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On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do.
No. You keep missing the essential point:
A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing it
It says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people.
We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ...
Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously)
But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face.
Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo.
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On November 24 2012 14:30 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2012 06:51 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 20:56 [F_]aths wrote:On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. I also feel that this is the real story here. Who makes no mistakes? It's less imo about to make no mistakes and more how you handle them. How do you want to make a good and exciting game if you don't have the courage to make mistakes? I have no issue with that if there is also enough character to correct them. They also corrected one of their mistakes PRE-beta: the Replicant. They scrapped it, just like BronzeKnee says they should have done for the Warhound, but they didn't receive as much negative feedback regarding the latter unit, so they let it play out in beta. IMO, this was the right decision, and when the Warhound didn't work out, they removed it. End of story. I find it very funny that there are two very different types of people defending Blizzard here: The first argues that Blizzard listens to the community feedback and responds. The second argues that Blizzard and their professional game designers are better suited than the community to balance the game and we shouldn't question them. In other words, they don't need the communities help and we should trust them. These are mutually exclusive arguments and while I believe both are wrong, I can ironically use the arguments created by one against the other.
Brilliant observation!
On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo.
I couldnt have said it better myself, thank you.
The one thing I would like to add is that even though I am criticizing the dev team heavily I do love the game and would hate to be able to say to the rest of the community "I told you so" in a few years, when it has gone down the drain after the last expansion. Blizzard is making the game more complex in the misbelief that "bigger [battles] is better" and "more [units] is better", but they miss the point that such "improvements" reduce the control and influence of the players.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
The thing is, from a design standpoint the warhound was a gookd idea. A unit that would deal with immortals and help mech against protoss.
It was removed however, because even though the design team designed the warhound to be a support unit, people were massing warhounds alone and winning games. You can design a thing no matter how you want and people will still find a different way to use it than intended.
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On November 24 2012 20:52 Qikz wrote:
The thing is, from a design standpoint the warhound was a gookd idea. A unit that would deal with immortals and help mech against protoss.
It was removed however, because even though the design team designed the warhound to be a support unit, people were massing warhounds alone and winning games. You can design a thing no matter how you want and people will still find a different way to use it than intended.
That still doesn't explain why nerfing it wasn't enough.
Unless balancing it proved completely impossible but in that case I'd say they haven't tried hard enough to know.
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On November 24 2012 23:01 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2012 20:52 Qikz wrote:
The thing is, from a design standpoint the warhound was a gookd idea. A unit that would deal with immortals and help mech against protoss.
It was removed however, because even though the design team designed the warhound to be a support unit, people were massing warhounds alone and winning games. You can design a thing no matter how you want and people will still find a different way to use it than intended. That still doesn't explain why nerfing it wasn't enough. Unless balancing it proved completely impossible but in that case I'd say they haven't tried hard enough to know.
Well mech needs something to support the Siege Tanks - which are good against armored units - against masses of infantry and air. Thors dont do "their job" against air well enough due to their bonus damage against light, which makes them weak against anything non-light. The end result would be the Goliath and Browder & Co. cant have that, because it would be like admitting that they cant find anything other than what the "devs of old" have implemented in BW. They MUST HAVE new stuff ... which is ridiculous, because "if it aint broken" there is no need to "fix it" (or replace it). There are only so many things you can create which make sense in a game.
So its a question of ego ...
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There should be some big adnotation to this video (LuckyFool?), its tiring to see people make threads in regards of balance and posting this video as a thought carry, and saying SC1 needed 7 years to get it right, no, since last patch in 2001 the game is exatcly the same balance wise. The same reaver drops, the same dropship micro, same costs, same movement speeds, same units, for whole eleven years.
Patch 1.08 BW
Release: 2001-05-18
SC1 Vanilla
March 31, 1998
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On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo.
Well stated. Pretty much what I've been trying to argue this whole thread, and why I believe Blizzard needs a new design team.
The unit and abilities they developed worked exactly as intended... Entomb blocked minerals and the Warhound countered Siege Tanks and Protoss Mech units. But because they were boring and bad ideas in the first place, they had to be removed.
It was never an issue of "oh we have a great unit idea, but just can't seem to balance it in testing." Many of their new units or abilities were a bad idea in the first place and no amount of testing was going to change that.
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On November 23 2012 11:08 Natalya wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2012 18:45 [F_]aths wrote:
If I hear Dustin Brodwer or David Kim talking, I feel that they are well-informed and care about the game.
