EPT
Welcome back for another Community Feedback Update. We’ve got some topics to discuss regarding balance, as well as some topics on Terran and Protoss.
Perfect Balance Thread
We saw the popular thread this week stating how Heart of the Swarm has near perfect balance. We wanted to say a few things about that. First is the game’s current balance is really a combined effort of everyone doing his or her part to make the results this good. For example, if players of a certain race aren’t playing as well as they would normally, even with our current numbers, the in-game stats wouldn’t look as good. Also, due to the heavy collaboration with our community, we feel that the perception around good stats has improved. In the past, we’ve seen many negative responses to posts like this due to less people being connected. Now however, due to increased community collaboration, we feel that this weird negativity has largely been dispelled.
The other important thing we’d like to point out is that while it’s true that LotV balance definitely won’t start off this good, this post and your thoughts around it was a good example of how there’s an extremely high confidence that we can get there over time. We say this because our processes having improved over the years, many community members have leveled up in their thought processes and suggestions, and players playing the game at a much higher level.
Thank you everyone for the high positive engagement throughout this year, and we hope that we can continue this throughout LotV as well.
Heart of the Swarm Patch?
Balance is looking pretty good right now, better players seem to win in each matchup, and we don’t want to risk Zerg being on the stronger side for BlizzCon finals, so we’ve decided not to do a HotS patch. Thank you for your feedback regarding this, and thank you for playtesting in the latest balance test map. Your efforts are always appreciated and helpful when we make these kinds of decisions.
Terran MULE
We’ve seen that the mining rate nerf wasn’t a good choice for the MULE. It’s hurting the cases where MULE’s need to be pulled off of minerals, and the randomness that can occur of a MULE not being dropped optimally causes more varying return amounts per MULE than we expected. Therefore, we’d like to revert this nerf, and reduce the harvest amount per trip instead to not have these effects. Also, the harvest amount nerf was too much, so we’ll be looking at a slightly smaller overall nerf to the MULE for the next patch. This should bring Terran up a bit in strength overall, which we think is a good thing since Terran is the slightly weaker of the 3 races currently.
Adept
Adepts do look to be in a much better place like you guys point out, but we also agree with the feedback that they probably need to be nerfed slightly more. We’d like to go for a slight nerf again to see where the unit stands. We’re currently thinking of reducing its life by 10.
Warp Prism and Warp-in Changes
The reduction in warp-in time is looking like it has a very small impact on the defensive case (units already warped in fast enough), and on the offense, the defending player really has no time to move the defending units around. We believe this is the issue with the Warp Prism, and would like to try out going to 4-5 seconds to warp in units. In this scenario, we would also remove the double-damage penalty for units warping in. We’re not too worried about the defensive warp-in case with these changes, because defensive units being warped-in to defend has always been strong and quick enough throughout Wings and HotS.
We did also look into the popular suggestion of making faster warp-ins an upgrade, but during internal playtesting, we realized it just pushes the problem to a later timing where the issue is arguably worse. Not having time to react in terms of army movement is the issue, so we felt the super quick warp-in ability just isn’t that great at any stage of the game.
Cyclone
We’ve had many discussions with players regarding this unit in the past week, and there seems to be a general consensus that Cyclones, when in small numbers, need to be buffed. We definitely agree but we want to make sure any buff we apply doesn’t make massing only Cyclones a viable strategy. We feel that it’s the 7 range required to lock-on that makes mass Cyclones much less effective than before, so we will try to avoid a buff in areas such as this.
For the early/mid game buff, we have been playtesting with a movement speed increase to the base unit to allow the Cyclone to be microed a bit easier, and it’s looking pretty solid so far. It definitely buffs both the defensive and offensive Cyclone usage in the early/mid game, so we would like to try out this change in the beta.
We also heard the feedback that they should be removed from the game, and while this is doable if it truly came down to it, we’d like to explore getting them to a good place first. We also wanted to remind everyone that being too extreme in feedback generally isn’t as helpful as offering constructive ways to solve issues within the game.
The Disruptor and the Warp Prism
We heard your feedback about allowing the Disruptor to load into the Warp Prism while Purification Nova is active and we also agree that this would be a good change. This will add new tactics in Disruptor versus Disruptor fights where, in the past, the person who fired off their nova second would be guaranteed dead. How it will work is if you have fired the ability, but pick up the Disruptor before the damage goes off, the damaging effect will fizzle, dealing no damage. This will create for cool micro moments in game where players will need to decide if they would rather save their Disruptor or deal damage. We’ll be making this change in the next balance update.
We’re aiming to get the next balance update out as soon as possible, and while we don’t know for certain yet, we’d like to release the update as soon as tomorrow afternoon.
