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On June 16 2015 05:26 bo1b wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 03:12 [F_]aths wrote:On June 15 2015 22:01 Grumbels wrote:
@[F_]aths,
Brood War was designed by someone with no finished education and only over one year of experience working in the games industry and DotA was designed by random modders. Game design is an art, not a science. I think your argument here is very dangerous, telling us that professionals always know better and that any involvement with outside critics is essentially futile. I'm asked to suspend my noticing of all the mistakes by Blizzard and accept they operate on a level beyond me. You've even rationalized that we should recognize their failures as proof of their success. You imply that Broodwar is an very well done game. I agree. I also consider Dota a good game, I played some of the Dota Allstars map in WCIII. Broodwar had the luxury to be based on SC1, an already good game but with some holes in the multiplayer. Blizzard allowed themselves to fail there in order to produce BW. Dota and its derivatives is one of many, many custom maps. Almost any custom map was a failure, only some are remembered. What I am trying to say is that so far no-one solved the formula to make a successful game. You have to take risks and be willing to iterate. You need to have the time to test. I would consider Blizzard's of failures quite long. And they always need so much time. Does it really take over 5 years to fix the ingame clock? COME ON GUYS. But I still assume that the SC2 development team does what it can. I think that they read most of the high-level feed-back and are actually influenced by it. Even if they don't implement it 1:1 or at all. However, according to my experience, it is often wise not not follow the user's suggestion. Any user has his job in mind. The developer has to look at the big picture, how to deliver for the most users while having limited resources. Anyone who wants their professional opinion to be trusted should have the same trust for the opinions of professionals in a different field as well. I don't understand you at all. Actually that's a lie, I don't understand why people like you say the things you say. It doesn't make you smarter, or more impact full in the community, or more helpful, or more of anything really, it just makes you a contrarian for the sake of being one. Which is fine I guess so long as you realise that in this situation you're more the creationist then the scientist. In any event, arguing that blizzard should keep doing what they're doing (which is what you are doing make no mistake) seems kind of dumb when we are yet again seeing this game get poured down the sink.
I cannot see any actual argument in your posting.
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On June 16 2015 16:41 Teoita wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 16:36 Ramiz1989 wrote:On June 16 2015 15:46 Qwyn wrote:On June 16 2015 08:38 Ramiz1989 wrote:On June 16 2015 07:50 Qwyn wrote:
After playing my first 10-12 games of LOTV, I cannot possibly express how I would love to play with the DH mod instead of the current economy system. The current economy system requires you to maynard your workers at staggered intervals from old bases to new ones in order to MAINTAIN your current level of income. The DH mod rewards you for SPREADING out your workers on even more bases in order to INCREASE your level of income.
As a Zerg player, this is the most appealing thing I have ever seen. So appealing it makes me want to campaign for it! To be able to do true swarm styles...
That's about the one thing I'd like. The only other thing I'm not too satisfied with is that every single Terran unit has an active ability. I am pretty positive that you would change your opinion about DH mod after 20 games. It just isn't optimal with the current units and production system of the game. I've played quite a few games of DH and my only thought about it is that the benefit of splitting workers among more bases isn't drastic enough! Really? Because what I've heard mostly is that cheeses and all-ins are just stronger because 8 workers per base is pretty much optimal. That is incredibly false and misinformed. 8 workers are better than with Blizzard's economy, but it's still awful income compared to 16. The DH Open games had cheese and allins because that's kind of how most DH Opens tend to go.
Ok, guess I'm wrong about that. I haven't played DH but I've seen games and showmatches of it, and heard a lot of players talking about it. Didn't really like what they were saying nor I liked the showmatches, they felt like a bit slower HOTS to me.
I don't think that LOTV economy is great, but I don't think that DH is that good either. I have a feeling that a ton of players are bandwagoning DH mod without actually seeing what's happening and that it doesn't make much difference in the end compared to HOTS.
