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[SC2B] Power Overwhelming
April 20th, 2010 14:23 GMT
Welcome back to another article. I recently had a chat with fellow TL.net writer Waxangel and it lead me to do some thinking. To sum up our chat: I mentioned that something in SC2 was too good or overpowered, he stated that in BW everything was too good, and that is why the game was so great. This is dead on the money.
The main focus of this article will be on patching: things I'd like to see improved and expectations we should have of SC2. One of the biggest things I notice when people compare SC2 with BW is that there is a very strong tendency of people wanting something to be nerfed because it is "overpowered". I want to show that Brood War was absolutely riddled with examples of overpowered units, and that having such units in SC2 is essential as well.
Starcraft 2 has a lot of units and abilities that people want weakened or that have been weakened already. Force field, for example, is too strong when you have 10 sentries and large armies clash—largely because smart cast enables you to split his your opponent's army in two in a second. Roaches are great in general: they are easy to mass huge amounts of, have lots of HP and only cost one supply (this is actually the one issue where you could claim that they were imbalanced after the regeneration nerf). There are many other examples: banelings are commonly complained about, banshees are mentioned often, brood lords and mutalisks have both undergone quite some discussion and the Mule and the queen's inject larvae ability are incredibly good.
Do these units or skills make the game or break the game? It can be both. Looking back at BW, there were, prior to some patches, a few imbalances that literally broke the game. The insanely fast spawn rate of larvae back in 1.00 is one example, the reaver harassment from 1.02 (back when reavers had a 0 second firing rate after being dropped from a shuttle) was another. These had to be fixed by balance patches because there wasn't anything players could do to counter them. However, there are also examples of ridiculously powerful abilities that stayed in the game and that, in my opinion, made the game what it was.
The best example is dark swarm with lurkers. This is essentially a combination that has only one terran counter: irradiate. Lurkers burrowed underneath dark swarm are practically invincible to anything other than irradiate that terran is likely to have. Yet it stayed in the game, and it definitely didn't break the game.
Other examples of this include: storm dealing 114 damage (initially 128) to a wide range of units in a matter of seconds, sometimes turning a game around completely; irradiate dominating zerg air to such an extent that once terran had 3-4 vessels out, there was hardly a point in building any new units; 3-3 terran mech dominating everything in the game cost-wise... Broodwar had many examples of "overpowered" units or abilities, and they never broke the game.
During the SC2 beta we have already seen some key nerfs: storm is smaller, EMP is smaller, roaches are no longer invincible with the regeneration upgrade... Marauders have also been nerfed somewhat , and in my opinion, in a good way—I actually called for making the slow an upgrade a couple hours before the most recent patch! This is essential not only for the marauders, but because they do to a great degree fill the role of the siege tank—marauders are pretty much as good as tanks at everything other than killing hydralisks and static defense, but they are way more mobile, can be healed, and fare significantly better against melee units.
I am happy that roaches and marauders have both been significantly weakened, because these are all-purpose units, or at least they were initially. Ideally, we want units that aren't too strong in everything, but that have the potential to deal ridiculous damage when they are used optimally in specific situations. I am happy that Blizzard reduced the armor of the roach and the burrowed healing when upgraded was obviously way too strong. However, reducing their burrowed movement reduces one of their specialized usages and this is something I am less happy about.
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/6/62/Roach.png) Roach underground speed was one of the unit's defining characteristics.
In conclusion: Brood War had a really large amount of units and abilities that were overpowered in a vacuum. In fact, virtually every unit except the marine, zealot, dragoon and hydralisk were "too strong" in certain settings, forcing the players to alter their game to fit the units. Yet somehow, BW ended up being quite balanced, even if it took a long time. This was part of Starcraft's greatness because it essentially allowed for the extremely high tension and uncertainty of BW—even if someone was far ahead, extreme comebacks could still happen. If a terran got properly flanked by a defiler-lurker-ultra-ling army, he could lose virtually everything and kill almost nothing in return; a zerg could be dominating a zerg vs protoss game only to lose his army to a few well placed storms and his economy to more storms; a protoss could be dominating in a protoss vs terran game only to have one attack fail completely because the spider mines killed the zealots faster than anticipated, or vice versa, the zealots could drag a bunch mines into tanks blowing them all up creating an improbable comeback for the protoss player.
Many units in Brood War had the potential to kill more than 10 times their own cost. Vultures were the fastest units in the game, two-shotted peons, costed 75 minerals and no gas, were able to put 3 "scarabs" into the ground that blew up anything that walks near them... I mean, three scarabs by themselves cost 45 minerals if you bought them from the reaver (disregarding the reaver cost), and reavers were often unable to fire more than that. Basically, if you compared the races unit for unit, stuff did not add up at all. Zerglings were much better than zealots cost wise, yet a dynamic evolved where protoss would end up having one attack upgrade more than zerg had armor at most stages of the game, and in this event zealots were better. Despite all these glaring imbalances, everything worked out great in actual gameplay. It's certainly hard to replicate, but we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard.
Watching the current nerf-trend, I am certain that an equivalent of dark swarm and burrowed lurker would not have had the slightest chance of making it out of the SC2 beta, and that this fear of the overpowered could eventually end up hurting the game.
With that said, I myself would like to see force field get a health bar (each FF having 400 hp or thereabouts), because as it is now, there's just no way, apart from brood lords, to approach a properly controlled protoss ball, and you certainly want more than one potential counter for a unit. While the patches so far in the beta have mostly been good—I am happy to have called for a few of the changes that were eventually made—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.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
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Interesting article. Good read before my Latin Test.
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Good ideas and nice article. New here but so far so good 
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I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years.
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Very interesting points, and it does raise some good issues. The last thing about the FF though does seem in direct contradiction to the rest of the article. Force Fields are insanely good, but it doesn't compare to say lurker-defiler in BW. And as it is, it's one of the more exciting things about spectating the game.
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This is approaching the "problem" of balance issues from a new, unexpected angle. I kind of like how you put it together.
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totally agree, people are just going to have to figure out proper builds and compositions for counters. After all terran mech, muta stacking, and shuttle reaver wouldn't have been discovered in a beta's lifetime. Some took years, like the bisu build, it took terran and toss a long time to perfect fast expand builds and know when to use them depending on what they scouted. Great article tho! keep em comin!
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Interesting article, you make a good point. I can't see the balance that BW had being replicated, but hopefully it will come close.
"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." I concur.
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On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
With that said, I myself would like to see force field get a health bar (each FF having 400 hp or thereabouts), because as it is now, there's just no way, apart from brood lords, to approach a properly controlled protoss ball, and you certainly want more than one potential counter for a unit.
On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
The best example is dark swarm with lurkers. This is essentially a combination that has only one terran counter: irradiate.
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On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard.
Exactly my thought.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES49625 Posts
very well written article
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I agree with you that overpowered "all-purpose" units are things to look into for patches but deadly combination like lurkers + dark swarm are just things that make the game better and should allow players to come up with clever counters.
Nerfing a key defining component of that unit is not the way to go, like the roaches. It would be as if you were to nerf the siege tank's range or time limiting the dark templar's cloaking. There are other ways and I think you sum it all up in this article.
"we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard." Exactly!
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Keep in mind that Dark Swarm lite--the Point Defense Drone--is still in the game
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There's so much pressure on Blizz to balance stuff immediately - they no longer have the luxury of waiting for creative players to find elusive solutions after a year or so of "imbalance".
It's true, dark swarm would have no chance to get out of beta now; but lurkers would probably not make it either, because by the time someone figured out there's a way to micro marines against small numbers or lurks, the thousands upon thousands of impatient, inexperienced and self righteous players would flood them with nerf requests. Not to mention that testers now have a more inflated sense of worth, because there are so many of them that have played a gazzilion hours of BW, how dare you question their experience in SC2?!
It's a different climate now, there are more players experimenting and with a greater RTS background than before, but Blizz is also a lot more restricted by the community. We are very impatient and very demanding. I don't see a way around it, we just have to hope they have the balls to stick with a good idea until it sinks in instead of caving to everything we say.
But then again, if they listen to me that would also count as caving in to what we're saying so I take it back!
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This makes alot of sense, its the right way to look at the balancing of SC2.
Good article. (y)
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I have the felling Blizzard is too afraid and tries to play it too safe which can potentialy make SC2 fail.
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The exact reason why we'll never see units like Lurkers and Defilers in SC2 - It requires way too much skill to counter/deal with it and it would scare away a big part of the casual players.
Issue with that is that we'll never see moments like "wow look at that amazing reaver micro" or "wow look at how well he dealt with that reaver harass" or "wow a perfect split with those m&m against those lurkers, that is soo hard to do" in SC2.
Which makes me a little bit sad 
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Great article, essentially we need lurkers and dark swarm to make a triumphant return!
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This article is OP 
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It does make a lot of sense. While nerf's may be herald as good, they might just make the game boring.
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Very nice read. It's a difficult line to draw though - when does something need nerfing (1.02 reaver), and when will players adapting balance it out by itself?
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Good article. I would focus more on making points and less on; "See! I made a call that Blizzard made! Me so smart!"
4/5
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great stuff, love the force field idea
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Great article. I couldn't agree more, all this nerfing only hurts the game.
I simply cannot beat a good Protoss player right now as Zerg but I haven't called out for a single nerf. I want to figure it out cause I know there has to be a way.
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Reminds me of mothership overnerfing.
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I do agree that these things hurt the game at the highest level, but I think this is actually intentionally part of blizzards plan because it makes the game more noob-friendly. The creative counters are sometimes pretty hard to pull off for beginning users, and blizz is aiming for a wider net in this game.
(interestingly, I disagree about the FF, I just think you shouldn't be able to move units as much with them, but have to cast in mostly open spaces instead)
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They are actually aware of this aren't they? Dustin Browder said that the most important thing he learned from the previous developer is to not be too quick on nerfing things but I guess they just felt that stuff like the roach movement while burrowed wasn't the direction they wanted (though i do agree it should be changed back to the faster speed)
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Very interesting article and a new prespective(well to most people anyways) on the whole balance issue. Agree on your thoughts as a whole but the article ends in a pretty funny note, like other have pointed out, that you first say how ff is imba and then talk about how things need to be imba and then how blizz should nerf ff
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Meh, everything written in this article has already been said or proposed multiple times. A lot of new posters actually have great ideas, some of which were exactly for the nerfs that already made it into current patches.
Making everything a little "too good" is Sirlin's method of approaching balance and also the right one.
The meta game currently suffers, because the way to scout opponent tech are expensive (sacrificing a mule for terran and getting expensive obs as P or suiciding multiple overlords). Scouting should be cheaper to allow people to switch up faster instead of massing up blinding, then losing one big fight and gg-ing.
Faster, dynamic switches to counter would benefit the current beta greatly imo.
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Would giving forcefields health be a good idea? essentially a field tank to soak up damage? it would have to be put on the lowest priority of possible targets atleast.
i think a better nerf would be that forcefields cannot be put ontop of eachother so making a wall midfight would be alot harder. it would be like a building, not blocked by units, but by other fore fields, so you couldnt do they instant wall that most players do now where they just drag the mouse and spam click.
on scouting: we wouldnt want scouting to be too easy either: (read: cnc)
so instead of making claims that it is too hard, maybe post some ideas you think would work well?
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Nice article. Made me think that's for sure. I wonder if people spend more time talking about "how" certain things should be balanced than "why" certain things should be balanced.
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Great writeup, but I think you forgot two things: Map size and "damage density".
Many of the current (or even pre-patch-X) problems with certain units are a direct consequence of the size of the maps. Marauder rushes pre Patch 8 would probably not have such huge success on a larger map, because the defender has more time to prepare and consequently more troops. The same might be true for Immortals if you walk them over to the opponents base.
