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SmtPersona
Australia5 Posts
Here's the link for the video: Starcraft: 7 years in 7 minutes In saying all this I am happy that from the few threads I have read, that some people are actually making valid suggestions to Blizzard with logical reasoning and as a life long fan of Starcraft, even during the BroodWar days, I am glad that we are still A-OK. From those of you who never actually took the time to watch the video then I'll say one thing, "Rome was not build in a day." ...........(<---- WTF WHO IS THIS GAY GUY) | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
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. The Tempest was originally suppose to solve a problem that didn't really exist. Mutalisks are not solved best by Stargate play, they are solved by Storm and Blink Stalkers because that is useful versus other Zerg units, while Pheonixes and anti-air Tempests would not be (the ability to transition is very important). Now the Tempest fills a completely different roll. And a lot of people (including me) spoke out against the Replicant and Entomb before the beta even began. They were terrible ideas, that brought nothing to the table. Fact is, Blizzard doesn't understand the game, evidenced by the ever changing roll that Warhounds, Tempests and Oracles have had. While it may be a Beta, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that Entomb was terrible and skilless, that the Replicant would lead people to simply not build certain units, and that the Warhound was the definition of a boring A-move unit. Those kind of ideas don't even need to tested, because they'll never be good. And look what happened when they were tested! Heck, they truly believed that Siege Tanks lines and positional play were ruining TvT, and we needed more deathballs. They even said it in this video (fast forward to 18:40). "So the Marines and Tanks are spread out pretty well... Now obviously if all these Siege Tanks and Marines were packed up tightly... there is no way this Hellion/Warhound army could push this line." Thanks David Kim, we'll form our Tanks and Marines into a deathball now so we can combat the Hellion/Warhound deathball. TvT will be so much better now without positional play. Now it isn't all bad, some new units are great and enhance the game. But given the fact Blizzard took way too long to make simple changes in WOL to address the imbalance (we just recently got ramp blockers in HOTS, how long did it take them to figure this out, how long was the community asking for it, how long did tournaments use them?) combined with their terrible unit ideas for HOTS, it shows their lack of understanding of the game. As it should happen with any business, at some point people need to stand up and say "What the hell is going on here?" when a business isn't listening to their customers and has bad ideas that people don't want. At this point I think heads need to roll at Blizzard, and a new team needs to take over who understands the game and listens to the community and professional players. | ||
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Switch24
United States20 Posts
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 21 2012 02:57 Switch24 wrote: Also, above you reference "ramp blockers" like neutral depots and what not, why is Blizzard responsible for that? Blizzard is responsible for it on their own ladder. Also the lack of ramp blockers skews the ladder winrate against Zerg, which means they use skewed data to balancing the game. One would surmise that if ramp blockers were introduced today in WOL, that the Zerg winrate would jump slightly. I know I've done my fair share of ramp blocking in WOL when I've needed wins. On November 21 2012 02:57 Switch24 wrote: At the end of the day, they are the ones who determine what goes in and what doesn't. If they want to test out a unit like a warhound or an ability like entomb, so what? Because the community knows better and says it shouldn't even exist. That sounds dumb and immature. But what was the end result? The end result was the Warhound and Entomb were removed, because they were terrible ideas. So the community was dumb and immature for saying the ideas were terrible before the beta, but the "professional game designers" were right for introducing the ideas, but then withdrawing them because they didn't work? And the reasons Blizzard gave for removing the Warhound and Entomb were exactly the same reasons that the community gave long before. Let me tell you, it didn't take Nostradamus helping the community to figure out those ideas weren't going to work. You're right, Blizzard can test out whatever they want. But if you understand business, you'll know that they don't want to waste their time and money testing bad ideas. No business does. The fact they have shows how out of touch they are, regardless of whether or not they are "professional game designers". And it would be one thing if they tested bad ideas in a small setting within Blizzard, but to test openly them in the face of so much criticism and powerful logical arguments was ridiculous. And look what happened. At the end of the day, the success of this game and whether it becomes a real sport is decided by the fans and the community. And I have faith that Blizzard will release something workable in the end. But that doesn't mean they couldn't have done a lot better, and at this point, I think they can do a lot better. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 21 2012 02:57 Switch24 wrote: The point of a beta is try new units, new abilities, tweak old units, and reinvent strategies. We talk about oh the Warhound was 1-a move unit and yes we understand that this is not right but they are the creators of the games. At the end of the day, they are the ones who determine what goes in and what doesn't. If they want to test out a unit like a warhound or an ability like entomb, so what? Because the community knows better and says it shouldn't even exist. That sounds dumb and immature. We need to understand that these guys are professional game designers. They are testing abilities and units they have designed because they want real time use and real time data. They want to see what works and what doesn't and what can be used, like maybe haywire missiles. Unfortunately, we too often play betas as pretty much finished products which are used for testing network loads, and matchmaking systems. I play Halo as well and I remember playing the Reach Beta and all it did was test the network loads like 2 weeks before the release. Blizzard is actively trying everything and although we may not agree with each unit or ability or change, we need to give them all the way to the release before we can make a final decision. This comment rather sounds "dumb" to me. Any "believe in the Blizzard, because they are surely smarter than you" comment is terribly stupid, given the evidence we have. - The Warhound had to be removed, because it has a stupid concept ... - the Oracle and Mothership Core have had serious changes in their design concepts which really show they have no clue what should and what shouldnt be in the game ... - the Widow Mine has been changed a lot as well and it seems to have a potential for being overpowered if massed above a certain number and used correctly ... - a unit with 22 range? Really? REALLY? and it is designed as a replacement for another unit which they didnt even try to fix, but which is a true classic unit from BW ... So it is practically PROVEN by Blizzard themselves that they can come up with terrible terrible ideas and no one should think that they are smart enough to fix any of these by themselves. They NEED the input of the community, so insulting said community by saying "dont complain, because Blizzard knows how to deal with that" is terribly stupid. Add to this all the terrible and "political" answers from Dustin Browder in his interviews AND his very very dismissive answer on the alternative movement proposal and you get a clear idea of a bunch of people who seem to have a. no clue of what they are doing OR b. the arrogance to think they are always right and never ever make a mistake. Neither is very flattering and everyone who still thinks they will do it right probably needs to learn some wisdom. At the end of the day WE are the ones who are supposed to buy the expansion and while all the pros and fanatics will do that without a thought, what about the casuals? I for one am not going to do it, because playing the game in its current state isnt fun. | ||
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green2000
Peru79 Posts
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Thanks for posting it, quiet courageous too as you basically laid out a hater bait for multiple groups of haters and the white knights following them, to meet up in this thread. | ||
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Stratos_speAr
United States6959 Posts
On November 21 2012 02:57 Switch24 wrote: The point of a beta is try new units, new abilities, tweak old units, and reinvent strategies. We talk about oh the Warhound was 1-a move unit and yes we understand that this is not right but they are the creators of the games. At the end of the day, they are the ones who determine what goes in and what doesn't. If they want to test out a unit like a warhound or an ability like entomb, so what? Because the community knows better and says it shouldn't even exist. That sounds dumb and immature. We need to understand that these guys are professional game designers. They are testing abilities and units they have designed because they want real time use and real time data. They want to see what works and what doesn't and what can be used, like maybe haywire missiles. Unfortunately, we too often play betas as pretty much finished products which are used for testing network loads, and matchmaking systems. I play Halo as well and I remember playing the Reach Beta and all it did was test the network loads like 2 weeks before the release. Blizzard is actively trying everything and although we may not agree with each unit or ability or change, we need to give them all the way to the release before we can make a final decision. Also, above you reference "ramp blockers" like neutral depots and what not, why is Blizzard responsible for that? They provide map editors and tools to allow the community to regulate itself in that regard. It's more immature for Blizzard to say, "This is OUR game, so we're going to make it how WE want it." This game isn't simply Blizzard's creation; they have a community that plays it and many aspects of the game rely on this community. If Blizzard really wants to say, "It's OUR game and this is how WE want it." then they need to be prepared to lose the already dwindling support; if you're not going to listen to your customers, then you don't get the privilege of keeping them. Furthermore, a beta for an expansion to a game that is primarily an e-sport is not meant to just introduce crazy new units and strategies. When you are designing an e-sport, the point of an expansion's beta is to introduce a couple new units to help diversify the metagame and introduce a few new strategies. If this was primarily a game to be enjoyed in a non-competitive setting (thinking something like DoW2), then you can introduce a wider variety of units and try some crazier things. | ||
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SpecKROELLchen
Germany151 Posts
On November 21 2012 02:31 BronzeKnee wrote: Let me play devil's advocate for a moment...... I am a huge blizzard fan and like all their games, but you sir are absolutely right. I never understood, why blizzard wanted to change TvT. In most eyes it was by far the best mirror. I did not understand, why they wanted to change anything there. Some changes which have to be made are so obvious, every lowleagueplayer would notice it. I was so shocked, that it took blizzard like 10 month to reallize, mothership in pvz is standard play. I thought how could they not noticing without watching anything. I guess there are like 300k Blizzard fans, who would love to do the balancing job and would watch like every tournament to get enough information (they do it anyways, cause they love the game). At least Blizzard should really do things like, inviting pros and discuss new units with them or let them suggest new units, before designing anything. This will make the whole process much faster and better. I dont see any reason to not do it. But well, enough negative spirit. Blizzard is still doing a great job and its alway hard to get the casual-,hardcore- and progamer under one roof. It will take time for sure, but why not begin smart... | ||
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RanDomFox
United States84 Posts
you may not like the changes brought about in the beta, but they will do one thing, change the game. its understandable that people don't like change and a knee-jerk reaction with be to hate it, but give it time (i bet people thought the same about brood war). blizzard does take the criticism into account but they do know better than the community. | ||
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wcr.4fun
Belgium686 Posts
The main reason I've quit is just the lack of addressing important issues or taking 2+ years to fix them. I got tired of watching broodlord infestor after about a month and it's still broodlord infestor basically every game. (same for the collussus) And of course units like the swarm host aren't adding a lot of excitement to the game either, especially when you think about the lost possibility to have something as awesome as the lurker. I have nothing against blizzard at all though. They brought me 2 of the best games to ever be developped in it's genre, starcraft (bw) and warcraft tft. And as soon as they live up to their previous level of quality, I'll be there to buy their games again. edit: also amazing posts by bronzeknee. | ||
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CYFAWS
Sweden275 Posts
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 21 2012 04:00 RanDomFox wrote: i think its important to realize that beta is for testing new and different things. the original sc beta was sooo different than the game we know then bw changed it all. its an ever ongoing and dynamic process that if past precedent means anything, blizzard will get right in the end. i trust in blizzard. you may not like the changes brought about in the beta, but they will do one thing, change the game. its understandable that people don't like change and a knee-jerk reaction with be to hate it, but give it time (i bet people thought the same about brood war). blizzard does take the criticism into account but they do know better than the community. The sad truth atm is that they dont understand how their "advancements" from BW to SC2 really affect the gameplay. Its SIMPLE math and imagination, but still they dont get it OR they purposefully ignore it due to arrogant thoughts that everything can be fixed through new or changed units. Well it cant ... not really, because Zerg will still have their huge production advantage late in the game ... if they are allowed to have it ... and totally denying them the capability to get there is unfair. Finding a decent balance that works is IMPOSSIBLE, because the timings and builds really work differently on different maps. So they kinda HAVE TO have a broad balance with a big margin of error for the players instead of the super tight one they have now with almost no margin of error. | ||
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HeeroFX
United States2704 Posts
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phodacbiet
United States1740 Posts
