On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote: the best balancing happens when players come up with a way to counter units, not when Blizzard just makes that unit or ability less powerful.

Yes! SC2 is such a convoluted game, there are countless options that have yet to be explored or fully imagined. By reducing everything to an essentially "flat" balance scheme, it will be redundant and boring.

Fantastic writeup.

OminouS

Sweden1343 Posts

April 20 2010 16:09 GMT

#82

I agree about the negative nerf trend. The statement 'we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard' was spot on imo.

Also, didn't the BW storm to 112 dmg?

Groovyschlumpf

Germany75 Posts

April 20 2010 16:13 GMT

#83

Good article!
And it is still the beta so there are still strategies to be seen and i am looking forward to seeing the counterstrategy to some so-called "overpowered" things

SeeDLiNg

United States690 Posts

April 20 2010 16:15 GMT

#84

pro article

I'd never really thought of things this way.

Hope blizz is reading this

Bibdy

United States3481 Posts

April 20 2010 16:18 GMT

#85

The "Terran vs Protoss" thread, in the strategy section, is a great example of players just needing time to adjust to changes, instead of screaming bloody murder and declaring that X and Y need to be nerfed, giving up, calling the game a failure and waiting for Blizzard to acknowledge their terrorist-esque demands. I think true game balance is attained when the loser can say to himself "Dammit, I should have done X, instead of Y", but too often in this beta stage people aren't being honest with themselves. They want to vent frustrations, knowing full well there is some alternate unit they could have used in that situation and they just haven't tried it, never given it enough of a chance or outright dismissed it from the claims of others (e.g. the Ultralisk).

lolreaper

301 Posts

April 20 2010 16:28 GMT

#86

i think adding cooldown and reducing time would solve the problem with FF
adding health bars doesnt look like good solution

metasonic

United States115 Posts

April 20 2010 16:39 GMT

#87

Nice article! Personally I don't think blizz will be able to stop nerfing in this release since the game is already relatively balanced and they don't want to throw that out the window. So I'm afraid the concerns of this article will manifest in a boring game than it needs to be.

However, I'm optimistic. Having two expansions means blizzard has two opportunities to majorly shake up the game after reflecting upon what they've done wrong in the past, so I feel like by the end SCII can be all we want it to be.

h0munkulus

Austria1481 Posts

April 20 2010 16:39 GMT

#88

i think the key to great longterm balance will be to stop releasing any balance patches once the game is released.

let players and mappers take care of "smoothing out the edges". blizzard would better spend their time analyzing community maps and adding them to the ladder map pool than to throw in a balance patch just because "rush XY" is overpowered on a certain map.

GreatDestroyer

United States3 Posts

April 20 2010 16:43 GMT

#89

I would really like to not see broodlords nerfed(even though they kill me). I love the fact that when they come out they are a complete game changer and felt like how you had to think differently about engaging zerg as terran when dark swarm came out. This is the same for many other units labeled OP so quickly. Love the article and completely agree.

ThorinB13

United States3 Posts

April 20 2010 16:48 GMT

#90

Good read. I found the health bar for FF as a very interesting idea. I think it could change both the early and late game effect of sentries.

Kezzer

United States1268 Posts

April 20 2010 16:48 GMT

#91

interesting read

Corak

Germany187 Posts

April 20 2010 16:52 GMT

#92

Great Article!
What I want to add is a theory Mark Rosewater made about Magic:The Gathering.
"It depends on the number of hoops you have to jump through if something is overpowered."

The Lurker + DS strat means you build Lurker teched to Defielers, researched DS, researched Consume eat a few lings and positioned well and fast. - That is a lot of hoops. And Players learned to take them while playing there game without losing while building up.

Massing Roaches + A-Move is no hoops at all. Roaches protect you, even.
So that should not be totally ridiculous, but it can be powerfull.

And FF for example have only one hoop: 100 Gas per Sentry. Which is some but not enough for them to win against almost anything (with an army in the back yadda yadda)
Storms take really long to tech to and lots of gas so I got the feeling that there are some hoops here and not that much of a "overpoweredness" so justify the hoops - but thats just me.

Anyway I think this concept helps when saying: "Some things should be overpowered!"
And they should be!

btw. what I understand was that burrowed Roaches where faster than non upgraded walking Roaches before the patch, and Blizz didn't like it in ZvZ. But that is something BOs could have worked out.

Chicken_Wings

12 Posts

April 20 2010 16:53 GMT

#93

Very interesting on this perspective of SC2.

kainzero

United States5211 Posts

April 20 2010 16:53 GMT

#94

I definitely like where the beta is at right now.

I think as patches begin to slow down, we'll realize that there will be less crying and more strategy development since Blizzard "won't listen."

2ndFoundation

Germany212 Posts

April 20 2010 17:02 GMT

#95

nice article. i didn't have this view yet. nice comparison.

dynomike

United States23 Posts

April 20 2010 17:02 GMT

#96

A lot of people forget the most overpowered unit in SC: the mutalisk. A unit so overpowered, it took an expansion to even begin to balance it out.

Plus, BW - in it's current state - did not exist until patch 1.08, which came out almost 3 years after vanilla SC was originally released. So no worries if this version isn't perfect at 1.0 (which it won't be), there's 2 expansions and many more patches to come.

fishyjoes

Germany644 Posts

April 20 2010 17:08 GMT

#97

Great article. I hope Blizzard reads it!

fellcrow

United States288 Posts

April 20 2010 17:08 GMT

#98

It's annoying how you can point out was seems so obvious but I'm oblivious until it is pointed out. God I'm a dumbass

good read though haha I agree

Chill

Calgary25972 Posts

April 20 2010 17:08 GMT

#99

Agree with the article, vehemently disagree with the forcefield conclusion.

TheTuna

United States286 Posts

April 20 2010 17:12 GMT

#100

Great read! My one concern with the current "overpowered" units as compared to what was really good in BW is this, though. The lurker/defiler combo, while incredibly potent, requires multiple units, teching, and passably good micro. Marauders, Immortals and Roaches are all single units that are or have been borderline OP by themselves, not with a combo, and often don't even need good micro. This is something that I feel should not happen; extremely potent combos aren't necessarily a bad thing, but extremely potent individual units are.