards race and map balance.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
Lol what a terrible example. Both players in chess have access to the exact same pieces, how would saying "knight OP" make any sense?
its not proven yet if chess is balanced or not. but nobody cares.
But the imbalance centers on who moves first, not the pieces, so it was a stupid analogy.
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
Lol what a terrible example. Both players in chess have access to the exact same pieces, how would saying "knight OP" make any sense?
its not proven yet if chess is balanced or not. but nobody cares.
since both ppl start with the same stuff it can't get more balanced.
On December 17 2010 02:35 Koshi wrote: I also made a post like this a month ago. It didn't have an entire wall of text but I suggested a no balance whine policy.
My thread got closed due to "not worthy of a thread".
But I repeat. TeamLiquid should have a 2 week rule that says: NO FUCKING WHINING ON THE FORUMS.
my too^^ looks like a system and looks like we are more than we think ..
Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played.
So explain how you know the difference between things that "clearly" had to be patched and NPWing? Who should Blizzard consult to know what is NPWing and what is a legitimate issue?
However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was.
Which is fine. Unless of course you can't get 40 people together for raids, or would like to be able to venture out into the world without being ganked.
In short, if people aren't you.
They should consult the good players. Sure they might tend to be more biased (since they play for money) so their opinion needs to be taken with a grain of salt - but they tend to know more about the issues - compared to the masses of BNet & TL forums. If you play ladder you lose, because you played bad - not because of balance issues.
Let's say you and me we're both at "50/100" skilllevel. You play P I play Z. P gains 0 Z gains 10 "skillpoints". So we're now 50 and 60. BUT we will never play against each other. Because the matchmaking algorithm is doing a great job. You will play against a 40+10(Z) player, while I will play against the 60 skill P player. Sure I might have more points & a better ranking compared to you (which is unfair!) - but the games we play will be against equal skillevels. Of course this changes at the very top & bottom of the ladder and when we take tournaments outside the matchmaking into account. But the majority of the whiners whine because of their ladder experience.
About your WoW question "would like to be able to venture out into the world without being ganked." PvE servers where there from the beginning. There is no shame in playing on a PvE server - I personally find it rude to go to an environment and try to demand changes while another environment exists with those changes in place when there is no advantage/disadvantage in being in one or the other. But maybe that's just me and people think it's more "prestigeous" to play on a PvP server.
I'll say what I always say to people who talk about this subject...
Competitive people, aka hardcore, are a small slice of the game's population. The vast majority, where the MONEY comes from, are not. So if the game is too hard or too inaccessible for them, blizzard makes no money.
So the true hard part for blizzard is how to make the game accessible to everyone and yet remain challenging enough to the hardcore. I feel they are doing great so far balancing the game.
@ OP: It's quite ironic you mentioned Boxer as your prime example for not whining, seeing as after a recent GSL he said in an interview something along the lines of "I think Terran is too weak. I might go random if I lose again". Not exactly, but along those lines.
On December 17 2010 02:12 canikizu wrote: For example, Africa is known for having a large amount of natural resources and its countries potentially are going to become a major economic powerhouses in the world if they make use of their resources effectively. But as we all know, they can't do that, and we other countries can't hang around forever to wait for them to rise by themselves. That's why we help them, by providing technology, human resources, health care,..... When they rise, they might be too op, but that's the future, other countries will nerf them later.
It's the same in this game. Since the game is so new, a particular race can be potentially strong though people haven't discovered the potential yet. But how long will it take for us to discover that? 6 months? 5 years? We can't hang around a game that long just to wait for some random guys. Patching is just a process to balance the game short-term, no matter how short it might seem, so that people have interest to play the game.
Have you never heard of Brood War? New strategies are still being discovered right now, 10 years later, and it is still more popular than SC2 in Korea.
WTF, that Africa analogy was so wrong it was unbelievable. So slavery then using a continent as a field for the cold war is "helping". Wow...\
Anyway on topic: I couldn't agree more with Chill and Nony. I hate how in SC2 it's always imbalance and never the players. It's sickening.
On December 17 2010 02:47 Grimjim wrote: @ OP: It's quite ironic you mentioned Boxer as your prime example for not whining, seeing as after a recent GSL he said in an interview something along the lines of "I think Terran is too weak. I might go random if I lose again". Not exactly, but along those lines.
Yup, even the pros whine.
No one said they didn't but actions speak louder than words.
On December 17 2010 02:44 Assirra wrote: since both ppl start with the same stuff it can't get more balanced.
Not true, white moves first. Even flipping a coin isn't "balanced" because you're more likely to flip heads (most people start with heads showing up and often instead of actually spinning when thrown up the coin just waffles in the air and lands down showing heads). There's very few rule sets that are actually 100% fair. The one saving grace is that sometimes you get to be white and sometimes you get to pick heads or tails. You can have a "balanced" win ratio in an imbalanced game.
I believe that the balance in BW was achieved through the maps, it's all about how wide are the choke points, traveling time between main bases (both by air and by land), number of mineral patches at the expansions, etc.
If you look closely, there are some very weird stuff in Broodwar, especially the almost total lack of use of some units and some upgrades are next to useless.
On December 17 2010 02:47 Grimjim wrote: @ OP: It's quite ironic you mentioned Boxer as your prime example for not whining, seeing as after a recent GSL he said in an interview something along the lines of "I think Terran is too weak. I might go random if I lose again". Not exactly, but along those lines.
Yup, even the pros whine.
And Boxer initially played Protoss in Broodwar, he switched after Blizzard nerfed the Reaver.
On December 17 2010 03:05 Caos2 wrote: I believe that the balance in BW was achieved through the maps, it's all about how wide are the choke points, traveling time between main bases (both by air and by land), number of mineral patches at the expansions, etc.
If you look closely, there are some very weird stuff in Broodwar, especially the almost total lack of use of some units and some upgrades are next to useless.
The only uselss unit I can think of is the Scout and its related upgrades. I've seen someone win because of the scout once, though he went 12 nexus on colosseum and got contained, but broke out of it because of Scouts. Without scouts, he would surely have lost, 100%.
But yes, scout are pretty useless on standard land maps. They're good against carriers, but who goes carriers in PvP anyway?
They're also good against battle cruisers, but who goes battle cruisers TvP?
Queens and ghosts do get used, though, and not just for gimmicks, but as parts of solid play. You don't see them every game, butyou do see them from time to time.
Oh, and dark archons aren't rare at all. Getting a dark archon in PvP isn't weird what so ever.
@ OP: It's quite ironic you mentioned Boxer as your prime example for not whining, seeing as after a recent GSL he said in an interview something along the lines of "I think Terran is too weak. I might go random if I lose again". Not exactly, but along those lines.
He said he would go random if terran got nerfed again but excellent point.
If people on th BNet forums read the OP's note carefully and then thought back, they'd see huge amounts of evidence on those forums. When Blizzard made changes to Terran (depot before rax, reaper nerf, tank damage nerf) the general reaction in the Terran sub-forum was for people to just bitch and complain about the changes. Then Zerg started FEing and instead of adapt, a large number of people again started crying and moaning instead of investing time in the game trying to adapt and work with what they had.
Now weeks/months later it has quieted down to a certain extent because people learned how to adapt, tried new things, replays were released and those completely incapable of doing anything but opening cheese (I'd bet a lot of pre-patch Terrans have dropped to Platinum with the Reaper nerf and depot before rax because it was rampant and when held off the general moron in ladder went "omg I don't know how to play past 5 minutes into the game, I'm screwed, QQ".
I agree with how Blizzard is approaching the patches with SC2. Slowly, carefully and moethodically. Recall WC3:RoC prior to FT? Orc would mass Witch Doctors, Shaman and a handful of Tauren for a meatshield and smash through anything. Come FT the game was completed reworked and while it was never remotely close to as balanced as SC2 is right now imo, Blizzard did try. Most people that post on the BNet forums should just write "I want a win button so I don't ever lose". It's normally a case of I don't want to invest time and learn how the game works, try new things and advance. They want easy street and if that was the case the game wouldn't be a whole lot of fun.
the complainers have made Blizzard make changes, but what do you expect? a majority of sc2 players arent high level, thus they really dont know about balance. They play a match and lose to banshees they start yelling "ZOMG BANSHEES SO OP" and if they have enough of their bad friends to agree Blizzard might make the change. It sucks but it is reality. The only thing you can do is roll with the punches and game on.
On December 17 2010 02:12 canikizu wrote: For example, Africa is known for having a large amount of natural resources and its countries potentially are going to become a major economic powerhouses in the world if they make use of their resources effectively. But as we all know, they can't do that, and we other countries can't hang around forever to wait for them to rise by themselves. That's why we help them, by providing technology, human resources, health care,..... When they rise, they might be too op, but that's the future, other countries will nerf them later.
It's the same in this game. Since the game is so new, a particular race can be potentially strong though people haven't discovered the potential yet. But how long will it take for us to discover that? 6 months? 5 years? We can't hang around a game that long just to wait for some random guys. Patching is just a process to balance the game short-term, no matter how short it might seem, so that people have interest to play the game.
Have you never heard of Brood War? New strategies are still being discovered right now, 10 years later, and it is still more popular than SC2 in Korea.
Don't tell me BW has never been patched before. And besides Koreans, how many people in other countries are still hanging around to wait for strats to be discovered, to wait for new talents to pop up?
my only problem with sc2 atm is that my wonderful terran race has to try to win in the beginning or it will get harder and harder, and there are no more impossible to break through in one try tank lines, that don't need support to survive alone hehe. Loved the 2 hour games that only terran made possible. Makes pro games a bit boring. See a 10 minute pvt replay terran won 20 minutes toss won atleast most of the time.
But this is more something you can only balance with introducing new units (expansion) or if players find out new moves, like a super good eye for emp range and hitting the hts the 0.5 range before they get into feedback range hehe.