On November 21 2012 03:40 green2000 wrote: I trust in Blizzard Me too, two years ago. Remember when everyone said "bw has blah blah blah years, sc2 only has blah blah years"? Well, 2 years later, instead of things being fine and dandy, the OPness/brokeness just shifted race, nothing is fixed (nice map pool guys). Remember, you are trusting in the people that said "arcade system is fine, top 3 interface control" and the people that released diablo 3. | ||
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padfoota
Taiwan1571 Posts
No problem. Thing is, BW allowed them to wait because it was an age where video games were just being introduced properly. Things were moving slow, allowing them to move slowly, and to experiment. This is post 2010. The amount of video games that come out each year are insane, and whether good or bad, the ones that leaves the hardest first impression is the one who will stay mainstream. Hardcore fans will always stick around, and the real way to make a game successful is to gain new attention and generate new fans. I can give them WoL. I can say its only been 2 and a half years, and BW was good because BW worked on creating a completely new game from the fundamentals of SC1. But they cannot waste anymore time as they have done to D3. Look at D3. So much potential, but such a horrible first impression that it even let the hardcore fans down. The current patches make the game look better and better, but most players have long since moved on to other games. If they flop HoTS too I really dont see Blizzard keeping these titles alive for much longer. Sure, we can still argue that Starcraft is the top RTS and there will unlikely be any direct competitors. But the same audience who can appreciate RTSs are all off watching MOBAs, and they arent coming back if Blizzard doesnt do something amazing. | ||
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_SilverSurfer_
United States41 Posts
TL;DR: Even though they released D3, I have faith they will deliver a very good, and very polished final game. In Blizzard I trust. | ||
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Mirosuu
England283 Posts
On November 21 2012 04:47 HeeroFX wrote: True, but should it really take 7+ years to balance a game? You could agrue that Street fighter is balanced when they come out. Why can't the game be ready to play when it comes out? Because an RTS game or even to some extent any PvP type game is a complex emergent system (See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) You cannot possibly know how the balance of units plays out until you play with them and see how the interactions play out between the units. The units in BW weren't balanced when released. The units in WC3 TFT weren't balanced when released... So why do you think that "just because street fighter is balanced on release" means that an RTS like SC2 should be balanced on release. | ||
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HeeroFX
United States2704 Posts
On November 21 2012 06:53 Mirosuu wrote: Because an RTS game or even to some extent any PvP type game is a complex emergent system (See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence) You cannot possibly know how the balance of units plays out until you play with them and see how the interactions play out between the units. The units in BW weren't balanced when released. The units in WC3 TFT weren't balanced when released... So why do you think that "just because street fighter is balanced on release" means that an RTS like SC2 should be balanced on release. Because fighters are actually really complex and balanced. Many people may not realize this, but if you play them you know. I do understand that games don't come out fully balanced. However in the case of HOTS it should be closer to balanced when it comes out because we have a beta, and because of what they know from WoL. Blizzard just needs to figure out how to address what we know. But it shouldn't take that long. I feel like blizzard didn't care about the multiplayer aspect of SC 1 for a long time, that could have delayed it + the team was smaller. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 21 2012 06:20 _SilverSurfer_ wrote: One thing that has really been bothering me about all this discussion about the HoTS beta is how readily people are giving up on a game that hasn't been released yet. I understand the frustrations people have with the development process as I feel similarly about a lot of the new units and the apparent lack of intelligence that seems to be coming from Blizzard, but you have to give them at least some credit where it's due. Even though most feel they haven't, they have listened to what the community is saying, even if the changes aren't coming as quickly as people would want. I think those who care about the game and it's over-all well being should realize that the game is still in beta (and of course it won't be perfectly balanced yet, I mean, 1 supply Roaches in the WoL beta. Just sayin') and wait for it to actually be finished before making a final judgement. In the mean time, keep up the balance discussions and unit suggestions because they can actually affect the game if a suggestion is good enough and properly addresses a problem. (e.g. NonY's carrier micro video) TL;DR: Even though they released D3, I have faith they will deliver a very good, and very polished final game. In Blizzard I trust. The loss of faith is quite easy to explain: 1. WoL isnt really balanced all that well and has huge problems (at least if you accept the "too tight unit movement" argument as the reason for the deathball). 2. The units which they have presented so far for HotS have undergone several "180 degree changes" in their design concept and this seems rather uncooked and random. Add those together and you get the picture that they havent got a clue how to go about fixing the game. Even though everyone says they are "the developers" that doesnt mean they really have a clue, since it is the first RTS for them in the Starcraft universe. This "first RTS" argumentation should be easy to understand since BW was developed by a different team and they made so many drastic changes to it - compared to BW - that you cant really call it a next iteration of the first game. Sadly they dont include these general changes in their balance thoughts, so any "I trust them to do it right" is rather infuriating, because the connections between problems and the general mechanics are rather obvious ... | ||
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drkcid
Spain196 Posts
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 21 2012 02:31 BronzeKnee wrote: Fact is, Blizzard doesn't understand the game, evidenced by the ever changing roll that Warhounds, Tempests and Oracles have had.. If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts". Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. Take a field of any profession, let it be music theory or geological field trip. There will be A LOT were you don't understand the reasoning, even though you are able to hear music and to see a geological conglomeration of sediments. On November 21 2012 02:31 BronzeKnee wrote: Now it isn't all bad, some new units are great and enhance the game. But given the fact Blizzard took way too long to make simple changes in WOL to address the imbalance (we just recently got ramp blockers in HOTS, how long did it take them to figure this out, how long was the community asking for it, how long did tournaments use them?) . Another "fact". Ladder play is not tournament play. You also cannot just bring something into the game because it sounds good. If you ever had something to do with the development of a larger software project, you know what you do when you have a working solution. You don't just add something or change something. It has to be well thought-out. You need to consider future implications. One false step in the project can cost you A LOT in the future. There is a reason why everything is so slow: You need to document all changes and need to make sure that they don't do any harm. In the software development, a fast solution often is a costly solution which sooner or later requires large part to be replaced by newly written code. | ||
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wcr.4fun
Belgium686 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts". Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. Take a field of any profession, let it be music theory or geological field trip. There will be A LOT were you don't understand the reasoning, even though you are able to hear music and to see a geological conglomeration of sediments. Another "fact". Ladder play is not tournament play. You also cannot just bring something into the game because it sounds good. If you ever had something to do with the development of a larger software project, you know what you do when you have a working solution. You don't just add something or change something. It has to be well thought-out. You need to consider future implications. One false step in the project can cost you A LOT in the future. There is a reason why everything is so slow: You need to document all changes and need to make sure that they don't do any harm. lmao. Your bullshit-injector must have been on overdrive while writing that post. | ||
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gingerfluffmuff
Austria4570 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts". Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. Take a field of any profession, let it be music theory or geological field trip. There will be A LOT were you don't understand the reasoning, even though you are able to hear music and to see a geological conglomeration of sediments. Another "fact". Ladder play is not tournament play. You also cannot just bring something into the game because it sounds good. If you ever had something to do with the development of a larger software project, you know what you do when you have a working solution. You don't just add something or change something. It has to be well thought-out. You need to consider future implications. One false step in the project can cost you A LOT in the future. There is a reason why everything is so slow: You need to document all changes and need to make sure that they don't do any harm. In the software development, a fast solution often is a costly solution which sooner or later requires large part to be replaced by newly written code. Mate, you need to chill. Game developing isnt rocket science, the frame for sc2 exists since BW. Blizz is also part of Acti, which is a company with shareholders to please, thats the main reason why sc2 is split in 3 parts i guess. There were valid points mentioned: 1) It seems too many on TL that Blizz has no clear vision for the races, so random units/upg are tested. 2) The lacking map pool and changes in the maps (like removing rocks, adding depots) done by premier leagues (GSL/MLG) --> The ladder is used to get better and compare with other people. It doesnt make sense that i cant use the same builds/maps showed by the pros. | ||
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emc
United States3088 Posts
On November 21 2012 04:47 HeeroFX wrote: True, but should it really take 7+ years to balance a game? You could agrue that Street fighter is balanced when they come out. Why can't the game be ready to play when it comes out? street fighter has never been fully balanced and it will never be. SSF4 Tournament Ed. is probably the closest balanced game they've made but still has it's flaws. SFxT was a complete dog, it's horribly unbalanced. SSF4 was also pretty bad, SF4 was even worse, it took them 3 SF4 games to finally get it right, how is that any different from 3 sc2 games? SF3, SF Alpha, even SF2 was imbalanced, and this is coming from a person who has played fighting games since I was a kid and followed the scene. No game is ever balanced on release, it took several dozen versions of Counter-Strike to finally get it right, and it took years and years to do so. Dota/LoL is an ever changing game, there will probably never be a version of those games that don't have changes for a year. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts". Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. Take a field of any profession, let it be music theory or geological field trip. There will be A LOT were you don't understand the reasoning, even though you are able to hear music and to see a geological conglomeration of sediments. Rofl ... clear points have been given soooo many times already and yet Blizzard ignores them. Here are a few of my favorites: 1. Deathball sucks and is caused by tight unit movement, unlimited unit selection and an increased production speed (compared to BW) .... fix is easy: remove production boosts, limit unit selection and force-spread units while moving. I think Blizzard even agreed on not liking the deathball either and yet Browder says "players want to clump up their units". 2. The asymmetric distribution of production speed boosts is the reason why certain races have advantages at certain "timings". The easiest example are all the Protoss timings which usually start after Warp Gate research is done and the X Warp Gates have been built. It is a terrible idea to have a "structural imbalance" in the general mechanics, because they have to fix this through the units. In addition it seems a stupid idea to claim to be wanting to make mech viable while the core unit of that strategy is NOT affected by any production speed boost. Fixing this is easy again: remove the production speed boosts AND the economic speed boosts (thus removing the MULE, which has been the reason why we dont have any maps with gold minerals anymore AND which has been complained about for a long time). 3. Unit balancing is different according to the number of units involved. "2 Marines vs. 1 Zealot" is a different balance from "20 Marines vs. 10 Zealots" or "50 Marines vs. 25 Zealots" and this is the core mathematical reason why unit cluming is terrible and should be removed ASAP! With "less clumping" the variation in the balance isnt as big, which makes the general stats of the units less important. We have seen that in the "local overpoweredness" of the Siege Tank in BW for example; it didnt really matter that the attack was strong, but in SC2 that kind of attack would be terrible and would have to be balanced precisely and with extreme care. On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: Another "fact". Ladder play is not tournament play. You also cannot just bring something into the game because it sounds good. If you ever had something to do with the development of a larger software project, you know what you do when you have a working solution. You don't just add something or change something. It has to be well thought-out. You need to consider future implications. One false step in the project can cost you A LOT in the future. There is a reason why everything is so slow: You need to document all changes and need to make sure that they don't do any harm. In the software development, a fast solution often is a costly solution which sooner or later requires large part to be replaced by newly written code. Rofl ... they arent programming the game anymore. That work has been done for years. They are simply adding in some new units and that shouldnt take weeks and weeks of programming. The biggest problem is adding in units which DONT SUCK. In the end the game is supposed to be an "eSports game" and because of this even Blizzard needs to respect the tournament organizations like GSL and MLG and they should use their maps on the ladder. For a new expansion they should stick to known maps, because it doesnt make sense that players have to try out new units AND new maps at the same time. That's really stupid to vary two things at the same time when you are testing something and only after the community complained did they add a few known maps to the HotS map pool. | ||
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Artisian
United States115 Posts
