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On March 20 2011 00:21 Arkless wrote:
Did you really make another QQ thread? I honestly can't believe thisd is a topic of discussion ATM. Firstly, you stated a pro said in beta how force fields were the most broken thing in the game. Well, you neglected to mention how much more dps the sentries did in beta, and how much bigger the forcefield was. Forcefield is a needed component, much like concuss and stim, and ling speed etc. Please stop mkaing this qq thread with a different name.
Yes sentries are necessary against Terran. But it seems that PERFECT forcefield play negates literally everything a zerg player can do to counter it. MC is amazing, which is exactly why this topic is created. If perfectly casted, forcefields can seemingly negate anything a zerg player can do. If this is the case, as Protoss players approach MC levels of skill, Zerg will be unable to win. It is a potential imbalance exposed by his tremendous skill.
Also, as you mentioned they have tweaked the sentries numerous times, which should indicate you that the ability is strong enough to require significant tweaking to get right. True the sentry certainly is not as good as the beta sentry and it has taken, but does that mean it's properly balanced now? Perhaps it just took this long for toss player to reach a level of skill where the forcefield's ability to abuse zerg mechanics is really becoming apparent. This should be up for debate.
If anything, a change needs to be made for the sake of SC2 as a spectator sport. It was very boring to watch even if it was technically excellent. It isn't fun watching a player literally helpless despite doing a lot of things right, you need some sort opportunity for July to micro his way to a victory to keep you on the edge of your seat. Once his main was ff'd off in the first game though it was gg. A confrontation that ends right when it begins is pretty boring IMO.
All in all though, MC deserved to win. I think we all just wish it was a little more entertaining.
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On March 20 2011 00:24 mordk wrote:
Also, I'd like to repeat something that Tyler said in SotG. When things like these happened in BW, the community, in particular this community, set out to find strategies that would counter the new kid on the block. When this happens on the SC2 community, they set out on a quest for blizz to rebalance the game, or more like a whining quest. I truly believe this strategies are beatable and very skill-dependant. I don't know. I remember BW and I can't help but imagine the gigantic shit threads it's spells would produce. I mean, plague???, Reavers??, Siege tanks??, Cracklings?? Effin DARK SWARM ANYONE??. Those skills, and particularly the latter one, were grossly overpowered, Dark swarm is actually a crazy skill terran can hardly even counter if well used. Hell, defilers even insta-regen energy for endless swarms.
I'd like threads to discuss STRATEGY around these world-shattering events. MC totally outplayed July, outside of any forcefield balance discussions.
You forget that in BW (not normal SC1), each race had the tools to manage all those abilities, and it was possible to formulate strats to beat them due to this wide array of tools each race had at it's disposal.
In SC2, the Zerg is lacking in tools.
The removal of certain units and spells, and shifting of tech, and abundance of needed upgrades to gain effectiveness, and a lack of hard counters, and nerfs to certain units, have left them hurting on a serious level in SC2.
Now, this could just be like back with SC1, the tools to get the jobs done wern't there until BW, and we'll have to wait until HoTS to see them added in.. but that's besides the point.
The nerf crusades happen because Zerg is under developed. Even day9 has said it himself on the SOTG podcast show that you're talking about.
Infact, he's expressed his frustrations with playing Zerg and their design a number of times now since SC1's release, as have many many other pro's.
People call for change, and not strategy, because the strats just aren't there to counter the issues without the race getting more utility/balance added to it first.
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It's not that I don't understand the solution; it's that you haven't successfully established the problem.
Yes, FFs are strong; and yes, in certain situations, when microed absolutely perfectly (as MC did, and as other Protosses often fail to do) they become dominating...but this is a situation where I'm pretty darn confident that players will find a way around it. It's barely imbalanced to start with, and it is counterable.
The community is starting to rely way, way too much on Blizzard's balance team, to the point where it's getting to be a massive psychological crutch. Every single time any unit, ability, or race is used successfully in a way that appears dominating, we cry imba...whereas in BW, if an ability or a unit is used in an utterly dominating fashion, everyone shouts about how amazing it is and how good the player is. It's an utterly wrong-headed approach to take to balance, in my opinion.
Blizzard is not going to fix every part of the game for us; Blizzard is not going to make the game "fair." And it shouldn't try.
If there IS a problem, then it's up to US, the players, to solve it. And by solve it, I don't mean posting theorycrafted crap about how to alter the FF ability to make it "fair" when we're not Blizzard and have no way of implementing our untested ideas. Expending that same energy as players talking about the ability and how to counter it and deal with it is actually helpful...which is why almost no one is actually doing it.
And I find it amusing that directly after the finals we have two threads discussing how FF is imba and how to fix it.