I'm confused. He said console games don't get patched, which is completely untrue. The current-gen games almost all get patches, and even before that, games got patched. There were no downloadable updates or anything...just a new press of the disc (SSBM, for instance, has 4 different versions). There's also the already mentioned pro-whine. And the fact that he's comparing games that have been out for many years to a game 6 months old.
my only problem with sc2 atm is that my wonderful terran race has to try to win in the beginning or it will get harder and harder, and there are no more impossible to break through in one try tank lines, that don't need support to survive alone hehe. Loved the 2 hour games that only terran made possible. Makes pro games a bit boring. See a 10 minute pvt replay terran won 20 minutes toss won atleast most of the time.
But this is more something you can only balance with introducing new units (expansion) or if players find out new moves, like a super good eye for emp range and hitting the hts the 0.5 range before they get into feedback range hehe.
Scan for observers. gun them down. cloak the ghost and emp it. Sensor towers are fantastic for seeing observers on the map. Generally late game is harder for everyone, you have more you need to do. Dont worry youll get use to it.
On December 17 2010 03:29 FeyFey wrote: my only problem with sc2 atm is that my wonderful terran race has to try to win in the beginning or it will get harder and harder, and there are no more impossible to break through in one try tank lines, that don't need support to survive alone hehe. Loved the 2 hour games that only terran made possible. Makes pro games a bit boring. See a 10 minute pvt replay terran won 20 minutes toss won atleast most of the time.
But this is more something you can only balance with introducing new units (expansion) or if players find out new moves, like a super good eye for emp range and hitting the hts the 0.5 range before they get into feedback range hehe.
EMPing vs HT is all a matter of who is quicker on the draw. I love it, its like a good old fashioned duel at dawn.
Terrans don't have to win fast, Jinro has proven that you can play a macro game with T. Most Terrans never think about getting a fast 3rd, if they don't win early they do a 2 base timing push, if that fails they are then usually fucked until their third is fully saturated... Jinro usually gets his third up BEFORE he does his big push, meaning he can replenish and tech switch much easier.
I am no pro, not good by any standard, but we can all agree that once u hit a certain level, me playing vs someone my own level should have roughly the same results as Jinro playing someone at his level (over a long series of matches, so long as the players are the same level as their opponent, the results will be roughly the same when using the same strats). When I get a fast 3rd against Z I usually win or atleast its a tight game, if i go for a 2 base timing push and then expo.... i either win there and then or lose 5 minutes later.
Most people on Team Liquid and many other sc2 sites will only complain about things that better players have complained about. Sitting here bitching about all the retarded team liquid posts is quite stupid because for the most part they hear something from a player they look up to that says how underpowered their race is or how overpowered a certain unit is. Look at what marineking does with marines and how broken that seems. Look at how slow hydras are yet they are zergs "anti-air" yet they can't catch up the harass.
Next, you compare SC2 to WOW in your original post way too much when the games aren't alike at all. If blizzard only makes sc2 easier and easier it doesn't matter at all. When blizzard makes wow easier and easier it sucks because all the endgame content you can do (yes wow IS a PvE game) is all AI and therefore if it gets easier for you then the whole purpose of the game gets boring.
Look at sc2 though, if Blizzard patches this game to make it "easier" because they listen to all the whining then what really would change? Nothing.
This is EXACTLY what I've been thinking about for some weeks. It's the ATTITUDE! I feel like most players have the mindset of "if something is hard, it is imba" Instead of in BW, where it was like "this is hard, but if the pros can do it, I just need to practise more!"
Just play the game, figure out what made you lose, check what you could have done better and stop thinking something is imbalanced.
Most people on Team Liquid and many other sc2 sites will only complain about things that better players have complained about. Sitting here bitching about all the retarded team liquid posts is quite stupid because for the most part they hear something from a player they look up to that says how underpowered their race is or how overpowered a certain unit is. Look at what marineking does with marines and how broken that seems. Look at how slow hydras are yet they are zergs "anti-air" yet they can't catch up the harass.
Next, you compare SC2 to WOW in your original post way too much when the games aren't alike at all. If blizzard only makes sc2 easier and easier it doesn't matter at all. When blizzard makes wow easier and easier it sucks because all the endgame content you can do (yes wow IS a PvE game) is all AI and therefore if it gets easier for you then the whole purpose of the game gets boring.
Look at sc2 though, if Blizzard patches this game to make it "easier" because they listen to all the whining then what really would change? Nothing.
This is a case of should we balance the game at which level, pro?, noob? 2v2? 3v3? or 4v4? or go for all of them. You pretty much have to pick one of those. a game like sc2 cannot be balanced at all levels. At the noob level the race with physically stronger units is going to be the best. I dont want to really go to much into this but basically. They need to focus the balance somewhere and just minority account for other areas. as much as some people like 1v1s there are people who buy the game solely for the 2v2s.
I can agree with the sentiment of the OP. However, at the very least, critical debate and constructive thought is necessary to point out flaws in the game. Whining of course falls under neither of the aforementioned categories.
On a side note, I must say, it's incredibly difficult to get behind an argument WHEN almost EVERY other WORD is CAPITALIZED so as to ARTIFICIALLY inject EMPHASIS into your POINTS. It's like we are TOO STUPID to understand the IMPORTANT PARTS OF YOUR ARGUMENT without you YELLING AT US.
I am NOT SURE but I would WAGER alot of MONEY that if you tried to have a MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION in this way with someone on the STREET, some people might NOT APPRECIATE IT.
Completely agree with your ranting. The game isn't balanced, and anything beyond +/- 5% is beyond Blizzard's satisfaction as well, so I'm not sure why you threw out those numbers.
And Boxer himself even complained when Zerg got buffs in the last patch and also [essentially] said that Z had an advantage over T (I believe this is before the dominance of all the marine/scv allins).
I think there is something to be said for your argument. Look at supersmash bros melee. No patches, just people learning how to abuse their character. Of course, they are completely different game types (the presence of many "throwaway characters" doesn't exist in a 3 race RTS, for example, or nearly unbreakable combos), but the basic premise still stands: if you want to beat shiek as captain falcon (very tough), you just have to play better and abuse your character better.
We saw a little bit of this mindset with the reaper nonsense vs zerg before it was patched.
On the other hand, as someone pointed out earlier, you dont seem to distinguish between necessary nerfs (like the spawning pool/4pool nerf in BW) which prevented game-breaking strategies, and less than necessary nerfs like the VR nerfs and the reaper nerfs.
I think it is ok to whine a bit and call (sparingly) for nerfs/buffs as long as you are aware that nothing will help you more than just learning to be a better (insert race here) player.
I could go on and on about flawed design vs ideal design and its relation to balance (which is what a lot of people whine about) but i think ill stop here.
AzurewinD United States. December 17 2010 03:47. Posts 50 PM Profile Quote # I can agree with the sentiment of the OP. However, at the very least, critical debate and constructive thought is necessary to point out flaws in the game. Whining of course falls under neither of the aforementioned categories.
On a side note, I must say, it's incredibly difficult to get behind an argument WHEN almost EVERY other WORD is CAPITALIZED so as to ARTIFICIALLY inject EMPHASIS into your POINTS. It's like we are TOO STUPID to understand the IMPORTANT PARTS OF YOUR ARGUMENT without you YELLING AT US.
I am NOT SURE but I would WAGER alot of MONEY that if you tried to have a MEANINGFUL DISCUSSION with someone on the STREET people might NOT APPRECIATE IT.
Some people are obviously under the impression that caps lock is somehow cruise control for cool. Id agree with you as well.
On December 17 2010 02:47 Grimjim wrote: @ OP: It's quite ironic you mentioned Boxer as your prime example for not whining, seeing as after a recent GSL he said in an interview something along the lines of "I think Terran is too weak. I might go random if I lose again". Not exactly, but along those lines.
Yup, even the pros whine.
No one said they didn't but actions speak louder than words.
he also said some time later that he just likes to whine regardless of actual balance.
i like how everyone is giving the OP shit for telling people to just play the game and quit complaining. is this really some hotly contested topic? i mean, are you FOR balance complaints?
Saechiis Netherlands. December 17 2010 03:54. Posts 1145 PM Profile Quote # Wasn't SlayerS_BoxeR the one who said he would change race if Terran got nerfed again in SC2?
There's obvious reasons why people whine so much:
1. Blizzard listens to balance feedback (whining) and as such people are rewarded for their (obnoxious) behaviour.
2. It's much harder to focus on overcoming certain obstacles when there's a chance Blizzard might patch your problem away.
3. It's much easier to blame racial balance for losses then to question one's enormous ego.
An evolutionary adaptation, babies cry when they are hungry. It is likely that in the past babies who didnt cry when they were hungry might miss meals. Busy parents can sometimes forget.
like the thread alot, BUUUUUUUT i think that there should still be threads and ideas on ways to change SC2 for the better in terms of design, playability and watchability because one of them, maybe, just might strike gold
PS: The part about people who read "these forums" is talking about b.net forums obviously.
Greetings,
I have never been one to post on these forums, yet I do lurk here quite often. This post is a culmination of many things that I have been upset about and angry with since the release of Starcraft 2. Namely, nerfs, patches, and whining (NPW from here on out). First I want to preamble with a little bit about myself. I have been gaming since the SNES, and have been competitive at games like Super Smash Brothers, Mario Kart (yes there are tournaments), Counter Strike, WoW, and Starcraft. Clearly the console games don't get patched like PC games, so they don't really factor into this discussion.
I want to bring to the reader's attention the horrible side-effects of NPW. NPW drastically dumbs down games. When players and forum posters complain about "oh MULEs are OP" or "Hydras are UP" it only bottlenecks the player's thinking. If you are an eSports fan than you know who SlayerSBoxeR is. BoxeR isn't famous for winning all of his championships. He is famous for HOW he did it. BoxeR took the struggling Terran race of the early 2000s and rocketed the Terran to the best race, hands down. This didn't happen because he whined to Blizzard for some kind of buff, it isn't because he started playing right after some major patch. It is because he ACCEPTED THE GAME THE WAY IT WAS. That's right, he didn't complain about imbalance, he didn't post stupid ass thread on teamliquid or battle.net. Instead he MADE IT WORK. He FOUND A WAY TO WIN. These are the major mental steps that I want to highlight.
