|
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CMY4GarWgAEbLWx.jpg)
Potential Balance Test Map for HotS
Before we get to the Void topics, we’d like to discuss a potential balance test map for Heart of the Swarm. We’re currently wondering if a minor change is needed to help Zerg against Terran mech and Protoss. We don’t quite know for certain that a balance update is needed, however we are wondering if we should start up a balance test map to explore the idea.
For this, we’re considering testing the Swarm Host balance changes that have been ongoing in the Void beta. The automatic Flying Locusts, cheaper cost, and decreased supply of Void Swarm Hosts have shown decent potential versus Protoss and mech, and for ZvT, we are looking for a change that will only really help versus mech, since Zerg vs Bio appears to be in a good state. Buffing Swarm Host harass could target this well, considering the relatively low mobility of Terran mech. Please let us know your thoughts in this area so that we can make the best possible decision. Thank you.
Design/balance Schedule in the Beta
As some of you may already know, our team is hard at work trying to release Legacy of the Void sometime this year. With this in mind, we wanted to discuss what this means for the Legacy of the Void beta. So far, we’ve been in the beta for about 4 months – approximately the length of the entire HotS beta.
With the ways things currently are, we don’t quite feel that we’re ready to move into the balance “fine-tuning” stages yet, since major changes (such as macro mechanics or Disruptor redesign) are still on the table. Our current plan is to continue exploring various large-scale changes for roughly one additional month, and then (assuming things are sufficiently finalized) we can shift our focus towards balance changes for the remainder of the beta. Design changes will still be considered after this period, but we will be trying to reduce them to things that are absolutely needed so that we can focus on balance tuning before the release of the game.
Protoss Warp-in changes
We found that the defensive case is too big of a nerf in expansion locations. After reading many of your suggestions, we’ve decided to test this mechanic with both Warpgates and Nexus providing faster warp-ins. Below is a list of all the warpgate changes going into the next update:
- Warping-in at a Pylon takes 16 seconds.
- If a Pylon’s power radius is touching a Warp Gate or a Nexus, the color of the power radius changes, and warp-ins take 2 seconds.
- Multiple Pylons can be affected by the same Nexus or Warp Gate.
- The Warp Prism’s power radius will be the stronger version, and units will only take 2 seconds to warp-in.
With these changes, we’re clearly seeing the heavy nerfs to the offensive warp-ins. The huge buff to defensive warp-ins is also feeling good internally, because one of the main reasons why Protoss is struggling in the beta right now is due to their difficulty in securing late-game expansions.
Macro mechanics
We’ve recently seen significant amounts of passionate and well-articulated discussions on the topic of macro mechanics. There are numerous people on both sides of our proposed changes, and we’ve read through and listened to many of the arguments as to why people feel the way they do. Having considered our testing internally along with your opinions in the community, we are currently planning to begin testing these changes in the next balance update. This does not mean the changes are permanent, but that we would like to explore their effects on a larger scale. To help prepare for this, we also wanted to briefly discuss some additional gameplay observations that we’ve discovered while testing.
Terran Mules being Removed
- Scanner Sweep use is much more common, but because there are so many possible scans available, Calldown: Extra Supplies now has tactical justification. The decision to cast one ability or the other has become rather dynamic, and the constant decisions between these two abilities seem interesting.
- The balance on these abilities might not be there yet, and if Mules do in fact get removed, we may need to tune these abilities’ details.
Protoss Chronoboost being Removed
- The removal itself seems good, but we’re definitely realizing that there may need to be some timing changes to help Protoss.
- We will be decreasing Warp Gate research time, and also speeding up the Disruptor build time, but we believe there’s more to come if this change goes through. Our current thought is that if Chronoboost is removed, we will need to strategically locate the specific units, buildings, upgrade times that would need to be reduced .
Zerg Inject Larva Being Auto-Cast and Reduced to 2 per Inject
- We were initially worried that this particular change would take away too much from Zerg macro, but surprisingly, it is feeling like there’s still so much macro to tackle.
- With this change, we’re also seeing better creep spread. This is something that we may need to tune eventually. Nevertheless, having a more visible result from players’ macro looks to be a much cooler direction rather than just having the forced/needed clicks found in things like Inject Larva.