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On June 16 2015 13:20 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On June 15 2015 20:10 [F_]aths wrote:
When an amateur suggests how to do something in which I have professional experience, it is in most cases wrong on so many levels. Even though it appears to be reasonable to other amateurs. They just don't know all the implications. That does not mean I consider myself brilliant or a mastermind. There is still a very, very large gap in the level of understanding an issue. Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 12:43 bo1b wrote:
and the simple fact is that for most of that time the community has not known what the kark is going on. And I am the definition of an amateur here, I don't get paid to do this. Let's see how my crazy ideas posted back in the HOTS Beta panned out... if I knew what the kark I was doing... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2-hots/378373-how-to-make-mech-and-stargate-play-viableOctober 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "Furthermore, when dropped from Medivacs Hellbats easily wipe out a mineral line in a few shots with it's wide arc of fire. Think pre-nerf Blue Flame Hellions!" July 11, 2013 - Patch 2.0.9: Hellbat attack damage decreased from 18 + 12 vs. light to 18. October 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "The solution is reduce the cooldown of the Siege Tank from 3.00 to 2.25-2.50" November 11th, 2013 - Patch 2.0.12: Siege Mode attack period decreased from 3.0 to 2.8. October 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "First, remove hardened shields" March 31 2015 - Patch 2.5.0 - Removed Hardened Shield Ability. Now I am not anything special, large parts of the community wanted these changes for long before I suggested them. It's just really sad it took Blizzard so long to catch on, and sad they had to try all their terrible ideas first. Blizzard has shown a clear inability to grasp and predict what will happen when they make changes. The Hellbat is by far my favorite example. They knew what happened with BFH, but they ignorantly repeated that, despite myself and many other amateurs in the community who saw that coming 10 miles away warning them. I specifically warned them 9 months before the patch came out nerfing the Hellbat that it would be BFH all over again.
Yes. And many other guys said other things. In the end, there is always someone who told so before. You proposed a lot which was not implemented, like bringing back the medic.
You overlook that the large bulk of the game actually works. Blizzard's team therefore must have an ability to grasp and predict. There are some things like the Thor, corruptor, or force field, which I think can be considered a failed design. The Thor was a request of the art team. The corruptor had different roles in the alpha and was not cut later when all was left was a rather boring air superiority unit. The force field sounds interesting on paper but creates new problems.
I still consider SC2 a real achievement. There is room to improve on of course. I have no doubt that you know how to improve the game for your needs. The dev team has to consider the entire user base however.
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On June 16 2015 17:21 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 13:20 BronzeKnee wrote:On June 15 2015 20:10 [F_]aths wrote:
When an amateur suggests how to do something in which I have professional experience, it is in most cases wrong on so many levels. Even though it appears to be reasonable to other amateurs. They just don't know all the implications. That does not mean I consider myself brilliant or a mastermind. There is still a very, very large gap in the level of understanding an issue. On June 16 2015 12:43 bo1b wrote:
and the simple fact is that for most of that time the community has not known what the kark is going on. And I am the definition of an amateur here, I don't get paid to do this. Let's see how my crazy ideas posted back in the HOTS Beta panned out... if I knew what the kark I was doing... http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/starcraft-2-hots/378373-how-to-make-mech-and-stargate-play-viableOctober 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "Furthermore, when dropped from Medivacs Hellbats easily wipe out a mineral line in a few shots with it's wide arc of fire. Think pre-nerf Blue Flame Hellions!" July 11, 2013 - Patch 2.0.9: Hellbat attack damage decreased from 18 + 12 vs. light to 18. October 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "The solution is reduce the cooldown of the Siege Tank from 3.00 to 2.25-2.50" November 11th, 2013 - Patch 2.0.12: Siege Mode attack period decreased from 3.0 to 2.8. October 27 2012 - BronzeKnee: "First, remove hardened shields" March 31 2015 - Patch 2.5.0 - Removed Hardened Shield Ability. Now I am not anything special, large parts of the community wanted these changes for long before I suggested them. It's just really sad it took Blizzard so long to catch on, and sad they had to try all their terrible ideas first. Blizzard has shown a clear inability to grasp and predict what will happen when they make changes. The Hellbat is by far my favorite example. They knew what happened with BFH, but they ignorantly repeated that, despite myself and many other amateurs in the community who saw that coming 10 miles away warning them. I specifically warned them 9 months before the patch came out nerfing the Hellbat that it would be BFH all over again. Yes. And many other guys said other things. In the end, there is always someone who told so before. You proposed a lot which was not implemented, like bringing back the medic. You overlook that the large bulk of the game actually works. Blizzard's team therefore must have an ability to grasp and predict. There are some things like the Thor, corruptor, or force field, which I think can be considered a failed design. The Thor was a request of the art team. The corruptor had different roles in the alpha and was not cut later when all was left was a rather boring air superiority unit. The force field sounds interesting on paper but creates new problems. I still consider SC2 a real achievement. There is room to improve on of course. I have no doubt that you know how to improve the game for your needs. The dev team has to consider the entire user base however.