Players that bottlenecks themselves with NPW do nothing beneficial for themselves. In fact I would go as far to say that they put a timer on their ability to play. Players who fall victim to NPW don't want to play until the patch comes out, don't want to practice "some stupid UP race". Would SlayerSBoxeR do that? Hell no. Players and fans need to pull their heads out of their own asses, and trust the Blizzard knows what they are doing. PLUS, if any of these complainers were ACTUALLY GOOD, they would know that the true imbalance in this game right now is Blizzard's shitty ass maps (yes every single map they have made, sucks, hard, except maaaaybe Shakuras, but even then..).
What I am trying to display is how community effort to get games patched or aspects nerfed never satisfies anyone. Only the people who are positively affected by the change are happy, and in Starcraft that is less than 30%, unless you play Terran. Basically, by nerfing the game once, Blizzard is forced to nerf it again. Look at what has happened to WoW. When WoW came out it was a hardcore, awesome ass MMORPG, kicked EQ2 and DaoC in the ass. Clearly there were some balance issues in vanilla WoW (rogues could backstab with swords in the early days) so they HAD to patch those to make sure people still played. But after years of player's NPW-ing the game is completely different and boring. Raids don't present the mental challenge they used to, the game is completely based on numbers not skill. Skill does show up in PvP, and I think that is why Blizzard is pushing PvP so much hard these days. However, I would go so far as to say that without as much NPW from the community, WoW would still be the fucking awesome, 40man raiding, world PvP-ing behemoth that is was. (Disclaimer: I have played WoW on and off from release. I have had each class at max level, either 60/70/80. I refuse to play cataclysm due to RL, and lack of interest.)
But now we look at RTS games. The difference with an RTS game is that NPW does NOTHING TO MAKE THEM BETTER. Starcraft 2 is a 90% balanced game imo, +/- 5%, and this means that the patches that need to happen are small, and not paradigm shifting. So many posters ask for "MULE nerfs" or "Fast Hydras" or whatever the fuck, and this is stuuuuupid. Completely changing the role of a unit would knock the carefully placed balances off their rockers. This game has been in the making for TEN+ FUCKING YEARS. I think Blizzard knows what role they want units to fill.
The driving theme of this post is to encourage members of the community to not post about what they want Blizzard to change, or how Blizzard has fucked up. I want to see a community like Brood War's, where players devise new strategies with the pieces they are given. I don't remember who said it, Nony I think, on the State of the Game Podcast, Starcraft 2 is a intelligence-limited game. Players have to find out what their opponents are doing. THAT IS THE FUCKING POINT. Blizzard shouldn't have to hold your hand, and say, "Look your opponent is making hydras, this means that you should build collosus." Frankly, Blizzard is too nice to most of the posters here. I feel like these are complain-boards, where under-skilled players go to NPW about the game. If you hit a plateau in your play, it isn't Blizzard's job to help you through it, it is yours. When you buy a chess set, the toy store doesn't come to your house every day to play with you, you have to practice on your own.
Maybe people who bought SC2 didn't realize that they would actually have to be accountable for their skill. I think a lot of new-age WoW players who are used to well-fare epics and stupid badge gear have bought SC2 thinking that they can be the best without ever thinking about what the game is. SC2 isn't your normal online game, its competitive, its fast, its completely on you. Losing in SC2 is much worse than dying in WoW or dying in CS, because death there doesn't lose you the entire game. Maybe in certain situations, but most of the time it doesn't. You have a team to rely on, resurrections to work with. SC2 doesn't have that, if you fuck up, you fucked up, that's it.
Perhaps I am ranting, perhaps I'm not. But I think that people are completely un-aware of what they are doing the community. This game will never last if people only focus on what is bad. There are so many fucking awesome things about SC2 compared to BW. Multiple Building Select O_O I can't wait to see Jaedong or Flash play SC2 so they don't have to use 90% of their godly APM for macro. Same with unit selections. People, grow up and stop whining. Blizzard has made a game that should, and will ( I feel ), be the best PC game of all time.
By whining and complaining for Blizzard to nerf or patch the game you take away from the value of the game. You make it seem that Blizzard hasn't done anything right, and that the game is bad. THIS GAME IS NOT BAD PERIOD. Blizzard - IMO you should ban everyone who complains for a nerf or patch unless you ask them.
NPW makes games not fun, it makes it not fun to be a part of the community that drives the game. And sadly, it is this community that eSports relies upon. If you want to see eSports go under the bus, then please keep posting stupid NPW threads, but don't say I didn't warn you when you get flamed into the ground. If you really want to be the best, and enjoy playing SC2, use your brain, think, be creative, and think outside the box. Maybe you will be the one to invent the new Reaver Drop or the new Vulture micro. Who knows, the game is there waiting for us to unlock it's mysteries, but instead we want them explicitly thrown in our face. Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine wine, there are so many layers and intricacies that drinking it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the wine. Wine, like Starcraft, is a fickle lover, she does not reveal her secrets to anyone, you must deem yourself worthy of understanding her secrets, but once you do, no one can stop you.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
LOL to quoting the ENTIRE OP!
Anyway, there is a fast and simple reply to the OP. SC is a complex game where Blizzard has to mind two opposing interests: overall game balance and race uniqueness. Something this complex and this young ought to be a little rough on the edges. No matter how much the layer of balancing and rechecking was done during development phase, The main purpose of the nerfs and patches is precisely to ensure that the game is decided by the skills and understanding of the many possibilities of the game and proacting/reacting accordingly, and not on the intrinsic infallibility of a certain unit/BO. RTS, after all, are experiential games, which involves almost infinite sets of possibilities. And this experience is derived most importantly from the community. Blizzard's task is to exercise thorough judgment in determining which QQs are player/lack-of-skill based, and which have the benefit reason and to effect due changes without being populist or reactive.
OTOH, there is gold at the core of this OP. Boxer and FruitSeller found ways to be the best at the game AS IT IS. Users/Players should also be responsible enough to exhaust all possibilities, preferably more in terms of practice than theorycraft, before complaining. xd
why do people in this thread CONSIDER that CAPITALIZING words in ther POSTS, is a good way to EMPHASIZE an ARGUMENT.
or are they having trouble controlling the volume of their voice like Austin Powers?
While nerfs, patches and whining do change a game. It is something that is a part of esports thanks to its growing popularity. Any game that is as new as SC2 at all relies as much on a metagame as SC2 does will have it.
Give it time once the game ages and settles it will die down.
This is a case of should we balance the game at which level, pro?, noob? 2v2? 3v3? or 4v4? or go for all of them. You pretty much have to pick one of those. a game like sc2 cannot be balanced at all levels. At the noob level the race with physically stronger units is going to be the best. I dont want to really go to much into this but basically. They need to focus the balance somewhere and just minority account for other areas. as much as some people like 1v1s there are people who buy the game solely for the 2v2s.
Thanks for your concerns, Adun
I'm also thinking that constantly patching the game is for the best. Sure players won't be able to completely master their race because things are constantly changing but this forces players to bring new build orders or units into the game which changes the game up.
Blizzard will do whatever is best for their game. Which will most likely be whatever brings them in the most new players which I'd assume will probably be team games or lower league players.
On December 17 2010 04:01 funk100 wrote: like the thread alot, BUUUUUUUT i think that there should still be threads and ideas on ways to change SC2 for the better in terms of design, playability and watchability because one of them, maybe, just might strike gold
yes but complaining right now seems like the norm rather than the exception so pretty much every balance thread gets glazed over by good players.
Chronald, you're my hero. Its not only on bnet forums (obviously its worse there), but it happens here too. The whining is so bad that the vast majority of decent players just avoid the strategy section all together.
On December 17 2010 04:06 mahnini wrote: yes but complaining right now seems like the norm rather than the exception so pretty much every balance thread gets glazed over by good players.
Which is something that is clearly an issue for TeamLiquid, considering the most recently State of the Game.
The players who really develop this game have a bad taste in their mouth about TeamLiquid strategy forums and general forums. They post something, and get flamed, bugged and generally spat at for their opinions by people who have much less experience and knowledge than them.
Hopefully the new changes that TL is making will ease this burden from top players and minds, but until then we have to wade through flames and trolls to find the gems in the rough of each strategy post.
Also, in no way do I consider myself the end-all for knowledge in any area. I don't want to insight rage at myself with this post, instead I wanted to start a discussion, should have put [D] around the title...
AND yes I LIKE capital LETTERS. It ISN'T an INSULT to the READER, I JUST do IT out of HABIT. Sorry ^.^
This thread is epic, I couldn't agree with it more. Not to say there haven't been a few good balance threads on TL from well-known players intelligently discussing game aspects, but the vast majority have been gold level and lower players complaining about whatever opponent strategy they just lost to 5 minutes before they made the thread. There are still several per day that the mods insta-close.
The OP admits the game isn't balanced and that more patching is needed, his point is that you should STFU about it. No one is saying don't give feedback to blizzard, no one is saying don't analyze the game, the OP's point is stop the random whining because it's really degrading the community.
On December 17 2010 04:01 funk100 wrote: like the thread alot, BUUUUUUUT i think that there should still be threads and ideas on ways to change SC2 for the better in terms of design, playability and watchability because one of them, maybe, just might strike gold
Then post it on the Blizzard forums which are the forums that Blizzard employees read who in the end decide on how to change a Blizzard game.
On December 17 2010 04:22 TheToast wrote: This thread is epic, I couldn't agree with it more. Not to say there haven't been a few good balance threads on TL from well-known players intelligently discussing game aspects, but the vast majority have been gold level and lower players complaining about whatever opponent strategy they just lost to 5 minutes before they made the thread. There are still several per day that the mods insta-close.