"So the Marines and Tanks are spread out pretty well... Now obviously if all these Siege Tanks and Marines were packed up tightly... there is no way this Hellion/Warhound army could push this line." Thanks David Kim, we'll form our Tanks and Marines into a deathball now so we can combat the Hellion/Warhound deathball. TvT will be so much better now without positional play. That's not what I heard him say, I heard him say that tank-marine would be better when positioned at a choke instead of in open field, and I suspect he meant packed tightly in range of that entrance. You completely cut out the choke bit, which is one of the key features and important points of any map. The idea isn't more clumped armies, the idea is that positioning wont let you just draw lines across the map wherever you want, you need to use the terrain. The point davie was trying to make was that TvT would have a new style that could combat the old in open field, but would have trouble pushing choke points. Blizzard doesn't hate positional play, but they do hate stalemates. Stalemates are bad for the game, they cause stagnation and boring matches. The option to break siege lines that aren't controlling a choke would do exactly that for TvT. I'd argue that even the replicant was a plausible fix to protoss's rigid tech tree in the mid game, it would have definitely made stargate and templar tech switches easier and safer. Blizzard might not always have the best ideas, nobody does, but what they think up is always innovative and plausibly effective if you just look for what they want to fix. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 22 2012 02:40 Artisian wrote: Blizzard doesn't hate positional play, but they do hate stalemates. Stalemates are bad for the game, they cause stagnation and boring matches. The option to break siege lines that aren't controlling a choke would do exactly that for TvT. One of the most interesting games I have ever seen was a TvP in BW, where the Terran had a reeeeaaaallly deep siege line with turrets, sieged tanks and goliaths. That lasted for some time while the Protoss tried to break out. Eventually he managed it, but all the time there was this tension of "will he be able to do it?" Stalemates are only boring if nothing happens and if you have "full army vs. full army" as your core design concept no one will start a skirmish, because that would be too risky. In BW with its limited concentration of units that worked well enough, so the conclusion is easy ... get rid of the tight concentration of units and you can easily have positional play. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 02:13 gingerfluffmuff wrote: Mate, you need to chill. Game developing isnt rocket science, the frame for sc2 exists since BW. Blizz is also part of Acti, which is a company with shareholders to please, thats the main reason why sc2 is split in 3 parts i guess. There were valid points mentioned: 1) It seems too many on TL that Blizz has no clear vision for the races, so random units/upg are tested. 2) The lacking map pool and changes in the maps (like removing rocks, adding depots) done by premier leagues (GSL/MLG) --> The ladder is used to get better and compare with other people. It doesnt make sense that i cant use the same builds/maps showed by the pros. What appears random to us can be the process of a thorough, well reasoned debate within the team. How can you tell the difference? Do you actually think they approach the game like a schoolwork project and try out random things? Tournaments are for the few pros. The ladder has to be attractive for all players. Things like neutral depots make the game more complicated. That doesn't mean that they don't belong to ladder, but it is a factor which has to be considered. The pros of course cannot really prepare for tournaments with ladder play but the ladder is not intended to do that anyway. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 02:40 Rabiator wrote: Rofl ... clear points have been given soooo many times already and yet Blizzard ignores them. Here are a few of my favorites: 1. Deathball sucks and is caused by tight unit movement, unlimited unit selection and an increased production speed (compared to BW) .... fix is easy: remove production boosts, limit unit selection and force-spread units while moving. I think Blizzard even agreed on not liking the deathball either and yet Browder says "players want to clump up their units". Most players want to build a ball of death, DB is right, because it makes it easier to focus damage. However a deathball lowers the viewer's experience at it is hard to follow the action. That means there is nuance here, it is not just "deathball sucks". Instead we have pros and cons. Spells with AOE damage force unit splitting for optimal play which involves skill. Foxer rose to fame with unit control. Limited unit selection is maybe applauded by some pros and even some casual gamers. But do you think that you can sell an RTS in this time with a limited unit selection count? While mechanically easier than BW, SC2 is still mechanically demanding on pro level, at least compared to competing esports games like LoL. Regarding RTS, there isn't even a competing game right now. Blizzard must have made at least some things right. On November 22 2012 02:40 Rabiator wrote:2. The asymmetric distribution of production speed boosts is the reason why certain races have advantages at certain "timings". The easiest example are all the Protoss timings which usually start after Warp Gate research is done and the X Warp Gates have been built. It is a terrible idea to have a "structural imbalance" in the general mechanics, because they have to fix this through the units. In addition it seems a stupid idea to claim to be wanting to make mech viable while the core unit of that strategy is NOT affected by any production speed boost. Fixing this is easy again: remove the production speed boosts AND the economic speed boosts (thus removing the MULE, which has been the reason why we dont have any maps with gold minerals anymore AND which has been complained about for a long time). If you can see so easy fixes I really wonder why you don't work in the industry. Did it ever occur to you that the fix is maybe not as easy as you think? Local imbalance and the favor of certain timings for certain build orders for each race allows the races to be actually different. While this gameplay mechanic also causes some troubles like timings which are easy to execute and hard to defend, it doesn't mean that the game as a whole would be better off without it. I am not certain about the right way. I don't think though that you can be certain either, even if you act as if you are certain. On November 22 2012 02:40 Rabiator wrote:3. Unit balancing is different according to the number of units involved. "2 Marines vs. 1 Zealot" is a different balance from "20 Marines vs. 10 Zealots" or "50 Marines vs. 25 Zealots" and this is the core mathematical reason why unit cluming is terrible and should be removed ASAP! With "less clumping" the variation in the balance isnt as big, which makes the general stats of the units less important. We have seen that in the "local overpoweredness" of the Siege Tank in BW for example; it didnt really matter that the attack was strong, but in SC2 that kind of attack would be terrible and would have to be balanced precisely and with extreme care. What exactly does this point prove? That it plays different compared to BW? You don't remove "ASAP" things if the game as a whole works more or less. You take carefully steps in the right direction or you risk to mess up the entire game. People make a living off an esports career right now. A responsible action is to not make "ASAP" changes. On November 22 2012 02:40 Rabiator wrote: Rofl ... they arent programming the game anymore. That work has been done for years. They are simply adding in some new units and that shouldnt take weeks and weeks of programming. The biggest problem is adding in units which DONT SUCK. In the end the game is supposed to be an "eSports game" and because of this even Blizzard needs to respect the tournament organizations like GSL and MLG and they should use their maps on the ladder. For a new expansion they should stick to known maps, because it doesnt make sense that players have to try out new units AND new maps at the same time. That's really stupid to vary two things at the same time when you are testing something and only after the community complained did they add a few known maps to the HotS map pool. Your roffeling shows that you didn't understood the point of my comparison. It also shows that you don't have experience with larger software projects and that you consider changes much easier than they actually are. If I am wrong and you are in fact a genius, please do go into the industry. | ||
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gingerfluffmuff
Austria4570 Posts
On November 22 2012 03:09 [F_]aths wrote: What appears random to us can be the process of a thorough, well reasoned debate within the team. How can you tell the difference? Do you actually think they approach the game like a schoolwork project and try out random things? Tournaments are for the few pros. The ladder has to be attractive for all players. Things like neutral depots make the game more complicated. That doesn't mean that they don't belong to ladder, but it is a factor which has to be considered. The pros of course cannot really prepare for tournaments with ladder play but the ladder is not intended to do that anyway. Its nice for you to defend Blizz, but you neither got any proof that the changes are not random (more or less). My Economical Standpoint(is this even an english word): Do the absolut minimum to not drive all players away, so that the expansions are going to sell. Say "we are working on the balance" and hype the expansion. I would do the same if i would be CEO, cause i wouldnt give a shit about posters like you and me. Being pylon/bunker - walled in aint so funny, i wouldnt call the games attractive. I hope your not playing zerg, saying stuff like this would make me believe your are chopping wood in wood league. Quite pointless our discussion is i guess, at least we are gaining posts. | ||
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Glorfindel21
France51 Posts
I will gladly read anyone here that would write something really solid about the nature of balance and establish a clear theory. | ||
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On November 22 2012 03:35 gingerfluffmuff wrote: Its nice for you to defend Blizz, but you neither got any proof that the changes are not random (more or less). It's more likely that they aren't, though. They have a team of professionals who have access to just about every stat there is, and have to spend their days developing ideas for the game. Part of it(an important one) is being able to admit a change was wrong, scrapping it, and trying again, see the mothership core. The point is, though it may seem like they're a bunch of drooling idiots to frustrated people like you, they've been doing more and more to suggest that this isn't the case. On November 22 2012 03:35 gingerfluffmuff wrote:My Economical Standpoint(is this even an english word): Do the absolut minimum to not drive all players away, so that the expansions are going to sell. Say "we are working on the balance" and hype the expansion. I would do the same if i would be CEO, cause i wouldnt give a shit about posters like you and me. Being pylon/bunker - walled in aint so funny, i wouldnt call the games attractive. I hope your not playing zerg, saying stuff like this would make me believe your are chopping wood in wood league. Quite pointless our discussion is i guess, at least we are gaining posts. The point of a beta is not to "work on balance", it's to focus the design of the game, to get a clear idea of how new units and abilities will affect the game, and tweak or remove certain things where necessary, until the game plays differently and better. Balance is much simpler by comparison, and can wait until release. The new units have been balanced to the point where they're all usable, but they've undergone design changes more times than they have balance. Also, work on your damn grammar please. Slight imperfections are one thing, but that first sentence was painful to read, flat out. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 22 2012 03:23 [F_]aths wrote: Most players want to build a ball of death, DB is right, because it makes it easier to focus damage. However a deathball lowers the viewer's experience at it is hard to follow the action. That means there is nuance here, it is not just "deathball sucks". Instead we have pros and cons. Spells with AOE damage force unit splitting for optimal play which involves skill. Foxer rose to fame with unit control. Limited unit selection is maybe applauded by some pros and even some casual gamers. But do you think that you can sell an RTS in this time with a limited unit selection count? While mechanically easier than BW, SC2 is still mechanically demanding on pro level, at least compared to competing esports games like LoL. Regarding RTS, there isn't even a competing game right now. Blizzard must have made at least some things right. Rofl????? They dont NEED to make much right, because it was a long expected sequel to a game with many many fans. Sure, they could have screwed up as much as Duke Nukem Forever, but due to the big fan community this game will be played even if it is less than perfect. There are nuances you know and SC2 has flaws in its design. One piece of wisdom I have learned in my life: You can sell DIRT if you advertise it correctly. In this case you just need Dustin to come out and explain to the players why unlimited unit selection is bad ... and in a sense he has already agreed to that by saying something like "split units are better for the viewer". A limited unit selection is also better for casuals, because you dont lose all your units if you make a mistake and can learn from that in the same game. No casual can split his Marines against a clump of Banelings rolling towards him .... which is an a-move every casual can do and putting them into one big group makes it even easier. On November 22 2012 03:23 [F_]aths wrote: If you can see so easy fixes I really wonder why you don't work in the industry. Did it ever occur to you that the fix is maybe not as easy as you think? Local imbalance and the favor of certain timings for certain build orders for each race allows the races to be actually different. While this gameplay mechanic also causes some troubles like timings which are easy to execute and hard to defend, it doesn't mean that the game as a whole would be better off without it. I am not certain about the right way. I don't think though that you can be certain either, even if you act as if you are certain. Stop that stupid "if you are so smart why dont you work in the industry" argument, which is just an attempt to intimidate or discourage the one you are supposedly arguing with. If you think you found a flaw in my arguments then please say so, but stop saying "I don't think though that you can be certain either". Either argue with my reasoning or shut up. On November 22 2012 03:23 [F_]aths wrote: What exactly does this point prove? That it plays different compared to BW? You don't remove "ASAP" things if the game as a whole works more or less. You take carefully steps in the right direction or you risk to mess up the entire game. People make a living off an esports career right now. A responsible action is to not make "ASAP" changes. Well if you find a problem - which I believe I have - AND you have already scheduled your release date - which they have - AND if the change would totally change the gameplay you kinda have to do things ASAP to be done before the release of the expansion ... easy logic I would say. Starcraft 2 can be easily compared to BW and once you do you