Some mechanics will affect the gameplay severely on a larger map and the biggest "offender" here is probably Warp Gate. In itself it might not be such a problem, but because the cooldown can be Chrono boosted it seems "too flexible". Another thing is the Nydus network, which only needs sight to connect to its target location. You will not be able to cover all your base in the few seconds it needs to spawn and move troops over there to kill it. These two "distance does not matter for deployment" mechanics are extremely flexible and might make the whole game unstable on larger maps. We will have to wait and see what happens after the content patch this month though.
One comparison between SC2 and BW is obvious: Unit movement allows for "tight ball formations" and I dont think that is a good thing, because it means you cant defend a large open spaces. Psi Storm and EMP already had their radius reduced and this favors the tight ball even more; that was a mistake IMO. Due to this "high damage density" defensive structures and any building usually fall in a matter of seconds and hardly seem worth the effort. This is another big concern I have atm, which does not have anything to do with the actual units themselves.
On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years.
Sometimes "you've got to be one to know one" is true and sometimes the opposite works better. With constant immersion in the game designing the Blizzard employees arent really objective enough to judge things in a good light. They have already acknowledged that players came up with a lot more creative strategies than they themselves thought possible. So "trusting your government to do it right" is bad in this case and the people need to have a voice in the decision making.
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Although I have not had the chance to play the beta, just by reading the posts, I feel that people are already so impatient with this game. I agree with Doctorasul that Blizz probably should not cave in to every person who cries imba. This game should grow organically and many of the imbalance factors are sometimes just trends in the meta-game.
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I don't like that the whole article is saying: "Don't fix too fast, because it might not be broken", and I totally agree with that, but you conclude with a balance fix suggestion. That seems to contradict with the rest. And
On April 20 2010 23:51 michiko wrote:
Good article. I would focus more on making points and less on; "See! I made a call that Blizzard made! Me so smart!"
Other than that, very good article. I agree with the points you make. I think Blizzard should not make any major balance fixes within less than 6 months of the actual release unless something seems to be really alarming, like the PvP warpgate rush.
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Good article, I kinda felt the same about the storm (and emp) nerf where it was like 23% (or 45 whoever was right) = wtf biggest nerf ever. I got that strange feeling that storm always has been kinda "imbalanced" and the suggestion was not to nerf storm, but make that light unit play (marauder, hydra etc.) less viable. Tough that did not happen but is often suggested now after the storm nerf. But thats just one side of the medal.
However Blizzard is now in a danger zone when it comes to balance since the slightest change will screw a lot up.
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It's funny how Blizzard removed the lurker because roach could be better. All we have now is a boring unit that can be detected by 50 different ways and can't attack while burrowed. And it's even more funny how they made medivacs, so they could follow reapers in the battleground and heal them. It's like giving wings to zerglings so they could follow mutalisks everywhere or making zealots blink so they could be always with the stalkers.
Storm on BW did more damage than in SC2, and the units in BW had way less HP. Funny how things changed now. In SC2 we got ground units like roach and marauder with lots of hp while storm do less damage haha.
Really nice article, I hope some important people in Blizzard reads it.
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This place seems to be the best one to ask my question. Anyone has an idea how to stop a Thor+Marauder/medivac timing push whit Zerg. Really as far as my knowledge goes, I have tried everything. Thor is just a perfect counter to everything at the moment. And yes I tried to neural parasite them, but the infestors just cant hold out, not to say if the timing push is good I have maybe one or two.
So as always there is two side to a coin.
You should nerf what doesn't fits in, and you should think before you take something away(like roach underground speed)
My biggest fear is, that since ActiVision is the boss at Blizzard, they just want to drop the game on the market so it can sell fast ASAP, and not to make a game that can be there for nother 12years like SC, SC:BW. They patch like insane, realy. bnet s.....ing BIG TIME, and the balance is getting worst whit every patch.
Hope we will have a "happily ever after"
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Imo a forcefield nerf would not be a good thing. What I think is that zerg needs another caster unit. P has the sentry and the ht and T has the raven and the ghost. The Raven owns and it's not used enough. Yes, it's late tech but hey, the ht is late tech too. The infestor ain't cutting it and Zerg is really turning into the A-move race thanks to the lack of skills. The only adjustment (not necessarily a nerf) I see viable to the FF is to limit it to just 1 FF per sentry at the same time (or 15 sec cooldown), to prevent too much spam of it.
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Good article but a little disappointed it ended with a suggestion for a nerf. i mean wasn't that the point of the article, to let things play out a bit. I really don't think broodlords are the only counter, cant roaches burrow move under the force fields, so snipe any observers with hydra and then burrow move. Idk just an option I guess.
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9933 Posts
best sc2 article i've read since the beta first came out. brood war is a delicate balance of imbalanced units, but mostly due to spells and abilities - force field fits this, but... probably not tier 1.5 units with ridiculous stats (holy trinity)? just sayin!
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
On April 21 2010 00:05 pure[L] wrote:
This place seems to be the best one to ask my question. Anyone has an idea how to stop a Thor+Marauder/medivac timing push whit Zerg. Really as far as my knowledge goes, I have tried everything. Thor is just a perfect counter to everything at the moment. And yes I tried to neural parasite them, but the infestors just cant hold out, not to say if the timing push is good I have maybe one or two. This is not the place to ask this
My biggest fear is, that since ActiVision is the boss at Blizzard, they just want to drop the game on the market so it can sell fast ASAP, and not to make a game that can be there for nother 12years like SC, SC:BW. They patch like insane, realy. bnet s.....ing BIG TIME, and the balance is getting worst whit every patch.
Hope we will have a "happily ever after"
This isn't an issue.
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I can't figure out if this part was a joke or not, "With that said, I myself would like to see force field get a health bar (each FF having 400 hp or thereabouts), because as it is now, there's just no way ..." because it's so out of place with the rest of your post -- and definitely out of place for an article. If it was a meta joke on yourself and I'm too dense to get it, er, sorry. If you were serious, lol, read your own goddamn article again.
*a tag got away from me
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How is it possible that first reply was made before the OP
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On April 21 2010 00:08 iammaru wrote:
I can't figure out if this part was a joke or not, "With that said, I myself would like to see force field get a health bar (each FF having 400 hp or thereabouts), because as it is now, there's just no way ..." because it's so out of place with the rest of your post -- and definitely out of place for an article. If it was a meta joke on yourself and I'm too dense to get it, er, sorry. If you were serious, lol, read your own goddamn article again.
*a tag got away from me
This was the point of my post as well, if he was joking, ignore that I said anything.
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On April 21 2010 00:04 rhap wrote:
It's funny how Blizzard removed the lurker because roach could be better. All we have now is a boring unit that can be detected by 50 different ways and can't attack while burrowed.
They removed the Lurker and other units so they had an easy supply of "new units" to introduce in the expansions. It is much easier to balance the game with fewer units and since it is going to be a new game you should have more new stuff than old stuff. Just look at the terran campaign: IIRC it has Medics in the solo missions and all the old models are supposedly in the game already. Go figure the rest from there.
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Interesting article. Haven't played the beta yet but it seems that in BW there were still counters to alot of the so called overpowered spells/units but it doesn't seem to be the case in SC2.
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Thanks for the write up. I am loving all your posts so far Drone, keep it up, I enjoy reading them a lot.
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A great article, and one that I agree wholeheartedly with.
Unit abilities are meant to bend the basic rules of the game, individualise units, and allow superior micro and tactical skills to have a very large impact on the outcome of battles.
If everything gets nerfed into oblivion then we end up with boring, featureless unit blobs rolling around the map, and a game that gets very stale very quickly.
Kev
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The game is still evolving, and not just the changes the developers make. The players crafted BW over the years and it will continue with sc2. People just get excited since the game is still so new so they cry OP too easy. Very good post
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Very interesting article. I love to read stuff that keeps me in the game even if I havnt got a beta key !
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FREEAGLELAND26780 Posts
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Well said.
Edit: I agree it is important to make each unit powerful in it's own right. It becomes a question of how you want the unit to be overpowered. Which is why I agree I s'pose with the armor reduction on the roach but am dissapointed by the burrowed movement speed reduction.
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Great Read.
Have been waiting for this one for some time =)
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great write up! and yes.... i hope they don't make every unit horrible
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Reducing the speed isn't so bad, in fact i think it's good. If they got ride of the movement all together then that would be a problem.
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Very interesting. Especially for me who has no SC:BW knowledge, it opened my eyes.
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Very good read! Keep ut the excellent work drone!
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On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
[ It's certainly hard to replicate, but we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard.
Watching the current nerf-trend, I am certain that an equivalent of dark swarm and burrowed lurker would not have had the slightest chance of making it out of the SC2 beta, and that this fear of the overpowered could eventually end up hurting the game.
i think this is the whole point of what he was trying to say. and i think he is right with that. how many games have we seen where one thing got nerfed because everybody cried about it. only so a few updates later it would get buffed to the state it was before or even better.
as he said things need time to develop. u cant balance a game when ppl just start to understand the game. having said that. like always there are things that need to be fixed and i feel blizzard did that. overall i think blizz is doing a darn good job on updating and balancing atm.
so just wait for them to make their magic happen and we all will be happy in the end. well not all because some ppl were born unhappy but hey we cant save everybody.
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I agree with the article, nicely written too.
Cheers
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Very intereting Philosophy. I'm prtty sure everyone can agree that under most circumstances instead of nerfing one unit into the ground I'd make for a much more interesting game to buff other things up to that level.
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FuDDx
United States5007 Posts
I NEVER read a word in the sc2 section.Until now that you cool people gave me a key I find Im trying to play keep up hahaha.
Great article.Thank you.
You still do any clowning drone?
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Very well written
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im not so much in favor of nerfing forcefield but adding something to the zerg so that they can snipe sentries/deal with forcefields better.
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Well structured and written article with extremely valid points;
well done
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Great article, thanks.
I agree with the idea that over-nerfing everything could cause SC2 to be a less interesting game.
One point comes to mind: Blizzard are not balance gods. Look at WC3. But there's one thing we shouldn't forget. We, as players and mapmakers also have tools to help swing the balance, if Blizzard has swung it too far in one direction.
Innovative strategies are the player's tool, and one of the factors that has made BW worth watching and playing for so long.
And as the mapmakers learn the strengths and weaknesses of each race, it'll be possible to make maps more favourable for the "weak" race.
Overall, I think that in time, the community will achieve a very playable balance and still have an interesting game to spectate, without a lot of further balancing from Blizzard..
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On April 20 2010 23:59 Rabiator wrote:Great writeup, but I think you forgot two things: Map size and "damage density". Many of the current (or even pre-patch-X) problems with certain units are a direct consequence of the size of the maps. Marauder rushes pre Patch 8 would probably not have such huge success on a larger map, because the defender has more time to prepare and consequently more troops. The same might be true for Immortals if you walk them over to the opponents base. Some mechanics will affect the gameplay severely on a larger map and the biggest "offender" here is probably Warp Gate. In itself it might not be such a problem, but because the cooldown can be Chrono boosted it seems "too flexible". Another thing is the Nydus network, which only needs sight to connect to its target location. You will not be able to cover all your base in the few seconds it needs to spawn and move troops over there to kill it. These two "distance does not matter for deployment" mechanics are extremely flexible and might make the whole game unstable on larger maps. We will have to wait and see what happens after the content patch this month though. One comparison between SC2 and BW is obvious: Unit movement allows for "tight ball formations" and I dont think that is a good thing, because it means you cant defend a large open spaces. Psi Storm and EMP already had their radius reduced and this favors the tight ball even more; that was a mistake IMO. Due to this "high damage density" defensive structures and any building usually fall in a matter of seconds and hardly seem worth the effort. This is another big concern I have atm, which does not have anything to do with the actual units themselves. Show nested quote +On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years. Sometimes "you've got to be one to know one" is true and sometimes the opposite works better. With constant immersion in the game designing the Blizzard employees arent really objective enough to judge things in a good light. They have already acknowledged that players came up with a lot more creative strategies than they themselves thought possible. So "trusting your government to do it right" is bad in this case and the people need to have a voice in the decision making.