The OP admits the game isn't balanced and that more patching is needed, his point is that you should STFU about it. No one is saying don't give feedback to blizzard, no one is saying don't analyze the game, the OP's point is stop the random whining because it's really degrading the community.
Seriously grocery stores should just start calling their dairy aisles the Starcraft 2 section.
"Hello sir I am looking for some cheese"
"Why yes lol you can find that in our SC2 aisle"
PVP - see who can 4gate the fastest
ZvT - Lololol!! I just think I will make a shitload of banelings and hope for the best. WHy should I work on my micro when I can just suicide a bunch of blings all day
TvT - just boring as shit. turtle in with tanks + turrets and see who can out macro each other. the person who actually plays aggressively gets shit on. it should be the other way around. I like playing aggressively and theres nothing more frustrating than playing someone whos turtling in and trying to make their base look like they work for the city of Manhattan civic engineering
TvP: this is actually kind of fun
but seriously the person who tries to go in with a strategic mindset, going for a fun back-and-forth game is usually the one who gg's
I still love this game but its so annoying sometimes. Its like day9 taught everyone too well
3. NPW does not break the game. It makes the game more popular in a sense. Every game has patches, every game has nerfs. Think SC1 and the many patches and nerfs happened through the 12 years. It is a challenge for the designers to make the game "balanced". However, the definition of balanced is not really a state where everyone is content. It is a state where the most number of players will be able to accept it.
no its not. the game is balanced when its balanced. it has nothing to do with the opinion of most of the players.
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
lol nice joke.
You realized the 3 gate VR all in was nerfed purely on the whim of the complaints of 3 players before it ever saw tournament play right? Not many T's even attempted to figure out how to counter it, and before anyone could even begin to figure out anything, that one particular strat (which is utterly easy to see coming might I add) was nerfed into the ground.
On December 17 2010 01:40 Millitron wrote: Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
You're comparing a game where both sides have the same pieces and abilities to a game with 3 distinct sets of pieces and abilities.
This argument would only be valid in the cases where people complain about Z being too strong vs. Z, T being too strong vs. T, or P being too strong vs. P. People have said that these matchups can be boring, but I don't believe any race is stronger than itself.
To the OP - Toyota made cars with brakes that didn't work. Microsoft made ubiquitous software that had huge security flaws. Yes, many people got scared and complained about these - even those with no knowledge of cars or software. Sometimes large, reputable companies make mistakes that need to be fixed.
No, Plexa is right. People keep posting poop like This from the other day on TL. Threads like this have no point, no one from Blizzard are going to see these threads and spontaneously decide to radically change the game, they are not going to provide the basis for a suddenly balanced game, they are not ideas that are going to suddenly garner mass appeal, they are simply a waste of electrons. And there are dozens of worse threads in the strategy section.
This kind of nonsense really does degrade the community. It encumbers an environment of intelligent well though out discussion and forces TLer's to sift through dozens of poor threads to find good ones.
I agree completly with OP, you are right.. I played sc1 from the start even before bw and I remmeber there was 0 whine about imba at all... I miss that. however I also remember never being frustrated with the game.. there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with sc2 and I cannot pinpoint it, and I think that may be what people are picking up on...
also like you said (OP) the maps are really really really bad and contribute massively to frustration.
one thing to add. whining on forums from bad players is pointless..if you are under 2900 pts and havent played in tournaments you have no idea about how balanced teh game actually is... there should be some place for good solid players to voice their concerns.. but that is another discussion
On December 17 2010 04:30 gg all-in wrote: Seriously grocery stores should just start calling their dairy aisles the Starcraft 2 section.
"Hello sir I am looking for some cheese"
"Why yes lol you can find that in our SC2 aisle"
PVP - see who can 4gate the fastest
ZvT - Lololol!! I just think I will make a shitload of banelings and hope for the best. WHy should I work on my micro when I can just suicide a bunch of blings all day
TvT - just boring as shit. turtle in with tanks + turrets and see who can out macro each other. the person who actually plays aggressively gets shit on. it should be the other way around. I like playing aggressively and theres nothing more frustrating than playing someone whos turtling in and trying to make their base look like they work for the city of Manhattan civic engineering
TvP: this is actually kind of fun
but seriously the person who tries to go in with a strategic mindset, going for a fun back-and-forth game is usually the one who gg's
I still love this game but its so annoying sometimes. Its like day9 taught everyone too well
Thanks for showing a good example of what the OP is talking about.
Learn to play better and SC2 is not at all like you describe.
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
lol nice joke.
You realized the 3 gate VR all in was nerfed purely on the whim of the complaints of 3 players before it ever saw tournament play right? Not many T's even attempted to figure out how to counter it, and before anyone could even begin to figure out anything, that one particular strat (which is utterly easy to see coming might I add) was nerfed into the ground.
I actually MOSTLY agree with the OP, but this is blatantly inaccurate. It may have been a few players, but according to David Kim it was from ACTUAL REPLAYS and the player was MakaPrime. Now I know some people might look down upon this, but unlike 99% of qq and whining, he provided a replay with the timing attack presumably showing that even with scouting it couldn't be reasonably countered. Now I haven't seen this replay so I can't know for sure, but if you can get a charged voidray into a T base before he has stim AND have units to support it and defend against timing pushes it MIGHT be OP, but this is never the level of discussion of people on forums.
On December 17 2010 01:40 Millitron wrote: Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
You're comparing a game where both sides have the same pieces and abilities to a game with 3 distinct sets of pieces and abilities.
This argument would only be valid in the cases where people complain about Z being too strong vs. Z, T being too strong vs. T, or P being too strong vs. P. People have said that these matchups can be boring, but I don't believe any race is stronger than itself.
To the OP - Toyota made cars with brakes that didn't work. Microsoft made ubiquitous software that had huge security flaws. Yes, many people got scared and complained about these - even those with no knowledge of cars or software. Sometimes large, reputable companies make mistakes that need to be fixed.
The brake pads were a manufacturing mistake, not design I believe. Windows (which is what I assume you are referring to) is a clear example design based issues. Microsoft treats their customers differently that Blizzard. If you have an issue with Windows, you can call Microsoft say "Hey my (_____) isn't working and you have to fix it". However this is because there is little user innovation with this product. The innovation comes from developers who create static applications that modularly extend the operating system. With Starcraft 2 you can't call Blizzard and be like, "My 1 gate FE versus Terran isn't working, fix it" the person on the phone will tell you to get better, or read their forums or something. (I might try this to see what happens). Yet players refuse to accept that the issues that Blizzard has to fix requires massive amounts of raw data, months of planning and testing, and feedback.
Feeback is the focus of this post. The feedback we are giving Blizzard is terrible, horrible, and atrocious. If we want this game to be the best, we have to help Blizzard make it that way, not expect them to do it because we complain about it. Attitude is what determines outcomes. If you want SC2 to be full of whiny, annoying kids like Halo or WoW continue to complain and NPW. If you want SC2 to be full of awesome, smart, competitive nerds, then shape up and have something important to say, or don't say anything.
On December 17 2010 01:40 Millitron wrote: Great OP. I've pointed out similar ideas in other threads, but never really wrote up a whole thing this size.
You don't see chess grandmasters saying "Knight is OP, Blizz better nerf it, and holyshit better buff bishops"
Edit: spoiler'd the quote cause its huge.
You're comparing a game where both sides have the same pieces and abilities to a game with 3 distinct sets of pieces and abilities.
This argument would only be valid in the cases where people complain about Z being too strong vs. Z, T being too strong vs. T, or P being too strong vs. P. People have said that these matchups can be boring, but I don't believe any race is stronger than itself.
To the OP - Toyota made cars with brakes that didn't work. Microsoft made ubiquitous software that had huge security flaws. Yes, many people got scared and complained about these - even those with no knowledge of cars or software. Sometimes large, reputable companies make mistakes that need to be fixed.
I am very amused by the large amount of people who just ignore the points made in the OP. it's stated very clearly thy yes thee are issues and that there is some fixing to be done. The issue is not the balancing though but the unhelpful and harmful nature of whining about how certain matchups or units are difficult. The metagame changes rapidly and instead of claiming that TvT isn't interesting, perhaps spend the time testing new strategies that could change the matchup for the better...
It's not about the game being balanced/unbalanced but instead about whining that is not what the sc community use to be about. Let's make a change and use our minds instead of our knee jerk reactions.
Brilliant rant. I've been wanting to post something like this for quite some time now. Blizzard needs to really ignore the entirety of their little "community" they've got fouling up the internet. Let's just hope that those people never figure out that this site exists. In the meantime, Blizzard should stick to watching replays of good players' game. If we don't balance around the competitive level, what do noobs have to aspire to???
EDIT: Damn read the first page. They've broken through!!!
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
lol nice joke.
You realized the 3 gate VR all in was nerfed purely on the whim of the complaints of 3 players before it ever saw tournament play right? Not many T's even attempted to figure out how to counter it, and before anyone could even begin to figure out anything, that one particular strat (which is utterly easy to see coming might I add) was nerfed into the ground.
I actually MOSTLY agree with the OP, but this is blatantly inaccurate. It may have been a few players, but according to David Kim it was from ACTUAL REPLAYS and the player was MakaPrime. Now I know some people might look down upon this, but unlike 99% of qq and whining, he provided a replay with the timing attack presumably showing that even with scouting it couldn't be reasonably countered. Now I haven't seen this replay so I can't know for sure, but if you can get a charged voidray into a T base before he has stim AND have units to support it and defend against timing pushes it MIGHT be OP, but this is never the level of discussion of people on forums.
The 3 gate VR all in Maka was talking about was easily scouted by the fact that each and every T now aday always scans on the 2nd 50 energy or they float a fac into/near the P base to see if he did an early Robo. No early Robo + Only 1/2 Gates means some kind of a tech cheese, which is 99.9% of the time is a Stargate cheese. This is also easily scouted by any early poke that will see that you HAVE NO SENTRY.