If you really feel they care about the game, go watch the last interview of Browder made by TL at the wcs finals. At some points the TL guy asks something like : 'What are your thoughts on the immortal all-in? Is it possibly too strong?" And Browder answered something like "Really? Why would that be?" The guy made me feel like he had never heard of the immortal all-in. He certainly didnt know parting was at something like 100-2 winratio with it (the 2 only times it's known his immortal all-in was hold was once on gsl once on wcs). Parting even said he had had a 70 win streak with it 70??? How can Browder not have heard of something that big? Then Browder said he watched a couple zvp and thought that every time the Z could have done something better to stop the allin... Even Tastosis started talking about the possibility that the game was broken if someone didnt figure out how to stop Parting. Not that I think they know everything about the game, but as far as i know that's like the only time they spoke about possible imbalance. The point here is not to talk about balance. It's to show Blizzard seems to not be aware of something EVERY sc2 fan that watches a little bit of sc2 knows. In short Browder made me feel like he's watching a couple games of professional sc2 a week. I feel like i'm watching 15-20 times more sc2 than him, which is not normal... After watching that interview, I went from the opinion "Let's believe in Blizzard" to "OMG they absolutely need the feedback of the community, they dont know their game and they dont know what they're doing with it."
It isn't Browder's job to watch pro matches all day. It's not his job to intervene if there is a strong strategy for some time. If something is seriously wrong, it's David Kim's job to fix it.
Maybe you caught a thing which DB missed. Maybe his understanding of the current strategies lags a bit behind even compared to the average GSL follower. There are probably 999 other SC2-related things DB is aware of while you didn't even know they exist.
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On November 25 2012 03:08 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo. Well stated. Pretty much what I've been trying to argue this whole thread, and why I believe Blizzard needs a new design team.
Where to get it from?
Is there another company which made a better esports viable RTS which is currently played?
While we should of course criticize all things which needs to be criticizes, I think its rather childish to act as if the current SC2 development team is a bunch of amateurs.
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On November 21 2012 02:31 BronzeKnee wrote:
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment.
HOTS is not WOL, it isn't an entirely new game where we don't know the issues. HOTS is an expansion that should add a few units to help break up the stale meta-game and add variety, make the game more fun, and address balance issues.
Units like the Warhound, Widow Mine, and Replicant and abilities like Entomb do not do this. Their existence brings into question who is coming up with these ideas and the understanding Blizzard has of the game.
They had their reasoning, but it turned out that those ideas were not the best.
I however still have a great deal of faith in Blizzard's SC2 team. Wings is the game I play the most, by far. In addition to playing Wings, I watch it. I have the GSL annual premium pass, I am an MLG gold member and follow (without memberships/payments) TSL and Dreamhack and Homestory Cup and even some german EPS casts. I just like the game. It's a great game.
It could be a better game, still. Of course.
We should see that SC2 is not only made for esports only. It must be esports viable in Blizzard's vision, but there is still the campaign, and there is the average multiplayer guy who doesn't watch GSL and wants to have an exciting experience with seemingly overpowered units (while in fact the race overall are more or less balanced.) The team need to try to push the limit to see how far they can go. The replicator and shredder and burrow-move banes could hardly be ever made esports viable. At least they tried.
If Blizzard only walks the save road, let's say with mimicking Broodwar, they only get so far. When they start with Lotv, do you want them to not try out seemingly insane units?
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On November 26 2012 09:56 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On November 25 2012 03:08 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo. Well stated. Pretty much what I've been trying to argue this whole thread, and why I believe Blizzard needs a new design team. Where to get it from? Is there another company which made a better esports viable RTS which is currently played? While we should of course criticize all things which needs to be criticizes, I think its rather childish to act as if the current SC2 development team is a bunch of amateurs.
There is not another company that could provide this that I know of. But they have all the people they need in the community itself. There are people with amazing ideas and a great understanding of the game, what makes it balanced and fun that they could hire and put to work. A lot of the experienced casters or professional players would be one place to start finding people.
However, the question of where do we find people to replace the design team or how do we convince Blizzard to replace them is far less important than the fact that they need to be replaced based on their decision making history. Once said change needs to happen, it needs to happen.
Blizzard has done some great and amazing things, but they've also made a lot of mistakes, too many mistakes in my opinion, especially when compared to a company like Riot. And at some point, it has to stop. Even if nothing changes, I still believe HOTS will be workable, but it could be so much better.
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On November 23 2012 20:42 [F_]aths wrote:
If the community would be so great, it should be possible to have an open source esports game. It even could feature LAN.