blord/infestor
rax before the depot
inferno pools
daedalus
swarm host mid game unit
4hellbat drops.
mine nerf will promote tank play vZ (my favorite one, show DKim is 100% clueless about his game)
14 range msc vision
All these things were blizzard decisions. All these things were stuff everyone with a decent understanding of the game would identify as bullshit. And it took months to correct it everytime.
Inferno pool will be played in the WCS final. And it's a shame.
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First, there’s a common misconception that after all the money we made with Starcraft we’re planning to actually listen to the community to improve the game.
When we say the game will change with each patch, we’re referring to the big picture. Like bunker build times, having skills cost 25 mana more or less, stuff like this. When you compare Heart of the Swarm to the current state of Legacy of the Void, the changes are barely noticable. This means we stopped giving a fuck years ago, while concentrating on better cash cows like WoW with more docile communities.
Completely remaking the game with each patch is too much effort. What we’re saying is that we see no competition on the RTS market, and thus will only continue to iterate on changes like bunker build time with future patches, and these changes will have absolutely no impact on the game. We’re definitely saying we won’t be trying new, big things in the beta—we clearly stopped caring and will continue to do so.
But we need to spend a lot more time playing the newer Blizzard games like Heroes of the Storm. That shit is epic, you need some real "Micro" there. Although it may be more fun to only try crazy new things that would make the game good for a chance, that’s not the purpose of this beta. The purpose is to give the fake impression that we still care about the community.
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ghosts are too expensive for this
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With all of this arguing about who's the better, the community or the dev team, I wonder if we as the community haven't been sufficiently aggressive with testing out our own hypotheses. After all, we do have the tools for it; we can make DH models reality and turn zerglings into cute little critters, we rebuilt Brood War literally in campaign and spiritually in Starbow. With a bit of time finagling on the editor, one should be able to modify the game to their own specs to test out their own balance changes. Comparative to the prior, changing a few numbers should be cake.
Don't mistake it for meaning that the dev team is better at making good decisions affecting gameplay; I personally believe that they're really hit-or-miss at best, presuming as much on their own theorycrafting as we do on ours, given that we can only trust their enigmatic internal testing at face value, since often what they say becomes very incongruous with what actually happens when the meta--or even individual unit usage--develops. However, it is also true that, of the unpolished mass of posts on forums, most of it is tosh when it comes to being implicated as beneficial balance or design. Perhaps, just as much as the dev team needs to, we have to "show" our hand and not "tell", as we tried with the DH model.
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On June 16 2015 21:05 Spect8rCraft wrote:
With all of this arguing about who's the better, the community or the dev team, I wonder if we as the community haven't been sufficiently aggressive with testing out our own hypotheses. After all, we do have the tools for it; we can make DH models reality and turn zerglings into cute little critters, we rebuilt Brood War literally in campaign and spiritually in Starbow. With a bit of time finagling on the editor, one should be able to modify the game to their own specs to test out their own balance changes. Comparative to the prior, changing a few numbers should be cake.
I agree. I always say its better to do things yourself instead of whining about why blizzard isnt doing things our way.