It was changed on the whim of Maka's input alone, with absolutely no testing by any other players. No one even attempted this kind of bs in a tournament level play. In fact, VRs at the time were considered so bad vs T that they were considered the easiest strat to beat for T. And yet VRs still get nerfed because ONE player, no matter how fucking good he is or who is name is, submitted some replays and said "this shit is OP, fix it".
This is a perfect example of what the OP is talking about. Rather then allowing the game to take its course and see if people can counter it, Blizzard listens because its Maka, then nerfs that shit immediately (in part also because VRs were causing trouble in team games also).
Not to sound pessimistic here, but too bad that is impossible, as for every smart, informative and important post, there are 50 whine posts on the bnet forums.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
lol nice joke.
You realized the 3 gate VR all in was nerfed purely on the whim of the complaints of 3 players before it ever saw tournament play right? Not many T's even attempted to figure out how to counter it, and before anyone could even begin to figure out anything, that one particular strat (which is utterly easy to see coming might I add) was nerfed into the ground.
I actually MOSTLY agree with the OP, but this is blatantly inaccurate. It may have been a few players, but according to David Kim it was from ACTUAL REPLAYS and the player was MakaPrime. Now I know some people might look down upon this, but unlike 99% of qq and whining, he provided a replay with the timing attack presumably showing that even with scouting it couldn't be reasonably countered. Now I haven't seen this replay so I can't know for sure, but if you can get a charged voidray into a T base before he has stim AND have units to support it and defend against timing pushes it MIGHT be OP, but this is never the level of discussion of people on forums.
The 3 gate VR all in Maka was talking about was easily scouted by the fact that each and every T now aday always scans on the 2nd 50 energy or they float a fac into/near the P base to see if he did an early Robo. No early Robo + Only 1/2 Gates means some kind of a tech cheese, which is 99.9% of the time is a Stargate cheese. This is also easily scouted by any early poke that will see that you HAVE NO SENTRY.
It was changed on the whim of Maka's input alone, with absolutely no testing by any other players. No one even attempted this kind of bs in a tournament level play. In fact, VRs at the time were considered so bad vs T that they were considered the easiest strat to beat for T. And yet VRs still get nerfed because ONE player, no matter how fucking good he is or who is name is, submitted some replays and said "this shit is OP, fix it".
"Maka's input" was merely an excuse used to cover the truth.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
How then, did Brood War get 10+ plus patches and achieved good balance?
What Tyler was talking about was AFTER all the patches the community decided, majority of it anyway, that the game was as balanced as it could possibly be. But before all that was a era similar to the era today.
If you honestly think that in SC and BW early days people didnt complain then you were never there to begin with.
Valid complaints are worth it, since they will shape the game for the better, having to go through countless badly worded complaints and balance suggestions is worth it if we can get a game that is as balanced and fun as BW is in a couple of years.
If everyone sits on their hands, nothing will get done, they do listen to feedback, they have done so since Diablo 1.
Where I agree with the OP I think that pitching balance ideas does not have to be the same as whinning. If some people believe the game is unbalanced, can explain valid reasons as to why, and pitch ideas on how to fix it without complaining about how unfair it is or how many more games they would win if it were more balanced then I believe teamliquid.net is a good forum to voice there opinion. Blizzard is making an effort to listen to the consumers so why not take advantage of their hard work.
On December 17 2010 05:08 Tyree wrote: How then, did Brood War get 10+ plus patches and achieved good balance?
What Tyler was talking about was AFTER all the patches the community decided, majority of it anyway, that the game was as balanced as it could possibly be. But before all that was a era similar to the era today.
If you honestly think that in SC and BW early days people didnt complain then you were never there to begin with.
Valid complaints are worth it, since they will shape the game for the better, having to go through countless badly worded complaints and balance suggestions is worth it if we can get a game that is as balanced and fun as BW is in a couple of years.
If everyone sits on their hands, nothing will get done, they do listen to feedback, they have done so since Diablo 1.
Yeah except in BW there was legitimate proof of imbalances. You would have people massing Wraiths Scouts early on dominating people due to their ridiculous air to ground damage, or Z in early SC1 days with their bajillion larvae that spawned at lightning speeds, just running over everyone. And it's not like this went on just for a few weeks, Blizzard allowed stuff like this to run on for months before they would even do anything.
In SC2, people are complaining about shit before other top level players are given a chance to figure out how to beat it. Also, people (in the next example, Z players) complained about stuff that makes no sense to complain about, like Helions and Reapers (after the first nerf), absolutely screwing T for a long time till they all said "fuck this" and 2 rax SCV rushed Z every game.
I do believe that Blizzard should be active in the balancing of the game since the metagame in SC2 is developing at a much faster pace than SC1, but people need to stop jumping the gun sometimes.
On December 17 2010 05:08 Tyree wrote: How then, did Brood War get 10+ plus patches and achieved good balance?
What Tyler was talking about was AFTER all the patches the community decided, majority of it anyway, that the game was as balanced as it could possibly be. But before all that was a era similar to the era today.
If you honestly think that in SC and BW early days people didnt complain then you were never there to begin with.
Valid complaints are worth it, since they will shape the game for the better, having to go through countless badly worded complaints and balance suggestions is worth it if we can get a game that is as balanced and fun as BW is in a couple of years.
If everyone sits on their hands, nothing will get done, they do listen to feedback, they have done so since Diablo 1.
I think if we asked Tyler which era had more NPW he would say today. Don't forget that Blizzard isn't a tiny dev company anymore, they have shittons of cash, and much more experience making these kinds of games. SC2 was way more balanced than SC1 on release.
Again, it isn't them listening to feedback that is bad, IT IS THE FEEDBACK. When nothing but poop and garbage is what they hear, that is what they make. Balance threads turn into flame wars and troll dens so fast its laughable. I'd love to see a Blizzard employee wade through 100 pages of flames and trolls to find one good post about what should actually be done with a unit/MU.
Valid complaints are 100% the best thing we can do. Find a VALID complaint. And yes, I didn't use forums when SC1 first came out, I was too young to really be hardcore about it (10 years old) so I don't know how heavy the QQ was. But using my knowledge now, I can bet it wasn't as bad. There simply wasn't the volume of expectation at the time. Blizzard's name really means quality gaming now. Players want the best from day 1 from Blizzard. Since they have to be so concerned with keeping a positive public image, they have to listen to garbage and trolls to keep them playing and paying (in WoW's case).
This isn't a complaint against Blizzard, or TeamLiquid, its a complaint against the community. Stop trollings, stop being stupid and most of all, STOP acting like you know everything. All of a sudden you will actually enjoy the game that you spent $60 and tons of your time playing.
As I have said, I don't make this game, I don't pretend to, and I don't pretend to be the one-stop knowledge shop. Instead I come as a community member begging everyone else to get their act together before we all go down on a burning ship.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Did you play during Burning Crusade? Badge gear and wellfare epics are a direct result of community NPW.
On December 17 2010 01:51 Fa1nT wrote: Whole post is pointless. Blizzard does NOT listen to crying. They listen for FEEDBACK on things that many people consider OP, then put extensive testing to those things. They only get changed if Blizzard themselves deem it necessary, not because people complained.
Take Marauders. They were bitched about since beta, and still are. They are not getting changed though because terran need them vs protoss ground or roach based armies.
lol nice joke.
You realized the 3 gate VR all in was nerfed purely on the whim of the complaints of 3 players before it ever saw tournament play right? Not many T's even attempted to figure out how to counter it, and before anyone could even begin to figure out anything, that one particular strat (which is utterly easy to see coming might I add) was nerfed into the ground.
I actually MOSTLY agree with the OP, but this is blatantly inaccurate. It may have been a few players, but according to David Kim it was from ACTUAL REPLAYS and the player was MakaPrime. Now I know some people might look down upon this, but unlike 99% of qq and whining, he provided a replay with the timing attack presumably showing that even with scouting it couldn't be reasonably countered. Now I haven't seen this replay so I can't know for sure, but if you can get a charged voidray into a T base before he has stim AND have units to support it and defend against timing pushes it MIGHT be OP, but this is never the level of discussion of people on forums.
The 3 gate VR all in Maka was talking about was easily scouted by the fact that each and every T now aday always scans on the 2nd 50 energy or they float a fac into/near the P base to see if he did an early Robo. No early Robo + Only 1/2 Gates means some kind of a tech cheese, which is 99.9% of the time is a Stargate cheese. This is also easily scouted by any early poke that will see that you HAVE NO SENTRY.
It was changed on the whim of Maka's input alone, with absolutely no testing by any other players. No one even attempted this kind of bs in a tournament level play. In fact, VRs at the time were considered so bad vs T that they were considered the easiest strat to beat for T. And yet VRs still get nerfed because ONE player, no matter how fucking good he is or who is name is, submitted some replays and said "this shit is OP, fix it".
"Maka's input" was merely an excuse used to cover the truth.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Yes. The patch the roach range buff came in confirmed this for me. Reapers got nerfed all to hell, all rax first builds were rendered null and void, and they buffed an already fairly strong unit (Roach), because a few zergs whined loud enough.
So you QQ about QQers, telling them to shut up and just learn to play the game as it is presented to us, then in the same post you QQ about the blizzard maps and how they fuck up the game and every single one is horrible - WTF!? if you follow YOUR VERY OWN advice don't QQ about the maps, LEARN TO PLAY ON THESE MAPS, as this is your whole point. so hypocritical.
QQing will always be, most of the time it will be pointless, sometimes it will help to balance the game. The ones that are helping to improve the game are worth the million stupid ones which aren't taken into real consideration anyway. Why do you even pay attention to the QQing? just play the game and don't care if it upsets you so much. If you just play the game as you stated you won't read any QQing. You contradict yourself so bad with the map bitching that you cannot be taken seriously. Your post is as useless as whining about slow Hydralisks, maybe even more useless.