Not only that there is no community-driven esports RTS game, there is not even a usable esports RTS from any real company right now. I think (without being absolutely sure here) that one of the reason is that is way harder to get to this point that we can imagine as players.
Interesting point.
There is an ongoing thread in the Custom Games forum here on TL for a mod called 'Starbow'.
A guy started this wanting to make a 'better SC2' using many of the better concepts that have been openly discussed on these forums for a long time now - some of them since beta.
The entire group of people that are actively involved in detailed design of the game is - I would say - less than 20. But somehow they are managing to come to a consensus on what works and what doesn't, by a solid understanding of what factors are most important in influencing how the gameplay, balance, and metagame works out.
Lo and behold if it's not working. In my opinion - it *is* turning out to be a "better SC2". All of the elements are there.
No - it's not completely open source, granted. The core of the game, the engine, are all made by a company with millions of dollars of resources to throw at it.
But - it *does* clearly demonstrate the designing units / abilities / stats for three distinct races, and juggling the numbers and timings to end up with a game that:
- does not encourage players to build massive armies and A move toward each other
- *does* encourage multi-tasking around the map with multiple small skirmishes
- *does* clearly reward better strategy, tactics, micro and macro and not dumbing down the skill cieling ...
That this can be done by a group of people that not only don't work in the same office -- most of them have never even met each other and most likely never will.
Balancing a game like SC is not impossible. It just takes the right team of people that understand what they are aiming at, keep a solid grasp of basic principles, know a killer idea when they see it AND have the sense to reject a bad idea when it comes up.
I'm not discounting any of the points you have been making here. The problem some of us are having is that we feel that the current team at Blizzard are showing signs that - honestly - they might not be the best people to be doing the job.
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The main problem with HoTS (and even WoL) is overall design. You can balance things but if they're designed poorly it's just not going to work. No amount of numbers tweaking with Colossus, Broodlords, Mother Ship, Fungal, Forcefields will make them more interesting. They're very basic and very easy to use spells and units.
SC2 is terribly lacking in many areas such as difficulty of use for units and just general unit combinations are lacking. For example late game zerg wants to get infestor+broodlord, this is a very strong composition but not too difficult to use to win with once you get it. In BW zerg would get defilers late game and used in combination with lurkers/lings/ultras it was amazingly strong but very hard to use well and very interesting to watch. I always felt like SC2 needed more units that took more skill to use well, or were harder to use somehow. Less point and click spells like Fungal and more fluid things like Plague.
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On November 26 2012 14:18 BronzeKnee wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2012 09:56 [F_]aths wrote:On November 25 2012 03:08 BronzeKnee wrote:On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo. Well stated. Pretty much what I've been trying to argue this whole thread, and why I believe Blizzard needs a new design team. Where to get it from? Is there another company which made a better esports viable RTS which is currently played? While we should of course criticize all things which needs to be criticizes, I think its rather childish to act as if the current SC2 development team is a bunch of amateurs. There is not another company that could provide this that I know of. But they have all the people they need in the community itself. There are people with amazing ideas and a great understanding of the game, what makes it balanced and fun that they could hire and put to work. A lot of the experienced casters or professional players would be one place to start finding people. However, the question of where do we find people to replace the design team or how do we convince Blizzard to replace them is far less important than the fact that they need to be replaced based on their decision making history. Once said change needs to happen, it needs to happen. Blizzard has done some great and amazing things, but they've also made a lot of mistakes, too many mistakes in my opinion, especially when compared to a company like Riot. And at some point, it has to stop. Even if nothing changes, I still believe HOTS will be workable, but it could be so much better.
While I agree a lot with your analysis, I don't understand how you come to your conclusion.
For example I agree that Blizzard often gives us the feeling that they don't know what they are doing. Forcefield was originally a spell of the Stalker. (Really?) Immortals once could be warped-in from a gateway. (REALLY??) How did they not instantly see the issues. With having the complete game now its easy for me to know what works and what doesn't.
Do you remember the alpha Thor, buildable by an SCV? The corrupter which actually corrupted terran buildings, later terran air units, so that zerg spikes came out of them? All good things seem to be gone during alpha. I cannot speak of others, but I was very excited when I saw all those ideas and quite disappointed when I learned that the final game does not look as exciting. They even had the lurker with a fully animated 3D model and did not use it for the release.
