On February 16 2013 06:57 Niska wrote: Hellbat drop timing at 6 30 is not unfair at all. A four gate will hit you at 6:00. Any good player will be scouting and should be able to tell if a hellbat drop is coming by now.
I am pretty confused with this whole elegant/inelegant discussion. You have to ask yourself one question is the game being balacned or unbalanced? What is elegant? Its perspective. Just like beauty. Balance is not the same. It is not based on perseptive it is based on results.
I will not go into detail why this thread should be closed but I have to say this.
Show me the replays. Show me a replay where this "inelegant design" is affecting gameplay. I don't care if you have a red hammer next to your name either show me a god damn replay.
Elegance is the attempt at having the most complexity come out from the most simplicity.
Go is more Elegant than chess, since it is simpler.
Chess is more elegant than Axis and Allies, since it is simpler.
And so on and so forth.
The argument is not about whether it *is* elegant or whether it *isn't* elegant. The question is how much of a remove from consistent logic are we willing to step back?
Two lings from one egg is weird--but twins *can* happen, so we say "okay."
Siege Tanks counted as Biological in BW, now Hellbats count as biological in SC2--a bit weird, but kind of makes sense sort of.
Hellions get fat when they stand up--weird, but Ultras got fat in SC2 as well so I can see *some* kind of logic.
The question is whether this logic is acceptable or are we reaching Red Alert 2 war dolphins and time traveling soldiers level?
Exactly. This is why me and my other 30-year-old friends still play hide-and-seek instead of playing some terribly complex game like SC2. It's just more elegant because you can derive more fun with less crazy assumptions.
Or.... not.
I'm just saying, one of the most popular video game series of all time involves an overweight plumber who kills things by jumping on their heads or spitting out fireballs because he ate a flower. That involves a lot of suspension of disbelief, but people put up with it because it was a well set up game.
Or if you'd rather have something from the strategy genre, let's take a look at BW. The protoss race involves heavy usage of a unit who has the ability to spontaneously summon currents of electricity strong enough to kill zerg units which can rip a man apart across a wide area of the field. That makes sense, right? I mean they're psionic, why wouldn't they be able to break the laws of physics? And then we have Terran, a race which has the capacity to drop nuclear missiles. Except unlike real nuclear missiles - these require direction from an actual living man down on the ground and some times he can get away unharmed by running... (which of course he won't do, if you don't tell him "hey dude, y'know that bomb you just dropped? you might not want to die to that"). Then after that, we have zerg, which are effectively big, ugly, buggy aliens. I could go on - but I think you see my point. If you're already able to accept "magic" and "zerg are weird" as an acceptable explanation for why something makes sense, why not "it's more of a marine suit than a vehicle when it transforms this way"?
Elegance, inelegance, beauty, flaws - these are all just words we use to describe our take on something which has no real absolute definition for what it actually is. Not that you should feel bad for doing that - humans are made to assess beauty in the world. But expect people to not see beauty in the things you see beauty in - and don't try to make them see it, because some people can't or won't and that doesn't make them wrong. It doesn't make you wrong either. It just makes you different - so stop trying to turn this into an empirical, logical argument based on use of subjective words - because empiricism and logic have no place in these realms.
State your beliefs. Move on. There's nothing to argue about.
On February 16 2013 07:29 Niska wrote: @Thieving Magpie
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
So this is a very perspective based thread on whether people think SC2 HOTS is logical. Well there are many lines that need to be drawn. Where is the logic in space marines, predators, and swarms of biological zerg all fighting against each other for universal dominion.
I just do not understand the point of this thread. What are you trying to accomplish? Ok so if you are right and they are being illogical. But they are still balancing the game without taking to much out. They have spent hundreds of hours figureing out each units specs and their synergy. But instead of worrying about that this thread wants to worry if they are being logical.
I still do not see the point. They are not crossing any lines of logic to me. So a hellbat fits two spaces and not 1. That is not to illogical. It solves a problem without having to rework the game. If you do not understand that logic then you are blind to the programming world and the progamming world.
So if its about "logic", then the topic shouldnt be titled with the words "balance" or "design" at all. Because those are fundamentally different things than applying logic to a game. In which case there has been loads of suspense of disbelief in the multiplayer portion of Starcraft and Starcraft 2 forever. Why is this such an issue when there are many examples of other things that defy logic much more?
Just a couple simple examples from WoL basically nullify their whole "logical" arguments, like how it's somehow more confusing that Hellbats take more space in a drop than a Hellion when a Baneling takes more space in a drop than a Zergling, yet that didnt confuse people. But then when they get their issues proved wrong they have to fall back on to some form of opinionated argument such as "elegance" because they can't win an argument with logic or consistency.
Also as I stated before, if they really want to bring logic in to this, since it's a sci-fi setting the developers could easily develop some lore to explain anything here. For example in the Flashpoint book they talk about how Larvae hold the DNA of every single Zerg strain inside of it, therefore explaining how a simple larvae could morph in to anything from a drone to a ultralisk to a building. Do they really have to do that to please the people who have nothing better to complain about?
As noted before, most these people with the loudest complaints aren't even in the beta by their own admission. So that brings ulterior motives to light when they are posting about balance in a game they aren't even playing.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
But the change does make sense!
They gave the Hellion driver about 2 tonnes of burgers.
The Hellion then increased in biological mass as well as increased in supply size.
IE--It's a fucking fat Hellion driver that needs heals and takes up more room in a medivac! Call it the all american upgrade.
I think it makes more sense that the hellions since the hellions are now a different shape, they don't fit as neatly into the medivac. Its like my slacks when I put them in my suite case. Two folds and I can file like 8 pairs in. But get up to that third fold and I can get like max 3 in there. #volume.
As for the bio upgrade, explain SCVs to me. They are clearly robots with little man drivers in them, but clearly robot suits.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
So your ignoring the fact that Idra has mentioned nearly every unit as underpowered or overpowered over the course of SC2, and still saying anything he said is gospel? Okay then... I'm a Zerg player and even I know that Idras comments have always been Zerg-centric.