While the OP makes sense, I don't think it will be very effective in its goals. Instead I would hope that Blizzard developers learn how to sift through all the BS and only use the relevant feedback.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Yes. The patch the roach range buff came in confirmed this for me. Reapers got nerfed all to hell, all rax first builds were rendered null and void, and they buffed an already fairly strong unit (Roach), because a few zergs whined loud enough.
Because there is absolutely no chance that they made the changes the felt were good, or needed, based on anything but QQ.
Trust me, people were whining about balance in videogames since the first arcade version of SF2: WW was out when Guile was killing people left and right
When the Rocket Launcher in Quake 1 was insanely overpowered, then made really weak in Quake 2.
The same happened in Starcraft, but since so few actually were on forums back then few remember it, they just like to pretend that Brood War came out and Blizzard just magically balanced it with no input from very good players.
I am sure "QQ" was made popular on WoW or 4chan, but actually whining about balance in games has been here way before WoW ever got released. For some reason people just want to pretend that everything was rosy before but now, since that demon hell spawn game called World of Warcraft came out, every gamer turned into a blabbering idiot.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Yes. The patch the roach range buff came in confirmed this for me. Reapers got nerfed all to hell, all rax first builds were rendered null and void, and they buffed an already fairly strong unit (Roach), because a few zergs whined loud enough.
Hehehe this is amusing and is as much of the reason why there's so much balance whine.
When people make posts like this they're essentially trolling to get people to start arguing balance. What's worse is they often don't realize it so aren't even capable of holding themselves back.
So long as you ignore reality, data, and player opinions you too can make a post to incite balance whine/'discussion'!
I don't know, I don't quite agree. If you filter out the ridiculous claims (remove mules, nerf marauders etc.) the community demands are usually quite reasonable. Reapers were broken, 60 HP scv all-ins were broken, warpgate rushes were broken, thor/PF repair abuse is still broken until the next patch.
What I don't like at all, however, is that Blizzard overnerfs all the time and doesn't mind having useless units or abilities. Reapers are now pretty much useless (except for the occasional scout), neural parasite is also not worth it anymore, hunter-seeker missile is also not worth it, fungal was about to be destroyed though thankfully was not, ultras and archons are still so-so. I really don't understand why they won't try to fix these potentially very cool (from the spectator's point of view) things.
Yeah, your kinda right, although you seem to be a next victim of trolls. It's bad that people favor whining so much, instead of chillin and playing the game. That's partially why like 0,001% people playing are pros, oh wait, they whine too, maybe less than a regular user, but their whining harm the state of the game even more, because everyone look up on them, and start bitching about the same stuff.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Yes. The patch the roach range buff came in confirmed this for me. Reapers got nerfed all to hell, all rax first builds were rendered null and void, and they buffed an already fairly strong unit (Roach), because a few zergs whined loud enough.
First off, roaches weren't "fairly strong" by any means. They were easily one of the worst 2 supply units in the game.
2nd of all, nobody was asking for a range buff. The community in general was thrown off by their +1 range change and a lot of people thought it wouldn't do a whole lot for the unit or the race.
The actual changes implemented are a great testimate to Blizzard not giving in to the bitching.
It's sad but true, Blizzard listens to QQ and WILL change the game to cater to QQs even if it means sacrificing balance. Sometimes they try to do both, but that obviously isn't optimal. It's even worse in WoW, as QQ = King.
Yea, its true, they do have to listen to some QQ, now that they are partners with acivision one their main interests is selling the next expansion. You have to give the customers what they want. As unfortunate as it is, since the majority of the population are QQers.
You ppl are delusional. Stop saying they changed wow cause of qq. If they actually did that no1 would even play it anymore cause it would be completly ruined. Do you honestly think blizzard can't think for themselves?
Yes. The patch the roach range buff came in confirmed this for me. Reapers got nerfed all to hell, all rax first builds were rendered null and void, and they buffed an already fairly strong unit (Roach), because a few zergs whined loud enough.
First off, roaches weren't "fairly strong" by any means. They were easily one of the worst 2 supply units in the game.
2nd of all, nobody was asking for a range buff. The community in general was thrown off by their +1 range change and a lot of people thought it wouldn't do a whole lotb for the unit bor the race.
The actual changes implemented are a great testimate to Blizzard not giving in to the bitching.
Wrong example to use.
Reapers were also changed past the build time nerf as a concession to how broken they were in team games and not for their role in ZvT.
First of all, the title for this silly thread should be "Why Whining Ruins Games", because not many people are going to agree that nerfs and patches ruin games. If you think so maybe you should go back to playing vanilla SC with 150min spawning pool and whatever else.
So what the OP really is is a long-winded rant about how "whining", and apparently no distinction is made by the OP between said whining and constructive criticism, "ruins" games. Spattered throughout this drivel is also a load of ALL CAPS gripes and baseless comparisons to other games, most notably WoW, which isn't even remotely a competitive game on the level of SC2. I see that the OP lists such distinguished hallmarks of the esports community like Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros amongst his portfolio of competitive experience, that might explain where these bizarre comparisons are coming from.
Now, to be fair, hidden in that waffle is some good stuff about player mentality and how self-improvement is really a better attitude than blaming the game, but the way the OP is phrased it gives off this viewpoint that any and all criticism, however valid, of the game is detrimental to the game and the community. This is so far away from the truth I scarcely know where to begin. Valid criticisms help the game evolve into a more stable and competitive state. I'm pretty sure I speak for more than myself when I say that no one's really interested in watching marine-SCV all-ins for 12 more years. The problem arises when distinguishing the valid criticisms from the baseless whining and outright flaming and stupidity. So really the thread should be called "Why Stupidity Ruins Games". Which could then be called "Why Stupidity is Bad".
And that's a topic so obvious it hardly requires a 11+ paragraph OP and a whole thread. Just make a thread saying stupid posts are not allowed. Oh wait, we already have that. So what was the point of this thread again?
Want to know what I've said multiple times, OP? I've said "What the hell is Blizzard doing, why are they making these significant changes instead of doing minor tweaks?"
When people say "nerf mules" what do you think that means OP? Does that mean "change them entirely so they perform a different role" or does it mean "tweak them so that certain strategies aren't so easy and there is more consideration required". To me, it means the latter. A "mule nerf" would be something like... start the CC on 0 energy. Make the OC upgrade require gas (even 25 or 50 gas), make it cost more minerals, make it require an ebay, make a mule cost 60 or 75 energy. Many small changes that don't change the role of the mule, or how it works, but they do impact things like a terrans ability to all in with ALL his SCVs while still producing marines back at home, thus slightly nerfing the marine/SCV all-in while not breaking it or breaking mules. To buff stalkers, give them an extra damage bonus vs armoured (+1 extra maybe), just tiny changes.
Not things like "knock 10 seconds off phoenix build time and fuck up fungal growth" (the latter obviously got reverted). Or: nerf bunkers, nerf reaper build time and then nerf the reaper ability to get speed so they become entirely useless and only used once in 100 games, and then only one for scouting.
Just because Blizzard overreact doesn't mean people shouldn't whine, even if they say something needs "fixing", it can be as simple as a minor tweak. No one is asking for the entire function of a unit to be changed (which Blizz did with the reaper).
Also the maps: many/most of them are terrible, which leads me on to...
Blizzard designed and balanced the game and maps based around internal work and the beta test. Things have moved on since theyn. Maybe there should be some major changes to certain things in light of the changes in the way the game is played. Blizzard may have had ideas about what they wanted units to do, but that doesn't mean that units are necessarily being used in that way. This means the maps are often horribly broken because they simply weren't designed around November/December SC2 play, they were designed around maybe June SC2 play or even earlier in the beta/alpha. They need 'patching' too, and are part of the balance problem.
I can kind of agree with this, but at the same time it's true that patches do make the game a lot better. The next incoming content patch is going to add a lot more depth to the game.. I honestly don't mind balance changes, so long as they aren't too harsh.
Good points to a degree, but perfection is the eventual goal. If SC2 goes on for as long as BW, and the patches are even SLIGHTLY positive, this game will be as close to perfect as possible in a few years.
you say blizzard has been making the game for 10+ years. of those 10 years only 2 years of actual development was done. because of staff relocation to wowc.
you say patchs dont fix balance. tell that to ppl who played bw 1.0 too 1.9. patchs fixed many things.
i however agree with u saying to many wow players spamming the forums about stupid changes.
you say that all this whinning is going to make this game crash and burn... i disagree... do u actually think blizzard listens to all the whine threads? they take it with a grain of salt and so should u frankly. ppl whine. big deal... since vanilla, this game is way more balanced. blizzard is doing awesome.
you say your OP is about trying to get the community to stop whining as much... u say u posted it on the blizzard forum... and thats awesome. im happy u didnt originally post it here because TL staff lock balance threads 10 times a day here. sooner or later all the whiners will get the hint and stop posting stupid shit on TL. now in regards to blizzard forums: anyone who actually reads those things is in the wrong forums completely. this is where to be.
TLDR: if u like to argue with retards and whiners. troll the blizzard forums. otherwise just use these forums which are awesome. 10x less whine here. blizzard takes the forums with a grain of salt. woudlnt worry about whine threads "burning the game"
On December 17 2010 01:35 SubtleArt wrote: OP obviously played Protoss when beta started and switched to Terran.
Are you really gonna be naive enough to assume a game this complex is going to be perfectly balanced barely months after its release? Maybe you don't realize it, but patches aren't random changes that a developer makes after hours of calculations and theory crafting. The game is balanced almost entirely on the feedback of its players.
Now, I agree that people who don't know what they're talking about are useless when they complain but I find it completely ridiculous when top players who dedicate their life to the game like Idra, Ret, Nony, and Artosis + Show Spoiler +
one of those may or may not be a joke
give their feedback and address things that need to be fixed or are overpowered, and then clueless masses get on them about how they're wrong and how they're horrible and how there must be absolutely nothing wrong with the game.
