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On February 16 2013 01:39 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote:
I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all? The whole point of "elegant game design" is that it does NOT have "balancing adjustments for specific situations" ... because it doesnt need it. Such a game is far easier to balance. As an example you might want to think about how the unit size and the tight clumping affects the balance between Marines and Stalkers for example. Since the Marine is much smaller you can clump more of them in the same area and this increases their "dps density" for the area occupied by the units and gives the Marines a clear advantage. In small numbers it is the Stalker which has the advantage. To "cover up" this bad design Blizzard had to add the Forcefield and Blink to make Stalkers - with their current stats - viable and any better stats would clearly make them too strong in a "few vs few" situation. The tight unit clumping and massive numbers of units which are easily produced is a clear example where bad design makes balancing harder. How do you "figure in" stuff like Forcefield and Blink in a balance equation? That is a pretty hard one, because playing skill affects the outcome and thus shifts the balance with your rank on the ladder ... which is kinda bad. Thus simpler game design which is streamlined to be equally hard for all levels of skill is better AND far easier to balance. Just look at how many balance adjustments the game had until now (in WoL) and it still isnt stable ... because balance hangs on a knife's edge all the time instead of being robust. Elegant game design = simple and robust balancing Complicated-situation specific game design = precarious knife's edge balance that is hard to achieve With robust balancing the map makers have far more freedom to be creative. An example: super narrow paths close to the main base or between bases two and three are kinda "impossible" because Protoss can easily abuse them with Forcefield. Without that spell it wouldnt be a problem to have such features on a map.
Balancing is hard because the game has 3 COMPLETELY different races. Things like chess and TvT are inherently balanced because both players have the SAME tools. if you want a game that is simple to balance just give everyone the same units. On the other had there is no such thing as an elegant game design that has simple and robust balancing the moment different races are introduced. This is the reason seemingly arbitrary rules are put into place are to account for these differences
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On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
Because they're value judgements, but if you read the commentary in the Patch 14 thread I think you can clearly see a consenus of people who think that the nerf is "ugly." There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Stop and consider that last suggestion for a moment, if Hellions could no longer transform into Hellbats and Hellbats were a separate unit produced from the Factory, then there would be no incongruities between the unit being biological, taking up 4 spaces in a Medivac and not being able to use Infernal Pre-igniters and Blizzard would have far more knobs to turn when designing the unit, from unit cost to unit build time to whether or not it could be produced from a Reactor or required a Tech Lab etc.
The idea isn't even new, the original concept for the Hellbat was a Factory produced Firebat in the WoL Beta, but as soon as they decided to get "cute" with an unnecessary "Transformers" theme they made the unit design that much more difficult to balance. And while I'm not saying it can't be balanced, I think it shows you how the "ugliness" of a car that transforms into battle armor can just overly complicate matters for little pay off.
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On February 16 2013 01:51 arcHoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 01:39 Rabiator wrote:On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote:
I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all? The whole point of "elegant game design" is that it does NOT have "balancing adjustments for specific situations" ... because it doesnt need it. Such a game is far easier to balance. As an example you might want to think about how the unit size and the tight clumping affects the balance between Marines and Stalkers for example. Since the Marine is much smaller you can clump more of them in the same area and this increases their "dps density" for the area occupied by the units and gives the Marines a clear advantage. In small numbers it is the Stalker which has the advantage. To "cover up" this bad design Blizzard had to add the Forcefield and Blink to make Stalkers - with their current stats - viable and any better stats would clearly make them too strong in a "few vs few" situation. The tight unit clumping and massive numbers of units which are easily produced is a clear example where bad design makes balancing harder. How do you "figure in" stuff like Forcefield and Blink in a balance equation? That is a pretty hard one, because playing skill affects the outcome and thus shifts the balance with your rank on the ladder ... which is kinda bad. Thus simpler game design which is streamlined to be equally hard for all levels of skill is better AND far easier to balance. Just look at how many balance adjustments the game had until now (in WoL) and it still isnt stable ... because balance hangs on a knife's edge all the time instead of being robust. Elegant game design = simple and robust balancing Complicated-situation specific game design = precarious knife's edge balance that is hard to achieve With robust balancing the map makers have far more freedom to be creative. An example: super narrow paths close to the main base or between bases two and three are kinda "impossible" because Protoss can easily abuse them with Forcefield. Without that spell it wouldnt be a problem to have such features on a map. Balancing is hard because the game has 3 COMPLETELY different races. Things like chess and TvT are inherently balanced because both players have the SAME tools. if you want a game that is simple to balance just give everyone the same units. On the other had there is no such thing as an elegant game design that has simple and robust balancing the moment different races are introduced. This is the reason seemingly arbitrary rules are put into place are to account for these differences
Balancing becomes needlessly hard due to the design decisions of Blizzard. That should be clear from the "Marines vs Stalkers" example and production speed boosts plus a high economy really combined with unlimited unit selection and automatic tight formation movement create this problem. With a lower economy, forced spreading of units while they move and a selection limit of 12 units you wouldnt have that kind of problem. It isnt the three races only ...