Your acting like he specifically stated various situations where the Hellbat was overpowered, which wasn't the case either. He was vague about it and didn't go deeply in to the specifics.
Have you tried to see what Idra thinks about this most recent balance change? How about watch his stream a bit and see if he has any problems with Hellbats whatsoever?
You are also ignoring all the logic that shown the precise problem with Hellbat drops, logic which says this was the best choice of the options, even better than the ones you listed. And saying they should wait until a stable game? It's beta! They are SUPPOSED to make the changes now before release! That's the whole point of testing! Once the game is released they need the fundamentals done because most of the tweaks post-release will be stat tweaks, not changes to fundamentals such as this.
Yeah everyone knows Hellbats are cheap on minerals. But Terran has always been that way. Terran also gets the only T1 ranged unit that doesn't cost any gas either. Compare to Zerg that needs to use gas to counter pretty much every opener in HotS. It's just racial differences, and you don't see me complaining when I'm a Zerg player.
Your talking about evidence, if you have evidence that Hellbats are too powerful in this current patch, how about providing some evidence? Where are people having problems with Hellbats? Where are the issues with Hellbats outside of drops?
You also have no explanation for why Banelings costing more cargo is any more or less elegant that Hellbats. How come you weren't complaining about that in WoL, or any of the other multiple problems people have brought up here?
Go ahead and insult me by saying I was "incoherently passive aggressively ramblling"... That combined with the fact that you ignored all the logic provided to you by me and others just makes it obvious that you can't counteract our arguments with logic and have to resort to personal insults. If you claim I was incoherently rambling I guess that makes it easy to not respond to any of the questions presented to you...
I've always assumed it was a funny joke. You know, fatten up the lings so much that they take twice as much space. But I never really thought about it from a balance perspective--mostly because the thought of having more than 4 banes in an overlord getting sniped is just too scary an image.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
But the change does make sense!
They gave the Hellion driver about 2 tonnes of burgers.
The Hellion then increased in biological mass as well as increased in supply size.
IE--It's a fucking fat Hellion driver that needs heals and takes up more room in a medivac! Call it the all american upgrade.
I think it makes more sense that the hellions since the hellions are now a different shape, they don't fit as neatly into the medivac. Its like my slacks when I put them in my suite case. Two folds and I can file like 8 pairs in. But get up to that third fold and I can get like max 3 in there. #volume.
As for the bio upgrade, explain SCVs to me. They are clearly robots with little man drivers in them, but clearly robot suits.
It was a good plan to put #volume in your post, because all I had to do to find it was to view all control-f. I wanted to be sure this point was acknowledged, and happily, tl didn't let me down.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
So your ignoring the fact that Idra has mentioned nearly every unit as underpowered or overpowered over the course of SC2, and still saying anything he said is gospel? Okay then... I'm a Zerg player and even I know that Idras comments have always been Zerg-centric.
Your acting like he specifically stated various situations where the Hellbat was overpowered, which wasn't the case either. He was vague about it and didn't go deeply in to the specifics.
Have you tried to see what Idra thinks about this most recent balance change? How about watch his stream a bit and see if he has any problems with Hellbats whatsoever?
You are also ignoring all the logic that shown the precise problem with Hellbat drops, logic which says this was the best choice of the options, even better than the ones you listed. And saying they should wait until a stable game? It's beta! They are SUPPOSED to make the changes now before release! That's the whole point of testing! Once the game is released they need the fundamentals done because most of the tweaks post-release will be stat tweaks, not changes to fundamentals such as this.
Yeah everyone knows Hellbats are cheap on minerals. But Terran has always been that way. Terran also gets the only T1 ranged unit that doesn't cost any gas either. Compare to Zerg that needs to use gas to counter pretty much every opener in HotS. It's just racial differences, and you don't see me complaining when I'm a Zerg player.
Your talking about evidence, if you have evidence that Hellbats are too powerful in this current patch, how about providing some evidence? Where are people having problems with Hellbats? Where are the issues with Hellbats outside of drops?
You also have no explanation for why Banelings costing more cargo is any more or less elegant that Hellbats. How come you weren't complaining about that in WoL, or any of the other multiple problems people have brought up here?
Go ahead and insult me by saying I was "incoherently passive aggressively ramblling"... That combined with the fact that you ignored all the logic provided to you by me and others just makes it obvious that you can't counteract our arguments with logic and have to resort to personal insults. If you claim I was incoherently rambling I guess that makes it easy to not respond to any of the questions presented to you...
I added that personal note because you misrepresent my views and because you say things like: "how about actually playing the game?" even if it's not relevant to the argument. (also, you're =/= your)
This change to hellbats is an example of Blizzard very deliberately adding specific rules to the game to address an issue. The other examples that come to mind are infested terrans not receiving the benefit from upgrades, and widow mines and spore crawlers having new damage bonuses; these changes have all come recently and I feel they are at odds with Blizzard's stated distaste for complicated rulesets, and as such I think they deserve some scrutiny. Blizzard's mantra is easy to learn, difficult to master. If every unit has unintuitive rules associated with it the game because a nightmare to navigate through and the game design fails.
I personally feel like beta is still a time where you are setting the foundation of the gameplay experiences to come for the next years, it can not be treated as a mature competitive game. I could accept these very specific fixes if something proved a dominant problem for a period of months and if other solutions would not have been as successful, but that's not the case: there are still frequent major changes to all the units and they will continue to come for a while, the game is still in a state of flux. As such I can not support this cargo change, it's not elegant and it goes against Blizzard's principles.
And I don't understand your obsession with banelings taking up more cargo space. Zerglings are not banelings, it's okay to have different rules for these two units. The weakness of banelings is that if they die before you get close they don't deal any damage, overlord drops are a way to circumvent this weakness almost completely and therefore there is a very real need to create this cargo exception, it's simply inherent in the design of banelings.