Wings of Liberty still made an impact which was bigger than any sane person could have imagined. That means, beside the strange approach of the development team, they did some things right. I would even go a step beyond that and claim that they helped to stabilize the PC gaming market at a time where consoles seemed to be quite strong. They did this with a multiplayer RTS which doesn't normally have a big followship anyway (compared to Sims or MMOs.)
When I develop little tools for the PC, I often get input about what to improve. Most of the input however is bad advise even though the one who asked me to implement a particular feature thinks that he had a brilliant idea. Because of this repeating experience, I can somewhat understand Blizzards reluctance to not instantly implement something when a consensus of the community or even of the professional community is reached.
According to Dustin Browder, they did try out some of the feedback, for example regarding the unit clumping and it turned out it changes little (as pros click very fast so that the unit ball clumps anyway) and it also would require serious rebalancing of the game. I guess a big rebalancing of the game would disgruntle many pros.
I see the difficulty when a pro talks to a developer. None of the developers seems to play at highest level so they only have a limited grasp of what the pro is talking about.
Now an argument which seems a bit cheap, but I bring it anyway: IF we had so much good game developers in the community, why don't get they hired by various companies? I do not mean to belittle their understanding of the game. But the gamer's angle on a game is different to a developer's angle. (Did you play D&D pen&paper for example?)
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On November 26 2012 14:43 Von wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 20:42 [F_]aths wrote:
If the community would be so great, it should be possible to have an open source esports game. It even could feature LAN.
Not only that there is no community-driven esports RTS game, there is not even a usable esports RTS from any real company right now. I think (without being absolutely sure here) that one of the reason is that is way harder to get to this point that we can imagine as players. Interesting point. There is an ongoing thread in the Custom Games forum here on TL for a mod called 'Starbow'. [...] That this can be done by a group of people that not only don't work in the same office -- most of them have never even met each other and most likely never will. Balancing a game like SC is not impossible. It just takes the right team of people that understand what they are aiming at, keep a solid grasp of basic principles, know a killer idea when they see it AND have the sense to reject a bad idea when it comes up. I'm not discounting any of the points you have been making here. The problem some of us are having is that we feel that the current team at Blizzard are showing signs that - honestly - they might not be the best people to be doing the job.
Since your posting is on the same page, I did not quote it fully so save space.
Starbow seems to be made for experienced SC veterans. Blizzard needs a game which sells in big numbers, there have to be some compromises. With my (low-league) Hots experience, I would say that Hots is both a harder and an easier game compared to Wol. Of course Blizzard makes Hots to sell it and they will cater to the low-league players, too. But they seem to still listen to the community, so they are keeping the carrier for example.
Seeing their actions in the beta I of course question their understanding of Hots because they change so many things. It's way more than a bit of finetuning. But on the other hand I like their willingness to cut out fully designed units and change fully implemented spells. There are humans behind their creation and they are probably sad that their works isn't used in the final game.
Wings only encourages big a-move balls in lower leagues. Pro gamers need to spread versus AOE damage. Even carriers are now used to win a game in pro matches, despite the consensus that the carrier in the current state is almost useless. Is the Brower/Kim team the best possible team? Probably not. Is it easy to create a better team? Probably not either, or it should has been done by now.
It looks to be somewhat easy to make a Dota, because we have several Dota clones now and one especially successful.
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Am I the only one here thinking of conspiracy theories along the lines of: "They are not making it perfectly balanced on purpouse"
Think about it. If they created a Perfect multiplayer experience with no holes in the unit design whatsoever in the very first of the 3 games they plan to release, then there wouldn't be anything new to add to enhance the multiplayer experience in HoTS and LotV. The mass whiners that usually whine about bad unit design and balance would be whining about no new units, nothing exciting to the expansions, which don't feel like expansions.
The solution? Simple they create 2 of the games with holes in the design, that are somewhat fixable, but cannot be perfectly balanced. The games are exciting at first, but then become somewhat stale (like they are now), then... the new expansion comes out with new units just to repeat the same.
Obviously they are going to lose some of the casual players but the more hardcore fans will stay.
And then comes LoTV which will introduce the units and fill the holes in the game as they have initially planned and fix whatever minor balance issues are left. The game gets balanced kind of well so that it produces exciting multiplayer games. All the haters see that and get the game anyways and they do profit in the end.
P.S. I realize that it's a little optimistic comment, but you do not honestly believe they will fix all the design issues in HoTS do you? They need to have something new and exciting for their big last expansion after all.