see that the newer game has problems which the older didnt have and then the solution is easy enough to see. That comparison and the long eSports tradition is a resource which they *should be* using, but they are not. If you have to ask what my "2X Marines vs. X Zealots" example means then you havent tried to understand it. If you have just 2 Marines and 1 Zealot came along to try and kill them they would have to run away for a bit and then shoot the Zealot, but it would take a lot of work from the player to keep them alive. If you do that for a larger group the Zealots have a smaller chance of winning, simply because the number of Marines is soo big that they can kill a few Zealots before they reach the Marines and then continue to kill them faster than the Marines would die, because more Marines can shoot the one line of Zealots which can attack them. It has something to do with the mathematical fact that the "group dps" is higher if your clump gets bigger and this continues to rise. This is so big that the Zealots die before taking too many swings themselves, which they can do a lot, when its just 2 Marines fighting a single Zealot. The size of the clumps is so big that they make expensive units - like Siege Tanks or Colossi or Thors - rather worthless and those expensive units just die too fast. Just look at a clump of Roaches "fleeing" from a group of Stalkers ... and if you have enough Roaches they can simply turn around and one-shot a Stalker. Thats stupid. On November 22 2012 03:23 [F_]aths wrote: Your roffeling shows that you didn't understood the point of my comparison. It also shows that you don't have experience with larger software projects and that you consider changes much easier than they actually are. If I am wrong and you are in fact a genius, please do go into the industry. You DONT NEED programming or software project experience to have ideas. Thats for programmers to organize. Hence the "rofls", because you keep sticking to this irrelevant argument. I dont work there, because it would be in the US and because they didnt ask me AND because I dont care for it. If Dustin sent me an email tomorrow I could advise him, but I doubt that will happen, so what is the point you are trying to make? It is also easier to see the problems and the right way if you are NOT part of the ongoing daily process, because then you get sucked up into the details and lose the view of the "big picture". My points above about the general problems - which they totally ignore so far - should show that easily. | ||
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Steelo_Rivers
United States1968 Posts
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wcr.4fun
Belgium686 Posts
On November 22 2012 07:25 LgNKami wrote: People dont understand that it took years to balance Vanilla SC (well... the balance for vanilla WAS bw. lol) and BW. I feel like people are expecting Sc2 to be perfect off the bat and HotS to follow suit. It just doesnt work that way. People need to stop and just give it some time. Considering there is another expansion coming out, I don't see sc2 being balanced anytime soon. It may be "close" to being balanced after LotV comes out but even then thats wishful thinking as its going to have to take cooperation from both Blizzard and the Mapmakers to make a decent game, not 1 or the other. sc vanilla only "existed for a year" and bw's last balancing patch was 1.08.. | ||
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GARcher
Canada294 Posts
On November 22 2012 07:25 LgNKami wrote: People dont understand that it took years to balance Vanilla SC (well... the balance for vanilla WAS bw. lol) and BW. I feel like people are expecting Sc2 to be perfect off the bat and HotS to follow suit. It just doesnt work that way. People need to stop and just give it some time. Considering there is another expansion coming out, I don't see sc2 being balanced anytime soon. It may be "close" to being balanced after LotV comes out but even then thats wishful thinking as its going to have to take cooperation from both Blizzard and the Mapmakers to make a decent game, not 1 or the other. The mapmakers are having problems because of the stupid ideas for units blizzard is putting out. It is a vicious cycle. | ||
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Treeborne
United States4 Posts
When you have so many people playing the game at an extremely high level, it's impossible as a designer to completely predict how different elements will interact with one another. Think about when we saw MKP first split his marines against mass banelings in the GSL. It was breathtaking and spectacular because nobody foresaw that occurring. Dustin even later commented that all the designers were shocked because none of them thought marines could be used in that way. Or to think even farther back, remember when julyzerg first popularized muta stacking? That fundamentally changed the way BW was played and was so groundbreaking that Kespa even debated on whether to ban its usage. So when Blizzard introduces a unit or ability in beta, it's because they want to see what the community can make of it and not because it's something they believe is complete in its design. That's the entire point of having a beta. That's not to say they just toss random ideas in and leave everything else in the hands of the players, but they do understand that every change that they make has farther reaching consequences than they could possibly imagine. Which also legitimizes their slow and minor patch approach. Why patch something that is just unexplored, not broken? TL;DR: In the end, human ingenuity and desire to succeed is what ultimately balances a game and not the rules laid out by the game designers. So before we go around hurling insults and pointing fingers, lets just give the game time (as the OP has pointed out) and let Blizzard and the players go to work. | ||
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EienShinwa
United States655 Posts
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Jimbo77
139 Posts
WoL and HotS are dead children. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: Ladder play is not tournament play. You also cannot just bring something into the game because it sounds good. If you ever had something to do with the development of a larger software project, you know what you do when you have a working solution. You don't just add something or change something. It has to be well thought-out. You need to consider future implications. One false step in the project can cost you A LOT in the future. There is a reason why everything is so slow: You need to document all changes and need to make sure that they don't do any harm. In the software development, a fast solution often is a costly solution which sooner or later requires large part to be replaced by newly written code. I'm not going to address the majority of your post, because other people have. But I want to talk about what I just quoted from you and ramp blockers. Now you better check yourself on this logic before you wreck yourself... 1. Starcraft 2 is the same for ladder and tournament play. 2. Part of how Blizzard balances the game is done by looking at ladder data. 3. The absence of ramp blockers skews the data against Zerg, as Terran and Protoss players can block the ramps for easy wins. Heck, I beat ROOTFitzy in the Custom Map TL Open by walling off his ramp on Ohana... these kind of strategies are easy to pull off and have a high win percentage, even if you play someone much better than yourself. 4. Blizzard is balancing the game for both ladder and tournament play based partially on data that is skewed against Zerg due to ramp blocking strategies. So Blizzard is balancing their game based on skewed data. What happens on ladder effects how the game is balanced, which effects tournament play. So much for being well thought out... On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts" So is that clear enough for you? Is what I said not fact? And to top it off, we very recently received ramp blockers in HOTS... Why did it take so long? How long did Blizzard have to think about it? And regarding everything being well thought-out... Entomb was not well thought out, it was a terrible spell that allowed a Bronze league player harass as well as a Grandmaster. It was skilless and not fun. And the community said it from the start. Blizzard should have listened and never implemented it. But they did. Then they realized what everyone knew, that it was terrible. And they had to remove it. So much for being well thought out... But you're right. I don't understand the process that Blizzard uses to balance the game. But I don't think it is because it is too scientific for me and they are too smart for me. I don't think so at all based on what they've done... | ||
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Crawdad
614 Posts
On November 22 2012 14:37 BronzeKnee wrote: But you're right. I don't understand the process that Blizzard uses to balance the game. But I don't think it is because it is too scientific and they are too smart for. I don't think so at all based on the results and what they've done... It's not scientific or objectively "smart", but it has reasoning and it makes sense. Blizzard has been very open with their thought processes, even more so than during the WoL beta, and none of their changes have come off as unexpected to me. There are clear reasons for why they choose implement what they do. Whether or not those changes are good or not, is an entirely different ball game, but you can't say that it's "random". | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. Take a field of any profession, let it be music theory or geological field trip. There will be A LOT were you don't understand the reasoning, even though you are able to hear music and to see a geological conglomeration of sediments. Unfortunately that argument falls flat on it's face when Blizzard does something like comes up with Entomb, gets criticized for it being a bad idea, implements it anyway, then has to remove it because it was in fact a bad idea. I may not understand their logic or reasoning, but I know it was a bad idea, and obviously they realize it now too. Or to use his analogy, I am in music theory class with the professionals that I don't understand telling them their music sucks for reason X and to stop working on it. They don't agree and keep working on it, but then they realize later that it does suck for reason X and have to stop working on it. They should have listened to reason X from the start... Sure makes those professionals look bad huh... and in this case the community had good reasons of why Entomb was a bad idea and those reasons were shared with Blizzard. And it just so happens those were the very same reasons that Blizzard cited as to why they removed Entomb after so much testing. Now, I will argue that the process they use is bad and the proof is in the pudding. It isn't so much that they are releasing units or abilities that don't work after testing, it is the fact the units and abilities they have been releasing are bad ideas before they are even tested. Entomb and the Replicant are prime examples, as I pointed out in my first post on the first page. Before you test anything scientifically, you should make sure it passes the logic test in your head. In other words, if you don't think mixing water and gasoline will make Kool-Aid, why test it in real life? Your time is better spent testing things that make sense. So if you think up a skilless, one click harass spell in hopes that it will make the game more fun to play while addressing an issue, why test it? Skilless spells aren't fun to begin with, and you don't need to test that to know it. | ||
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tpir
United States53 Posts
On November 22 2012 14:56 BronzeKnee wrote: It isn't so much that they are releasing units or abilities that don't work after testing, it is the fact the units and abilities they have been releasing are bad ideas before they are even tested. It feels like the new units are coming in top-down from internal "game jams" Blizzard is doing for crazy ideas instead of working bottom-up to fix each race and incorporate new pieces as they go. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 22 2012 15:05 tpir wrote: It feels like the new units are coming in top-down from internal "game jams" Blizzard is doing for crazy ideas instead of working bottom-up to fix each race and incorporate new pieces as they go. Well said. I really think SC2 needs a better design team. They are trying to reinvent the wheel here, instead of simply making it roll smoother. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 22 2012 15:06 BronzeKnee wrote: Well said. I really think SC2 needs a better design team. They are trying to reinvent the wheel here, instead of simply making it roll smoother. My comparison for their way of doing it comes from Lord of the Rings, where they come across some beautiful caves in Rohan and Gimli says that dwarves would come and visit them and that they would improve them by taking a small chip every decade or so. Blizzard on the other hand seems to have created SC2 with a lot of dynamite in the cave of BW only taking a few remnants after the blast. We now see the problems coming out of it. In todays code A morning cast Wolf said something like "Stalker and Marine have the same dps", BUT if you compare them as a clump of units the Marines come out on top, because they can stack much tighter than the Stalkers. This will give them an edge the bigger the stacks get and probably makes up a lot of the weakness which Stalkers seem to have. If only Blizzard would understand ... | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 03:35 gingerfluffmuff wrote: Its nice for you to defend Blizz, but you neither got any proof that the changes are not random (more or less). My Economical Standpoint(is this even an english word): Do the absolut minimum to not drive all players away, so that the expansions are going to sell. Say "we are working on the balance" and hype the expansion. I would do the same if i would be CEO, cause i wouldnt give a shit about posters like you and me. Being pylon/bunker - walled in aint so funny, i wouldnt call the games attractive. I hope your not playing zerg, saying stuff like this would make me believe your are chopping wood in wood league. Quite pointless our discussion is i guess, at least we are gaining posts. I feel you apply reasonable arguments so I don't feel the discussion itself pointless even though we have no way to determine what Blizzard exactly does. If I hear Dustin Brodwer or David Kim talking, I feel that they are well-informed and care about the game. Of course it could be that they just play their role. Of course both are working for a company which has to make money, last year Blizzard laid off a lot of guys and Blizzard is also known for having rather small teams anyway (I don't know how much the development team were affected or if just community managers were laid off.) Some things in the past showed imo that they did some things they didn't have to. They improved the graphics engine and the "low" setting ground textures after the game was launched. During Wol beta they included bane morphing and spire morphing animations even though it was not really demanded by the gamers. They are still working on Wol balance even though their goal is to sell the expansion. I assume that the point is, that those steps don't pay off at first but generate trust. Seing Blizzard still working on Wol eases your mind because we expect an effort to polish Hots, too – even though Lotv is still to come. I do play zerg by the way, but with Hots and unranked ladder I do | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 15:26 Rabiator wrote: In todays code A morning cast Wolf said something like "Stalker and Marine have the same dps", BUT if you compare them as a clump of units the Marines come out on top, because they can stack much tighter than the Stalkers. This will give them an edge the bigger the stacks get and probably makes up a lot of the weakness which Stalkers seem to have. If only Blizzard would understand ... A tight ball of marines renders them vulnerable to storms, fungals and siege tank shots. While it is a bit easier to make a marine ball than to fight it with AOE damage, every race has its pros. Zerg for example has it way easier to remax and can try to use bane landmines to force the terrans to build a raven or waste scans. Just yesterday I lost a game versus marines. But I didn't reflect on how Blizzard could 'fix' this but rather what I could have done better to get my banes connecting properly. | ||