My post was aimed at players new to the game. Experts (read A level players) can obviously exploit potential holes better than blizzard, but I see so many >200 post users claiming that "x" is imbalanced that it makes me want to cry.
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Nice article I'm looking forward to more.
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“OP,” “IMBA,” and a Suppositional Approach
I appreciate this article for the way it extends the "balance" dialogue in a fairly even-handed manner. However, I'm not sure if you got to where you wanted to go with it (to use a vague idiom!). Here is what I mean:
Your main argument is that the phrase "OP" is a misnomer; in SC, there is actually an excess of OP units, which is what causes the game to have such a distinct and challenging flavour. "Everything was too good." There is a sense in which I agree with you, especially your last sentence: "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."
I contend that the whole idea of OP is misunderstood. There are some players who have likely logged over one thousand games of Beta since its inception. Lots of time, we might think, to develop strategies, understand unit composition and play, and comment persuasively about what parts of the game are imbalanced. However, there seem to be three ways in which the idea of OP is misunderstood.
Approach to Beta
Due to the competitive nature of Starcraft, players are pushed to play with a certain perspective toward each game: win. This is exacerbated by the Beta itself, which provides a select group of players the opportunity to be the "first" to get to the top of a ladder, etc. The "gold rush" effect is wearing off a little bit as new ranking wipes occur and people have to redo their placement. However, there is a fairly strong trend of victory-minded play styles.
This is by no means a bad thing! SC2 is a competitive game capable of audience-level entertainment. But, what this does mean is that less attention is given to the generation of new strategies for the sake of defeating "OP" builds. People don't want to "waste" games attempting to overcome a Protoss ball with 10+ sentries. So we QQ and move on to another game. Eventually a competitive approach develops strategies more organically, but this is often after a large number of games and a great deal of frustration.
Collective RTS Consciousness
This approach to Beta is, in part, built up by a strange phenomenon within gaming that I will call the "RTS Consciousness." What I mean is that the (short) history of competition-generating RTS games has developed an awareness of and expectations to the way a game like SC2 "should" work. We can trace through games like SC1, Warcraft III, II, I, C+C, Total Annihilation, and a few others, the presence of a collective attempt to make a truly "competitive" RTS. I do not believe SC would have been quite so successful if the collective consciousness of a country like Korea was not present to carry it along. You make a great point that, in many ways, SC has some areas of severe imbalance (cost of Vultures with spider mines).
And yet, the collective consciousness of players in Korea pushed past these barriers and helped to develop crazy strategies based on game glitches (worker through minerals, muta micro). Players like Boxer, Nal_Ra, Yellow, and others worked with SC like a potter kneads hard clay, until the game was putty in their hands. Marine micro? No problem.
However, what has this collective consciousness done for SC2? With the weight of RTS games contributing their voices, and the weight of an entire e-sports industry overshadowing this new release, players begin to have expectations of what a game should be like instead of what it is like. This is the key shift. It is a shift in the power dynamic of how a game is created. Betas are longer, the “community” has more input and power in decisions about the game. Generally speaking, we use a mob-mentality approach of QQing in order to attempt to alter the way the game operates. But for SC, none of this took place. Rather, the players worked with what they had. Perhaps they complained a little, but battle.net was nothing like it is today (remember LAN parties?). Instead players were left to be creative in their own ways – left to puzzle out counter-strategies when most of us would have said, “that unit is OP, or IMBA.”
Imminence
The shift to a completely online game adds an additional layer of consideration when discussing imbalance within SC2. Imminence means “nearness,” and in this sense, I want to extend the idea that Blizzard will likely have much more trouble “patching” SC2 in the realm of balancing than any other game before. More than WoW? Yes. Why?
The online nature of the game means that everything is too close. Players, developers, commentators, math majors (for all those handy-dandy stats) all exist in a tight dialogue of power relations. Consider the example of WoW. How many sights are there devoted to quest help, walkthroughs, class spec guides, and (in the recent past) gear/raid check. Blizzard itself provides a powerful database in the Armory. But all of these factors affect the way the game is designed, balanced, and played. It is impossible, in many ways, for an initiate of WoW who is part of the collective consciousness of gamers and internet users, to experience the game apart from these other websites. In fact, in higher level raiding it is an absolute necessity for players to have proper UI configuration, Skype/Vent, and Gearscore awareness (entirely foreign to WoW itself).
I am arguing that SC2 is similar. There is a “nearness” in livestreams, casting, blogging, math analyses, and forum discussions that actually affects the way the game is perceived and balanced. When Orb complains, many other Protoss complain (of course, Orb is actually fairly even-handed as far as I have seen – especially in his praise/criticism during his review show). When Day9 says jump, 2000k+ viewers obey. The effect is a community-wide attitude toward the game.
Conclusion
This is why I like the Goatrope show. A little wild sometimes, but Goat generally tries strange builds (4 rax/4 queen anyone?). It is that kind of an emphasis which I would encourage across the board. We are still in Beta, and there are likely to be changes that someone loves and another hates. But we need to look past this and recognize that the power to develop creative builds is the real value of participating in a Beta. Climbing the ladder is great – go for it! But try to contribute as well. Take a current “problem” and attempt to work out an interesting solution. For instance, work out a solution to Zerg FE that does not involve an early timing push. Most games I have seen, if the timing push fails, or if the Protoss or Terran attempt to play catch-up with their own expansion, the Zerg will out-macro and win. Is their another solution?
These kinds of questions are all over the place in SC2 if you care to look. This is why I propose a “suppositional approach” to Beta play. This means, playing to work out a problem. For a while, in PvT (and still to a certain extent), mass Marauder/Marine with Ghosts supporting was a formidable strategy. Work out a solution.
One obvious objection is that it doesn’t work that way. When you are in game you have no idea what your opponent is going to do. My contention is that a suppositional approach means that you are prepared to work out solutions when the opportunity presents itself, and you are attempting to develop your own questions when there is no opportunity. What about working out strategies for some of the upper tier units? This is where the mastery of SC players came from. Pressing on a unit to do what no one else expects it to do. Find a use for the Ultralisk or Infestor. Plan some convincing Siege Tank/Ghost play that is sustainable.
The key to understanding the idea of “OP” is the recognition that the way we view RTS games is much different than in the past. But to continue to claim “OP” or “IMBA” shows that we are not serious about the challenge of creativity presented to us. By complaining to Blizzard as a community (world-wide), we effectively ask them to spoon-feed us strategies, much in the same way that the Roach/Immortal/Marauder dynamic was spoon-fed and summarily rejected by the community. Can we show Blizzard that SC2 can support such creativity? Can we be patient?
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Good insight, I feel the same about Terran's approach towards Thors. They were under-appreciated but now they seem to be popular now after some time. Only time will tell along with new strategies and tactics. At least I think that's what happened.
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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.
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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?
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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
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pro article
I'd never really thought of things this way.
Hope blizz is reading this
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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).
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i think adding cooldown and reducing time would solve the problem with FF
adding health bars doesnt look like good solution
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Very interesting on this perspective of SC2.
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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."
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nice article. i didn't have this view yet. nice comparison.
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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.
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Great article. I hope Blizzard reads it!
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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
+1
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Calgary25966 Posts
Agree with the article, vehemently disagree with the forcefield conclusion.
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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.
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I think the problem might be more exarcebated by the league-division-ranking systems at the moment. It really depends on what statistics they rely on the most in order to make the larger-scaled content changes?
For example, having ranking divisions in beta allows Blizzard to monitor the effects of a patch change amongst the most elite players. What happens in lower divisions shouldn't have an effect on their decisions (because the gameplay and strategies utilised are optimally efficient at the highest ranking levels, and use of the changed content introduced by the patch wouldn't be used as effectively or be as 'fleshed out' as within the lower divisions). (Although, it would be interesting to find out whether the lower division statistics do in fact have an effect at all on Blizzard patch decisions and why).
The problem comes from whatever win-loss thresholds (by percentage) Blizzard might be using in the upper divisions to reach conclusions about the effect of a patch on game balance.
For example, if a patch is introduced, and then suddenly in the 'platinum' division (that's the highest ranking division, right?) there is a move from a 10% win rate by zerg players to 80%, then they'll believe that the patch introduced even more imbalance. But if the win rate only increased to 55%, they might consider the patch a success. Obviously, not every race will be able to adopt an equal win-loss rate exactly (of 33.3%). But a threshold win-loss rate (for e.g. from 20% to 40%) would be a pragmatic approach for evaluating the effect of patches on game balance.
But what happens when players encounter a negative patch change on their favourite race? They switch over! Some would. This obviously distorts the statistical rate of win-lose that races generate. So you have to assume players dont play static in terms of race choice. Also, are the periods in between patch changes enough to allow the long-term win-loss rate to eventuate? Remember, some strategies that seem OP now, might seem only a minor annoyance in the future.
...My head hurts from thinking too much. Someone else can finish off whatever I was trying to say. =)
NOTE: I don't actually have access to SC2 at all. LET THE FLAME WARS BEGIN RAWRR!!!
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Great article. I think it's important to remember how long Brood War was out, and how short of a time the Beta has been available. I like SC2 because I think it has wonderful potential. I think we're to the point where we haven't even scratched the surface of the of using units tactically.
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On April 21 2010 02:08 Chill wrote:
Agree with the article, vehemently disagree with the forcefield conclusion.
It kind of goes against all the things he said before that doesn't it.
At first I agreed with him but that's because I'm not objective and I'm annoyed at the ZvP losses I've had, this is exactly the kind of specialised spell that people need to battle longer to be able to judge that it needs to be nerfed.
Overall still a very good article.
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This is exactly what i think. I totaly agree with this article
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hmm, intresting though i do not fully agree
lurkers under darkswarm
1.) Have the defiler out, actually the hardest thing to achieve in ZvT
2.) create hydras and morph them into lurkers
3.) consume really small zerglings (hard to click on them, especially if they move)
4.) move forward with your troops
5.) cast darkswarm
6.) burrow the lurkers
+defilers are slower than the rest of your army, and could be sniped with irradiate
And the Terran could pull his army back
Versus
Force-field
1.) have the sentrys out (1.5 tier units)
2.) when the clash happens, select your army, press a-click, throw down 5-6 forcefields with smart casting
The Zerg cannot really retreat if you done it well.
Darkswarm was expensive, and hard to use, forcefields are cheap and very easy to use. You could run trough a darkswarm if it wasnt placed correctly or the units werent in place.
Forcefield is OP.
The problem with Marauders is that Blizzard did not nerf them, they fixed the stupid imbalanced rush in TvP. A cheap upgrade does not set the marauder back. mass-Marauders with heal arent countered by any Zerg unit but Mutas and having 1 (one) Thor and maybe a couple marines shuts down more than enough Mutas. Hydras melt because of their low hp, roaches are countered by them, lings cannot surround a big ball of marauders, banelings dont do enough dmg. Infestors are cool but with enough dropships the effectiveness falls hard.
But i agree with the idea, having really powerful units does good for the game. Like reapers can shitrape your entire economy or cancel your spire and whatnot, yet they arent OP, etc..
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Great article but the force field comment detracts from an otherwise well organized post (regardless if force field should be changed or not)
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good article. Hopefully more people will realize these very good ideas!
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I totally support this article. I participated in many beta tests of RTS games, and often I tried to make a topic along the lines "Please don't nerf". The beauty in SC:BW balance happened because overpowered units and abilities somehow appeared to be balanced.
Many players and developers fail to realize that if you nerf everything too much, the game becomes bland and all units start to look alike. I see this very dangerous trend in SC2 balance patches and it is very sad. For example, Roaches almost went from a strong tank that can also harras or surprise to a hydra that shoots only ground. Mothership was fantastic in it's second version, and it went to slow arbiter (yes, it was OP, but I'd prefer another solution to this issue).
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Very nice article, pretty interessing.
Good job on that.