In big battles even the "high tech" Stalkers become "throw away and replace" units and that is caused by this high economy nonsense they chose to have for the game. Being able to quickly replace your units has become more important than tough units and how often have we heard from commentators that a Terran mech player cant afford to lose his tanks?
How are they balancing the economies?
Are they figuring in the production speed boosts into the balancing at all?
Does it make sense to have different "timings" where race X has a production speed boost triggering while the other races dont have theirs yet?
Does a later and bigger production speed boost make up for that or does it create too many "dont let them get there" strategies?
The game would be far easier to balance without any production speed and economy boost ... Many have whined about the MULE and it is the reason why there are zero gold minerals on maps anymore (except KeSPA, but they are new to that). Sure you would have fewer units, but then the game is more about your playing skill instead of your macroing skill. Watching a 2v2 battle of Zerglings vs Zerglings and have one player win that by keeping both his Zerglings alive is awesome. Watching endless waves of disposable units crash into each other is becoming boring after some time.
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On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
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With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
It's hard to get because most people think with their eyes.
Doubling the size of a button = Big Change
Changing a two-digit number to a two digit number = Small Change
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I didnt see these zergs getting all up in arms about the taking aggressive options away from terran with the queen buff.
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On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
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On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote:
With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
My god, I would have loved to read the reviews. A modern game releasing with limited unit selection for the sole purpose of making the game harder enough for the tiny, hard core community that loved their previous games. Also, it doesn't support wide screen displays, because it gives the player to much of a viewing window and they need to limit what they can see. Also, the minimap is still shit, because thats the way it was before. All unit stats, held in a basic text file 7 folders deep in the system section.
Lets bring this all back to 1999, when everything was terrible and no one played videogames because they were like that.
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On February 16 2013 02:29 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable. Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
The worst part about it is the whole community is flipping shit over this stuff.....
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On February 16 2013 02:29 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable. Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak.
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On February 16 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:29 Bagi wrote:On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable. Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already. Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak.
The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs.
On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote:
With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
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On February 16 2013 02:42 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:37 Plansix wrote:On February 16 2013 02:29 Bagi wrote:On February 16 2013 02:16 arcHoniC wrote:On February 16 2013 02:01 MoonCricket wrote:On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play. There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people. Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable. Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already. Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak. The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs. Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote:
With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead. Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
Rabiator, you don't play in the beta by your own admission, so I fail to understand why you continue to argue in these threads. The only real reason I can see is that you like shit on Blizzard and argue with people who are trying to discuss the game. A lot of people agree that the medivac speed likely needs a second look, but it is a good ability in concept and needs to be refined with either slower speed, acceleration or a longer cool down. The healing may no longer be an issue now that the number of hellions is limited.
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On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote:
...TvZ has lost a lot of early aggression options for Zerg in HOTS that really takes away from the race's versatility in the match up.
And the same thing happened to Terran with an unmerited queen change which made the MU go from the most balanced state it's ever been in (statistically) to completely lopsided with no options for terran other than 3 CC builds or huge zerg blunders.
So if you want to preserve versatility in the matchup, you're way late with that son.
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On February 16 2013 02:42 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote:
With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead. Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
You have to be out of your mind if you think the general gaming populace would embrace a RTS in 2013 with a 12 unit selection limit.
Nothing to do with being a fanboy, or following Browder. It's common fucking sense.