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gingerfluffmuff
Austria4570 Posts
On November 22 2012 18:45 [F_]aths wrote: I feel that you actually apply reason so I don't feel the discussion itself pointless even though we have no way to determine what Blizzard exactly does. If I hear Dustin Brodwer or David Kim talking, I feel that they are well-informed and care about the game. Of course it could be that they just play their role. Of course both are working for a company which has to make money, last year Blizzard laid off a lot of guys and Blizzard is also known for having rather small teams anyway (I don't know how much the development team were affected or if just community managers were laid off.) I do play zerg by the way, but with Hots and unranked ladder I do I hope that i am wrong and that your feeling is right, cause i really enjoyed playing sc2. For me the game got too stale and i stopped playing. (i play zerg too, but the lack of unit options in the matchups is sooo limited). I still watch GSL cause its awesome and TL is a really good community. After the d3 fiasko i think our beloved blizz north is gone forever. I will wait for hots to be sold and see, but never again i am gonna buy a blizz game at release. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 14:37 BronzeKnee wrote: I'm not going to address the majority of your post, because other people have. But I want to talk about what I just quoted from you and ramp blockers. Now you better check yourself on this logic before you wreck yourself... 1. Starcraft 2 is the same for ladder and tournament play. 2. Part of how Blizzard balances the game is done by looking at ladder data. 3. The absence of ramp blockers skews the data against Zerg, as Terran and Protoss players can block the ramps for easy wins. Heck, I beat ROOTFitzy in the Custom Map TL Open by walling off his ramp on Ohana... these kind of strategies are easy to pull off and have a high win percentage, even if you play someone much better than yourself. 4. Blizzard is balancing the game for both ladder and tournament play based partially on data that is skewed against Zerg due to ramp blocking strategies. So Blizzard is balancing their game based on skewed data. What happens on ladder effects how the game is balanced, which effects tournament play. So much for being well thought out... You are making some assumptions here. Blizzard also watches pro tournaments. They use ladder data to see the win rates through all skill levels. Anectotes like beating Fitzy doesn't really proof a point beside ladder play doesn't equal to tournament play. Since the maps are different, SC2 is not really the same for ladder and tournament play. On November 22 2012 14:37 BronzeKnee wrote: So is that clear enough for you? Is what I said not fact? And to top it off, we very recently received ramp blockers in HOTS... Why did it take so long? How long did Blizzard have to think about it? And regarding everything being well thought-out... Entomb was not well thought out, it was a terrible spell that allowed a Bronze league player harass as well as a Grandmaster. It was skilless and not fun. And the community said it from the start. Blizzard should have listened and never implemented it. But they did. Then they realized what everyone knew, that it was terrible. And they had to remove it. So much for being well thought out... But you're right. I don't understand the process that Blizzard uses to balance the game. But I don't think it is because it is too scientific for me and they are too smart for me. I don't think so at all based on what they've done... Not everyone knew that Entomb was terrible. Some voiced their opinion against it and were proved to be right. But had they to offer a better idea? The current oracle is possible because of Blizzard's willingness to makes mistakes. Mistakes like the warhound, not to mention the shredder, replicant and other units. If you are so good that you do everything right without a mistake, you are either goodly or you doesn't do anything. I also wonder if you understand the concept of alpha and beta versions and if you really criticize Blizzard for trying out something which was viewed negatively by some. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 22 2012 05:26 Rabiator wrote: Rofl????? They dont NEED to make much right, because it was a long expected sequel to a game with many many fans. Sure, they could have screwed up as much as Duke Nukem Forever, but due to the big fan community this game will be played even if it is less than perfect. There are nuances you know and SC2 has flaws in its design. One piece of wisdom I have learned in my life: You can sell DIRT if you advertise it correctly. In this case you just need Dustin to come out and explain to the players why unlimited unit selection is bad ... and in a sense he has already agreed to that by saying something like "split units are better for the viewer". A limited unit selection is also better for casuals, because you dont lose all your units if you make a mistake and can learn from that in the same game. No casual can split his Marines against a clump of Banelings rolling towards him .... which is an a-move every casual can do and putting them into one big group makes it even easier. Does it make a good argument to begin with "Rofl"? Of course SC2 is less than perfect, so is any other game. Limited unit selection would feel like a punishment to build a big army. SC2 is a game where big armys fight big armies, it's not WC3. Even when SC1 was released, the unit limit was not generally praised but often felt like an artifical constraint. SC2 was able to make an RTS in the western esports scene popular again. While WC3 already had a lot of fans, it turned out to be a small thing compared to SC2. I think the data is conclusive that Blizzard did some things right with the game. Now we need to have the remaining flaws removed to get an even better game. On November 22 2012 05:26 Rabiator wrote: Stop that stupid "if you are so smart why dont you work in the industry" argument, which is just an attempt to intimidate or discourage the one you are supposedly arguing with. If you think you found a flaw in my arguments then please say so, but stop saying "I don't think though that you can be certain either". Either argue with my reasoning or shut up. Why so aggressive? The general flaw of many of your arguments is that you only look at a small part or at one of many possible situations. Or that you state your personal opinion which is shared by some others while you act as if you voice the general consesus. At the same time you write in a style as if you are 100% sure that you fully understand all aspects of the game. On November 22 2012 05:26 Rabiator wrote: Well if you find a problem - which I believe I have - AND you have already scheduled your release date - which they have - AND if the change would totally change the gameplay you kinda have to do things ASAP to be done before the release of the expansion ... easy logic I would say. Starcraft 2 can be easily compared to BW and once you do you see that the newer game has problems which the older didnt have and then the solution is easy enough to see. That comparison and the long eSports tradition is a resource which they *should be* using, but they are not. If you have to ask what my "2X Marines vs. X Zealots" example means then you havent tried to understand it. If you have just 2 Marines and 1 Zealot came along to try and kill them they would have to run away for a bit and then shoot the Zealot, but it would take a lot of work from the player to keep them alive. If you do that for a larger group the Zealots have a smaller chance of winning, simply because the number of Marines is soo big that they can kill a few Zealots before they reach the Marines and then continue to kill them faster than the Marines would die, because more Marines can shoot the one line of Zealots which can attack them. It has something to do with the mathematical fact that the "group dps" is higher if your clump gets bigger and this continues to rise. This is so big that the Zealots die before taking too many swings themselves, which they can do a lot, when its just 2 Marines fighting a single Zealot. The size of the clumps is so big that they make expensive units - like Siege Tanks or Colossi or Thors - rather worthless and those expensive units just die too fast. Just look at a clump of Roaches "fleeing" from a group of Stalkers ... and if you have enough Roaches they can simply turn around and one-shot a Stalker. Thats stupid. You DONT NEED programming or software project experience to have ideas. Thats for programmers to organize. Hence the "rofls", because you keep sticking to this irrelevant argument. I dont work there, because it would be in the US and because they didnt ask me AND because I dont care for it. If Dustin sent me an email tomorrow I could advise him, but I doubt that will happen, so what is the point you are trying to make? It is also easier to see the problems and the right way if you are NOT part of the ongoing daily process, because then you get sucked up into the details and lose the view of the "big picture". My points above about the general problems - which they totally ignore so far - should show that easily. The shifting balance of melee versus ranged units makes the game more complex as I pointed out in another reply in another thread. You don't need software project experience, any experience of a complicated process where humans are involves is sufficient. Even small changes can have a large impact. You don't change things "ASAP" just because they sound good. You can do that in a small project, but when many people are involved you need to be sure that you don't make things worse. Unbuildable rocks are coming with Hots, a good chance to introduce them and have them tested in ladder play. When you pick one thing which turns out to be a good thing and then ask why it wasn't implement 'ASAP' as someone proposed it, you are underestimating the difficulties managing a complex project like SC2. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 22 2012 19:37 [F_]aths wrote: Does it make a good argument to begin with "Rofl"? Of course SC2 is less than perfect, so is any other game. Limited unit selection would feel like a punishment to build a big army. SC2 is a game where big armys fight big armies, it's not WC3. Even when SC1 was released, the unit limit was not generally praised but often felt like an artifical constraint. SC2 was able to make an RTS in the western esports scene popular again. While WC3 already had a lot of fans, it turned out to be a small thing compared to SC2. I think the data is conclusive that Blizzard did some things right with the game. Now we need to have the remaining flaws removed to get an even better game. Yes it doesn make for a good start, if the argument in question is hilariously stupid. Of course SC2 is more popular than anything before, because the INFRASTRUCTURE IS THERE NOW! Streaming is easy like hell, but if we had the same during WC3 days or even BW days they would have been big in the west as well. Korea is a special case, because it is a small country with very concentrated infrastructure of high quality. Do you remember your internet connection speed a few years back? Now think again if "rofl" isnt an appropriate answer to arguments of yours ... On November 22 2012 19:37 [F_]aths wrote: Why so aggressive? The general flaw of many of your arguments is that you only look at a small part or at one of many possible situations. Or that you state your personal opinion which is shared by some others while you act as if you voice the general consesus. At the same time you write in a style as if you are 100% sure that you fully understand all aspects of the game. I dont claim I understand all aspects of the game, but what I criticize is based upon logical conclusions and basic math. If you find faults in that chain of conclusions then please state them, I am eager to read them, but please stop the "you cant be 100% sure, so shut up" arguments, because you cant be sure that your argumentation is 100% accurate either, so you shouldnt write this either. Its an empty argument ... A certain degree on aggressiveness is appropriate, because you refuse to TAKE PART IN THE DISCUSSION and rather concentrate on saying "you are wrong" or "you are not qualified". Either argue with the points in question or keep out of it ... On November 22 2012 19:37 [F_]aths wrote: The shifting balance of melee versus ranged units makes the game more complex as I pointed out in another reply in another thread. You don't need software project experience, any experience of a complicated process where humans are involves is sufficient. Even small changes can have a large impact. You don't change things "ASAP" just because they sound good. You can do that in a small project, but when many people are involved you need to be sure that you don't make things worse. Unbuildable rocks are coming with Hots, a good chance to introduce them and have them tested in ladder play. When you pick one thing which turns out to be a good thing and then ask why it wasn't implement 'ASAP' as someone proposed it, you are underestimating the difficulties managing a complex project like SC2. If you are so knowledgeable, why dont you work at Blizzard in game design? Do you recognize this argument? Changing things "ASAP" is necessary if you have wasted too much time and you have a "deadline" for some new releases which will change the balance and the gameplay anyways. Thats a perfect opportunity to implement BIG changes like the ones I suggested. If you dont agree with them thats your right, but dont try to tell me that I am wrong without arguing with the reasonings I have given. The shifting balance between melee and ranged is NOT what I was hinting at, because the same works for Marines against Stalkers. Since the Stalkers are bigger than the Marines you can stack your Marines much tighter and thus will have a much higher "dps per area" for the Marines than for the Stalkers. This is terrible, because the Stalker is the more expensive unit and should be tougher to kill. They only "work" because of Blink and Forcefield. Your argument that it makes the game more complex is true ... but you forgot to add the words "to balance" at the end. The game logic is simple: mass all your units in a tight clump and go for it at the right angle. There is no "mystic complexity" to which you allude and the only consequence is that the game is harder to balance due to the tight formations ... | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 22 2012 19:23 [F_]aths wrote: You are making some assumptions here. Blizzard also watches pro tournaments. They use ladder data to see the win rates through all skill levels. Anectotes like beating Fitzy doesn't really proof a point beside ladder play doesn't equal to tournament play. Since the maps are different, SC2 is not really the same for ladder and tournament play. Not everyone knew that Entomb was terrible. Some voiced their opinion against it and were proved to be right. But had they to offer a better idea? The current oracle is possible because of Blizzard's willingness to makes mistakes. Mistakes like the warhound, not to mention the shredder, replicant and other units. If you are so good that you do everything right without a mistake, you are either goodly or you doesn't do anything. I also wonder if you understand the concept of alpha and beta versions and if you really criticize Blizzard for trying out something which was viewed negatively by some. I don't think we're going to agree. I'm not sure you understood my point regarding ramp blocking and the effects it has on ladder win rates which Blizzard uses the balance the game. There are no assumptions, it is an open and shut case. If ramp blocking didn't give a huge edge to Terran and Protoss versus Zerg, it wouldn't be removed from every tournament, and Blizzard wouldn't be introducing things to prevent it in HOTS. My point regarding Fitzy was just evidence that blocking is an overpowered strategy and this is well known. The fact it has been allowed for ladder play for so long after the community realized it was overpowered, and that ladder data is used to help balance the game is idiotic. Where specifically is the hole in that argument? You applaud Blizzard for trying an idea like Entomb. Again, I liken it to Blizzard thinking that mixing gasoline and water in an effort to make Kool-Aid. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that is a terrible idea, and the people who thought Entomb was going to work just didn't listen to the logical arguments presented. Entomb was a powerful harassment spell, but it required no skill, and very little micro to make work. It was boring. And most people knew that from the moment Blizzard released the idea. The important part of what I just wrote is that it wasn't just an opinion that people had that Entomb wasn't good, it was an argument made from logic and reasoning. And lo and behold, the argument made from logic and reasoning by the community defeated Blizzard's "professional game designers" who seemingly lacked logic and reasoning when designing Entomb. This is the problem with Blizzard. They are coming up with ideas that are terrible even before testing. You're arguing an authoritative argument. You believe that Blizzard and their "professional game designers" are far better suited to make decisions than the community. This is an argument that goes like this: Most of what authority A (Blizzard) has to say on subject matter S (Starcraft) is correct. A says P about subject matter S. Therefore, P is correct. This issue with this is pointed out in the Wikipedia article linked below: "because the argument from authority is an inductive-reasoning argument — wherein is implied that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises — it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion must be true." So the authority Blizzard and their "professional game designers" have is not enough alone to prove that our arguments are incorrect. You actually have to provide evidence. This is where Blizzard loses, because they have a long history of being told something by the community, ignoring whatever the community says, then ending up doing what the community said in the first place. Small "rush maps", the idea that the ladder and tournaments should have different maps, close spawn positions... I could go on. More regarding an authoritative argument:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
On November 23 2012 01:33 BronzeKnee wrote: You applaud Blizzard for trying an idea like Entomb. Again, I liken it to Blizzard thinking that mixing gasoline and water in an effort to make Kool-Aid. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that is a terrible idea, and the people who thought Entomb was going to work just didn't listen to the logical arguments presented. Entomb was a powerful harassment spell, but it required no skill, and very little micro to make work. It was boring. And most people knew that from the moment Blizzard released the idea. The important part of what I just wrote is that it wasn't just an opinion that people had that Entomb wasn't good, it was an argument made from logic and reasoning. And lo and behold, the argument made from logic and reasoning by the community defeated Blizzard's "professional game designers" who seemingly lacked logic and reasoning when designing Entomb. This is the problem with Blizzard. They are coming up with ideas that are terrible even before testing. You're arguing an authoritative argument. You believe that Blizzard and their "professional game designers" are far better suited to make decisions than the community. This is an argument that goes like this: Most of what authority A (Blizzard) has to say on subject matter S (Starcraft) is correct. A says P about subject matter S. Therefore, P is correct. This issue with this is pointed out in the Wikipedia article linked below: "because the argument from authority is an inductive-reasoning argument — wherein is implied that the truth of the conclusion cannot be guaranteed by the truth of the premises — it also is fallacious to assert that the conclusion must be true." So the authority Blizzard and their "professional game designers" have is not enough alone to prove that our arguments are incorrect. You actually have to provide evidence. This is where Blizzard loses, because they have a long history of being told something by the community, ignoring whatever the community says, then ending up doing what the community said in the first place. Small "rush maps", the idea that the ladder and tournaments should have different maps, close spawn positions... I could go on. This is pretty much the problem I have with Blizzard as a whole. Not just Starcraft, but also with Diablo, Warcraft, and Battlenet. Blizzard DOES learn from their mistakes. The problem is that they learn at a glacial pace, while also making utterly retarded mistakes that a brainless monkey could see a mile away, and oftentimes their "lesson learned" still doesn't fix the problem because they don't want to listen to community suggestions and still insist they do it "their" way. How long did we have to scream for them to put chat channels back? How long for clans? How long for the custom game interface (which still sucks btw)? How long for 99% of the things that Diablo 3 had that we knew would be problems yet they didn't fix anyway? Yet because Blizzard is so hard-headed, we have to practically scream at the top of our lungs for months, usually years, for them to finally get it, and they still don't get it most of the time. There's no reason why ANY of the things I listed should have even lasted past beta, let alone years after release. Time is crucial. Blizzard can't afford to spend so long on obviously bad ideas, especially when the community is very vocal about said ideas being bad. I don't blame people at all for moving from RTS games to MOBAs. At least with MOBAs, we don't have to spends years trying to convince Riot/Valve that chat channels might actually be a good thing. Blizzard might have been professional game designers a decade ago, but those days are long past. | ||
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emc
United States3088 Posts
On November 22 2012 10:03 Treeborne wrote: Seriously, guys need to calm down. I agree that sometimes you can look at the game and think "wtf was blizzard thinking...", but at the same time I think they're taking the right approach when trying to balance it. When you have so many people playing the game at an extremely high level, it's impossible as a designer to completely predict how different elements will interact with one another. Think about when we saw MKP first split his marines against mass banelings in the GSL. It was breathtaking and spectacular because nobody foresaw that occurring. Dustin even later commented that all the designers were shocked because none of them thought marines could be used in that way. Or to think even farther back, remember when julyzerg first popularized muta stacking? That fundamentally changed the way BW was played and was so groundbreaking that Kespa even debated on whether to ban its usage. So when Blizzard introduces a unit or ability in beta, it's because they want to see what the community can make of it and not because it's something they believe is complete in its design. That's the entire point of having a beta. That's not to say they just toss random ideas in and leave everything else in the hands of the players, but they do understand that every change that they make has farther reaching consequences than they could possibly imagine. Which also legitimizes their slow and minor patch approach. Why patch something that is just unexplored, not broken? TL;DR: In the end, human ingenuity and desire to succeed is what ultimately balances a game and not the rules laid out by the game designers. So before we go around hurling insults and pointing fingers, lets just give the game time (as the OP has pointed out) and let Blizzard and the players go to work. This should have been the OP and gets the point across very clearly. Why change something so suddenly when it could not even be broken in the first place? I really do agree with this and it's why I prefer a slow patching process to a rushed one. Fungal has been a problem for a long time, but I think a lot of people, especially zergs, thought that it was fine because of all the other crap in the game. But now that pro zergs have caught up to terran skill level, we are seeing how abusive it really is. I KNOW blizzard wants to release this game with fun mechanics and units with fun and unique design. Balance can come later in the form of post-release patches, so we just need to be patient and continue with our feedback to help blizzard realize that even though something might seem really cool and fun on paper (like timewarp) it may turn out to be really bad 2 years down the road. But at least in 2 years, blizzard would be willing to make drastic changes for the sake of this being the best RTS on the planet. a lot of you act like blizzard is working 24/7, they are not. Their jobs don't just rely on watching forums and making changes every week because some kid can't handle the metagame, they are careful for a reason. Pro play is a huge reason why they want to take things slowly, so let them. Maybe 100 TL threads and 50 b.net threads claimed that entomb was bad... and? If I was blizzard I would definitely give it time to see how it functions in real play. I'm glad hots isn't changing every week right now, it's giving players time to figure things out and for blizzard to decide what's really broken and what's underpowered. Could be the widow-mine is absolutely OP in lower leagues, but is absolutely useless in higher leagues, blizzard is keeping and eye on it and we should just be patient. Give feedback, but don't expect blizzard to be up 24 hours a day reading a thread that came from EU at 12 am, and then a thread from AUS at 4 AM and a thread from US at 8 AM and expect blizzard to read all of it. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 23 2012 03:35 Spawkuring wrote: This is pretty much the problem I have with Blizzard as a whole. Not just Starcraft, but also with Diablo, Warcraft, and Battlenet. Blizzard DOES learn from their mistakes. The problem is that they learn at a glacial pace, while also making utterly retarded mistakes that a brainless monkey could see a mile away, and oftentimes their "lesson learned" still doesn't fix the problem because they don't want to listen to community suggestions and still insist they do it "their" way. How long did we have to scream for them to put chat channels back? How long for clans? How long for the custom game interface (which still sucks btw)? How long for 99% of the things that Diablo 3 had that we knew would be problems yet they didn't fix anyway? Yet because Blizzard is so hard-headed, we have to practically scream at the top of our lungs for months, usually years, for them to finally get it, and they still don't get it most of the time. There's no reason why ANY of the things I listed should have even lasted past beta, let alone years after release. Time is crucial. Blizzard can't afford to spend so long on obviously bad ideas, especially when the community is very vocal about said ideas being bad. I don't blame people at all for moving from RTS games to MOBAs. At least with MOBAs, we don't have to spends years trying to convince Riot/Valve that chat channels might actually be a good thing. Blizzard might have been professional game designers a decade ago, but those days are long past. Time is crucial, that is a good point. I think the SC2 community is ripe for the picking if some company can come along and design a good RTS, listen to their community, and adjust as necessary. On November 23 2012 04:38 emc wrote: If I was blizzard I would definitely give it time to see how it functions in real play. Entomb worked exactly as everyone, including Blizzard, thought it would. And that is why it was removed. | ||
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emc
United States3088 Posts
On November 23 2012 04:45 BronzeKnee wrote: Time is crucial, that is a good point. I think the SC2 community is ripe for the picking if some company can come along and design a good RTS, listen to their community, and adjust as necessary. Entomb worked exactly as everyone, including Blizzard, thought it would. And that is why it was removed. If an RTS were made today that surpassed SC2 and the dev team gave the community everything it wanted, my mind would be fucking blown that a game could exist. And this game couldn't just be an average game either, SC is a great game because each race is unique and play in completely different ways, it's asymmetrically balanced, this is NOT an easy feat. I seriously think BW was pure luck that it turned out to be balanced, blizzard had their numbers and ran with it, but were fortunate that the game turned out to be a huge Esport. I don't think blizzard ever foresaw BW being as big as it was and it became BIG after blizzard stopped patching the game, so there would be no reason for blizzard to patch BW if it was played today. SC2 is a different story, blizzard is trying to make it an Esport from Day1 because of the expectations of BW. that means there are pros relying on blizzards teets now more than ever. Because of this, blizzard has to take it slow. LoL does a relatively good job of patching things quickly, but it is a completely different game because it was based on a pre-existing game with pre-existing mechanics and there aren't 3 characters, there are dozens and any one of those heroes can be banned at any time if it appears imba. The zerg race can't be banned until Blizzard fixes it, Infestors can't be banned, The game HAS to be played as is, this is not the same as LoL. Literally the only game that comes close in my eyes as a great RTS is Company of Hereos, but that game doesn't have nearly enough diversity among the different armies. Each army has a MG crew, a mortar crew, vehicles and engineers with slight differences. Entomb was removed, but there is no use in removing the ability without testing it extensively. How many people actually thought the warhound was a joke? I'm taking a wild guess and saying maybe 50%? It doesn't matter if it appeared IMBA, it had to be tested by pros before a decision could be made. I think more than anything, blizzard was trying to think of a way to keep Entomb because it costs money to run a company full of developers who ask for a pay check every two weeks. Where do you think this money come from? Don't you believe that in a business, it's a LOSS for your company to go back on something you created? In my business screwing up on a job and admitting you made a mistake is a huge loss to the company because now I have to redo our work for free and isn't billable because we made the mistake. The artwork, animation and mechanics behind entomb is now lost, but someone still had to get paid to make all that. I truly believe blizzard is trying to not only admit their mistakes, but at least find SOME way to make those mistakes work in SC2 while keeping it an esport and still earning enough money that they don't have to lay off anybody. Time is money, and all blizzard has is time. | ||