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Good article. I look forward for zerg getting buffed ;] and the other changes aswell
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Good article, it's something I look forward to every week, but this was wasn't up to par to the others. I completely agree with most of your article about how screaming IMBA may end up ruining the game as units become weaker and less and less interesting, but your conclusion completely contradicts the rest of your article. That alone makes me question the article as a whole.
Also I feel that there's a big difference between types of IMBA. Some are fun to watch as with the defiler's dark swarm and HT's psi storm, but their are others than are just plain boring. Armies that take very little skill to build and comprise of only a limited number of units that can counter a variety of tactics is IMBA and also frankly stupid as hell. That's a completely different beast than defiler IMBA which is rewarding because it's not only hard to master, but also much more situational. With the later case of IMBA, the IMBA is a good thing that adds depth the game while the former case of IMBA does the opposite.
Blizzard needs to promote game depth with situational IMBA that rewards skill, chance (is good for competitive games as mentioned in your previous article), and planning, but at the same time discourage one unit army compositions that ruin the game. That's what I think and that's also what I felt your article was directed at, but your conclusion feels like an afterthought that's just out of place.
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Yes I agree with the article. One of my friends used to say when I played against him, that he thought psyonic storm was OP. I could not really make any arguments against that other that it could be hard to micro your templars and place the storm correctly. But psyonic storm was somewhat op, I had to agree with him.
As Triscuit says, the game is just in beta, so I do not expect a balanced game.
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probably your best article to date.
but we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard.
This quote resonated the best with me. I think blizzard has been VERY good about making games where every race or in the case of diablo 2 and WoW every class had some defining atributes that made them OP in the right hands or as you said in the right situation. I hope they keep their trend and allow some units or unit combinations to be very strong at certain stages of the game so long as they are not unstoppable.
I also agreed with the forcefield issue you said. I play random and some of the games I've had in PvZ I can't help but laugh how bad the forcefield shits on them. Pushing units away and blocking ramps while I kill their base. Endless FF FTW. Hope there is some dynamic other than not letting them get to your ramp such as the one you suggested by adding hp bar gets implamented. By giving them HP bars they are still very useful.
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Interesting article.
I'd also like to mention that the gaming industry is vastly different from what it was 12 years ago.
There's so much more money that goes into developing and marketing games now. Without a steady revenue stream for SC2, I doubt we'll get the same type of post release support we did with SC1.
As much as I'm looking forward to SC2, I'd be super surprised to see it last half as long as SC1 in terms of a competitive esport game.
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On April 21 2010 01:05 mcneebs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2010 23:59 Rabiator wrote:Great writeup, but I think you forgot two things: Map size and "damage density". Many of the current (or even pre-patch-X) problems with certain units are a direct consequence of the size of the maps. Marauder rushes pre Patch 8 would probably not have such huge success on a larger map, because the defender has more time to prepare and consequently more troops. The same might be true for Immortals if you walk them over to the opponents base. Some mechanics will affect the gameplay severely on a larger map and the biggest "offender" here is probably Warp Gate. In itself it might not be such a problem, but because the cooldown can be Chrono boosted it seems "too flexible". Another thing is the Nydus network, which only needs sight to connect to its target location. You will not be able to cover all your base in the few seconds it needs to spawn and move troops over there to kill it. These two "distance does not matter for deployment" mechanics are extremely flexible and might make the whole game unstable on larger maps. We will have to wait and see what happens after the content patch this month though. One comparison between SC2 and BW is obvious: Unit movement allows for "tight ball formations" and I dont think that is a good thing, because it means you cant defend a large open spaces. Psi Storm and EMP already had their radius reduced and this favors the tight ball even more; that was a mistake IMO. Due to this "high damage density" defensive structures and any building usually fall in a matter of seconds and hardly seem worth the effort. This is another big concern I have atm, which does not have anything to do with the actual units themselves. On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years. Sometimes "you've got to be one to know one" is true and sometimes the opposite works better. With constant immersion in the game designing the Blizzard employees arent really objective enough to judge things in a good light. They have already acknowledged that players came up with a lot more creative strategies than they themselves thought possible. So "trusting your government to do it right" is bad in this case and the people need to have a voice in the decision making. My post was aimed at players new to the game. Experts (read A level players) can obviously exploit potential holes better than blizzard, but I see so many >200 post users claiming that "x" is imbalanced that it makes me want to cry.
So you are saying that a newbie with just common sense cant find potential problems (like being able to warp in loads of units anywhere in an instant or deploy them even without needing creep first) as I mentioned? Common sense also dictates that balancing Starcraft is much more complex than simply comparing the stats of units with each other. The prime example here is the Sentry, which can multiply the damage potential of other units (most importantly the Immortal) by protecting them against harm. As a Tier 1.5 unit it is really really powerful.
Sadly most people ignore any synergies and simply look at the stats of one single unit. The Infestor and its awesome Fungal Growth is such a unti: totally ignored by 95+% of Zerg players? You are capable of doing what Marauders and Sentries can do in one spell and both these units get "flamed for". Fungal Growth allows you to influence the opponent and to form a concave around the enemy OR to run away while the enemy takes damage. So Fungal Growth + some Roaches beat a bigger number of Roaches.
The sad truth in all these claims is that you have to read everything and judge for yourself. Even "top posters" can post incorrect stuff, but newbies could find a golden nugget or really IMBA combo too. The whole concept of balance can not be separated from the playing style of the players. It is a fluid and ongoing thing.
Also: What seems balanced for "Platinum players" might be imbalanced for Copper ... and the game should be fun for all types. A good example here is the "hot topic" of the Immortal push vs. Terran. If some top players figure out one build to do their fast expanding, but it requires so much precision in its execution that it isnt doable for Copper league Terrans it may be a problem if the Immortal aggression build is easier to master. Everyones answer needs to be looked at, but the top players analyze better than the bottom ones and thus can describe problems much more precisely.
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way to hit the nail on the head liquid drone! ive been watching these nerfs and some of the just baffle me. like i understand some units need to be nerfed but you have to find the best way to nerf.
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Honestly, until we get some better maps (and bigger), it's hard to say what is balanced and what isn't.
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This is a wonderful article, and I agree with it 100%.
As a long time Melee professional player, the announcement of Brawl was a huge welcome for most players. As the smash community over at smashboards got bigger and bigger, it was natural for everyone to look forwards to a sequel to a game that everyone loved and played together for long hours. All my casual friends were excited, all my high level player friends were excited, it was hard to not look forward to the release of the game.
Then it happened.
"We want to create a game that both casual players and professional players can play against each other on a closer ground" -Sakurai
Those aren't the exact words, but the same philosophy was there. The team behind Sakurai didn't want to make another high level competitive game. They just wanted to create a game that casual players can play at a decent level and have more fun. So how do we do that? Let's take out all the advanced techniques. L-canceling? Wavedashing? Shuffling? Comboability? Gone. Let's slow down the game as well. Oh, let's add tripping too so we can add more randomness too! All these moves from Melee were too good so we're gonna make them weaker! (and miraculously leave Metaknight arguably broken)
This philosophy makes no sense at all. Because there were too many techniques that were "too overpowering" for the normal player, they decided to take it out/nerf it. Just so casual players can "maybe" make the game respectable playing against a high level player? Regardless of what game you play, a casual player will never beat a professional player. I can understand making the interface easier for a casual player, but to constantly nerf units so a casual player won't go "wow! that's OP!" is the wrong approach. It really should be "dang, that unit is very powerful, but I have something that is also powerful!" Just like your darkswarm+lurker and irradiate examples.
Melee was similar in this regard where the top tier characters had a lot of very skill oriented and powerful moves, and likewise, there were lots of other characters that could compete against it (though obviously, melee is not a balance game with slightly more than half the characters not tournament viable in a respectable tournament). But Sakura took these powerful characters/moves and just dumbed it down universally so the game was arguable more balance, but for the wrong reasons. Everything couldn't combo as well, couldn't move about the stage as well, etc. Then suddenly we have a less in-depth and not as enjoyable competitive game (at least from my point of view, though MANY players express a similar view).
Units shouldn't be nerfed in SC2, rather, the weaker units should be buffed. Granted, this approach is probably more difficult to balance the game, but in the end, it produces a more rewarding game.
But the buffing should be done in an intelligent way as well. Too much of a buff can produce the unwanted super hard counters that most people don't want. This is where you get something like a metaknight in Brawl, but not as extreme.
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if you cater to casuals and copper league players you will ruin the game. bw never did that, and it still remains to be an amazing game so many years later. fuck timmy and fuck his inability to do anything but attack move.
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Great article!
Agree 100% with adding health bars to force fields. It would be a nice fix to the problem without nerfing how the ability works.
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Great Article once again!
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Really good post,
I guess that unbalanced units give more dynamics to gameplay. Only uncounter units has to be changed... otherwise its ok !!
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Yeah, great article!
It is a good summary of why we should think twice before asking for a nerf.
I really like how you compared Broodwar to SC2 and it really makes sense.
I've seen some tweaking that Blizzard did and really ask myself if it wouldn't be possible to counter it properly instead (as the mothership one). At least, I'm very happy how the beta seems to run: Blizzard makes great efforts to balance the game, but I'm sure they will be tweaking the game long after the launch.
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Good article. I am not currently in the SC2 beta, but I have watched quite a few match replays on Youtube. I played SC quite a bit but only casually. When SC2 comes out I plan to play a little bit more competitively, but I think I have a unique viewpoint in that I'm not locked into the mindset of a competitive BW player.
Here are some thoughts I had in no particular order from watching replay videos of SC2 on Youtube:
-There are way too many variables aside from unit health and armor to mathematically balance the game perfectly. The speed of the unit, it's rate of attack, whether it's ground or air, whether it can attack ground or air, is its attack continuous or a projectile, does it have energy, how much energy if it does, etc.
-Many people (not all of course) ignore the fact that there are only a handful of maps in the beta, which is why I think it's extremely important that Blizzard release the editor or inject new maps before the beta is over, as many perceived unit imbalances could just be due to the smaller maps. Though I think they are smart enough to realize this.
-It seems to me like players focus a lot on the early game and if they can't pull off a quick win they transition directly to late game and start to turtle so they can mass. When you have hundreds of units attacking each other in one big battle, the tiniest differences in their stats or the way they move and attack are going to be amplified. I think a lot of perceived imbalance is actually do to lack of player creativity in the mid-game.
-I'm not sure if it should be implemented, but it occurred to me that it might be a good idea for statistical purposes to force people to play random in ladder matches in the beta (not in the release game).
-I agree with the person who posted above that a lot is missed when people are worried about their personal win-loss stats. In those cases I think a lot of people just go along with the meta-game and hope their macro/micro holds up rather than explore crazy new strategies.
Also just a few quick observations from a spectator perspective as to units that are underused or underpowered for w/e reason:
-Nobody ever seems to use carriers or dark templar
-Nuke seems weak (and is quite boring to see in use as most of the time it really only seems to deny the opponent a little bit of mining time and doesn't kill most buildings)
-Psi-storm seems weak
-Neural parasite seems weak
Again I'm not in the beta, so feel free to critique what I said.
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Totally agree and a great post.
Unfortunately, people in their mind see things that are "good" as being imbalanced.
If they lose a game, the FIRST thing they do is blame it on imbalance and that some other race needs to be nerfed while theirs needs to be buffed.
I'm glad i'm not the only one that see it that way.
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I agree that SC1 unit mechanics made it an exciting game where anyone could turn the tides with quote "units with potential to kill 10 times their own cost".
But I just want to make a point that having so-called "overpowered units" in starcraft 2 may not be such a good idea in the pursuit of maintaining a wide skill gradient among players.
The new game controls i.e. smart-casting, MBS, multiple-unit selection creates an atmosphere where technical difficulties of executing counters like dark swarm and psi storms are greatly diminished.
Also, where certain units become "nerfed" is where other units begin to shine... so... don't make any conclusions just yet!