Hellbats are nothing like this, they are mostly a generic combat unit. There is nothing special in their design that makes it acceptable for them to have cargo restrictions. If they are too powerful in drops then it's either a case of the timings being too powerful or of the unit being too cost-effective in general. Although the cargo change addresses the timing, this could have been done in a number of different ways, such as incorporating the blue flame upgrade or turning the medivac speed boost into an upgrade as well. And hellions having different cargo size just adds insult to injury.
Just thought I'd add to this thread that since the patch I haven't even really lost more than 5 workers to hellbats and if it's on one base and I have 2 CCs then that doesn't really matter.
You have to pull workers sure, but 2 hellbats really don't do anything and if he's gone 2 medivacs for 4 hellbats off of one base he's seriously commited so you can just go kill him later on after you gain a massive early advantage.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
So your ignoring the fact that Idra has mentioned nearly every unit as underpowered or overpowered over the course of SC2, and still saying anything he said is gospel? Okay then... I'm a Zerg player and even I know that Idras comments have always been Zerg-centric.
Your acting like he specifically stated various situations where the Hellbat was overpowered, which wasn't the case either. He was vague about it and didn't go deeply in to the specifics.
Have you tried to see what Idra thinks about this most recent balance change? How about watch his stream a bit and see if he has any problems with Hellbats whatsoever?
You are also ignoring all the logic that shown the precise problem with Hellbat drops, logic which says this was the best choice of the options, even better than the ones you listed. And saying they should wait until a stable game? It's beta! They are SUPPOSED to make the changes now before release! That's the whole point of testing! Once the game is released they need the fundamentals done because most of the tweaks post-release will be stat tweaks, not changes to fundamentals such as this.
Yeah everyone knows Hellbats are cheap on minerals. But Terran has always been that way. Terran also gets the only T1 ranged unit that doesn't cost any gas either. Compare to Zerg that needs to use gas to counter pretty much every opener in HotS. It's just racial differences, and you don't see me complaining when I'm a Zerg player.
Your talking about evidence, if you have evidence that Hellbats are too powerful in this current patch, how about providing some evidence? Where are people having problems with Hellbats? Where are the issues with Hellbats outside of drops?
You also have no explanation for why Banelings costing more cargo is any more or less elegant that Hellbats. How come you weren't complaining about that in WoL, or any of the other multiple problems people have brought up here?
Go ahead and insult me by saying I was "incoherently passive aggressively ramblling"... That combined with the fact that you ignored all the logic provided to you by me and others just makes it obvious that you can't counteract our arguments with logic and have to resort to personal insults. If you claim I was incoherently rambling I guess that makes it easy to not respond to any of the questions presented to you...
I added that personal note because you misrepresent my views and because you say things like: "how about actually playing the game?" even if it's not relevant to the argument. (also, you're =/= your)
This change to hellbats is an example of Blizzard very deliberately adding specific rules to the game to address an issue. The other examples that come to mind are infested terrans not receiving the benefit from upgrades, and widow mines and spore crawlers having new damage bonuses; these changes have all come recently and I feel they are at odds with Blizzard's stated distaste for complicated rulesets, and as such I think they deserve some scrutiny. Blizzard's mantra is easy to learn, difficult to master. If every unit has unintuitive rules associated with it the game because a nightmare to navigate through and the game design fails.
I personally feel like beta is still a time where you are setting the foundation of the gameplay experiences to come for the next years, it can not be treated as a mature competitive game. I could accept these very specific fixes if something proved a dominant problem for a period of months and if other solutions would not have been as successful, but that's not the case: there are still frequent major changes to all the units and they will continue to come for a while, the game is still in a state of flux. As such I can not support this cargo change, it's not elegant and it goes against Blizzard's principles.
And I don't understand your obsession with banelings taking up more cargo space. Zerglings are not banelings, it's okay to have different rules for these two units. The weakness of banelings is that if they die before you get close they don't deal any damage, overlord drops are a way to circumvent this weakness almost completely and therefore there is a very real need to create this cargo exception, it's simply inherent in the design of banelings.
Hellbats are nothing like this, they are mostly a generic combat unit. There is nothing special in their design that makes it acceptable for them to have cargo restrictions. If they are too powerful in drops then it's either a case of the timings being too powerful or of the unit being too cost-effective in general. Although the cargo change addresses the timing, this could have been done in a number of different ways, such as incorporating the blue flame upgrade or turning the medivac speed boost into an upgrade as well.
Playing the game is relevant, because if you actually did you would see these complaints brought up are actually not issues at all, and the way things are being explained isn't how they actually play out in game. It's also important because those that actually play test these things enough will see the issues clear enough to pinpoint the exact problem, and come to an understanding as to why the changes are good or bad, rather than basing their arguments off assumptions as the majority is doing here.
Cargo size is a separate statistic for units, not a "special rule", that's why it is directly relevant to the Ling/Baneling comparison. Just because units are morphed from another unit has never meant that it will take the same amount of cargo space. But more importantly this shows that when a unit is morphed from another unit it is not the same unit anymore. This is something that has been done throughout the entire lifetime of WoL, Banelings were not a "special rule" either, just a different cargo size for a different unit, same as this.
How come you don't understand that fundamental difference, that Hellions and Hellbats are different units? Just look at the command card for a factory. You could choose to build one or the other. What does this mean? This is a clear indication to the player that they are to be considered different units.
This goes along with the Blizzard philosophy perfectly. Different units have different cargo, plain and simple. You ask my obsession with the Baneling issue, it's because it's an example of the same exact design and balancing philosophy that has existed since WoL alpha. Nothing has changed at all, it's the same exact philosophy at work, the only difference is apparently some of the people here don't understand that Hellions and Hellbats are different units, even though there are clear indications on the interface to communicate this to the player.