Overall, we expect there will need to be a lot of balance tuning required if the macro mechanics changes stick. We are definitely looking forward to hearing your feedback and observing how the changes play out in the beta. Also, please remember to keep an open mind when testing out these changes - it will take time to iron out the balance as we continue testing this area.
Thanks for all of the passionate feedback and discussions these last few weeks. We hope that you will continue to have such rich discussions while we test these rather unique changes as we are certainly eager to hear your thoughts after playing with them.
Thanks so much!
Source
|
Well that was... disappointing I guess. I was kind of hoping for some more changes considering macro mechanics are being removed. I'd be lying if I wasn't at least half-expecting supply costs to be revisited, especially for zerg since they're going to have an even tougher time remaxing after a fight without as much of a larva bank. May as well let zerg have a larger max army to help with trades.
|
As a HotS only Terran player, I have problems vs Mech as well. I know recently buffing units is the way to go, but considering that Mech is trouble in TvZ, TvT and TvP, nerfing something hard in the Mech composition would be a better idea. Just as a reminder, Mech was buffed 4-5 times throughout the last 2 years. Hellbats were introduced, air and ground weapon and armor upgrades were mixed. Siege tank fire rate was buffed aswell, which is a buff to the Mech composition as it uses more tanks than the Bio composition.
Please read this <3.
Cheers
|
I've never been so disappointed in a community update.
"Hey we're going to help ZvMech, here's the swarm host"
How about you give vipers PB and/or split mech attack upgrades like in lotv, which ACTUALLY balance the match up instead of fucking around with the useless swarmhost. Either give back the old swarmhost or do the changes that are done in the beta that actually solve the problem.
I still find the removal of the macro elements to be the worst decision for the beta yet, but I haven't really thought many of the decisions have been good. I really don't see how this gives any positives while it seemingly just harms match ups. I'm glad that they're at least acknowledging that protoss needs upgrades/build times decreased in some areas to balance it out so at least that's a start.
|
I don't like the Inject Larva auto-cast and two larva way of adjusting Zerg macro - but it's worth a shot I guess.
Everything else seems fine.
|
On August 15 2015 03:37 chipmonklord17 wrote:
I've never been so disappointed in a community update.
"Hey we're going to help ZvMech, here's the swarm host"
How about you give vipers PB and/or split mech attack upgrades like in lotv, which ACTUALLY balance the match up instead of fucking around with the useless swarmhost. Either give back the old swarmhost or do the changes that are done in the beta that actually solve the problem.
I still find the removal of the macro elements to be the worst decision for the beta yet, but I haven't really thought many of the decisions have been good. I really don't see how this gives any positives while it seemingly just harms match ups. I'm glad that they're at least acknowledging that protoss needs upgrades/build times decreased in some areas to balance it out so at least that's a start.
Swarmhost is on the border between being incredibly difficult to deal with, and incredibly useless. Right now I'd argue its the latter. Even in Lotv they feel so underwhelming.
Nerfing mech I dont think is the answer, but without the old swarmhost, zerg in hots lost their ability to trade efficiently which is what makes mech so strong in zvt, especially in split map scenarios (ie flash v curious earlier today in gsl).
|
Ok I love all of these patch, but when is it comming?
|
On August 15 2015 03:43 Sogetsu wrote:
Ok I love all of these patch, but when is it comming?
I'm thinking the exact same thing man...when!
|
warp prism 8 adepts will be much stronger 
|
On August 15 2015 03:37 Pooof wrote:
Mech is trouble in TvZ, TvT and TvP
Please do show me the last TvP mech you've seen in the pro level, thank you
|
Great patch, now release it and let's test!
|
Disagree 100% with the complete removal of macro mechanics and warp gates. Expected a lot more since there were 2 weeks instead of one to prepare the update this time. Oh well lets try them atleast i guess
|
On August 15 2015 03:41 Energizer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2015 03:37 chipmonklord17 wrote:
I've never been so disappointed in a community update.
"Hey we're going to help ZvMech, here's the swarm host"
How about you give vipers PB and/or split mech attack upgrades like in lotv, which ACTUALLY balance the match up instead of fucking around with the useless swarmhost. Either give back the old swarmhost or do the changes that are done in the beta that actually solve the problem.