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Wow i bet that every post created on the subject of forcefields, or almost every, is created by people who have not even played at a level near that of MC or Masters or even diamond for that matter. I also do not understand why people are so stupid as to only see forcefield as an issue, and completely ignore the reason that it has been implemented. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A BIO BALL STIM AND KITE GATEWAY UNITS???????????????????? The cost efficiency of Bio balls against gateway units is RIDICULOUS. How about you try playing some games without making ANY sentries, then tell me that forcefields are "broken and imbalanced". You can feel free to post the videos here or make a new thread with them. Oh but sorry i won't be accepting any play below high masters level, as there are too many obvious mistakes that can be made by your opponent which would skew the game into your favor.
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On March 19 2011 22:22 Sirion wrote:
Just a spontaneous idea I got:
Make Queens massive. That has exactly two effects:
a) Queens can crush forcefields, so a ramp block can be negated, and generally the zerg player has an additional defenders advantage against force fields.
b) Phoenixes can no longer lift Queens. So while drones and overlords are still vulnerable, the Queen becomes a valid defense against Phoenixes. And since Hydras seem to fail in that regard, so I consider that positive.
You actually just balanced ZvP. I'm being 100% serious, fantastic idea man.
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United States2241 Posts
The best way to beat FF's is to deplete energy, and the best way to do that is 3-prong attacks, or FF baits, which force over FF's (see wut I did thar o___O), or less-than-perfect FF's.
Easier said than done, but I think it's valid. (Coming from a Z myself)
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OP, so you are saying that stim and concussive shells don't prevent the other race from microing? I mean, when you have a shit load of slow zlots and stalkers, can you really MICRO against stim and cshell? ur argument countered by the other side of the coin.
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Give the forcefield 300 hp. It loses 20 hp per second, so after 15 seconds it dies. That way if you get forcefielded up your ramp you can attack it reducing its duration. Same if you get FF'ed out of positions so several units are rendered useless you can micro them to attack FF's until they can pass/retreat.
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http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/all
all 3 races have almost the same win ratio
therefore they are balanced
therefore nerfing any race significantly will disrupt the balance
imo it was a mistake to remove khaydarin amulet for example
I am a terran player
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The idea is to Give zerg a mid to late game counter to heavy force field useage right?
Idea: Curruptors can now currupt focefields, destroying them instantly.
Would also encourage zergs to get them in the mid game vs colossus.
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On March 20 2011 00:53 DestroManiak wrote:http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/allall 3 races have almost the same win ratio therefore they are balanced therefore nerfing any race significantly will disrupt the balance imo it was a mistake to remove khaydarin amulet for example I am a terran player
I'm not sure if you're trolling or not....That's a common argument and it doesn't work because it just means that the matchmaking system is working correctly (goal of the matchmaking system is to have everyone hover around 50% win rate). It's possible that a 2k diamond zerg is at the same skill level that a 3k masters protoss is and racial imbalance prevents that from advancing up. I doubt it's that extreme but you get the idea.
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On March 20 2011 00:18 mustache wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2011 22:19 Elwar wrote:
I must have missed the avalanche of games recently where FFs completely ruined the match for there to be this much outrage. I only saw MC vs. July, surely people aren't basing all their opinions on one series?
This is very reminiscent of after patch 1.3 was announced, Kheydarin Amulet was getting threads pseudo over-analysing it as if it was sooooo obviously ruining every game up until that point. Yet before that there was very little discussion on it. No one was really THAT anxious about the upgrade either way.
Can people step back and say, whoa, its been eight months and nothing has changed since yesterday. Zergs are still taking games off protoss last I checked. Its not some urgent big deal, IF anything needs changing its only something small and Blizzard shouldn't be in any rush to get something rushed out, nor should anyone expect them to.
What you say makes no sense. The recent games gave light to a possible imbalance, that only very skilled players can pull off. Just because not everyone can do it doesnt mean the imbalance isnt there and shouldt be changed. And the only way you would actually realize the imbalance is there is when someone executes it. Are you saying imbalances are good jsut because only skilled players can pull them off? You're saying it's odd that people only complain about an imbalance after it was discovered? that seems pretty logical to me, im not sure why you'd complain about something which you didnt know exists. Im not saying the forcefield is imbalanced, im merely wondering about your view on balance discussions. d
No, he was originally saying that prior to the MC vs. July game, there were no discussions about Force Field balance anywhere. As soon as these games ended, people are talking about FF being broken as if it's always been very broken.
The game didn't change since two days ago and 12 hours ago. Two days ago, hardly anybody thought forcefields were imbalanced. After the set a few hours ago, a ton of people think forcefields need to be nerfed. The only thing that happened was that MC beat July 4-1 in the Grand Finals of GSL5.
If you seriously think that any strategy should be nerfed after viewing one set between two top level players, you don't have a place in talking about balance. You're assuming that July did everything humanly possible, yet the sole reason MC won was because of forcefields and not July's mistakes. You're assuming that there's nothing in the game currently that can deal with the power of Protoss's forcefields. And you're assuming that based off the results of one set.