Oh well i suppose we are opposites. I hate it when a pro QQ's or "gives feedback" and then everyone jumps on the band wagon. People have a right to their opinion, even if it is against someone of a higher skill level. Now I'm not saying, "all plats should complain," but getting annoyed by ones opinion is lame and in a sense arrogant.
i for one has whined way too much at sc2 compared to pointing out its good things
absolutely love this game but i must admit i dont say it enough. me whining on bnet or the gameplay balance etc is just a way of showing how much i care about it i guess. i guess my point here is that if u see someone talk negativity about the game it doesnt necessarily mean they dont like it or is losing hope, could just mean they love it alot and wants it to get improved
coming from BW and analysing tons of replays u get the mindset of expecting things to be perfect and u only point out things that are mistakes or is bad so you can improve your play. i guess this still kinda caught on to me in my personality to do this on a daily basis revolving anything that comes across me
im sure blizzard are doing their very best and im sure they appriciate even the negative feedback as long as it got some valid points in it so its not some rambling troll/ragequitter :p
On December 17 2010 05:26 Tyree wrote: Trust me, people were whining about balance in videogames since the first arcade version of SF2: WW was out when Guile was killing people left and right
When the Rocket Launcher in Quake 1 was insanely overpowered, then made really weak in Quake 2.
The same happened in Starcraft, but since so few actually were on forums back then few remember it, they just like to pretend that Brood War came out and Blizzard just magically balanced it with no input from very good players.
I am sure "QQ" was made popular on WoW or 4chan, but actually whining about balance in games has been here way before WoW ever got released. For some reason people just want to pretend that everything was rosy before but now, since that demon hell spawn game called World of Warcraft came out, every gamer turned into a blabbering idiot.
Whining, etc, has been around ever since bulletin boards were available, but WoW really brought in a large portion of the public (and a ton of morons) into gaming. Coupled with the fact that the devs were willing to cave in to the largest and loudest group meant that the paradigm re: game balance had shifted largely in favor of these idiots
afaik, Boxer actually used to play protoss. After reaver and dropships got nerfed, he switched to Terran. Not entirely sure but i remember this from an interview or something.
I completely agree with the OP. So often I alt-f4 TL because of the unbearably stupid comments some people make. Like the "Hey Listen!" thread, some people really need to learn respect and humility
On December 17 2010 05:53 shawty wrote: I completely agree with the OP. So often I alt-f4 TL because of the unbearably stupid comments some people make. Like the "Hey Listen!" thread, some people really need to learn respect and humility
The Hey! Listen! thread was a polite and amusing thread about posting etiquette imploring users to think more critically before posting.
This thread is a long-winded ALL CAPS rant about stuff that "ruins" games.
Chronald speaks the truth, this patching for the pubsters is what ruined the game I played before this, america's army, and it ruins a lot of other games. Eventually the competitive community get tired of it, sponsors who put up big money for tournaments will pull out of an unstable game that is constantly being patched, and most of all, the game will become not fun anymore as most of the original mechanics of the game will be taken out, and will seem like a shitty generic version of a game that use to be.... Just what I've seen from past experiences.. The tone of a community can change a game quite a bit.
All it took was one person to start crying with a good reason to make blizzard patch an error, now every stupid kid in the world believe they are right when they call X or Y , OP or UP. Some people are able to point out flaws, as you said the game is ours to discover, but we're not only gonna discover rainbows of fun and perfectly balanced strategies, there's also a lot of imbalanced crap people will come up with in the future. I do have to agree that most of the NPW is useless, biased, and gives an overall bad feeling about the community. But blizzard keeps saying they want players feedback for their games, so we're gonna see that kind of crap forever. A simple solution would be to create forums only for NPW, that could be useful even on TL. NPW threads would go there, if you dont wanna see them just dont go in those forums, it would keep the good forums clean. Something that would be good to add to this (but I doubt that's possible) would be to have moderators keep an eye on that forum to kind of "filter" or "separate" who's just crying huge tears of rage at their computer, from the people who actually give well thought out ideas to improve the game. This would be more of an official blizzard forum thing tho, but they could eventually have a private forum where only the smart posters are invited in to discuss game balance on a neutral ground, without interference of the stupid people who just cant help it and post retarded things everyday. Because lets face it, there are smart people in this world, and there are stupid people, and this is just a wild guess but when it comes to game balance stupid people aren't all that useful.
On December 17 2010 05:26 Tyree wrote: Trust me, people were whining about balance in videogames since the first arcade version of SF2: WW was out when Guile was killing people left and right
When the Rocket Launcher in Quake 1 was insanely overpowered, then made really weak in Quake 2.
The same happened in Starcraft, but since so few actually were on forums back then few remember it, they just like to pretend that Brood War came out and Blizzard just magically balanced it with no input from very good players.
I am sure "QQ" was made popular on WoW or 4chan, but actually whining about balance in games has been here way before WoW ever got released. For some reason people just want to pretend that everything was rosy before but now, since that demon hell spawn game called World of Warcraft came out, every gamer turned into a blabbering idiot.
Whining, etc, has been around ever since bulletin boards were available, but WoW really brought in a large portion of the public (and a ton of morons) into gaming. Coupled with the fact that the devs were willing to cave in to the largest and loudest group meant that the paradigm re: game balance had shifted largely in favor of these idiots
This x1000. To people who don't understand how the gaming industry has changed, leading to how developers have different perspectives in balance and community input, read this.
The ironic thing about his slayersboxer arguement is that boxer has been complaining about balance in sc2 and even took the time to write a letter. I can't imagine that boxer didn't complain about balance in sc1 too.
Kind of saddening to see the OP getting this much shit thrown in his face for pointing out a very obvious truth. The constant whining creates an atmosphere where any problem is percieved as imbalance and the effect compounds, so more and more people whine about more and more stuff... and very few people are actually working around the obstacles the game presents. So ask yourselves - what the hell makes the game fun if not obstacles to overcome? Pointless rankings in anonymous divisions and icons every schmuck can get by just brainlessly massing games? Really?
Thank you for your post OP, reminders like this are a very good thing... time to stop whining about PvT and start raping Terrans instead.
And how I share your sentiments about WoW... I used to love that game back when an epic item really was epic and an achievement in itself - Headmasters Charge, my fellow warlocks? Oh, the endless Scholo runs
I disagree with the OP. The Terran nerfs were made to limit the crazy amount of openings Terran had earlier on in development. Terran still has a few options for openings but not so many an opposing player is confused about what to expect or feel completely helpless outside of rine + scv rush.
Protoss got some changes and the void ray still seems in beta with as much attention it has gotten in patches before and after launch. It's still potent even with the developments it has received.
These are a few changes I can think of at the moment that had purpose but didn't cause a great deal of long term harm to the races involved. The changes have done if anything made timings and decision making that much tighter.
I sort of agree with OP, but he may be jumping the gun a bit after quite possibly the infester revert (necessity, but there were alternatives to fixing this problem), i mean i get the vibe that zerg is getting a little bit too much buff treatment as of late too. (take note: im terran haha)
When we hit the point where a nerf is ridiculously reasonable and the people who play that race unanimously whines and blizzard complies (lately complying a lot with zerg as of late), there would be a call for this thread, but its just not the right time.
Edit: I also want to note that hopefully the starcraft community's take on the patches is not so negative initially, after a couple months of testing within the changed meta there would be a reasonable consensus on whether or not a nerf or a buff is right or wrong.
Edit: And this is the point where i agree with OP: Blizzard, listen to the community but at the same time, listen to your own data and testing within the game. The rational and the irrational is something to put in perspective
1. Balance patches do help when they are focused around top tier level.
2. Of course if there are certain glaring imbalances, people should voice their opinions about this to an extent.
Let me clarify this point though. Presenting an argument about a perceived imbalance is completely different than the nonsensical whining we see plaguing (plaguuuuuu) the forums.
People are too quick to judge when they can't just hit a few buttons to fix a problem, this is mainly because the majority of lower skilled players have the idea reinforced in their head from WOW that if they complain enough, the game will be made easier.
The quantity of whining should not be a factor, but rather the quality!
3. By constantly nerfing, you are diminishing the wow affect certain units or abilities bring to the table. We all want a dynamic and engaging game right?
4. I agree some bigger/more balanced maps in the ladder pool would be awesome.
OP's post is just ridiculous. Telling peope that asking for changes to the mule and hydras are stupid because they are paradigm changes (do you even know what a paradigm is?) is utterly ridiculous. What if the game came with mules nerfed (to current standards)? You seem to forget this game is just one of many possibilities that exist to make it balanced. SC2 just happened to have this combination of features, it's possible that in another universe SC2 has no mules, but has something else and still be balanced. Why is it stupid to want different things? Why conform to what it is? What it seems to me, is that you don't want people to complain, then you create reasons for that, no matter if they make sense or not. Think about them again, and you'll see they don't.
With this current rate of NPW, we will never see any sort of Savior's 3 hatch meta game shift or Bisu build revolution in Starcraft 2. There is just not enough time and motivation for strategic innovations.
Didn't boxer say if they nerf terran again he's going random?
With Idra as the flagship for NPW worldwide I would say crying has gotten his race buffed and some money in his pocket. Before the patch he was always just the guy who can't beat nony and cried alot. After the patch he has become the guy who cant beat nony that cries a little.
@Apolo Well why don't you think about the mules usefulness? Why don't you think about terran design in general?
Terran can't easily replace an army without taking more time than protoss's warpgates and zerg's larvae, Terran's only useful core unit is usually the marine, requiring use of much of the mule's resources and that again, the marine is usually killed easily by a siege tank fire, collosi laser strike, or a baneling blast. Mules does not ruin the gas economy, where the more useful high tech units are, (looking at siege tank, medivac, etc) and that still requires terran to expand.