How could you say there is nothing in Hellbats design to give them a difference in cargo restriction? They are a different unit! Same as Marines and Marauders are different sizes in cargo, same as Lings and Banes. Being a different unit is more than enough in their design to qualify them for different cargo restrictions.
Your right about one thing though, it was the timings that made the Hellbat/Medivac synergy too strong. But the other two possible fixes you listed would not have been effective at fixing the issue because they affect other strategies too much. Messing with the Medivac in general would weaken it's capabilities with drops and any other unit, which are obviously intended to be viable strategies. And they could have messed with timings for blue flame yes... But that would weaken Hellbats strength as defensive units, or as a unit in general. The reliance on an upgrade was removed so that Hellbats would be easier to fit in various compositions as well, allowing you to tech switch to them as needed. Give them reliance on an upgrade and you are removing this. Both of those changes have side effects that the cargo solution did not, as well as they don't address the other problem with 4 hellbats being able to trap units in mineral lines. The cargo solution fixed that problem in addition to adjusting the timings, without weakening either unit, and contrary to your claims it stayed 100% in line with their design philosophy since WoL, just like the baneling example
On February 16 2013 10:12 Qikz wrote: Just thought I'd add to this thread that since the patch I haven't even really lost more than 5 workers to hellbats and if it's on one base and I have 2 CCs then that doesn't really matter.
You have to pull workers sure, but 2 hellbats really don't do anything and if he's gone 2 medivacs for 4 hellbats off of one base he's seriously commited so you can just go kill him later on after you gain a massive early advantage.
Nice to see people who actually tried the changes, this is similar to my results so far. 4 Hellbats 2 Medi can still do some damage, but is more in line with other strategies because they need to commit to the harass, as you said..
This, btw, is the exact reason I keep saying people should play the game before complaining. The fix pinpointed and solved the problem perfectly.
On February 16 2013 07:29 Niska wrote: @Thieving Magpie
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
So this is a very perspective based thread on whether people think SC2 HOTS is logical. Well there are many lines that need to be drawn. Where is the logic in space marines, predators, and swarms of biological zerg all fighting against each other for universal dominion.
I just do not understand the point of this thread. What are you trying to accomplish? Ok so if you are right and they are being illogical. But they are still balancing the game without taking to much out. They have spent hundreds of hours figureing out each units specs and their synergy. But instead of worrying about that this thread wants to worry if they are being logical.
I still do not see the point. They are not crossing any lines of logic to me. So a hellbat fits two spaces and not 1. That is not to illogical. It solves a problem without having to rework the game. If you do not understand that logic then you are blind to the programming world and the progamming world.
So if its about "logic", then the topic shouldnt be titled with the words "balance" or "design" at all. Because those are fundamentally different things than applying logic to a game. In which case there has been loads of suspense of disbelief in the multiplayer portion of Starcraft and Starcraft 2 forever. Why is this such an issue when there are many examples of other things that defy logic much more?
It is only about "logic" in the sense that simpler design makes balancing easier. This is a mathematical fact, because more variables always complicate things ... and a lot of stuff in SC2 is unnecessary weight which does affect balance. There are lots of mechanics in the SC2 design which make balancing harder and that is simply "inelegant" and "illogical" (to do it that way).
Stuff like the production speed boosts and economic boosts are unnecessary and while "warp-in" might look nice the excitement comes from the battles and tactical decisions and those can be equally fun - if not more so - if you only have a few units to lose which arent easily replaced. More units DONT make battles more fun or exciting and thus the whole "high economy junk" in SC2 is not necessary. You dont even have to change the units in a big way if you take that out, so the complexity of battles remains the same (roughly, because you have to change tactics to fight without constant reinforcements).
It is also about "lack of logic" on the Blizzard side when they create a new problem (turbo-boosted-Hellion-healing-Medivacs OR super-regenerating-Mutalisks) and have to introduce new specific changes to counter their stupid decisions.
On February 16 2013 07:29 Niska wrote: @Thieving Magpie
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
So this is a very perspective based thread on whether people think SC2 HOTS is logical. Well there are many lines that need to be drawn. Where is the logic in space marines, predators, and swarms of biological zerg all fighting against each other for universal dominion.
I just do not understand the point of this thread. What are you trying to accomplish? Ok so if you are right and they are being illogical. But they are still balancing the game without taking to much out. They have spent hundreds of hours figureing out each units specs and their synergy. But instead of worrying about that this thread wants to worry if they are being logical.
I still do not see the point. They are not crossing any lines of logic to me. So a hellbat fits two spaces and not 1. That is not to illogical. It solves a problem without having to rework the game. If you do not understand that logic then you are blind to the programming world and the progamming world.
So if its about "logic", then the topic shouldnt be titled with the words "balance" or "design" at all. Because those are fundamentally different things than applying logic to a game. In which case there has been loads of suspense of disbelief in the multiplayer portion of Starcraft and Starcraft 2 forever. Why is this such an issue when there are many examples of other things that defy logic much more?
It is only about "logic" in the sense that simpler design makes balancing easier. This is a mathematical fact, because more variables always complicate things ... and a lot of stuff in SC2 is unnecessary weight which does affect balance. There are lots of mechanics in the SC2 design which make balancing harder and that is simply "inelegant" and "illogical" (to do it that way).
Stuff like the production speed boosts and economic boosts are unnecessary and while "warp-in" might look nice the excitement comes from the battles and tactical decisions and those can be equally fun - if not more so - if you only have a few units to lose which arent easily replaced. More units DONT make battles more fun or exciting and thus the whole "high economy junk" in SC2 is not necessary. You dont even have to change the units in a big way if you take that out, so the complexity of battles remains the same (roughly, because you have to change tactics to fight without constant reinforcements).
It is also about "lack of logic" on the Blizzard side when they create a new problem (turbo-boosted-Hellion-healing-Medivacs OR super-regenerating-Mutalisks) and have to introduce new specific changes to counter their stupid decisions.