That's inane.
Ideally, the process of balance concerning strategies should go: A strategy is shown to be pretty good-->Masses of people start using and experimenting with it more-->People start experimenting with how to deal with the strategy-->Balance is achieved and a new layer of gameplay is added.
You want to go: A strategy is shown to be pretty good-->IMBA! NERF!-->Strategy gets nerfed and no layers of gameplay or tactics were developed.
Good end-game balance isn't achieved by nerfing every strategy that looks pretty good--keep this up, and in a few years the only strategy will be a-moving into each other.
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On March 20 2011 00:53 DestroManiak wrote:http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/allall 3 races have almost the same win ratio therefore they are balanced therefore nerfing any race significantly will disrupt the balance imo it was a mistake to remove khaydarin amulet for example I am a terran player
Why bring up khaydarin amulet in a forcefield thread? I'm wondering what ZvP winrate would be if you singled out this 6 warpgate push with 11 sentries from a 4k+ master protoss, but I'm doubting it would look balanced. Just because all leagues have almost the same win ratio together doesn't mean that at the tip top levels forcefields can't be imbalanced.
Actually it is the opposite, because when watching the games the forcefields are what made everything feel so helpless as Zerg. Especially the game on metal where he just forcefields the ramp for infinity and takes out the expansion that Zerg has to have to even be viable at that point in the game. The forcefielded ramp negates any type of micro July could do to take out units. Then even after losing some units on the low ground with July on only 1 base only producing units he just walks up the ramp and it is gg.
My friend that was new to the game actually commented about how horrible it was to watch forcefields dictate the game without me even explaining what they were to him. I personally think from a spectator point of view that FF (especially at ramps) makes the game feel like an uphill battle especially with the larva mechanics Zerg deals with.
At the time, MC is the leading person using 11 sentries in every push to abuse FF so much. Other people are bound to start trying this out more after seeing these finals, so hopefully Zerg can influence some metagame to help combat it. I'm think the only real way to deal with this is burrow movement and burrow as soon as lair comes up while pumping only roaches when you see 6 gate incoming.
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On March 20 2011 00:41 Captain Peabody wrote:
It's not that I don't understand the solution; it's that you haven't successfully established the problem.
Yes, FFs are strong; and yes, in certain situations, when microed absolutely perfectly (as MC did, and as other Protosses often fail to do) they become dominating...but this is a situation where I'm pretty darn confident that players will find a way around it. It's barely imbalanced to start with, and it is counterable.
The community is starting to rely way, way too much on Blizzard's balance team, to the point where it's getting to be a massive psychological crutch. Every single time any unit, ability, or race is used successfully in a way that appears dominating, we cry imba...whereas in BW, if an ability or a unit is used in an utterly dominating fashion, everyone shouts about how amazing it is and how good the player is. It's an utterly wrong-headed approach to take to balance, in my opinion.
Blizzard is not going to fix every part of the game for us; Blizzard is not going to make the game "fair." And it shouldn't try.
If there IS a problem, then it's up to US, the players, to solve it. And by solve it, I don't mean posting theorycrafted crap about how to alter the FF ability to make it "fair" when we're not Blizzard and have no way of implementing our untested ideas. Expending that same energy as players talking about the ability and how to counter it and deal with it is actually helpful...which is why almost no one is actually doing it.
And I find it amusing that directly after the finals we have two threads discussing how FF is imba and how to fix it.
The community is just worried because MC stands as the pinnacle of protoss play. The general skill level of the community has and will be ever increasing. Saying that not everyone can use FF like MC is just naive because eventually more players will learn to do it after countless practice. It bothers them because FF is giving too much control to the protoss player. The protoss player can dictate whether your reinforcements are able to fight, whether you are able to attack him, split your army. The flow of the game is now up to the protoss to win or lose it.
It has become such that an almost perfect player like MC will never botch and never lose. Thats the concern. As players get better, it will just get more evident. I am a random player and do not want to be as bias as to say forcefield has to be removed but it definitely has to be tweaked. It should not be able to be offensively splitting armies. Restrict its usage to being able to only place on empty hexes should solve the versatility issue.
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On March 20 2011 00:53 DestroManiak wrote:http://www.sc2ranks.com/stats/league/all/1/allall 3 races have almost the same win ratio therefore they are balanced therefore nerfing any race significantly will disrupt the balance imo it was a mistake to remove khaydarin amulet for example I am a terran player
Even though i hate balance-discussions like this but I still have to defend it here. The B.net 2.0 matchmaker-systems goal is that players should have roughly 50% winrate on ladder so they get matched with people who for instance are "worse" than they are if the system thinks you need more wins, therefore you cant really go by ladder to get good data on imbalance. (Unless it´s map-imbalances we´re talking about.)