But I also had to find out that people really arent interested in playing an SC2 balance mod. People are suprisingly reluctant about trying new things.
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On June 16 2015 23:45 RoomOfMush wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2015 21:05 Spect8rCraft wrote:
With all of this arguing about who's the better, the community or the dev team, I wonder if we as the community haven't been sufficiently aggressive with testing out our own hypotheses. After all, we do have the tools for it; we can make DH models reality and turn zerglings into cute little critters, we rebuilt Brood War literally in campaign and spiritually in Starbow. With a bit of time finagling on the editor, one should be able to modify the game to their own specs to test out their own balance changes. Comparative to the prior, changing a few numbers should be cake. I agree. I always say its better to do things yourself instead of whining about why blizzard isnt doing things our way. But I also had to find out that people really arent interested in playing an SC2 balance mod. People are suprisingly reluctant about trying new things.
Starbow?!
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On June 17 2015 03:04 saddaromma wrote:
Starbow?!
Starbow what?
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One change I would really like to see is for Blizzard to increase the supply cap to 250. This would make the game so much better.
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On June 17 2015 04:44 Loccstana wrote:
One change I would really like to see is for Blizzard to increase the supply cap to 250. This would make the game so much better.
Agreed. Then we would see 250/250 deathballs dancing around instead of 200/200 deathballs.
More units = more explosions = more fun
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On June 17 2015 06:16 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2015 04:44 Loccstana wrote:
One change I would really like to see is for Blizzard to increase the supply cap to 250. This would make the game so much better. Agreed. Then we would see 250/250 deathballs dancing around instead of 200/200 deathballs. More units = more explosions = more fun
You don't know how to articulate the argument you want to convey. Instead you're contradicting your point and making a weird sarcastic joke. In all serious fairness, 250/250 supply cap would not promote more deathballing but instead promote just spending money on slightly stronger timings. If you pay attention to high level sc2 players you'll notice that players tend to prefer timing attacks in 90% of cases. In each case when a player does not do some kind of timing attack, it's 5- 25 min into the game and it's only because they are being forced into that/ they can't get out of the situation fast enough.
Basically you end up wanting to fight as soon as strategically viable, which is whenever you have a clear enough upper hand / you can guestimate based on your experience, mechanics and scouting, etc.
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The thing is, though, that there is not, nor has there ever really been, such a thing as a "community stance" on the game. There are lots of different people with lots of different likes and dislikes throwing out lots of different ideas, some of which are well thought out, some of which are stupid, and some of which are just random. Some of those complaints are more or less common, and some ideas and phrases just get picked up on and repeated over and over again by other people for not very good reasons. The SC2 community is not a dev team; it's a bunch of random people who all happen to play the same game, some of whom happen to follow esports, some of whom happen to post on the same forum, some of whom like to think analytically about the game, and some of whom get really mad whenever they lose and rage about balance.
That's not to say that some or even many of those people don't have real insights into the game and even really good suggestions. It's to say that TL is not some kind of giant genius level game design brain just waiting to take over from the bumbling development team and make the game absolutely perfect in every respect. TL is not a dev team, and it never will be. TL cannot design this game. The "community" cannot design this game, nor can it "fix" the game, either. Game design is really complicated and really hard, and it doesn't reduce to a few graphs that someone posted that one time, or to the little catchphrases that people like to toss around ("positional play"! "defender's advantage!"). It's really hard, which is why even professional game designers need, frankly, all the help they can get, including help from smart people in the community.
Look, I love this game, and I want it to be as good as it possibly can be. The best way I can think of for that to happen is for a positive, constructive dialogue to take place between the devs and smart, invested people in the community. And that dialogue simply cannot take place if every individual in the community thinks of himself as a genius who could do everything better himself, and would fix the game in a a heartbeat if the imbecilic, diabolically evil developers would just shut up and do everything he says. I do wish Blizzard would engage more frequently, more openly, and more in-depth with the community; but engagement has to go both ways, and as it stands now, I really think that the attitude of the community is one of the biggest things standing in the way of that. Take it or leave it.