Logic, design, and balance are 3 completely different subjects. Logic does not make balance nor design easier, likewise design and balance does not always need to be logical. You need to suspend your disbelief in 99% of games out there for this reason. You bring up many other games in comparisons to this one, and every other game you brought up needs quite a bit of suspended disbelief. That means things are not always logical.
Your 2nd paragraph is just a rant that's completely off topic and shows that you have complained about nearly every aspect of the game now. Economy, production, balance, design, "free units", the lack of logic, inelegant design, poorly designed units... apparently you don't like anything about the game and do nothing but complain about every aspect. Hell you don't even play HotS and spend more time here than most people who are in the beta. So is your point just to troll?
And lets face it, you barely even understand the issue of Hellions and Medivacs. You can claim you do, but you haven't played against it. You can't understand the dynamics of balance of any game without playing it for yourself. Your just wasting everyone elses time who isn't aware that you don't play the beta, and therefore aren't qualified to make the complaints you are making.
Which is probably your goal, since your ulterior motives are obvious.
I agree with the OP that hellions changing from mechanical to biological and 2 storage to 4 storage when transforming to hellbats is very inelegant. Blizzard should seek more sensible solutions to these balance problems. Especially now, as the beta allows them greater latitude to experiment with many different balance changes. Time is quickly running out though.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
So your ignoring the fact that Idra has mentioned nearly every unit as underpowered or overpowered over the course of SC2, and still saying anything he said is gospel? Okay then... I'm a Zerg player and even I know that Idras comments have always been Zerg-centric.
Your acting like he specifically stated various situations where the Hellbat was overpowered, which wasn't the case either. He was vague about it and didn't go deeply in to the specifics.
Have you tried to see what Idra thinks about this most recent balance change? How about watch his stream a bit and see if he has any problems with Hellbats whatsoever?
You are also ignoring all the logic that shown the precise problem with Hellbat drops, logic which says this was the best choice of the options, even better than the ones you listed. And saying they should wait until a stable game? It's beta! They are SUPPOSED to make the changes now before release! That's the whole point of testing! Once the game is released they need the fundamentals done because most of the tweaks post-release will be stat tweaks, not changes to fundamentals such as this.
Yeah everyone knows Hellbats are cheap on minerals. But Terran has always been that way. Terran also gets the only T1 ranged unit that doesn't cost any gas either. Compare to Zerg that needs to use gas to counter pretty much every opener in HotS. It's just racial differences, and you don't see me complaining when I'm a Zerg player.
Your talking about evidence, if you have evidence that Hellbats are too powerful in this current patch, how about providing some evidence? Where are people having problems with Hellbats? Where are the issues with Hellbats outside of drops?
You also have no explanation for why Banelings costing more cargo is any more or less elegant that Hellbats. How come you weren't complaining about that in WoL, or any of the other multiple problems people have brought up here?
Go ahead and insult me by saying I was "incoherently passive aggressively ramblling"... That combined with the fact that you ignored all the logic provided to you by me and others just makes it obvious that you can't counteract our arguments with logic and have to resort to personal insults. If you claim I was incoherently rambling I guess that makes it easy to not respond to any of the questions presented to you...
I added that personal note because you misrepresent my views and because you say things like: "how about actually playing the game?" even if it's not relevant to the argument. (also, you're =/= your)
This change to hellbats is an example of Blizzard very deliberately adding specific rules to the game to address an issue. The other examples that come to mind are infested terrans not receiving the benefit from upgrades, and widow mines and spore crawlers having new damage bonuses; these changes have all come recently and I feel they are at odds with Blizzard's stated distaste for complicated rulesets, and as such I think they deserve some scrutiny. Blizzard's mantra is easy to learn, difficult to master. If every unit has unintuitive rules associated with it the game because a nightmare to navigate through and the game design fails.
I personally feel like beta is still a time where you are setting the foundation of the gameplay experiences to come for the next years, it can not be treated as a mature competitive game. I could accept these very specific fixes if something proved a dominant problem for a period of months and if other solutions would not have been as successful, but that's not the case: there are still frequent major changes to all the units and they will continue to come for a while, the game is still in a state of flux. As such I can not support this cargo change, it's not elegant and it goes against Blizzard's principles.
And I don't understand your obsession with banelings taking up more cargo space. Zerglings are not banelings, it's okay to have different rules for these two units. The weakness of banelings is that if they die before you get close they don't deal any damage, overlord drops are a way to circumvent this weakness almost completely and therefore there is a very real need to create this cargo exception, it's simply inherent in the design of banelings.
Hellbats are nothing like this, they are mostly a generic combat unit. There is nothing special in their design that makes it acceptable for them to have cargo restrictions. If they are too powerful in drops then it's either a case of the timings being too powerful or of the unit being too cost-effective in general. Although the cargo change addresses the timing, this could have been done in a number of different ways, such as incorporating the blue flame upgrade or turning the medivac speed boost into an upgrade as well.
Playing the game is relevant, because if you actually did you would see these complaints brought up are actually not issues at all, and the way things are being explained isn't how they actually play out in game. It's also important because those that actually play test these things enough will see the issues clear enough to pinpoint the exact problem, and come to an understanding as to why the changes are good or bad, rather than basing their arguments off assumptions as the majority is doing here.
Cargo size is a separate statistic for units, not a "special rule", that's why it is directly relevant to the Ling/Baneling comparison. Just because units are morphed from another unit has never meant that it will take the same amount of cargo space. But more importantly this shows that when a unit is morphed from another unit it is not the same unit anymore. This is something that has been done throughout the entire lifetime of WoL, Banelings were not a "special rule" either, just a different cargo size for a different unit, same as this.
How come you don't understand that fundamental difference, that Hellions and Hellbats are different units? Just look at the command card for a factory. You could choose to build one or the other. What does this mean? This is a clear indication to the player that they are to be considered different units.