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This is what I have been saying and thinking for so long :O :D
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Norway28574 Posts
couple comments to comments:
the force field nerf I suggested, well, it's definitely out of place. I considered just making sure I was here when this article was posted so I could post that as a suggested nerf in the first reply. consequentially, as it is, this suggestion was not intended to be taken completely seriously. however, I DO feel that force field is flawed in a way that no brood war spells or abilities were flawed.
essentially, the successfulness of force field depends entirely on the protoss. storm, irradiate, dark swarm, plague, stasis, all the game-turning spells of brood war, were all possible for the opposing player to if not defend completely against, then at least reduce the effectiveness of. in fact, I think watching a zerg player instantly split out his one irradiated muta from the bunch, or a zerg player perfectly dodging storms with his 4 control groups of hydralisks is just as exciting (or quite possibly more) as watching the protoss player throw those storms. with force field, it's just not like that. you can reduce the effectivity of it through engaging in an open area, but apart from that, how effective it is depends entirely on how well the protoss throws down a wall of them. making it actually possible to counter force field through actions of your own (granted, terran can do this with EMP) is essential for an overpowered ability to be balanced. that being said, the suggested 400 hp is way too little. it'd probably have to be at least double that amount.
also, someone noted how my example of dark swarm + lurker having only one terran counter, yet being a combination enhancing the game, yet me feeling differently about force field which also only has one counter, and how this was kind of inconsistent.
this is correctly observed, the article is a tad inaccurate here. irradiate is not THE only counter to dark swarm+ lurkers. mines counter them to some degree, sieged tanks delay the push, firebats can kill lurkers under swarm if there aren't too many of them (and sieged tanks are actually able to deal damage to lurkers under swarm IF there are a lot of lurkers burrowed. ) further, having a separate squad of m&m can allow you to cut off reinforcements and snipe defilers wanting to advance the swarm. in theory, you can even kill them with yamato gun. basically, the multiple tactics terran players employed attempting to counter the dark swarm+ lurker combination is the ultimate example of players making adjustments to an ability that happens to be ridiculously powerful.
and finally, force field is probably the single coolest ability to actually use in starcraft 2. but it's the most annoying ability to play against. Ideally, I'd want it balanced through just removing smart cast - this would make it absolutely amazing but actually difficult to use, but I am confident that ship has sailed and there's no way blizzard is making a that major interface change at this stage of the game. giving them health bars (once again - this would have to be more than 400 hp despite what I stated in the article) would give zergs some way of actually microing against it.
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This is the greatest article i've ever seen, i love it.
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I rooted for you on Saturday, Drone! Very gg
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It was these "overpowered" abilities that made BW so exciting (both to watch and to play). A relevant post from the Dustin Browder interview thread:
On April 13 2010 22:04 Crisium wrote:
So they make cool units, regardless of the balance. This gets Roaches with rapid healing, Reapers that throw D8 Charges, Mothership with Planet Cracker, etc. Then the plan is to let gameplay and time balance it out. Blizzard seemed to think that balance would be adjusting HP, damage, costs, build time, etc. But instead balancing lead to making the "cool" units very uninteresting. Roach is just a cheap Tank, Reapers D8 is now only against buildings and makes the unit harass only, Mothership is just a big, slow, expensive, powerful Arbiter.
The cool is gone, but the units are still there, boring and all.
I think SC1 took a similar approach, but kept the cool in because they weren't so pressed for balance right away (think 1998). That allowed us to have cool things with crazy micro such as Reavers, Vultures (with and without mines), "invincible" M&M balls vs nearly instant-marine-killing Lurkers. People would cry IMBA today and we would lose them.
Does anyone think Colossus Micro is as exciting as Reaver? Can Hellions even compare to Vultures? They have to stop to attack (balance).
Where are the imba spells of SC1, such as Irridate (delay kill almost any Zerg unit, and splash damage), Spawn Broodling (instant kill many units), and anything the Defiler has. Seriously - consider the Defiler on paper. It's way too good. Sacrifice a few 25 mineral units and you can spam countless Plagues that reduce units with a couple hundred HP to 1. Or spam countless Dark Swarms against Terrans who can only send in weak firebats or use splash damage. These Imba spells do not exist in SC2 because out of the fear of balance. I'd rather they did, because they are cool and can be managed by strategy and/or patches instead of outright removal.
The general consensus seems to be that these overpowered abilities are partially balanced by their difficulty to use. Smart casting has removed a lot of mechanical difficulty in spell abilities, so they need to be watered down to become balanced. But by watering them down they become boring (and in some players eyes, useless). So what is Blizzard to do? Throw caution to the wind and allow "imba" units/abilities to stay and hope players figure out counters?
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Good read. The balancing has gotten a bit out of hand.
I like in scbw how units counter other units by how you use them. Vultures only counter dragoons with the right micro, and dragoons only counter vultures with the right micro. It's the same with MM vs lurkers, zealots vs hydras, lings vs rines, mutas vs scourges, and every single other unit matchup. In scbw, you don't get into situations where a unit counters another unit in itself rather than in its micro abilities. In sc2, that seems to be the usual case.
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Good article,
Some people forget that they can burrow under forcefields and i have never ever seen that used in a high level game. Thats one counter to the forcefield but adding health might help terran or protoss, maybe even zerg that doesn't want to get burrow.
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On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years.
If you think that the people balancing SC2 are the same people who balanced BW then you are gravely mistaken! SC2 will be balanced thanks to communitiies like this but seriously, SC2 is as if some random company won the license to create a sequel to BW.
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I never thought about it in this way, but it makes a lot of sense. Really good thinking!
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I agree as well. The problem with Warcraft 3 is that they stopped doing changes when the game is still a tad imbalanced in orc's favor.
However, doing a balance change every time someone says "nerf" is also ridiculous. I think they probably collect hard data from game play and see what unit composition happens that causes a certain win percentage on certain maps.
So far I think the nerfs have been intelligent and not over-dramatic, but hopefully they won't feel the force of the loud crowd killing everything.
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Nice article,
only thing there is to discuss is how to balance those overpowered spells/units. Seriously can you imagine BW without overpowering spells of any race? That would be whole another game
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Although I am new to this forum, I have been following the SC/SC2 scene for some time now, and I completely agree with you on "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."
Well written!
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Nice commentary. It seems like people will complain about just about anything if changes are made, but it really pays off to sit back and see how things work out for a while.
It's precisely this imbalance that leads players to come up with new micro, and try new units / build orders.
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On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years.
OP should be mandatory reading for everyone and I totally agree with this ^. If bw was in beta as it is today I would think a whole ton of stuff would have to be changed to make it balanced if I didn't know any better.
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I fully agree that overpoweredness is what made SC:BW great. Because basically every unit felt and ability felt crazy strong it was very fun to experiment with ways to get your favorite crazy unit faster and faster which it what led to the state of the game currently.
SC:BW matches always seem like a race to see who can get the crazyest stuff done the fastest and get away with it.
That said some units/abilities are truly broken in SC2.
In my eyes the only major issue still with the game other than possible minor HP dmg and build time changes.
That issue is the sentry's force field. It makes it almost impossible to engage a protoss ground army with a ground army of your own since they can either cut your army in half or make it impossible to have any kind of concave. It also serves an enraging tactic of infinitely walling a ramp, for just 400 mins 800 gas (does even need to be spent all at once since they spawn in with enough energy to cast it) at the cybernetics core tech with no research you can prevent any ground army from moving up your ramp or down their own until they have enough air to overwhelm the sentries (which are fairly strong combat units for cost).
I'm not sure just adding HP to the forcefields would be enough but it would certainly be better than no change.
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On April 20 2010 23:20 Plexa wrote:
Good article
This ^^ I loved it all and agreed with almost all of it. Why didn't you talk about dark swarm against any race but terran?
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The most interresting articles on TL imho, even though there are alot of awesome writers. Somehow the talk about the early SC-patches gets my adrenaline pumping!
Also, you are making a very good point. The chance of an epic comeback (most exciting maybe in ZvT with perfectly controlled swarms combined with scourge that kills SV and dropships) is definitely a big factor to why i love the game so much, and why i dont just turn of the game after 10 minutes.
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Really quality article with interesting points.
I especially like the point about how roaches and marauders are all-purpose. SC1 had some really powerful units but were all kinda niche. lurker, defiler, reaver, vulture etc. they had certain roles to fill in a varied attack strategy. also another key thing about them is that they required TECH. Thats why i really like banshees and ravens(2 of my fav units in SC2). they are really cool and powerful but require tech and a strategy/game plan to go along with it.
SC2 better add on more creative units like the lurker and vulture in the next expansions(emphasis on LIKE the lurker and vult not the same units)
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Hmmm... perhaps I have been thinking about things in the wrong way. Thanks for opening my eyes to that Drone. Great article
Although I'm still going to keep whining about immortals LOL
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I thoroughly enjoyed this article and thought it was really well written!
I really feel like smartcasting should be removed from the game. Yes, spells would be harder for some players to use, but because the skills would be harder to use they could get buffed and become 'cool' or interesting again.
The point that "this fear of the overpowered could eventually end up hurting the game" is something i strongly agree with and i feel like that's exactly how blizzard is approaching the balancing of SC2 so far. I hope something does change; I really want to see powerful units and spells such as lurkers and dark swarm reappear in the game.
also, i think carriers need to be changed / given their old system of attacking back.
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Completely agree Nony,
I don't know if it's a World of Warcraft thing going on right now, with "Nerf this, this class is OP" etc.
I hope that every poster reads this article before crying out, that Immortals/Banshees/Broodlords needs nerfs..
ELA.
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great article. though the main issue with balance is the unholy trinity. the problem with them is not that they're too good in a specific way, but they're good against everything which makes gameplay very boring and mundane. as long as blizzard can effectively address that, sc2 will be fine. (o god i can't believe a maurder buff is coming next patch >.< )
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Good article except that you say that
The best example is dark swarm with lurkers. This is essentially a combination that has only one terran counter: irradiate. Lurkers burrowed underneath dark swarm are practically invincible to anything other than irradiate that terran is likely to have. Yet it stayed in the game, and it definitely didn't break the game.
And then you say that
because as it is now, there's just no way, apart from brood lords, to approach a properly controlled protoss ball, and you certainly want more than one potential counter for a unit.
Also I know I'm not alone in saying that Zerg has the advantage with the current balance in ZvP... in the polls on the tl sc2 forums it's definitely a large majority that think Zerg is the imba one...
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I agree with the points you’re making, but I think that we aren’t totally devoid of ‘overpowered’ units and spells.
The Raven has Point Defense Drone, which can really turn the tides of battle if you’re fighting anything with projectiles. And it doesn’t cost a huge amount of energy. It’s a bit like dark swarm, just not quite as good.
It also has Hunter-Seeker Missile, which deals a ton of damage if it connects. The opponent can of course micro the Hunter-Seekered unit away, and take little or no damage. But it’s kind of like microing out of storm, yeah you can do it, but chances are you’re going to take some heavy damage.
Then there’s the Infestor for zerg, Neural Parasite isn’t super powerful, but it can be useful against huge units like the Thor and Colossus.
But Fungal Growth is pretty potent. Yeah it deals kind of sad damage, especially when compared to Plague. But it’s really the damage when coupled with the movement stopping effect that is really what makes this powerful.
Say you’re up against a Roach, Muta army, and you’ve got some Infestors and a fair number of Hydra’s out. Using Fungal Growth on the enemy army would enable you to pretty much walk all over them. (And if you have energy left over you can throw down some Infested Terran) Muta/Roach only have 3 range, unless I’m mistaken, while Infested Terran and Hyrda have 5. They can outrange the enemy army easily, and tear through them.
Oh, and it’s also good against ranged units, because they can’t micro and if you have melee units you can close the gap quickly and take out the softened up enemy units.
I know that not all situations will be custom tailored to make Fungal Growth look powerful, but I’m just saying that though we don’t have abilities as powerful as in BW, they are pretty close.(Unless Blizzard continues nurfing things.)