Can Terran easily expand to an outer expo other than an expo they can inwardly push over time to the zerg? Because of this design, mules must be present to battle out Zerg's aggressive expansion design as a race (Combined with fast speed, larvae, expanding and saturating is easier); its what makes this game have different special features in each race but however, serve the same purpose: gaining an advantage of money
I can't say the same for Hydra's because i'm not a zerg user, but isn't the sole purpose for hydras the ability to snipe off certain types of air more easily then the corruptor? Having them have more usefulness as a unit will make the roach's usefulness much less useful, and the overall usage of all units will be lessened in favor of the more used hydra, which is not what blizzard wants to design.
So, what your saying about the "utterly ridiculous" is more reasonable (to a degree, though i still think OP is jumping the gun a little).
However, I do agree with what you say about conformity, we shouldn't be so conform, because Starcraft II is still in its infancy as another game of the year all years for balance, but certain things that require balance must require thought and focus on the exploration of its design and purpose.
I think some of the patches need to be thought out more clearly because now that we have discovered the races more thoroughly we find that tanks are clearly not op as everyone thought it was. Also reapers were completely taken out of the game except for scouting purposes. I am not sure if it was intended to just be a scouting unit but I really want the reaper back. Blizzard made the first minutes of the game dull and boring because of all the qq players wanted their easy expos and fast tech. Game is changing faster than nerfs are coming so please wait and think before you complain.
On December 17 2010 01:19 Chronald wrote: Don't do this, a fine game is like a fine ____, there are so many layers and intricacies that _____ing it once simply won't do. You have to peel away the layers of flavor and musk in order to find the true beauty of the _______.
I read your entire post even though I was hesitant and I regret having done so. In particular I find your fundamental lack of understanding about why Blizzard creates patches disturbing. Blizzard doesn't make balance decisions based on some random kid who whines on a forum but rather through rigorous testing, feedback, and analyzing statistics. There is nothing else objective in your post even worth discussing.
btw I don't know why you bother with some silly term acronym like "npw". It makes no sense considering how patches imply nerfs.
The game is still early and pretty much balanced than most games out there. Give it time like BW had and it will be near perfect,,, until the next expansion comes and messes up everything again.
The people complaining are like those kids in math class. When they are faced with a problem, they immediately ask the teacher for help and guidance, but they have the ability to solve the problem.
If Blizzard wants "extra APM" to be utilized, they need to design the game so that late game management is more important and so that more units require good micro to use to their fullest potential.
This means better designed maps that allow for early aggression but also make late game play require holding multiple positions and defending them adequately.
Also, I think something has to be done about the mineral overflow that occurs in the late game, because this really favors Terran like no other. This is something mappers have to consider.
The pathing system should not allow units to push other idle units out of the way. Yes, it's less efficient, but it will not affect lower level play too much and will automatically make unit control matter much more.
Lastly, they should enable animation canceling, especially the deceleration animation that units have. Of course, the Pheonix's moving shot will have to be removed.
Of course it's possible to play a 'down' race well like Boxer did and if you play a race that gets buffed you'll clearly be happy no ones gonna argue with that. However the whole aim of blizzards patching is that people of the same skill level can play different races and have close games. That's real balance and what makes a game fun for everyone.
"What the hell is Blizzard doing, why are they making these significant changes instead of doing minor tweaks?"
Man is this true or what.
Small changes are indeed necessary and welcome in many cases. However it's when you see ideas like Fungal growth no longer affects air (Nixed I'm aware, I'm nitpicking the thought process here), Thors no longer have energy, Reaper speed now requires a factory, Flux vanes is removed, DepotB4Rax, etc that you start to wonder how much of this should have been discovered in the beta.
Regardless of how successful or unsuccessful the above changes were, are, or will be, you can't deny that they're major design changes that are occurring sometimes months after release. Removing an entire ability or upgrade because your data finally suggests its superfluous 5 months after release to me signifies a breakdown in the fundamental development process.
Honestly I'd almost go as far as to say that at this point Blizzard shouldn't be talking about removing or completely changing the function of major pieces of gameplay unless they want to admit they screwed the pooch upon inception. If the next patch months down the line has some similar change in the patchnotes, I'll be surprised if the following patch afterwards doesn't see the removal of an entire unit (probably Warp Prism lolol) as a change.
Tweak build times, tweak damage, tweak resistances, tweak upgrades, but I don't think at this stage we should be talking about removing entire objects or overhauling prerequisites anymore. If we do, then Blizzard had damn well do a better job of setting up their fundamentals in future releases.
Now I realize this is all completely off topic. In a desperate attempt to stay on topic, I'll echo whats already been said by saying that critical discussion != whining. One is vital, the other is unproductive.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, Chronald. Your comparison with the new-age SC2 community to the WoW community that polluted the game's once qualities (world PvP, epic 40-man raids, etc.) is a flawless comparison. NPW, and "balancing" to the ultimate level creates a banal experience where everyone and everything plays the same while simply "disguised" under the ruse of varied skins. Where WoW is now, every season of PvP, every new Dungeon, every rotation of gear, and every class of the same category (dps, healing, tanking) operates under the same mechanics, and everything is painstakingly stagnant. I fear SC2 is heading down the same road if newbies and casual gamers decide that free gifts are better than user creativity and imagination. With drastic variations in races/classes (WoW) and races/units/structures (SC2), we have ourselves a more complex and interesting schematic open to innovation. Albeit, it will not be as "balanced" as say...if everyone were to play the same race and there was only 1 race to choose from, 1 unit to make, and 1 attack for that unit. The races need to be different, and the community mindset should promote diversity, technique, and strategy. So, next time readers sit down to play some SC2, realize that in our age of attention-deficient, 2-minute quickie, channel surfing, multi-tasking society, it'll do you good to enjoy that you still have some creativity in you; just use it.
P.S. My merits include: Vanilla --> WoTLK every raid instance cleared with server's top guild; Warlock, Paladin, Rogue, Druid, Warrior, and Hunter to max level; Gladiator Seasons 1-5 with Merciless Gladiator in S2; quit @start of S6 ~2 years ago
Op's post is actually wrong I stopped reading when he went on about how boxer took a weak race in sc1 and showed people shit. Its actually true that boxer used to play toss then they nerfed shuttle (or fixed a bug) where a reaver would shoot instantly and reload in the shuttle fast so he switched to terran.
Yeah that game isn't popular at all. No one plays it because of all the balance patches. I heard there's only like 9 people on the server.
Blizzard pisses me off on many counts, but I do recognize that they know how to manage this sort of situation. It might not be fast, or always correct, but they eventually get it right for the most part. They've shown it over and over again. Don't worry.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
You seem to like the word fucking. I suggest you go do that to yourself. You think people who play this game should be like chess player and that they should not expect chess inventor to hold their hands? This is not chess where everything is perfectly balance.
The balancing team does not have enough people to see everything so they need feedback of the players to fix it. Patches ruin the game? I am sure 90% of the players would quit SC2 if no patches had been released since the beta version so your argument is trash.
Sure players can complain a lot and the main job of balancing team is to see which complain is valid. If they somehow nerf the game to oblivion then the fault lies with the balancing team for not being able to tell which change is needed. Ultimately the patches come from Blizzard so they are the only ones who can ruin the game. Not the players.
The players who are dumb enough to complain about everything and everything will not likely to stick around and I don't think this community need such players. Eventually only the hardcore fans who take the game seriously, give reasonable feedback and accept reasonable patches stay around. They are the ones who will keep this community alive.
Quote you one more time to end my post.
To summarize, STOP FUCKING COMPLAINING, STOP FUCKING WHINING, AND PLAY THE FUCKING GAME.
finally someone sees it the way I do now while we know the game isn't balanced out just yet we know that it will be, blizz plays their game and knows when something is off, i'm willing to bet any changes they make might not ever even come from the community but from blizz noticing these things themselves I'm not saying they don't need help from time to time but if something is "OP" or "UP" people should just make a thread (or post on a preexisting one) and just try to find a way around it until it is changed and that way people would have so much more fun with the game.
one more thing, when goldeneye 64 was big did anyone complain about the golden gun? no you just fought like hell to get it and adapted to the game...and isn't it strange how so many people have fond memories of a game with a 1 hit kill gun that if it was there now would have people running to forums and crying about it. we can make ourselves enjoy our games more if we just try to relax and play and find out how to beat these things and not cry so hard when we lose that the game "has to be broken because i lost"
Um @OP boxer QQed about protoss nerfs and switched to Terran o_O (in BW)
Also its not the whining thats the problem. Its that blizzard doesn't understand the problem.
When we asked for moving shot, we didn't get the moving shot we wanted, and it was only for the phoenix. If they took the time to understand the corsairs moving shot shown in the video instead of just doing a knee jerk reaction, it would have been implemented much better.
So in the same thread you say that whining is bad and then you whine and complain about blizzard's "shitty ass maps," including going on to say that every single map they've made "sucks hard"
You're clearly extremely hypocritical, and the fact that you use capslock and/or the word "fucking" every other sentence in a thread designed to try to get people to stop whining suggests to me that you're completely devoid of anything useful to say on this subject (not to mention not very intelligent).
The best part is that part of your overarching point is that whining and such will get us nowhere, yet I think the balance whining gets a heck of a lot more done than your silly whining-based whining.
First thing first, even if I don't read the SC2 battle net forum, I tend to feel nervous about this ambiant elitism saying that the bnet forum sucks: most of the answers to the OP's post are pretty interesting in my point of view. I think it's pretty dumb to whine about the whiners. The problem come from the blizzard dev team, who don't let enough time to the player to find a way through the game before patching. I also think their way to fix imbalances is bad: nerfing is a bad solution in most cases because it gives you less possibilities as a player. Giving another unit the capacity to face the imbalance is more interesting in my point of view.
100% agree, sure patches will occasionally be needed for certain small fixes/balances but really all matches come down to the individual player's skill. QQers should stop playing or work to improve their game play.
EPT