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On June 17 2015 06:16 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2015 04:44 Loccstana wrote:
One change I would really like to see is for Blizzard to increase the supply cap to 250. This would make the game so much better. Agreed. Then we would see 250/250 deathballs dancing around instead of 200/200 deathballs. More units = more explosions = more fun
With 250 supply, players can actually afford to spread out their army all over the map and take more than three mining bases. In other words, the game will be more like broodwar.
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On June 17 2015 08:36 Captain Peabody wrote:
The thing is, though, that there is not, nor has there ever really been, such a thing as a "community stance" on the game. There are lots of different people with lots of different likes and dislikes throwing out lots of different ideas, some of which are well thought out, some of which are stupid, and some of which are just random. Some of those complaints are more or less common, and some ideas and phrases just get picked up on and repeated over and over again by other people for not very good reasons. The SC2 community is not a dev team; it's a bunch of random people who all happen to play the same game, some of whom happen to follow esports, some of whom happen to post on the same forum, some of whom like to think analytically about the game, and some of whom get really mad whenever they lose and rage about balance.
That's not to say that some or even many of those people don't have real insights into the game and even really good suggestions. It's to say that TL is not some kind of giant genius level game design brain just waiting to take over from the bumbling development team and make the game absolutely perfect in every respect. TL is not a dev team, and it never will be. TL cannot design this game. The "community" cannot design this game, nor can it "fix" the game, either. Game design is really complicated and really hard, and it doesn't reduce to a few graphs that someone posted that one time, or to the little catchphrases that people like to toss around ("positional play"! "defender's advantage!"). It's really hard, which is why even professional game designers need, frankly, all the help they can get, including help from smart people in the community.
Look, I love this game, and I want it to be as good as it possibly can be. The best way I can think of for that to happen is for a positive, constructive dialogue to take place between the devs and smart, invested people in the community. And that dialogue simply cannot take place if every individual in the community thinks of himself as a genius who could do everything better himself, and would fix the game in a a heartbeat if the imbecilic, diabolically evil developers would just shut up and do everything he says. I do wish Blizzard would engage more frequently, more openly, and more in-depth with the community; but engagement has to go both ways, and as it stands now, I really think that the attitude of the community is one of the biggest things standing in the way of that. Take it or leave it.
To say that the community as a whole is not a good dev team is a roundabout way of avoiding the facts that, one, it's ignoring the gems among the rough, and two, it's not mutually exclusive with the possibility that the dev team is not good at what they're doing. Modding communities have time and again produced works of art that rivaled the vanilla in which they were based, but even they sit amongst a pile of rubbish because most of it is, well, rubbish.
I don't want to say that the community is a bunch of geniuses, because most of us aren't. A lot of us are probably filthy casuals or balance whiners or fantasy leaguers or what have you. That still doesn't excuse what may be obviously bad game design presented by the dev team. It doesn't take a genius to realize the fact that infestors had way too much flexibility during the late WoL era once broodlord-infestor became prominent; it doesn't take a genius to realize that the old swarm hosts produced stalemate games, especially with the infamous Mana vs. Firecake, among others; it doesn't take a genius to realize the fact that Blizzard was really slow in tackling those issues at hand. People can argue whether Halo or Call of Duty is the better game, but all but the most deluded will agree that a broken disc is a bad one.
Blizzard simply has earned a lack of faith and trust through its roundabout ways of balancing, its bandaiding which feels more like a house of cards a lot of the time (I personally find a lot of the patches revolving around the mutalisk and the widow mine to be particularly stressful), and a history of not providing enough feedback to its audience. So of course we're gonna demand better feedback, and of course we're going to be skeptical about any actions they take; that shouldn't be surprising or even insulting for a company like them, it should be par for the course. People don't demand these things because they want to see the game fail, they do so because they want the game to succeed.