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Von
United States363 Posts
On November 22 2012 01:30 [F_]aths wrote: If you could make clear points, you would not have to resort to such "facts". Just because you don't understand Blizzards thoughts behind it doesn't mean that they don't understand it. It just means that you don't understand what a team of highly professional and experienced game developers had in mind. . Contrary to what some people seem to believe .. game design is not a mystical voodoo art, guided by the high priests of arcane taboo knowledge, sequestered on a mountaintop and consulting with ancient animal spirits. There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start. It was readily apparent on any number of levels that it A) created more problems than it was apparently designed to solve - B) overlapped with an existing unit in the same race, and C) it was immediately perceived by the user base to be the clunky, dull and unimaginative unit it was, so much so that they were forced to pull it from the game after a huge backlash. Highly professional and experienced game developers *should* be brainstorming imaginative, unique, synergistic game unit concepts on a regular basis ... evaluating them to fit a definite and targeted role to enhance or fix an important aspect of the game ... RE-evaluating them and testing them to be *sure* that the unit is the best and most original and effective it can possibly be. THEN testing it internally, putting it through its paces - getting feedback from pros and trusted independent un-biased analysis to see if it passes the test ... *long* before the patch it in a release version and put it out to the public. But this current team at Blizzard apparently does not work that way lol. Really - hardly at all. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see it. They've demonstrated this over and over. Why? Who knows. Could be any number of internal, political, management, personality conflict factors we are not privy to. But they don't work that way man. | ||
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Crawdad
614 Posts
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. | ||
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dddoushio
81 Posts
On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote: Yes, and they removed it from the game, which is a hell of a lot more than most developers would do. Why did they add it in the first place? If the entire community is telling you this unit is terrible and dull you should probably listen. | ||
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Natalya
Belgium287 Posts
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." | ||
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gengka
Malaysia461 Posts
Zergs are a bunch of mindless creatures (mostly) that can breed like no tomorrow. Protosses are high tech aliens that are able to control time and space. Without warp in and larva mechanics the personalities of these race will not be obvious and so does the personality of the game. For terran i think Blizzard did a very good job by making the dropship play so accessible. In my opinion Terran is supposed to be a race with a rich internal warfare history back on the earth killing among themselves (lol) So they are equipped with vast battle tactics like the guerilla tactic (multi prong small troop harrass) and positional defence play. However one thing they need to fix is terran is suppose to be a race with advance mechanical and nuclear technology. But due to some balance issue mech is not too viable vs z & p, players tend not to play mech and terrans lost a big part of their idendity. Thors Ravens and BCs are freaking cool but nobody gonna use it if they continue to be weak. Buff or make some changes on them while introduce a nuclear powered unit (iron man?) then the terran's personality will be completed. And i shall play that stylish terran to death even though its not perfectly balanced ROFL | ||
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ETisME
12387 Posts
On November 23 2012 11:03 dddoushio wrote: Why did they add it in the first place? If the entire community is telling you this unit is terrible and dull you should probably listen. sometimes the community only focus upon that specific unit and forget how it allows MECH to work in TvP. Sure, at the end it didn't work, but we should be glad the community agreed it isn't a good unit after testing it out in beta, along with all the other new units and the Mech TvP game. It is a dull unit for sure, a moving and extremely powerful and mobile. BUT a unit can be boring itself given it is a good conjunction with the unit composition. Is marine interesting? not that interesting until baneling force split/medivac drop micro. Zealot interesting? etc It should be the same when we judge warhound. We really shouldn't just go "wtf blizzard remove NOW" but at least they gave it time to see how it really is | ||
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pmp10
3318 Posts
On November 23 2012 16:22 ETisME wrote: We really shouldn't just go "wtf blizzard remove NOW" but at least they gave it time to see how it really is How have they given it time? The unit was gone within 2 weeks and nobody cared about the effect on mech TvP. This places them in very awkward position if it turns out that something like the warhound is necessary to make it work. | ||
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ETisME
12387 Posts
On November 23 2012 16:52 pmp10 wrote: How have they given it time? The unit was gone within 2 weeks and nobody cared about the effect on mech TvP. This places them in very awkward position if it turns out that something like the warhound is necessary to make it work. they have given it time in the sense that they tested the unit and tweaked it a little and it just doesn't have that "mech" feeling and completely botched tanks role in mech. I suspect the biggest reason why it was removed rather than it was reworked is largely due to it being anti mech unit while itself is a mech unit. It just doesn't go with their initial thought and thus it was removed completely. | ||
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Crawdad
614 Posts
On November 23 2012 16:59 ETisME wrote: I suspect the biggest reason why it was removed rather than it was reworked is largely due to it being anti mech unit while itself is a mech unit. It just doesn't go with their initial thought and thus it was removed completely. Isn't that how it works in SC2, though? All anti-armored units are armored, most anti-light units are light... | ||
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pmp10
3318 Posts
On November 23 2012 16:59 ETisME wrote: they have given it time in the sense that they tested the unit and tweaked it a little and it just doesn't have that "mech" feeling and completely botched tanks role in mech. I suspect the biggest reason why it was removed rather than it was reworked is largely due to it being anti mech unit while itself is a mech unit. It just doesn't go with their initial thought and thus it was removed completely. The unit being 'anti-mech' was it's whole purpose. Lack of mobile counter to stalkers and immortals is a very significant hole in mech arsenal. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 23 2012 17:12 pmp10 wrote: The unit being 'anti-mech' was it's whole purpose. Lack of mobile counter to stalkers and immortals is a very significant hole in mech arsenal. Kinda pointless to have an "anti-mech" unit for mech if you already have the Siege Tank with bonus damage against armored. If they are more efficient than the Siege Tank to the point of not needing the tank anymore they should just "fix" the tank instead. Mech needs a clear and rather mobile anti-air + anti-infantry unit ... something like the Goliath. The Thor doesnt really fulfill the job of "anti-air" due to its bonus damage, which excludes the worst danger ever to mech ... the Broodlord (and the Corruptor). | ||
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pmp10
3318 Posts
On November 23 2012 20:01 Rabiator wrote: Kinda pointless to have an "anti-mech" unit for mech if you already have the Siege Tank with bonus damage against armored. If they are more efficient than the Siege Tank to the point of not needing the tank anymore they should just "fix" the tank instead. Mech needs a clear and rather mobile anti-air + anti-infantry unit ... something like the Goliath. The Thor doesnt really fulfill the job of "anti-air" due to its bonus damage, which excludes the worst danger ever to mech ... the Broodlord (and the Corruptor). There is no shoe-horning siege tank into other roles due to it's very design - it's meant to be immobile. Map control needs to be done using more mobile and flexible units and lack of hellion equivalent for meching TvP in an issue. And there is no fixing mech anti-air problems from the ground. Even if you could counter broodlords the addition of the tempest means you will always end up out-ranged. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 23 2012 00:29 Rabiator wrote: Yes it doesn make for a good start, if the argument in question is hilariously stupid. Please try again but with less insults and more real arguments. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote: Contrary to what some people seem to believe .. game design is not a mystical voodoo art, guided by the high priests of arcane taboo knowledge, sequestered on a mountaintop and consulting with ancient animal spirits. There was no mystery why (for instance) the Warhound was immediately seen by the players as a bad idea from the start. Some some players, not by the players. I would agree that most of the pro players seems to have a consensus that the WH was bad. If I undersood Artosis right, he would however liked to have had the Warhound tested out for more time. On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:It was readily apparent on any number of levels that it A) created more problems than it was apparently designed to solve - B) overlapped with an existing unit in the same race, and C) it was immediately perceived by the user base to be the clunky, dull and unimaginative unit it was, so much so that they were forced to pull it from the game after a huge backlash. Now in retroperspective is it easy to say "it was apparent". On TL forums and Bnet forums we have quite a lot of detailled postings explaining in details how to balance the game or fix some units. As it turns out, most postings -- even though it took a lot of work to write them -- don't get to the core issue, because the game as a whole is so complex. I see several issues here. Progamers seem to don't like to have frequent balance changes because it interrupts practice. On November 23 2012 10:16 Von wrote:Highly professional and experienced game developers *should* be brainstorming imaginative, unique, synergistic game unit concepts on a regular basis ... evaluating them to fit a definite and targeted role to enhance or fix an important aspect of the game ... RE-evaluating them and testing them to be *sure* that the unit is the best and most original and effective it can possibly be. THEN testing it internally, putting it through its paces - getting feedback from pros and trusted independent un-biased analysis to see if it passes the test ... *long* before the patch it in a release version and put it out to the public. But this current team at Blizzard apparently does not work that way lol. Really - hardly at all. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see it. They've demonstrated this over and over. Why? Who knows. Could be any number of internal, political, management, personality conflict factors we are not privy to. But they don't work that way man. In the past, I felt that some Wol balance ideas originated from TL forum discussions. I think that they listen. But it's still their game. 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. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote: 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. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 23 2012 20:30 pmp10 wrote: There is no shoe-horning siege tank into other roles due to it's very design - it's meant to be immobile. Map control needs to be done using more mobile and flexible units and lack of hellion equivalent for meching TvP in an issue. And there is no fixing mech anti-air problems from the ground. Even if you could counter broodlords the addition of the tempest means you will always end up out-ranged. Mech is also meant to be somewhat immobile, but what is the most mobile stuff on the battlefield? Infantry and air. So that is what is needed as a "counter unit" to support the immobile Siege Tank. | ||
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Crawdad
614 Posts
On November 23 2012 20:56 [F_]aths wrote: 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. | ||
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pmp10
3318 Posts
On November 24 2012 06:51 Crawdad wrote: 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. But they have received a lot of negative feedback regarding the widow mine. They just put themselves into a position where they can no longer remove or change it. | ||
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Crawdad
614 Posts
On November 24 2012 06:56 pmp10 wrote: But they have received a lot of negative feedback regarding the widow mine. They just put themselves into a position where they can no longer remove or change it. I don't believe they can no longer change it. Do you believe it needs to be removed rather than changed? | ||
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pmp10
3318 Posts
On November 24 2012 07:08 Crawdad wrote: I don't believe they can no longer change it. Do you believe it needs to be removed rather than changed? I don't know as I have no idea what Blizzard intended for the unit. But I'm sure that no matter the changes to it there will still be plenty of negative feedback due to it's design. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 23 2012 06:21 emc wrote: Don't you believe that in a business, it's a LOSS for your company to go back on something you created? In my business screwing up on a job and admitting you made a mistake is a huge loss to the company because now I have to redo our work for free and isn't billable because we made the mistake. The artwork, animation and mechanics behind entomb is now lost, but someone still had to get paid to make all that. If you read through my posts here, you'll see that I wrote this: But if you understand business, you'll know that they don't want to waste their time and money testing bad ideas. No business does. And that is why I don't have as much faith in Blizzard as a lot of you do. Paid professionals are coming up with unit ideas like the Warhound and abilities like Entomb. They just don't understand the game. They actually believe these are good ideas that have potential, otherwise they wouldn't flesh them out or test them (ie spend money on them). But myself and most of the community can think about the idea in our head and understand it is a terrible idea. And like I said, Entomb worked exactly how everyone thought it would when it was tested. And that is why it was removed. It never needed to be tested, it was a bad idea. I don't understand how someone in Blizzard couldn't figure that out, or why they couldn't listen to the community before going through all this. The same can be said for the Replicant and Warhound they worked exactly as we thought they would. And that is why they had to to be removed, bad ideas from the start. They literally had no potential and yet someone in Blizzard thought they did. On November 24 2012 06:51 Crawdad wrote: 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. The Warhound shouldn't have had to have negative feedback from the community for Blizzard to remove it. They should have understood before they even brought it to the Beta that it was an A-move unit, and that like the Widow Mine now, the unit functions better independent of Siege Tanks rather in combination with Siege Tanks (and thus we see Bio players incorporating Widow Mines in PvT rather than going for Mech). Thus the Warhound was a replacement (and a boring one) to the Siege Tank, rather than a compliment. It is really about the game designers understanding unit and game theory. Does that make sense? They are seemingly designing units who simply don't fit into the game logically, and that is why most of the units they have introduced have been removed (Replicant, Shredder, Warhound) or totally revamped (Tempest, MSC, Oracle), even though those units have done exactly what they were supposed to do after testing. | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