(There’s also the ghost but this post is getting to lengthy anyways. And all that really needs be said is they devour Protoss shields and any energy.)
Once again I agree with most of the points Drone made, I just wanted to articulate my opinion that we are not totally lost of potent units. I disagree with giving Force Fields life, it would totally clutter up big battles, and give Protoss a sort of mobile meat shield. Good post though.
TTFN
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wise words. especially the end is great and i hope people become more patient and try harder to find counters, before yelling for nerfs. good read!
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I agree there's a difference between calling for a change to something that is out of a player's hands(your example of force field is a good one) and finding a way to counter something. The game is like two months old and that's just the beta.
That being said you have to be honest with yourself about what you can and can not do. Example: TvZ and terran banshee rushes zerg and the zerg player says "Well I couldn't have done anything, banshees rape me and kill my queen and I have no early Anti-Air.
Well that's not true, if you get an evolution chamber earlier in your build(cuz you better be getting at least one but probably two later) you now can build a spore crawler that can hold off the air with your queen, allowing you to get mutas or hydras to respond.
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very nice read, and i agree with not making things suck!
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Interesting and good read as usual Eriador. Thanks!
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I agree, Im afraid that the current beta is too hyped already to be properly tested and balanced. Frankly, it would be quite damn okay if the game isnt fully balanced when it is released.
I also agree that unique and powerful units is one of Brood Wars biggest advantages!
But hey! A beta period like this have never been seen before, we also cant say for sure whats good and bad about the ways things turning. Its probably going to end up pretty good. When the game feels kind of balanced, maybe Blizzard can start patching with audience aspects in mind, and so on..
Anyway, really nice writeup! Keep those damn good articles coming and Im happy. (Especially when battle.net Europe having a downperiod, sob sob sob.)
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This was almost as good as Art of Defense. Keep these coming! :D
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It makes sense, good read.
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Great article. It's good to have new functions in a game but when you add too many functions into an RTS it only makes it harder to balance and boring to watch. So far most of the games I've watched are slightly entertaining but nothing brick shitting like SC1.
I know SC2 is still in beta but I seriously hope SC2 doesn't end up to be WoW the RTS.
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I don't understand this post, his last thought about FF completely contradicts everything he has just said. I'm not even talking about balance here, I have no strong feelings one way or the other if FF is OP or just too good.
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Well we also have to keep in mind that sc1 as we now know it also had an add on and blizzard said that they would bring out at least one for sc2 as well. I personally hope for a comeback of some experimental stuff like the difiler was. I personally think that sc2 still lacks these very special stuff that sc1 had but no other game ever dared. They have some cool units but i rarely see them beeing used as much as in sc1.
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Haha, point made. I see a lot of topics about zerg broodlords being overpowered (especially ZvP), but you are right. You can't keep nerfing right away. I see gameplay evolve every day with new strategies and tactics. It is way too soon to clearly state if anything is OP or imbalanced.
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Great read!
It's certainly hard to replicate, but we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard.
Definitely my favorite line in there, I couldn't agree more!!
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Thank you for taking the time to write the article, i think you are right about all of it.
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Your BW examples require a lot more APM than anything I've seen in SC2. Sure once you're on 3 gas and survive 15 minutes with a healthy economy Lurker/Swarm can be really overpowered. It's also not the easiest move to execute, especially offensively.
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I can actually understand both sides of the discussion, the ones saying stuff should be nerfed a lot and the ones saying let it stay in and see if it balances out.
As most people know, broodwar was not a balanced game at all in the beginning, and players doing the balancing themselves was a big part of broodwar becoming what it is today.
I am almost inclined to say you could throw out an unbalanced game (not broken, just unbalanced) and just let people play it, and they most likely will find some kind of way to deal with most of the balancing problems they find.
On the other hand, Blizzard is just trying to make a good game, and as someone said before, they can't wait for players to balance things out in this long process at this point anymore, since the setting in which SC2 will be released is a very different one from the one SC1 was being released in. (i.e. expectations, Korean eSports etc.)
(This btw. also counts for players whining a lot aboutu SC2 being not a good game, give it some time for players to actually FIND where to micro and macro and spend your apm's on, it might just happen to be more viable of a progaming game than you thought)
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Why is everyone always bringing up this "roach up to 2 supply" nonsense? If the roach needs a nerf then lower its HP, attack speed, movement speed, armor, whatever. But don't increase the supply cost.
During early and midgame this might sound ok, it basically means a cost increase of 1/4th larva and 25 minerals (quite hefty already). But once the zerg hits 200/200 it would be devastating, especially in zvp.
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This is definitely some refreshing thought on the new nerf trend. Thanks for thegood read!
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I really liked this article. Nice points.
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I agree, you generally don't think of op units being balanced, but every race had some sort of game breaking ability so in a way it was balanced
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i haven't played the beta, but from what i see, because micro is easier (smart casting, multiple selection, better pathing...) most spells and abilities seems underpower
the only problem to me is that buildins seems a lot more fragile, and with this, defenses seems very weak. With this, games are resolving in massing armies and attacks, i feel the game lacks some of the strategic elements that makes starcraft 1 so good
don't know, things will probably get better after some good map making
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This was a very well thought out article, I enjoyed it and agree with you. I'm also afraid they will over balance SC2, but I feel blizzard has good intentions most of the time.
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Yeah what the hell, the whole article was really good.. except for the last paragraph were you contradicted the crap out of it
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Is it possible that blizz wants to have overpowered units in the game to appeal to an untapped market or boost the PvE part of the game? DB is really high on the campaign, every time a balance takes place for Multiplayer it affects his precious pve content. The guy who is lead producer for SC2 is the same guy who worked on CC with all its multi-player imbalances in exchange for cool units.
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i don't believe the focus should be in nerfing each unit until it the game is seemingly balanced between all different strategies and units.
the focus should rather be where each unit available is a viable option to specific strategies. As described in the article, there are plenty of abilities and units in BW that seem overpowered at first glance, but they need to be implemented effectively in order to procure optimal effects from them [i.e. proper placing of storms, backlash of spider mines, etc]. The analogy most prevalent to this is in Team Fortress 2: certain classes are very effective counters to specific strategies and maps, but no class/weapon is overwhelmingly powerful in all scenarios.
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very good article
however to add onto that, tanks can hit lurkers in darkswarm no?
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Well yeah the purpose is to balance RACES and not UNITS; people fail to understand that.
Each race must have their really strong combos or units, and other races some ways to counter it : AND it must be in an interesting way for countering it (abilities or specific tactics, not just massing it and A-move).
Think of it like Chess, Queen is a far overpowered piece but it can be counter, and your opponent has one too !
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forcefield should be emp-able.
having HP doesnt really make sense if the FF is made of "energy"
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On April 20 2010 23:20 Plexa wrote:
Good article
My sentiments exactly ability-wise. The nerf has put many units in a state of limbo ability wise(mothership/infestor) by stripping them of their original awesomeness.
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Really hits one of my gripes with SC2. Good read.
Hope Blizzard is paying attention.
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HP bars for force field.. wow i never thought of that!
Sounds like a good idea!
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An article urging caution against nerfing everything and then agreeing with most of the nerfs (with the exception of storm and emp?) and even going as far as suggesting another nerf. This article confuses me.
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definitely enjoyed it thanks!
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Sheep.
Have any of you really read the article or did you get entranced by the nostalgia of BW in its current state?
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On April 21 2010 08:45 omninmo wrote:
forcefield should be emp-able.
having HP doesnt really make sense if the FF is made of "energy"
While lore-wise your point is perhaps the most valid, there are some concerns that
the Ghost's EMP ability is already too much of a 'hard-counter' to many Toss units (Sentry, High Templar, Immortal) that adding further utility to the ability in TvP could be harmful.
If the P player has the APM to cast half a dozen perfectly placed force fields before the terran can EMP the sentry, then frankly I say well done to the Protoss user. In the same way, if the T can EMP half the Protoss army before Feedback/Psi Storm is used, then good on them. I can't say I'm particularly happy with the Protoss caster/Ghost dynamic as it stands, but introducing more ways that they counter each other can in my opinion, only be detrimental to the unit relationship.
Kev
[edited for typos. I need to proofread.]
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Well said. But pretty obvious is it not?
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oh GENIUS!
forcefields with HEALTH BARS!!
Why won't genius suggestions like this appear in the sc2 forums instead of "adding grappling hooks to units"
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On April 21 2010 08:27 rezoacken wrote:
Well yeah the purpose is to balance RACES and not UNITS; people fail to understand that.
Each race must have their really strong combos or units, and other races some ways to counter it : AND it must be in an interesting way for countering it (abilities or specific tactics, not just massing it and A-move).
Think of it like Chess, Queen is a far overpowered piece but it can be counter, and your opponent has one too !
good job. You too drone!
Guarenteed Blizz developers have some sort of balanced scorecard as a guideline to keep each unit/race counterable by another, then Beta, which sole purpose is to test that scorecard (along with bnet, ladder, and the rest of the fine details that go into the game) and tweak and make adjustments. They are able to look at graphs and charts every morning seeing every statistic one could think of. That along with Beta forums, and community feedback like TL = beautful final product.
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One of the best articles i have read since sc2 beta began. Please do such articles more oftten!
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Woulda digged it but there's no digg button, awesome article
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"we must avoid balancing SC2 by making everything suck equally hard."
I support this message.
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Right now the one thing I believe is game-breakingly imbalanced right now is spawn larvae and larva buildup.
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Well said. Any chance you'll cross-post this to the Blizzard forums? I think everyone involved in the SC2 beta needs to read this.
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Very good point to make, and I support it - though I'm neither skilled enough nor be-beta-keyed enough to have an opinion outside the realm of theory.
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On April 21 2010 11:42 Rawn wrote:
Well said. Any chance you'll cross-post this to the Blizzard forums? I think everyone involved in the SC2 beta needs to read this.
Definitely, even people who aren't involved but think it is "taking to long" to balance the game.
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Made me think very differently about bw and sc2, thank you for the epic read
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Never really thought about it like this. Valid points, but some balancing/nerfing is always needed.
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I think somehting that needs mentioned is that in broodwar these "overpowered" spells takes a lot of practice to master, not only for the one casting spells but for the player defending as well
ie: dark swarm / consume / defiler micro / keeping defiler alive with zvt and with the t it is irridate defiler / keeping vessel alive / marine medic micro. And example for zvp is storming / storm dodging and flanks and templar sniping. These are definately some of the most adrenaline producing moments in BW.
I think one of the reason storm was nerfed is because it is almost impossible to attack a protoss that has HT/storm as zerg because the backbone of the zerg army is so slow you cant storm dodge anymore and added to that storm is easily spammable.
I guess what i am trying to get at is having overpowered spells in broodwar is a lot different than in sc2 because smartcasting makes an overpowered spell that much more retardedly powerful and its just easy. I personally feel that smartcasting is the reason spells are having to be dumbed down for SC2. I am not trying to get into a 'smartcasting" or SC2 vs. BW debate i am simply stating one of the reasons i think spells are getting nerfed.
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On April 21 2010 12:23 KaRnaGe[cF] wrote:
I think somehting that needs mentioned is that in broodwar these "overpowered" spells takes a lot of practice to master, not only for the one casting spells but for the player defending as well
ie: dark swarm / consume / defiler micro / keeping defiler alive with zvt and with the t it is irridate defiler / keeping vessel alive / marine medic micro. And example for zvp is storming / storm dodging and flanks and templar sniping. These are definately some of the most adrenaline producing moments in BW.
I think one of the reason storm was nerfed is because it is almost impossible to attack a protoss that has HT/storm as zerg because the backbone of the zerg army is so slow you cant storm dodge anymore and added to that storm is easily spammable.