And I disagree that the community cannot fix the game or balance it or even design it. They most certainly have the capability to: we have the editor, we have the power, and we've at least tried and tried again with the likes of Starbow and Brood War mimics and DH models and Dota and so on. Players have created entire gametypes, if not games, on a whim. To say that the community can't do this is about as bad as a generalization as we (admittedly) accuse the dev team. Is game design complicated? Sure. But if a small dev team can make it work in a Blizzard office, why can't that enthusiasm hold true for a group of Starcraft aficionados?
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You don't have to be an expert designer to tell that something feels wrong about the gameplay. And seemingly enough people share this opinion that it's unsettling the designers never addressed this.
That's the basic idea, it's not about the false dichotomy of whether the community or the developers should design the game, it has more to do with the fact so many people think something is off with the game yet Blizzard ignores them. They have a responsibility to make a good game, this should include listening to community concerns.
Another flawed idea is that either Blizzard should take in all feedback and suggestions and treat them all equally, so that they become overwhelmed with rubbish, or that they should continue insulating themselves. It is actually possible to filter through mud to find the gems, for instance they could start a dialogue with people that have a track record of providing good feedback. They don't just have to implement the top reddit posts directly into the game.
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Does Blizz know and intend that Parasitic Bomb stacks? They are already nerfing the ability so it is cast less, but if they just made it not stack maybe they wouldn't need to nerf the cost to single cast status.
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So they will keep the Adept as the 'solution' to Protoss gateway units being so weak in the early to mid game. This is one way to do it, not neccessarily bad per se, could actually be quite interesting. At least the bottom line is, Protoss will have an answer to 'weak gateway units early on'. It does open some possibilites for new units for Terran And Zerg to be added with the Adept inclusion. It may bring a more diverse early game composition to Protoss, but we have to see if that is actually true, or it goes the opposite way and no-one builds anything but Adepts early on - time will tell.
I dont like teh Disruptor at all. Too much luck is tied to it (whether the opponent is reacting correctly), the Colossus at least gives the Protoss player more control in deciding the damage delt. Colossus > Disruptor. Maybe the Colossus can get a Disruptor upgrade and be able to use a weaker version of the Disruptor to use, would create interesting battle dynamics. ie. Almost like a defense option when a Colossus is isolated by the enemy, instead of being instantly picked off, the Protoss player can dispatch mini-disruptors to aid the Colossus from being 100% sniped. As it is now, an isolated Colossus always gets picked off so easily.
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On June 17 2015 12:38 Loccstana wrote:Show nested quote +On June 17 2015 06:16 Charoisaur wrote:On June 17 2015 04:44 Loccstana wrote:
One change I would really like to see is for Blizzard to increase the supply cap to 250. This would make the game so much better. Agreed. Then we would see 250/250 deathballs dancing around instead of 200/200 deathballs. More units = more explosions = more fun With 250 supply, players can actually afford to spread out their army all over the map and take more than three mining bases. In other words, the game will be more like broodwar.
I'm really not sure about that. The main reason we see so many deathballs is because it's the optimal way to play considering SC2 unit design and pathing ; and the main reason we don't see player taking more than 3 mining bases is because it is useless.
Assuming a 250 supply cap, why would you spread your army all over the map, while your opponent would then move his 250 supply deathball around, wrecking your small army parts spread on the map?
On June 17 2015 15:48 Grumbels wrote:
You don't have to be an expert designer to tell that something feels wrong about the gameplay. And seemingly enough people share this opinion that it's unsettling the designers never addressed this.
That's the basic idea, it's not about the false dichotomy of whether the community or the developers should design the game, it has more to do with the fact so many people think something is off with the game yet Blizzard ignores them. They have a responsibility to make a good game, this should include listening to community concerns.
Another flawed idea is that either Blizzard should take in all feedback and suggestions and treat them all equally, so that they become overwhelmed with rubbish, or that they should continue insulating themselves. It is actually possible to filter through mud to find the gems, for instance they could start a dialogue with people that have a track record of providing good feedback. They don't just have to implement the top reddit posts directly into the game.
I don't think they have the responsability to make a good game tbh. They just have the responsability to do is to make a game that sells.
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EPT