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Glockateer
United States254 Posts
Remember when fungal growth made you unable to move? Remember when we needed tech labs on every barracks to produce tier 1.5 units instead of an academy? Remember when protoss lived and died by force fields in the early game? 200/25 for the slowest tier 1 production and slowest build time. Hilarious. I can accept the reactor but the tech labs are bullshit. | ||
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Von
United States363 Posts
On November 23 2012 10:33 Crawdad wrote: 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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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 24 2012 14:30 BronzeKnee wrote: 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: 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. 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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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
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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pmp10
3318 Posts
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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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 24 2012 23:01 pmp10 wrote: 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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bgx
Poland6595 Posts
Patch 1.08 BW Release: 2001-05-18 SC1 Vanilla March 31, 1998 | ||
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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote: 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. 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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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 23 2012 11:08 Natalya wrote: 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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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 25 2012 03:08 BronzeKnee wrote: 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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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
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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BronzeKnee
United States5217 Posts
On November 26 2012 09:56 [F_]aths wrote: 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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Von
United States363 Posts
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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LuckyFool
United States9015 Posts
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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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 26 2012 14:18 BronzeKnee wrote: 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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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
On November 26 2012 14:43 Von wrote: 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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darthrado
Bulgaria10 Posts
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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Veratule
United States105 Posts
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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NostalgiaTag
Canada508 Posts
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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Westy
England808 Posts
On November 24 2012 15:07 Von wrote: 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. 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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The_Darkness
United States910 Posts
On November 23 2012 11:08 Natalya wrote: 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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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 27 2012 01:34 NostalgiaTag wrote: 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. I take it you have no experience with BW ... never played it and never watched it. They didnt "throw in imbalanced units" ... they added "crutches" to make their mechanics work. Forcefield, blink, Fungal are all little helper tools which act as an excuse to say "learn to micro", but in the end the basic math of the units REQUIRES these crutches to keep the game and its lousy balance. Just look at the Stalker and then look at the Marine. Both are roughly the same dps for ONE unit, but since you can stack more Marines into the same area compared to the much more expensive Stalker the Protoss NEED that Blink and Forcefield to make the unit work at all against the higher "dps per area" of the Marines. Managing Forcefields and/or Blink as a requirement to make the unit work is a terrible idea for such a basic unit ... even if it is an interesting concept. The reason why this is terrible is easy to explain with another comparison: USING a bunch of Banelings is easy; DEFENDING AGAINST them - Marine splitting - is hard and this basically is the core of the problem when looking at the units. You have too many crutches which are needed and gaps in the required skill for the races, which simply wasnt there in BW. You could make this less important by thinning out the units and making engagements less of a "big one" ... its all math and yet Blizzard doesnt notice this. Oh and some of the crutches - some/many Zerg players are whining about not being able to win without Fungal in its current form - are downright terrible if they reach a critical number (the Infestors that is). You say that you dont want to watch basic units all the time, but its stupid to think that every unit can have some special gimmick without having the risk that these gimmicks prove too good when you reach a critical number. Why else was the Reaper nerfed, if not for the ability to mass them quickly AND use them to tear down enemy buildings easily. HotS has no more anti-building mines from them and replaces it with a useless out-of-combat-heal. Just watch some BW games and you will see that it ISNT all about basic units if the basic units are "boring" and without any special gimmicks, so you might as well change that misconception there. You should also remember that "if everything is special ... the special is the norm and its not special anymore", so having lots of basic units involved is good, because it is more exciting when something special happens. | ||
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TheSambassador
United States186 Posts
On November 27 2012 03:16 Rabiator wrote: Just look at the Stalker and then look at the Marine. Both are roughly the same dps for ONE unit, but since you can stack more Marines into the same area compared to the much more expensive Stalker the Protoss NEED that Blink and Forcefield to make the unit work at all against the higher "dps per area" of the Marines. Managing Forcefields and/or Blink as a requirement to make the unit work is a terrible idea for such a basic unit ... even if it is an interesting concept. The reason why this is terrible is easy to explain with another comparison: USING a bunch of Banelings is easy; DEFENDING AGAINST them - Marine splitting - is hard and this basically is the core of the problem when looking at the units. You have too many crutches which are needed and gaps in the required skill for the races, which simply wasnt there in BW. You could make this less important by thinning out the units and making engagements less of a "big one" ... its all math and yet Blizzard doesnt notice this. Your argument about stalkers makes no sense. Stalkers have 1 more range, a ton more HP, are faster, and later on get Blink. Marines have MUCH higher DPS with Stim and have synergy with Medivacs. This argument has absolutely nothing to do with anything. If anything, it's Zealots who need Force Fields in order to stay alive. Marines NEED stim to be able to fight Stalkers, but you aren't complaining about that. Why not? Because units have abilities, and those abilities make them stronger. Blink makes stalkers stronger and more interesting. Units and their abillities is what Starcraft is all about. Is using a bunch of Banelings actually easy? Banelings are designed to be cost effective against Marines almost specifically. They SHOULD be "easy" to use. Marine splitting is extremely exciting, and it makes marines, which are supposed to be countered by banelings, cost effective against them. This is one of the BEST parts of TvZ. Splitting marines takes micro, splitting banelings to hit the marines and not waste themselves on one marine at a time takes micro, what are you complaining about here? Just admit that all you really want is Brood War. There ARE issues with some spells, like Force Field and Fungal, but this sort of whining is really getting old. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 27 2012 03:57 TheSambassador wrote: Your argument about stalkers makes no sense. Stalkers have 1 more range, a ton more HP, are faster, and later on get Blink. Marines have MUCH higher DPS with Stim and have synergy with Medivacs. This argument has absolutely nothing to do with anything. If anything, it's Zealots who need Force Fields in order to stay alive. Marines NEED stim to be able to fight Stalkers, but you aren't complaining about that. Why not? Because units have abilities, and those abilities make them stronger. Blink makes stalkers stronger and more interesting. Units and their abillities is what Starcraft is all about. Is using a bunch of Banelings actually easy? Banelings are designed to be cost effective against Marines almost specifically. They SHOULD be "easy" to use. Marine splitting is extremely exciting, and it makes marines, which are supposed to be countered by banelings, cost effective against them. This is one of the BEST parts of TvZ. Splitting marines takes micro, splitting banelings to hit the marines and not waste themselves on one marine at a time takes micro, what are you complaining about here? Just admit that all you really want is Brood War. There ARE issues with some spells, like Force Field and Fungal, but this sort of whining is really getting old. Your argument about the range of Stalkers is irrelevant if they cant "outrange" the Marines and keep them away. They need the crutch of Forcefield to be able to do that. You are also overlooking the point that you get three Marines for every Stalker and thus have three times the dps for the same amount of resources. Stop bringing up upgrades like Blink or Stim and just look at the basic units[*]. I would rather have those Marines than the Stalkers and you kinda HAVE TO have either Blink or Sentries with Forcefield energy to even have a chance to survive with the Stalkers ... since the tight unit clumping makes sure that all Marines will be in range and thus the extra range doesnt really matter. Now to the Baneling example. What do you need to do to use the Banelings? 1a ... and maybe another 1a when the Marines run to the side. Are you panicking? Nope, you already know that the Banelings will die while you attack. What does the Terran do? He has about ONE SECOND to properly react and thus is in PANIC MODE. If he doesnt see the Banelings because he was macroing or a decoy attack pulled his attention then it is all over. There are lots of "one second reaction time or die" decisions for non-Zerg, because there is also Fungal Growth. I wish you would stop about the "Marine splitting is exciting" part and think about "is this actually fair?" and "is this equally possible for Joe Bronzeleague compared to MarineKing?" I think we know the answer to the last part and thus it should be removed or at least toned down. I know no other tier 1 unit, which you can rightclick on a Planetary Fortress and it WILL DIE ... unless there is a big clump of defenders there as well. No other unit has such a huge stackable burst damage and it should be replaced by non-stacking damage over time (1-2 second duration) with friendly fire to non-Banelings. Just because I think that Broodwar has soled many problems in a better way doesnt mean I dont want an evolution. This isnt a black and white decision and going a few steps back is WISE and not as stupid as you think it is. Learning to acknowledge your own mistakes is an important part in growing up and something newer isnt automatically better than something old. We have lots of experience with both games now and can compare them in their styles adequately. Both have their faults, so why not try to reach the middle ground? SC2 has too many units on the battlefield in a too high concentration. This makes the battles SHORT and hard to watch/understand as a viewer AND it makes tough units which we should care about (Battlecruiser, Carrier) become pretty much useless because masses of small units can easily overwhelm them and be replaced even easier due to the production speed boosts. BW has clunky 8-direction movement and sometimes units get stuck or follow a weird pathing. You cant have multiple production buildings selected and workers cant be rallied onto a mineral patch. I could live without these and take an improved setting, BUT the "friendly unit collision" part of the movement is important and has to be kept to give the platoon movement a will of its own and to force the spread of the units. Keeping the 12 unit selection limit is yet another thing to be kept ... and it should be added to a multi-building selection limit as well. So what would be so terrible about such a compromise (which shouldnt take that much to implement)? To keep the numbers of units at an acceptable level the production speed boosts (and the MULE) should be scrapped as well, since it is a bad thing to have "timings" when race A has its boosts operational and other timings when the same happens for race B and race A knows that it needs to prevent that from happening or it dies due to a better production boost capability of the other race. [*] REQUIRING clickable abilities to make a unit "keep up" with other units is a terrible concept, because of the different skill of players of different leagues. The best example for the difference in skill and its efficiency is the two abilities for the Knight and the Ogre Mage in Warcraft 2. The defensive heal ability of the Knight made it far less useful and MUCH harder to use compared to the mines cast by the Ogre before the battle. Stimpack is a clickable ability from BW, but it wasnt as necessary or overpowered as it is in SC2 due to the much lower density of Marines. | ||
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