I guess what i am trying to get at is having overpowered spells in broodwar is a lot different than in sc2 because smartcasting makes an overpowered spell that much more retardedly powerful and its just easy. I personally feel that smartcasting is the reason spells are having to be dumbed down for SC2. I am not trying to get into a 'smartcasting" or SC2 vs. BW debate i am simply stating one of the reasons i think spells are getting nerfed.
yeah the game controls in sc2 make the so-called overpowered abilities a lot easier to use, even in unseasoned hands
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I feel the real balance of BW came from the maps. As soon as people get a hold of the the new map editor, the current balance will change drastically. Balanced or not at release the new maps will do what Blizzard may not be able to.
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On April 20 2010 23:23 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I mentioned that something in SC2 was too good or overpowered, he stated that in BW everything was too good, and that is why the game was so great.
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Interesting article. I'm just worried about the maps. Like, every single map is elevated with a choke ramp resting on a natural, and things are being balanced around that. Is every future map going to be the exact same? Would force field make people cry about being locked in their bases if their only access point wasn't their ramp?
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Watching the current nerf-trend, I am certain that an equivalent of dark swarm and burrowed lurker would not have had the slightest chance of making it out of the SC2 beta, and that this fear of the overpowered could eventually end up hurting the game.
Poll: Does Starcraft 2 Need Something Like lurker swarm to be balanced &fun?No (12) 57% Yes (9) 43% Other, explained in post (0) 0% 21 total votes Your vote: Does Starcraft 2 Need Something Like lurker swarm to be balanced &fun? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): Other, explained in post
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Well, you have to look at what units were overpowered. In BW, you had higher tech units that were overpowered, in the sense that they had very hard counters to a specific lower tech unit, but were not strong by themselves. They were backloaded, to increase teching and to encourage the emergence of dramatic, game changing plays by a player (PLAAAGGUGUGUEUUEUEE and prostorms and reaver drops)
The OP units in SC2 are frontloaded (Marauder, Roach, to some extent, immortal)
Its fine, even desierable if a vulnerable, micro heavy, and lategame unit is overpowered in a certain way. By overpowered, you mean "Has the ability to dynamically alter the game". Issues arise when a lower level unit becomes OP.
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8748 Posts
I posted something along the lines of the ideas in this article a while ago...
In response to a Sentry complaint:
Basically you've just said, in an ideal situation, how super effective Sentries can be. But really effective moves ought to be in the game unless you want SC2 to be a snoozefest. Yeah, there will be, and ought to be, times when one unit enables something crazy good, even against a pro opponent.
Great article!
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I completely agree and have been trying to point this out in various posts as well. To add onto why things like these are what made BW what it was, not only does it make the game more dynamic, but things like lurkers, dark swarm, reavers, spider mines, storm, etc. are THE types of units that created a defender's advantage for a player (as well as high ground obviously). A well placed reaver could hold off TONS of hydras and lings trying to bust into an expansion. One lurker and one defiler could hold off a huge marine/medic force trying to attack into a choke. It's units like these that made not only fast expanding and fast teching a lot more easy to do, but it made games a lot more strategic and not end after one single battle. In SC2 currently, after you lose the first big engagement, you generally lose the game right there because you just have less stuff than your opponent and can't possibly defend any longer because he's going to remain ahead in food count for the rest of the game then. There are hardly any units in the game that allow you to hold off and stay alive with a smaller army and work yourself back into the game. You just need more shit that your opponent to defend, and that's it. It makes it a lot more stale, and makes it SO much more simple in terms of how games end up. There's no more back and forth battles, and DEFINITELY makes comebacks rare. If you win the first battle, you win the game 90% of the time because units like these aren't in the game.
On a side note, the thing that balanced out a lot of these "powerful" units/abilities like lurkers, reavers, dark swarm, mines, etc. was the fact that they had to be incredibly stationary to do massive work. It emphasized map control and holding key pieces of terrain even more because of this.
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I like what this article is saying, but I feel like the weakness of buildings needs to be factored in. You would never see a nexus sniped in BW by a handfull of units, but in my experience this happens all the time due to mutas/reapers/immortals in SC2. If individual units are going to be so powerful, this needs to be in reasonable proportion to the strength of buildings.
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the forcefield with 400 hp might be a good idea, but i think that they should really take away smartcasting. it's not as exciting to see because you know it's a lot easier to smartcast
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Well put, definitely something I think most of us (including myself) can easily forget.
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I have a question: Are these thoughts also handed to Blizzard, since you are totally right ?
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I disliked this article and some of the suggestions were really bad. Giving forcefields HP would be a HUGE buff. 400 HP meatshields for 50 energy? rly? So ranged units in the back autoattack it over moving forward to attack actual units?
I feel like the OP plays protoss, however irrelevant, I like seeing if my instincts are correct.
Also, I wouldn't say underground movement was a defining characteristic of roaches. It's in fact a very timing-inefficient, gimmicky upgrade for the most part. I used it to win a ton of games in the first weeks of beta, and I agree that it getting nerfed was fairly pointless because it's countered by any form of detection, but ... the defining characteristic(s) of the roach were it's imbalanced regen when burrowed, and it's debatably imbalanced 2 armor/ability to tank everything. As a zerg player, I'm inclined to support the burrow/armor nerfs but not the movespeed one -- I felt like that should have been buffed if anything.
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Great article by Drone. But i partly agree with Angra's opinion that SC2 has less defensive abilities/buildings/capabilities of units. I say partly because if your at the point that you cant survive after a big battle in the middle or late stages of the game then either your opponent has a better macro than you or more expands/unit producing buildings, or your army composition is very inadequate to his composition of units. That said I still would like more defensive types of units/abilities/structures (maybe because im more of a defensive player i dont know). But as i can remember it took (I think) 2 years for SC 1 and a ton of patches and expansion patches to become the BW we know and love today. So SC2 will have new units to balance even more the game someday (I hope).
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Awesome read. I agree that having units that can, in certain circumstances, turn a game around completely add greatly to the excitement level of the game.
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Great! Didn't understand these things before.
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nice article, invites for a different point of view on the game
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Good article.
So instead of nerfing Thors against zerg, give Infesters burrowed neural parasite.
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I like the article and also I share the point of view.Yes there are overpowered units but gamers should not blame the units but themselves when they loose.That's the most common error - blaiming everything on the unit not on the real reason.
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i totally agree. i believe that since sc2 is still relatively new Blizzard should not be too quick to nerf. instead have all the units and imbalances and let the users find a way to counter and in essence find a balance to the"overpowered units".
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Liquid`Drone , that is what we all fear. the concept of balancing it in the calculator will result in SC2 become just a normal RTS game.
the same amount of mineral buying different unit from different race does not have to be equal in term of strength or mobility. That is why some people( including me) believe balancing SC2 just like SC1 will be very hard, it is 10 years of trial and error combine with some luck from blizzard that we have the game as it is today.
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Good job at pointing out the obvious :D Blizzard just got lucky, let's face the fact; it's not going to happen again. SC2 WILL flop
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On April 21 2010 21:33 eXNewB wrote:
Good job at pointing out the obvious :D Blizzard just got lucky, let's face the fact; it's not going to happen again. SC2 WILL flop
Why the scepticism ?
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On April 21 2010 06:25 milly9 wrote:
I don't understand this post, his last thought about FF completely contradicts everything he has just said. I'm not even talking about balance here, I have no strong feelings one way or the other if FF is OP or just too good.
Hah seriously "do as i say not as i do"
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This is actually a really hard subject. I agree with a lot of points in the article, but i think there is one important thing you didnt mention:
In BW there is a lot of "overpowered" stuff and still the game can be considered as extremely well balanced because everything can somehow be countered.
The risk of having such overpowered units / unit combos is, that it may kill the strategical diversity of the game.
Example: in BW TvP there is no point in building barracks units (except for one very small timing window), and the only reason for this is that storms are so incredibly strong against them. Even after 12 years nobody has figured out how to play bio in TvP mid / lategame and most likely nobody ever will. Thats half of Terrans units being almost completely useless in this MU as long as you dont want to all in. I think thats really bad balancing in some way!
There are other matchups with similar problems, like ZvZ, which is very stiff, the players dont have many choices to do as soon as the initial build order was picked, all because of muta > everything else. Compare this to SC2s ZvZ wich is ridiculusly diverse for a mirror matchup.
Kind of overpowered stuff IS needed to make the game interesting but you must find a balance so that it doesnt shut down completely a big part of the choices a player can take.
I think SC2 will be a game where you can play in a more creative way, even when it gets mapped out more and more.
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Am I really the only one who found this article to be rather uninspired and not quite to the point? At least I found it much worse than the previous works. Saying that in BW "everything was too good" is not an insight to me, but just semantics. I could just as well say: "no, clearly nothing was too good, otherwise you would not be able to counter it (efficiently)".
It is true that lots of folks are too quick to judge sth OP or too good, just because it's extremely good in some situations. So one should be cautious with the nerf bat. But buffing everything else to extremes (which seems to be implied by making everything too good) is equally naive. It's also not a question between all-purpose unit vs. special purpose unit. Both unit types can be too good (in relation to everything else), it's just that special purpose units can usually be hard-countered more easily, which at least makes army composition become important. However, we can all agree that a game around hard counters could just as well end up as rock-paper-scissors in space.
What impresses me the most in BW is that a lot of the "counters" don't come from simple unit stats, but rather involve good micro or positional play (which can also backfire if you screw up). This makes counters situational rather than global and results to a highly dynamic game where huge overturns due to awesome plays or seemingly slight mistakes become possible. All the examples given in the article (like mines, lurker play, dark swarm and irradiate) underline that imo.
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The problem is, that alot of players in the beta, are or at least have been playin WoW a long time.
In WoW it is habit to moan about every single change in every patch.
Everybody is like: WOOOOT thats so OP !! NERF THIS!! NERF THAT!!
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I like the article and I agree on the point that the process of players coming up with creative strategies to counter this and that "supposed imbalance" should come first before rigorously nerfing units / abilities and make everything "suck equally".
I still can't really set aside the issues I got with force field. It's exactly like you put it, for the protoss player it's the single most fun ability to use vs his opponent - for the opponent it's the single most annoying ability to play against. In another thread I made a comparison to the riot shield from CS 1.6 which has an equal reputation amongst the community (source). And similarly, it only depends on the player who is "lame enough" to equip the riot shield to make a mistake so you can deal damage to him. If he decided to dodge you forever he could do that as well. And this is what makes both these features not imbalanced, but an element of disrupting the natural flow and the intention of the game: fighting battles in the most skillfull and artistic way possible (which is not "haha i cut off half your army and now i just clear the trash - battle over").
That's what battles in SC2 should be about:
On April 21 2010 03:51 Liquid`Drone wrote:
[...], all the game-turning spells of brood war, were all possible for the opposing player to if not defend completely against, then at least reduce the effectiveness of. in fact, I think watching a zerg player instantly split out his one irradiated muta from the bunch, or a zerg player perfectly dodging storms with his 4 control groups of hydralisks is just as exciting (or quite possibly more) as watching the protoss player throw those storms. with force field, it's just not like that.
You just don't have this "two-way-excitement" of the ability.
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U guys ever heared something about burrow???
counters forcefields easy.
Forcefields are useless against air.
and btw. what about EMP ? Thats clearly OP too....
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SC2 seems to slowly be becoming more and more watered down, I really hope blizz can find the balance between having very powerful abilities and having abilitys that break the balance of the game.
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Good read Drone. I've been saying this kinda stuff for a long time now, just because a certain unit beat a given player harshly, doesn't mean that the given unit is automatically broken and needs nerfed. I really believe that the majority of 'imbalance' issues really comes from none of us having played the game enough to fully grasp all the intricacies. Hell even 12 years after original SC, and 9-10 after BW, there's still new strategies and techniques being developed in that game professionally. As a result I don't think we can really say that everything has been explored in SC2 in fact, the case probably is more along the lines of we've explored very little of the eventual depth the game will supply.