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Would making FF targetable work? Give them some HP.
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On March 20 2011 02:02 mmdmmd wrote:
Would making FF targetable work? Give them some HP.
no it wudnt work, terran dps too high
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once again, SC community rushes to a snap judgment after one series. people constantly whine about force field not requiring skill, being OP, blah blah blah. MC outplayed July. hard. yes, his force fields were ridiculous, but there was plenty July could have done, like prepping for a ling backstab to punish sentries immobility. sentries are an investment. you are spending a ton of gas, banking on your micro being better than theirs. when you're as good as MC, you have no problem making that assumption. but at the same time, one misclick, and MC could lose those games. something that fickle doesn't sound OP to me
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Random player, low masters here (not that it really matters) and IMO, queens as massive would fix the problem They're so slow off creep that they're almost useless for early aggression so FF would still be useful for defending AND still useful in the attack if utilized correctly but the zerg would actually have a chance to respond to FF rather than just being "oh crap, perfect forcefields? GG"
I love FF and love seeing it used effectively and agree that it is needed against early MM pressure from terran but terran units at least can stim and micro around a bit whereas zerg units just get trapped completely and isolated. This change would also make those 4-gate and 6-gate timings more difficult without completely eliminating them.
Oh and all you people saying that we're just whining about FF can pipe down. I like talking about possible game balance changes and hypothesizing over fixes. I don't expect the changes I suggest to be made but I enjoy thinking about what would happen if they were. Don't come to the thread if you don't want to read about it.
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On March 20 2011 02:01 StateOfZerg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2011 00:41 Captain Peabody wrote:
It's not that I don't understand the solution; it's that you haven't successfully established the problem.
Yes, FFs are strong; and yes, in certain situations, when microed absolutely perfectly (as MC did, and as other Protosses often fail to do) they become dominating...but this is a situation where I'm pretty darn confident that players will find a way around it. It's barely imbalanced to start with, and it is counterable.
The community is starting to rely way, way too much on Blizzard's balance team, to the point where it's getting to be a massive psychological crutch. Every single time any unit, ability, or race is used successfully in a way that appears dominating, we cry imba...whereas in BW, if an ability or a unit is used in an utterly dominating fashion, everyone shouts about how amazing it is and how good the player is. It's an utterly wrong-headed approach to take to balance, in my opinion.
Blizzard is not going to fix every part of the game for us; Blizzard is not going to make the game "fair." And it shouldn't try.
If there IS a problem, then it's up to US, the players, to solve it. And by solve it, I don't mean posting theorycrafted crap about how to alter the FF ability to make it "fair" when we're not Blizzard and have no way of implementing our untested ideas. Expending that same energy as players talking about the ability and how to counter it and deal with it is actually helpful...which is why almost no one is actually doing it.
And I find it amusing that directly after the finals we have two threads discussing how FF is imba and how to fix it. The community is just worried because MC stands as the pinnacle of protoss play. The general skill level of the community has and will be ever increasing. Saying that not everyone can use FF like MC is just naive because eventually more players will learn to do it after countless practice. It bothers them because FF is giving too much control to the protoss player. The protoss player can dictate whether your reinforcements are able to fight, whether you are able to attack him, split your army. The flow of the game is now up to the protoss to win or lose it. It has become such that an almost perfect player like MC will never botch and never lose. Thats the concern. As players get better, it will just get more evident. I am a random player and do not want to be as bias as to say forcefield has to be removed but it definitely has to be tweaked. It should not be able to be offensively splitting armies. Restrict its usage to being able to only place on empty hexes should solve the versatility issue.
Is JulyZerg the pinnacle of Zerg play though? Was the set a perfect example of the best possible Protoss vs. the best possible Zerg?
CaptainPeabody is completely right. People are using Blizzard's ability to patch things as a crutch and it's having major problems. Not only is nerfing things before any strategies have a chance to be fleshed out bad, but most people refuse to try new things to actually combat the problem. It's ridiculous that people are actually saying, "It's unfair we have to get to lair tech and burrow just to deal with forcefields," as if that's the only solution or that's even a ridiculous thing to do.
It's the same way with the, "Ways to use High Templar after Patch 1.3," thread. Hardly anyone gave suggestions--people just complained that HTs are useless now, let's all go Colossi, no way to defend against Terran drops, EMP is OP, and a bunch of other whiny and honestly useless things.
When new strategies are shown to be good by high level players, the next step is supposed to be where people figure out ways to deal with the strategies, adding more layers to the game. Not cry that it could be imbalanced and pre-emptively nerf it, reducing possible strategies. Yet, it's hard to even experiment with tactics to deal with good strategies if so many people complain, refuse to experiment, and rely on Blizzard for a "solution now" that only hurts the game in the long run.
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