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On November 21 2012 03:40 green2000 wrote:
I trust in Blizzard
I trust in Starcraft's FANBASE to lobby hard enough to make Blizzard SEEM like they know what they're doing.
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As much as blizzard wants a balanaced game, I trust in what blizzard is trying to do. Let me elaborate:
Blizzard could have remade sc1. Put the exact same mechanics back in and the same units. They instead decided to try and be creative and throw in "unballanced" units and then try to balance around them. This is in theory a good idea, because its INTERESTING, I for one dont wana watch a game of ling vs zealot vs marine games all the time. Having creative units makes the game fun. However by having creative units it makes the game much more difficult to balance as we are discussing. Have they done a good job? debatable. But i believe they are doin the best with a confined set of paramaters. Call me a blizzard fan boy but I think they are IN THE END going to make the right decisions, its just going to take some back and forth balancing and experimentation, which is going to make the game more interesting.
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On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote:Show nested quote +On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote:On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:
There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start.
Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. No. You keep missing the essential point: A creative team that had a solid understanding of the game and what was needed, would have rejected it in the trash as not good enough ... *before* they spent the time, money, and damage to their reputation by releasing itIt says something about this team. It's revealing, There is something wrong with the way they work. T.his is what is worrying people. We (the people that are seeing this) are seeing a very clear, evident pattern here. It shows in their lack of ability to handle obvious, clear and present, gaping holes in the interface and the gameplay - even after it is pointed out to them over and over and over and over ... Others - for whatever reason - do not see this pattern, and rationalize all kinds of excuses why these things are not being handled. And why "the authority knows best so don't question them" (lol. Seriously) But such is life. Life is full of people who - for whatever reasons - do not have much ability to use deductive reasoning to see what is happening right in front of their face. Its a defining hallmark of the era we are living in imo.
This, so much this.
I keep getting into arguments with people on HotS Bnet over Blizzards design team. Any team that let the Warhound and Entomb make it into a public beta clearly has no understanding of the game they are working with, or what the community want. Both were incredibly boring and incredibly broken.
There is so much wrong with HotS right now. And the worst thing is, none of the HotS changes seem to be aimed at fixing any WoL problems. It's almost as if the design team don't even play or follow the WoL scene.
I miss the days when games were made by gamers, not by business men.
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On November 23 2012 11:08 Natalya wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2012 18:45 [F_]aths wrote:
If I hear Dustin Brodwer or David Kim talking, I feel that they are well-informed and care about the game.
If you really feel they care about the game, go watch the last interview of Browder made by TL at the wcs finals. At some points the TL guy asks something like : 'What are your thoughts on the immortal all-in? Is it possibly too strong?" And Browder answered something like "Really? Why would that be?" The guy made me feel like he had never heard of the immortal all-in. He certainly didnt know parting was at something like 100-2 winratio with it (the 2 only times it's known his immortal all-in was hold was once on gsl once on wcs). Parting even said he had had a 70 win streak with it 70??? How can Browder not have heard of something that big? Then Browder said he watched a couple zvp and thought that every time the Z could have done something better to stop the allin... Even Tastosis started talking about the possibility that the game was broken if someone didnt figure out how to stop Parting. Not that I think they know everything about the game, but as far as i know that's like the only time they spoke about possible imbalance. The point here is not to talk about balance. It's to show Blizzard seems to not be aware of something EVERY sc2 fan that watches a little bit of sc2 knows. In short Browder made me feel like he's watching a couple games of professional sc2 a week. I feel like i'm watching 15-20 times more sc2 than him, which is not normal... After watching that interview, I went from the opinion "Let's believe in Blizzard" to "OMG they absolutely need the feedback of the community, they dont know their game and they dont know what they're doing with it."
Posts like this really make me angry. Did you watch the currrent GSL and see Parting and Creator epically fail to pull of the dreaded sentry-immortal all in? Did you see Sniper, DRG and Hyun absolutely beat that build down? Because I'm sure Browder did. How could you not know this? If the GSL pros have figured it out, and they have, this is not something to worry about. His response is 100% the correct one. This push, in fact, has been defended by the top zergs for quite some time notwithstanding Parting's BS about never losing with that build. That Ret, Sen or Scarlett [or insert non-world class caliber Zerg here] have trouble holding it against a world class Protoss opponent (e.g., Parting) does not mean that the build is broken. Whether Zergs can defend the push is a matter of scouting and execution, which is the case with almost everything else in the game.
The staggering and preposterously unjustified level of confidence so many posters here have in their uninformed opinions is truly remarkable.
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EPT