This goes along with the Blizzard philosophy perfectly. Different units have different cargo, plain and simple. You ask my obsession with the Baneling issue, it's because it's an example of the same exact design and balancing philosophy that has existed since WoL alpha. Nothing has changed at all, it's the same exact philosophy at work, the only difference is apparently some of the people here don't understand that Hellions and Hellbats are different units, even though there are clear indications on the interface to communicate this to the player.
How could you say there is nothing in Hellbats design to give them a difference in cargo restriction? They are a different unit! Same as Marines and Marauders are different sizes in cargo, same as Lings and Banes. Being a different unit is more than enough in their design to qualify them for different cargo restrictions.
Your right about one thing though, it was the timings that made the Hellbat/Medivac synergy too strong. But the other two possible fixes you listed would not have been effective at fixing the issue because they affect other strategies too much. Messing with the Medivac in general would weaken it's capabilities with drops and any other unit, which are obviously intended to be viable strategies. And they could have messed with timings for blue flame yes... But that would weaken Hellbats strength as defensive units, or as a unit in general. The reliance on an upgrade was removed so that Hellbats would be easier to fit in various compositions as well, allowing you to tech switch to them as needed. Give them reliance on an upgrade and you are removing this. Both of those changes have side effects that the cargo solution did not, as well as they don't address the other problem with 4 hellbats being able to trap units in mineral lines. The cargo solution fixed that problem in addition to adjusting the timings, without weakening either unit, and contrary to your claims it stayed 100% in line with their design philosophy since WoL, just like the baneling example
On February 16 2013 10:12 Qikz wrote: Just thought I'd add to this thread that since the patch I haven't even really lost more than 5 workers to hellbats and if it's on one base and I have 2 CCs then that doesn't really matter.
You have to pull workers sure, but 2 hellbats really don't do anything and if he's gone 2 medivacs for 4 hellbats off of one base he's seriously commited so you can just go kill him later on after you gain a massive early advantage.
Nice to see people who actually tried the changes, this is similar to my results so far. 4 Hellbats 2 Medi can still do some damage, but is more in line with other strategies because they need to commit to the harass, as you said..
This, btw, is the exact reason I keep saying people should play the game before complaining. The fix pinpointed and solved the problem perfectly.
Hellbats are not morphed units, they are transformed units, and unlike morphed units they have the ability to alternate between their primary and secondary form so it's no where near as logical to say that a Zergling which undergoes an evolutionary change into a creature of greater size and mass is comparable to a Siege Tank, Viking or Hellion that only undergoes a revertable change in form. I don't think "logic" has to be the overarching design restraint of SC, but to say nerfing Hellbat cargo space is a precedented design decision based on a Zerg mechanic that is significantly different from a Terran mechanic and unprecedented with the Siege Tank, and to a lesser extent the Viking, within the Terran race is reaching for justification.
At the very least I agree that the patch has weakened Hellbat drops, I'm still not convinced that the power level of Hellbats have been fully addressed tho' and hope now that drops are no longer the obvious abuse mechanism that people will start to use direct Hellbat pushes to see whether or not they're too effective.
Excuse me for being blunt: But I'm still really perplexed why so many people are writing these long paragraphs about how this patch isn't going to work when it was released less than 24 hours ago.
By the time you finish your argument you probably could have had many games to support your claims. Many forget the huge queen upgrade that essentially forced Terran out of any early game aggression against Zerg; in fact, this change enabled Zerg to be the most played race in WOL and Terran the least. W/L ratio's plummeted after that change and still remains lower than before. After 8-9 months Blizzard has still refused to revoke this change and many players have made due with it and learned ways around it. It is way too early to even comment on the subject - unless you want only P and Z match-ups all days long.
(see 5:50 marker) and look at the juxtapositon today.
On February 16 2013 17:39 MoonCricket wrote: Hellbats are not morphed units, they are transformed units, and unlike morphed units they have the ability to alternate between their primary and secondary form so it's no where near as logical to say that a Zergling which undergoes an evolutionary change into a creature of greater size and mass is comparable to a Siege Tank, Viking or Hellion that only undergoes a revertable change in form. I don't think "logic" has to be the overarching design restraint of SC, but to say nerfing Hellbat cargo space is a precedented design decision based on a Zerg mechanic that is significantly different from a Terran mechanic and unprecedented with the Siege Tank, and to a lesser extent the Viking, within the Terran race is reaching for justification.
First off, I disagree with your logic argument, claiming the Hellbat switched forms to take more cargo space is nowhere near as logical as a Zergling which undergoes an evolutionary change. The change the Hellbat goes through somehow increases it's HP significantly. Can you really say it's not logical that a change that makes the unit somehow more well defended and harder to kill wouldn't hinder it's size or mass in some fashion?
Let's not forget that they move at a snails pace as a Hellbat. Does that not indicate more mass?
Now to adress the mechanics you mention... if you want to get technical Hellbats are significantly different from all 3 mechanics you named - Zergs, Tanks, and Vikings.
But you can argue about them being "unliked morphed units" and call them "transformed" units or whatever the hell you want. But the difference is, in Hellion and Hellbats are different units. Which means of the three you listed, they have the most in common with Lings and Banelings because Lings and Banelings are different units as well.
Sure, they have an ability that lets them turn back in to the other form. That doesn't mean they aren't different units. You can play with words and try to twist that however you want, but it still doesn't change the fact that they are different units.
Blizzard even indicated to the player by the fact that you can train either Hellions or Hellbats at a factory. The interface indicates it. The unit index in the Help menu indicates this. Unlike the other 2 Terran units you named (Tanks and Vikings) more changes about them than just their attack, the unit itself changes, just like the Baneling. Aside from the attacks, the name of the unit changes, the HP changes, the unit tags change, and now the cargo size changes too. They each have dedicated pages on the Starcraft 2 website explaining their usage, and on both there and the help screens it lists varied strengths and weaknesses for both units.