That’s it for this week. We’re looking forward to hear your thoughts after you’ve given these changes a go.
Perfect Balance Thread
We saw the popular thread this week stating how Heart of the Swarm has near perfect balance. We wanted to say a few things about that. First is the game’s current balance is really a combined effort of everyone doing his or her part to make the results this good. For example, if players of a certain race aren’t playing as well as they would normally, even with our current numbers, the in-game stats wouldn’t look as good. Also, due to the heavy collaboration with our community, we feel that the perception around good stats has improved. In the past, we’ve seen many negative responses to posts like this due to less people being connected. Now however, due to increased community collaboration, we feel that this weird negativity has largely been dispelled.
The other important thing we’d like to point out is that while it’s true that LotV balance definitely won’t start off this good, this post and your thoughts around it was a good example of how there’s an extremely high confidence that we can get there over time. We say this because our processes having improved over the years, many community members have leveled up in their thought processes and suggestions, and players playing the game at a much higher level.
Thank you everyone for the high positive engagement throughout this year, and we hope that we can continue this throughout LotV as well.
Heart of the Swarm Patch?
Balance is looking pretty good right now, better players seem to win in each matchup, and we don’t want to risk Zerg being on the stronger side for BlizzCon finals, so we’ve decided not to do a HotS patch. Thank you for your feedback regarding this, and thank you for playtesting in the latest balance test map. Your efforts are always appreciated and helpful when we make these kinds of decisions.
Terran MULE
We’ve seen that the mining rate nerf wasn’t a good choice for the MULE. It’s hurting the cases where MULE’s need to be pulled off of minerals, and the randomness that can occur of a MULE not being dropped optimally causes more varying return amounts per MULE than we expected. Therefore, we’d like to revert this nerf, and reduce the harvest amount per trip instead to not have these effects. Also, the harvest amount nerf was too much, so we’ll be looking at a slightly smaller overall nerf to the MULE for the next patch. This should bring Terran up a bit in strength overall, which we think is a good thing since Terran is the slightly weaker of the 3 races currently.
Adept
Adepts do look to be in a much better place like you guys point out, but we also agree with the feedback that they probably need to be nerfed slightly more. We’d like to go for a slight nerf again to see where the unit stands. We’re currently thinking of reducing its life by 10.
Warp Prism and Warp-in Changes
The reduction in warp-in time is looking like it has a very small impact on the defensive case (units already warped in fast enough), and on the offense, the defending player really has no time to move the defending units around. We believe this is the issue with the Warp Prism, and would like to try out going to 4-5 seconds to warp in units. In this scenario, we would also remove the double-damage penalty for units warping in. We’re not too worried about the defensive warp-in case with these changes, because defensive units being warped-in to defend has always been strong and quick enough throughout Wings and HotS.
We did also look into the popular suggestion of making faster warp-ins an upgrade, but during internal playtesting, we realized it just pushes the problem to a later timing where the issue is arguably worse. Not having time to react in terms of army movement is the issue, so we felt the super quick warp-in ability just isn’t that great at any stage of the game.
Cyclone
We’ve had many discussions with players regarding this unit in the past week, and there seems to be a general consensus that Cyclones, when in small numbers, need to be buffed. We definitely agree but we want to make sure any buff we apply doesn’t make massing only Cyclones a viable strategy. We feel that it’s the 7 range required to lock-on that makes mass Cyclones much less effective than before, so we will try to avoid a buff in areas such as this.
For the early/mid game buff, we have been playtesting with a movement speed increase to the base unit to allow the Cyclone to be microed a bit easier, and it’s looking pretty solid so far. It definitely buffs both the defensive and offensive Cyclone usage in the early/mid game, so we would like to try out this change in the beta.
We also heard the feedback that they should be removed from the game, and while this is doable if it truly came down to it, we’d like to explore getting them to a good place first. We also wanted to remind everyone that being too extreme in feedback generally isn’t as helpful as offering constructive ways to solve issues within the game.
The Disruptor and the Warp Prism
We heard your feedback about allowing the Disruptor to load into the Warp Prism while Purification Nova is active and we also agree that this would be a good change. This will add new tactics in Disruptor versus Disruptor fights where, in the past, the person who fired off their nova second would be guaranteed dead. How it will work is if you have fired the ability, but pick up the Disruptor before the damage goes off, the damaging effect will fizzle, dealing no damage. This will create for cool micro moments in game where players will need to decide if they would rather save their Disruptor or deal damage. We’ll be making this change in the next balance update.
We’re aiming to get the next balance update out as soon as possible, and while we don’t know for certain yet, we’d like to release the update as soon as tomorrow afternoon.
That’s it for this week. We’re looking forward to hear your thoughts after you’ve given these changes a go.