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This sounds like a whine thread to be honest. Another player who isn't happy about blizzards design choices. What's the point of these threads exactly? For us to agree with you and hope blizzard does too? if you want to comlpain about something then post on the b.net forums, TL should not be the place to discuss balance or why X sucks and why Y needs to be changed to Z. I'm sorry to break it to you, but it's blizzards game, if they think overlord speed and hellbats should be the way they are, then that's the way they are. Believe me, it would be nice to have lurkers and T1 hydras and medics and vultures again, but do you see me making a thread about it?
The most important changes will come when more pros are playing HotS and Blizzard is able to see how the game plays out in a competitive scene.
Here are just a few threads I've found that complain about something and want something changed, so can we stop already?
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=395920
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=397760
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=395651
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=391612
Since the beta is pretty much done, we should be discussing ways to deal with the current balance rather than trying to change it. And we need to quit thinking that our view of the game is "superior" to blizzards, it doesn't matter if it is, blizzard will balance the game how they like.
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Talking about inelegant balance... TIL:
Do you guys know why in D&D lore elves are immune to Ghoul paralysis, but not to Ghast (simply a bigger, meaner ghoul) paralysis?
It's because of the tabletop strategy game Chainmail
Elves were very expensive troops. Ghouls were cheap. Ghoul paralysis allowed them to beat Elves especially efficiency-wise and they were generally the preferred army so Elves were made immune as a balance move. And they still are in D&D 3.5e.
Source.
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Not sure if this has come up but why no issues with scvs which are both healed and repaired but the hellbat are a design issue in people minds(note I'm not talking about balance just the idea of them being healed).
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On February 16 2013 03:44 FLuE wrote:
Not sure if this has come up but why no issues with scvs which are both healed and repaired but the hellbat are a design issue in people minds(note I'm not talking about balance just the idea of them being healed).
Because SCVs are magic and all the people complaining every noticed before.
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On February 16 2013 02:42 Rabiator wrote:
The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs.
That is NOT the problem. You don't even play the beta how come you are acting like you know the problem better than the people who do?????
If the problem was medivac being able to "turbo boost through turret fire" then it would be having problems with other units. Nerfing the turbo boost is a bigger change that needs a lot more testing before even thinking about, because it would hurt Medivacs synergy with all other units in the game.
There isn't even a problem if you play right now. It's fixed.
How come every single suggestion people come up with, such as the ones you just listed, would harm those units with other compositions? That's why they are not good solutions, furthermore making them not an elegant solution, since they are affecting balance on a more global scale.
Like I mentioned earlier, everyones opinion of elegant is different. You stated your opinion of an elegant solution and it would affect balance of other units. In my opinion, a fix that actually pinpoints the exact problem without nerfing either of the units in any other situation, sounds like a pretty damn elegant solution to me.
Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
And the people actually playing the beta can inform the people not playing that the problem is pretty much fixed, and the haters who don't even play the beta will follow...
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But elegance is a real word, invoking simplicity in form to achieve complexity. I don't think it's a stretch to say that hellbat design is not particularly elegant, regardless of your opinion on the meaning of the word. If you don't like such fuzzy concepts then okay, but the question still exists: is it okay to address the perceived strength of hellbat drops with this solution?
I don't think it is. The hellbat does have good synergy with the medivac, but at its heart the problem was that they are too effective as combat units. IdrA said that the hellbat is too powerful in general, so isn't it weird to have awkward fixes to its use in drops at this point? I would say that the unit itself needs to be addressed and only then should something else be considered.
Nevertheless, if we were several months into the live game and hellbats seemed fine in most scenarios except for in drop play, then by all means use a surgical fix like this, that precisely nerfs the one scenario where it's too powerful. Then I wouldn't complain too much about how contrived the fix was, I understand that you can't have an actual balanced game without resorting to such measures, - slightly changing the queen resulted in half a year of zerg being imbalanced - but until that point arrives I think other solutions should take precedent.
What's going to happen now is that someone will put four hellions in a medivac, land them, transform them and see that he can't load all of them. He'll ask on a forum about why there is such a silly rule and the answer will have to be that in beta patch #13 hellbat drops were a problem. Now it's just a bandaid fix, but we'll be stuck with it for the rest of the game's lifespan. Blizzard has been extremely hesitant in reverting changes, - I honestly can't think of a good example of them doing otherwise - so this cargo change is never going to go away. Even if in the future hellbat drops are completely figured out, hellbats have been nerfed, hellbat counters have been buffed, they are unlikely to remove this cargo restriction, so that's why I dislike this change.
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EPT