Do you think it's a coincidence that all these complaints are explained by one simple mechanic - the fact that Hellions and Hellbats are different units? It seems that fact has gone over many peoples head here, even though Blizzard has provided numerous indications.
They are intended by Blizzard to be two different units, and as a result are being treated as different units. Why aren't you?
Want to do yourself (and all of us) a favor? Stop thinking of them as the same unit. Do not think of them as a siege tank or viking, think of them as a different units, because that is what they are! All of a sudden things will come together for you, and you won't have to waste so much time with pointless complaints that are nothing other than a lack of understanding. And then you wonder why Blizzard doesn't listen to this kind of feedback, it reeks of ignorance of the information provided and not understanding the basics.
why it is illogical only 2 battle helions can take place of 4 helions ? when i lay my shirts i get alot in a bag but if i just stomp them into it its like only 2/3 of them ^_^ when they are transformed they are just not that nice to park anymore (each 2 over each other) and they have to remove the 2nd floor and because they not like line but more like circle units, they also cant put them next to each other ^^ its totaly logical they can only fit 2 in them transformed
ps: sry for english its 3am i miss 3/4 of the words i need ^^
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
He also says that mech isn't viable in ZvT because of Viper/Hydra.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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.
Sure elegant is a word, but it's a word describing ones opinion. It doesn't have a static definition.
On the topic of Hellbat design being elegant or not, that depends on what aspect you look at. Which is a perfect example of how opinionated the word is. You may say it's not elegant because it morphs from a Hellion, others may say that's an example of elegance. Some may say it's elegant in it's function, some may say it's not. Who is right?
Is it okay to balance Hellbats with this solution? You say no because Hellbats are too effective as combat units. But that argument is flawed. Because you said yourself they have a great synergy with Medivacs. Outside of Medivac usage, do you really think Hellbats are a problem? Because unless you can say that with 100% certainty, the Hellbat as a unit is not too powerful.
Idras opinion has been right in some circumstances, but he has also been known to voice his feelings, and his feelings have not always been correct. He had complaints about nearly every unit in the game at some point, and said Zerg was underpowered even when he was winning and Zergs performance was great. I don't know why you state this as evidence of a problem, but I could give you may examples, from Starcraft and outside starcraft (such as in the fighting game community) where top players voice problems they are having and they are not real issues once the metagame settles.
You do realize that the beta has basically been public for months now, right? I'm not sure if you are playing the beta, but in HotS Hellbats became the standard opener on all levels of play, and this went in to tournament games, where the Hellbat openers not only made the games very 1 sided and/or random, but was not entertaining to watch at all. There was more than enough information to indicate there was a problem.
This is besides the fact that 4 hellbats and a medivac reached the enemy bases before they even had defenses up. Look at the timings between all three races. Can you honestly say 4 Hellbats that 2 shot workers, and a medivac, at 6:30, is not an obvious issue with timings?
Take control of replay helped a lot with testing this issue as well. If you took control of a replay from the earliest point you scouted, you could try to see if there was any effective way to defend it. Even in a best case scenario spending hundreds of resources on multiple static defenses, it was still hard to defend, and extremely random. Can you say that doesn't indicate a problem?
You sort of contradict yourself as well. You state that we should wait months to see if things are imbalanced, yet you are determining Hellbats are too powerful. The unit itself hasn't really been a huge problem, which is why they are hesitant to nerf the unit itself .Same goes for Medivac. But for the reasons above, there was obvious issues with the early game synergy of Medivac/Hellbats. Note I specifically said early game. The synergy late game is awesome and could lead to some really good plays, especially with Ravens incorporated in to the mix. But early game definitely had some obvious issues.
Your final paragraphs a bit silly imo. You don't need to go to a forum to see how much space a unit takes in a Medivac. And it's really not a bandaid fix. It works great, especailly because there are cues in game that indicate Hellbats are a different unit. Hell you could train them at a factory as their own unit. This situation is much more similar to Lings and Banelings being different units, even though they morph from the same unit.You do realize Banelings take more supply than a Zergling in drops, right? Have you seen people confused on the forums all though WoL because of that? This is no different. Your argument is flawed.
The other reason I think the final paragraph is silly is because it's extremely presumptuous. You go on to say they will never revert this change, it has fixed the problem! Why would they revert it? Why would they go on to nerf the other units? The problems are gone... It's really silly if you dislike the problem because you assume it isn't enough (when all indications and testing show otherwise) and stand your ground that Hellbats are too strong, when they aren't causing a problem right now. That's all based on assumptions and not actual gameplay.
How about actually playing the game for awhile, if you run in to a problem hop in to control from replay with a training partner, see if you could find a way to solve your problem, and then if you can't complaining that something is too strong? That's how you can determine real problems.
I'm not contradicting myself. There are several options: 1. if hellbats seem too powerful then this change doesn't address the problem 2. if hellbat drop as an opening is too powerful then you can make the medivac speed boost an upgrade or let hellbats be affected by blue flame 3. if hellbat drops seem categorically too powerful then by all means go ahead and make the cargo change, but only in a stable game. It might be necessary to change the medivac speed boost in a later patch and then we're stuck with the cargo change.
Balance is important and hard to get right, and in that sense it's a bad idea to have overly specific changes that make the game messy and complicated, because the balance and the metagame will change, leaving you with these strange rulesets that only make sense in the context of past balance problems.
And IdrA is literally one of the people most equipped to discuss the balance for Heart of the Swarm. He is likely one of the strongest players currently, – far better than anyone in this thread – and he's been playing only Heart of the Swarm for a long time now. If he makes the analysis that hellbats are not only too strong in drop scenarios, but also in general, I think that's worth listening to.