Lots of people keep talking about the 'rush happy' attitude of players, and I think that is really because no one is confident with running up the tech tree yet, simply because every SC2B player is inexperienced in the game (lets face it even 2500 games isn't enough to fully explore an RTS like SC). If one can recall, it is widely known that at the launch of SC, BW, War3, and War3 TFT, rushes were the staple play - they are easy to perform, effective, and don't rely on precariously teching while defending with a small force.
I firmly believe that once this game has been out a year, two years, and after the first expansion, each point will show a shift in play dynamics. And perhaps once the full version comes along a pro like Flash or Jaedong will come along and show us how to play properly (I mean in terms of how the general play style changed because of these players, and not their skill per se).
Edit: Just wanted to briefly touch on Immortals and Force Field since this seems to be what most people are having trouble with. Immortals should not have their bonus damage reduced - yeah I said it. Quite simply the only counters Protoss has to mass armored units are quite simple - an ungodly amount of 3/3/3 Zealots /w Charge, Carriers, Void Rays, and Immortals. Everything but Immortals is automatically off the list as all of those units serve another key role in the Protoss army, and also are not cost effective as a counter. The main reason I see people complaining about Immortals is how P can go from having none, to 6 in only a couple of minutes. I'd say that a 25% build time increase on Immortals would be the way to solve this if it really is an imbalance, not a stat nerf. Furthermore, it would seem that the counter to Immortals is not making a 100% armored army versus a Protoss. We all know they will get Immortals to counter our armor - so go something else, mass bio even, force them to go Archons to counter that, then switch to armored after they are taxed for gas.
Force Field is definitely a powerful ability, but I'm inclined to say that it is not imbalanced, as the cost to mass enough sentries to effectively split an entire army, or even wall off part of an army is very very gas intensive to say the least. This will slow down P for the entire game if they commit to mass Sentries, and provided the player defending against the P sets up proper defense, it would seem to me that player will come out with an advantage, in the form of having 800-1200 more gas than the P.
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Agree. Disregarding obviously broken shit, overpowered units are one of the things that will actually bring beauty to the game. I mean, let top players(especially progamers) figure out ways to overcome stuff that at first glance seems imba, and let the game evolve for years with counters to the current trend coming up, just to set a new trend that will be countered as the game evolves.
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On April 22 2010 01:36 RamenStyle wrote:
Agree. Disregarding obviously broken shit, overpowered units are one of the things that will actually bring beauty to the game. I mean, let top players(especially progamers) figure out ways to overcome stuff that at first glance seems imba, and let the game evolve for years with counters to the current trend coming up, just to set a new trend that will be countered as the game evolves.
We can only hope that Blizzard doesn't listen to every single low-ranked player complaining about imbalance, because if they do we'll have RushCraft 2, not StarCraft. However I'm fairly confident in their patching ability, as throughout all their games they never change TOO much in a patch that it makes it a point of no return.
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I really hope things fall into place. Good read.
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Totally agree about the fear of imbalance can make game poor.
Imba units and abilities are the interesting thing about the game.
For example SC1 high templar storm was very imbalanced in many battles. But the other units sucked more than the other races units. Templars could also been sniped with mutas, vultures, small group of zerglings could have taken a lot of these units. All of which made a perfectly healthy picture.
Time-tech pressure was applied - for example ultras, defilers, carriers were imbalanced - but you could prevent your opponent from reaching them or cripple them enough so when they have them it is still an even game.
This makes the game exciting so SC2 should not fear having some units too strong and some weaker than those of other races.
One thing to be wary about is not making the game mass 1 unit(yeah marauder reference) for almost all purpose all strategy every matchup, so we don't have another c&c game.
Small correction : SC1 storm does 112 dmg (16x7) and used to do 128(16x8) damage
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spawn infested terran ability is just extremely limited in its practical uses... gawd
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Beautifully written article. I've been thinking exactly the same things.
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United States47024 Posts
On April 21 2010 21:33 eXNewB wrote:
Good job at pointing out the obvious :D Blizzard just got lucky, let's face the fact; it's not going to happen again. SC2 WILL flop
1) Strictly speaking, Blizzard didn't get it right until the second iteration--the example Lurker/Swarm interaction didn't exist until Brood War.
2) There's no middle ground between smashing success and a "flop"?
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I really enjoyed the article. After reading about so many "nerf roaches/marauders/workers" threads and articles by so called "pros" (some of them actually quite qualified), it is very refreshing to read about an article breaking the trend and commending the balance for what it is. Hopefully, StarCraft II will become BW and more after the pro-scene starts spinning in full gears.
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Good article, we have to remember that this is Blizzard we're talking about, and they know more than a thing or two about games. They already know this stuff, from what I've seen and played in the Beta they're keeping to the philosophy that "there shouldn't be 1 strategy which always wins" and so far the patches generally have reflected that.
Take the Marauder nerf, I've been playing mostly Terran, but I wasn't bothered by this because it made tones of sense. Early Marauders were almost invincible if handled correctly against Protoss with the slow effect on their guns because Zealots didn't have a hope of getting in melee range and Stalkers=dead against them, so having it as an upgrade effectively made it a counter to Chargelots in late game.
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Lots of OP units and OP counters to them = fun
Lots of nerfed to shit units and nerfed to shit counters to them = lame
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Nice article, once again! I hope blizzard manage to divert zerg a little bit more, hidra & roaches aren't fun.
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I've been reading and posting some in the suggestions/balance bnet forum for the first time tonight and omg it's bad. It looks like a bunch of bronze players complaining about random stuff. Not even silver level players. The worst part is I think blizzard prob made some changes in previous patches based on their complaints. I mean carriers being too strong? Zerg able to spine crawler 'rush' and use the queen to spread creep? Seriously? Does the queen really need to be made slower off creep because of this or do people need to learn how to not lose to cheesy stuff? Are we going to implement a 10 min no rush rule next?
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Great article. Especially the exemple of swarm+lurk example. That kind of combo would be considered as imba in the beta, and in the end all the races will have shitty units, if we keep complaining too fast, instead of looking for a good counter.
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interesting read, and I agree on the forcefields... from what ive seen in matches, well placed forcefields can just overwhelm most zerg (current) builds, with ease. I also very much agree with the balancing, and I have seen it in alot of other SC2 articles, so lets hope that blizz manage to read a few of these at some point
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Interesting article indeed
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very nice article... good points
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nice article !! i like the points being made.
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roaches cant move burrowed now can they?
i remember seeing them being able to move while burrowed before. o.o
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Good article, really made me think about all the stuff i've been calling imba in SC2 right now. I'll definitely keep a more open mind
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On April 20 2010 23:30 mcneebs wrote:
I still don't know why so many new players feel that they know how to balance a game better than those who have been designing them for the past 15 years.
this because many people talk out of their ass
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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.
Nice article man. I totally agree.
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good article...another prespective look on sc2
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I like the force field health bar idea a lot (because I don't play protoss mostly)
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Nice Article, however this one here:
"Many units in Brood War had the potential to kill more than 10 times their own cost. "
was always closely related to micro. Good micro on Vultures against a bad micro toss with dragoons? That will come up cost efficiently for the terran!
Siegetanks? High Templar? They are the essence of cost efficiency. They need other units to protect them often but from a good position they can do horrific damage, same goes for lurkers.
So I think the question "to what degree may a unit be used cost efficient?" (given that there is resistance! any whatsoever unit could deal a great economic damage when there is no protection to the eco line) MUST be related to micro. Right now there are few situations to use units extremely cost efficiently and those which can - like Ghost vs Protoss, HTs or Sentries - do often not require a great deal of micro to do so !
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the mothership is probably the most powerful unit in sc2, yet i haven't seen it wreaking mass amounts of havoc and is definitely not impossible to take down. i agree that powerful units in the game don't guarantee victory, and believe they just make for interesting gameplay
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Nice article. Reminds me of something I wrote about 2 years ago  , but this article rings truer since we've had the beta in hand for months now. It's still pretty early to say things are totally off in SC2, but it's something to keep a very very close eye on. My biggest beef is when AOE/Splash that is microable against (read, the guy who micros the best gets ahead) is nerfed too much, it definitely creates a muted atmosphere of high level play.
About ForceField. It's way too soon to nerf it. In theory, I see a few counters besides Broodlords that hopefully will see the light of day.
1. Overlord drop abilities! For some reason everybody thinks turning 20 overlords into dropships is suddenly overpriced in SC2. Combined with mutas and/or empty overlords to draw fire, carry your units on top of the enemy and drop on them.
Apparent weaknesses: load time and drop time. Do you load half your units before the fight? Can you move units during a fight? In smaller numbers probably.
2. Roach burrow. I'm pretty sure people have mentioned and used this already. Retreat or advance through FF.
Weaknesses: You need to have roaches and burrow? I don't see many weaknesses.
3. Bait and retreat. It is very possible to bait wasted FF use. And that's mana that takes time to come back.
Weaknesses: You can't be cornered, but if you are cornered that's your fault anyway.
4. The OP mentioned Broodlords. Seems like a fine answer to me. How about air in general. If Protoss has a strong ground, you can go strong air and counter. There are no corsair yet and storm sucks against air.
Weaknesses: Zerg may need to be ahead on gas by one base to really make this work, I don't know. Maybe not though... sentries are also very gas intensive. Sentries are good against mutas head to head, and that's a real weakness up front. But muta vs worker/base harass is still really powerful.
5. [EDIT] And something with a Nydas or three. Haven't figure it out yet, but I feel there i something there. Think about it, if you run into a Nydas you are essentially "safe", b/c if they kill the Nydas they don't kill the units. Perhaps if you could control/predict the ground army class, you could always have a couple of Nydases flanking the enemy.
Anyway, still way early to say. With interesting unit dynamics, most late game strats are counterable in some way or another. BW proved this.
--slightly off topic below--
Now extreme late game (map almost mined out) is much trickier to balance for a few reasons. For one, 99% of beta games never get there. Two, extreme defense becomes viable. Three, because of #2, non-mineral/gas air siege is very good (BroodLords, Yamato). Four, energy-based specials are more powerful because if you are defending and running the clock you are building energy.
I believe that Terran extreme-late game is the best at this point due to Siege tanks, Yamato, Banshees+Vikings+scan, Nukes, and the Raven. Oh the Raven, how I love thee. Nukes plus Yamato plus defense drones against a turtle, anyone?
Protoss don't have a safe way to siege a dedicated turtled cliff/island base from air (interceptors cost money, hallucinate maybe can help a mothership get in but not likely), and while Zerg have Broodlords they don't have any really powerful offensive spellcasters to bank on. Maybe you could get creep near the enemy base with Queens to heal Broodlords/Corruptors and Defilers to slime enemies that poke their noses out. Feels a little flimsy though, but maybe.
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true
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Strong units or combinations would break SC2 because there is literally no game deciding micro anymore. Battles are, instead of tons of micro, a-click 1:1-stats-comparison+rock-paper-scissor-events in which players' actions do not have a great input anymore.
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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.
Very well written, I agree on most points
Too many impatient players nowadays who think that they are greater than they are, and can balance a game better than professionals by nerfing, not finding new ways to counter
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awesome article. im one of those inexperienced zerg players who hates late game terran mech and am always complaining, but this article really opens up my eyes. i think ill give it some more time before i ragequit lol
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I was reminded of this article by a lot of the recent discussions about ZvT and what needs to be done to fix it, and I've been SO worried that there will just be more and more nerfs to SC2 rather than buffs to compensate for imbalances. It scares me a lot because I'm always reminded of this article and how BW is. If everything is nerfed, the game won't be fun anymore.
This is probably one of my favorite articles concerning SC2 and balance in all of TL because it describes EXACTLY what made Broodwar such an amazing and fun game. I really hope for the sake of SC2 and esports that everyone takes the things in this article into consideration when discussing and implementing the balance of SC2.
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Looks like they are going the nerfland way...
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konadora
Singapore66116 Posts
with the announcement of HotS, i think this article is appropriate once more.
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