I still find the removal of the macro elements to be the worst decision for the beta yet, but I haven't really thought many of the decisions have been good. I really don't see how this gives any positives while it seemingly just harms match ups. I'm glad that they're at least acknowledging that protoss needs upgrades/build times decreased in some areas to balance it out so at least that's a start. Swarmhost is on the border between being incredibly difficult to deal with, and incredibly useless. Right now I'd argue its the latter. Even in Lotv they feel so underwhelming. Nerfing mech I dont think is the answer, but without the old swarmhost, zerg in hots lost their ability to trade efficiently which is what makes mech so strong in zvt, especially in split map scenarios (ie flash v curious earlier today in gsl).
That's entirely what I said. The real problem with ZvMech in HotS is twofold. First, the fact that terran can transition flawlessly into fully upgraded viking banshee from ground mech due to combined upgrades. Zerg doesn't have something that can match this in versatility as the counterpart to viking/banshee (corruptor/BL) is far more expensive, and far worse especially down on upgrades. This is fixed in LotV.
The perhaps larger problem is the fact that Vipers are completely defenseless versus air. In any "even" engagement (meaning one player isn't out of position and both are ready to take on said engagement) worth a damn in HotS a zerg player generally loses all if not most of their vipers. This is due to the fact that to get in range to blinding cloud vipers have to pass over vikings and thors, who are both well upgraded and have amazing range to kill them. Every engagement goes something like
1)vipers fly in and blinding cloud as much as they can before they die
2)ground army goes in and kills everything they can before blinding cloud runs out
3) rinse repeat
The problem is that the time it takes to "rinse/repeat" is the mech player's greatest asset. The time it takes to remake an army AND to remake the vipers AND give vipers the time to gather energy is arguably enough to offset the slowness that mech takes to build up, as it takes fewer units to fortify a position defensively as mech. This is also fixed in LotV in the form of parasitic bombs. There is now a viper micro element in LotV which allows a zerg to not throw away their vipers every engagement as they can attack the air units that your ground army is likely far out of range for.
|
Horrible and to be frank, quite disappointing given the time they took to make it, community update.
1) Balance map for HotS : I'd like them to let the game evolve. If anything, swarm hosts aren't the answer. Splitting upgrades again would be far more reasonable to avoid those BCs turtle games.
2) Fine tuning : we're clearly not at that point, yeah.
3) Warp-in change : I've said it before, that change is just wrong. It strengthens warp prism adepts all-ins even more, to the point of retardedness, is complicated, inelegant. Splitting warp-in power and energy power achieves the same without any drawback. Warp prisms are going to be the new sentry, even worse... Frustrating to play against, source of all-ins, etc... Stop buffing that unit that is already quite broken with the range.
4) Macro changes : please no autocasts...
Overall I'm very disappointed with the direction they're taking... They're making wrong decisions while leaving cyclones and liberators untouched, not doing anything about adepts strength early game that makes PvP a nightmare worse than WoL 4 gates... I'm more and more worried.
|
Really weird that they have like only a month left while these changes are the biggest ever...what happened to ' when it's done' 
Don't really understand why protoss research times should be reduced because chrono is gone. Without mule and with 50% worse injects Zerg and Protoss stuff is going to be much later as well.
HotS change shows they really don't want to spend any time on HotS
|
Awesome! Looking forward to the live patch!
|
On August 15 2015 03:58 [PkF] Wire wrote:
3) Warp-in change : I've said it before, that change is just wrong. It strengthens warp prism adepts all-ins even more, to the point of retardedness, is complicated, inelegant. Splitting warp-in power and energy power achieves the same without any drawback. Warp prisms are going to be the new sentry, even worse... Frustrating to play against, source of all-ins, etc... Stop buffing that unit that is already quite broken with the range.
First, they will tune down the Adept at some point, so it doesn't matter
Second, Adepts can't shoot air, so with a Viking you can deny or stop the Prism (even Turrets)
The All In warping with Prism could be strong but it is a good thing because right now any sort of warp all in is stupidly strong, even the Adepts early game without any Prism and skipping the Bunkers, etc etc.
I really love the whole patch notes, but I want the patch to try it ASAP. And I hope they put the new changes on the Cyclone they were testing as well the new Disruptor.
|
Quoted myself AGAIN... Will one day get used to that new design
|
Only one month to try "bigger" changes? Please no! Take your time Blizzard! Take all you need!
|
Zerg macro is stupid without inject.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