There is other evidence that the hellbat is simply too powerful. Other pro gamers have voiced similar opinions, but more importantly: the hellbat is a generic combat unit, costing only 100m/2s; it's cheaper and somewhat more accessible than a marauder. There is nothing about the unit that has it conceptually make sense for there to be special rules for cargo. I could see these rules for banelings and widow mines, even for high or dark templar, not for the hellbat. It does have to do with elegance: units with special abilities might require special rules to make them work (even then it's iffy), but if generic combat units also require special rules it indicates there might be a problem with the unit itself. And this is obvious, the hellbat by now is already a mess with a whole bunch of weird rules, even outside of it not sharing too many characteristics with the hellion.
I don't think I addressed all of your points, but most of your comment is passive aggressive incoherent rambling, so forgive me.
So your ignoring the fact that Idra has mentioned nearly every unit as underpowered or overpowered over the course of SC2, and still saying anything he said is gospel? Okay then... I'm a Zerg player and even I know that Idras comments have always been Zerg-centric.
Your acting like he specifically stated various situations where the Hellbat was overpowered, which wasn't the case either. He was vague about it and didn't go deeply in to the specifics.
Have you tried to see what Idra thinks about this most recent balance change? How about watch his stream a bit and see if he has any problems with Hellbats whatsoever?
You are also ignoring all the logic that shown the precise problem with Hellbat drops, logic which says this was the best choice of the options, even better than the ones you listed. And saying they should wait until a stable game? It's beta! They are SUPPOSED to make the changes now before release! That's the whole point of testing! Once the game is released they need the fundamentals done because most of the tweaks post-release will be stat tweaks, not changes to fundamentals such as this.
Yeah everyone knows Hellbats are cheap on minerals. But Terran has always been that way. Terran also gets the only T1 ranged unit that doesn't cost any gas either. Compare to Zerg that needs to use gas to counter pretty much every opener in HotS. It's just racial differences, and you don't see me complaining when I'm a Zerg player.
Your talking about evidence, if you have evidence that Hellbats are too powerful in this current patch, how about providing some evidence? Where are people having problems with Hellbats? Where are the issues with Hellbats outside of drops?
You also have no explanation for why Banelings costing more cargo is any more or less elegant that Hellbats. How come you weren't complaining about that in WoL, or any of the other multiple problems people have brought up here?
Go ahead and insult me by saying I was "incoherently passive aggressively ramblling"... That combined with the fact that you ignored all the logic provided to you by me and others just makes it obvious that you can't counteract our arguments with logic and have to resort to personal insults. If you claim I was incoherently rambling I guess that makes it easy to not respond to any of the questions presented to you...
I added that personal note because you misrepresent my views and because you say things like: "how about actually playing the game?" even if it's not relevant to the argument. (also, you're =/= your)
This change to hellbats is an example of Blizzard very deliberately adding specific rules to the game to address an issue. The other examples that come to mind are infested terrans not receiving the benefit from upgrades, and widow mines and spore crawlers having new damage bonuses; these changes have all come recently and I feel they are at odds with Blizzard's stated distaste for complicated rulesets, and as such I think they deserve some scrutiny. Blizzard's mantra is easy to learn, difficult to master. If every unit has unintuitive rules associated with it the game because a nightmare to navigate through and the game design fails.
I personally feel like beta is still a time where you are setting the foundation of the gameplay experiences to come for the next years, it can not be treated as a mature competitive game. I could accept these very specific fixes if something proved a dominant problem for a period of months and if other solutions would not have been as successful, but that's not the case: there are still frequent major changes to all the units and they will continue to come for a while, the game is still in a state of flux. As such I can not support this cargo change, it's not elegant and it goes against Blizzard's principles.
And I don't understand your obsession with banelings taking up more cargo space. Zerglings are not banelings, it's okay to have different rules for these two units. The weakness of banelings is that if they die before you get close they don't deal any damage, overlord drops are a way to circumvent this weakness almost completely and therefore there is a very real need to create this cargo exception, it's simply inherent in the design of banelings.
Hellbats are nothing like this, they are mostly a generic combat unit. There is nothing special in their design that makes it acceptable for them to have cargo restrictions. If they are too powerful in drops then it's either a case of the timings being too powerful or of the unit being too cost-effective in general. Although the cargo change addresses the timing, this could have been done in a number of different ways, such as incorporating the blue flame upgrade or turning the medivac speed boost into an upgrade as well.
Playing the game is relevant, because if you actually did you would see these complaints brought up are actually not issues at all, and the way things are being explained isn't how they actually play out in game. It's also important because those that actually play test these things enough will see the issues clear enough to pinpoint the exact problem, and come to an understanding as to why the changes are good or bad, rather than basing their arguments off assumptions as the majority is doing here.
Cargo size is a separate statistic for units, not a "special rule", that's why it is directly relevant to the Ling/Baneling comparison. Just because units are morphed from another unit has never meant that it will take the same amount of cargo space. But more importantly this shows that when a unit is morphed from another unit it is not the same unit anymore. This is something that has been done throughout the entire lifetime of WoL, Banelings were not a "special rule" either, just a different cargo size for a different unit, same as this.
How come you don't understand that fundamental difference, that Hellions and Hellbats are different units? Just look at the command card for a factory. You could choose to build one or the other. What does this mean? This is a clear indication to the player that they are to be considered different units.
This goes along with the Blizzard philosophy perfectly. Different units have different cargo, plain and simple. You ask my obsession with the Baneling issue, it's because it's an example of the same exact design and balancing philosophy that has existed since WoL alpha. Nothing has changed at all, it's the same exact philosophy at work, the only difference is apparently some of the people here don't understand that Hellions and Hellbats are different units, even though there are clear indications on the interface to communicate this to the player.
How could you say there is nothing in Hellbats design to give them a difference in cargo restriction? They are a different unit! Same as Marines and Marauders are different sizes in cargo, same as Lings and Banes. Being a different unit is more than enough in their design to qualify them for different cargo restrictions.
Your right about one thing though, it was the timings that made the Hellbat/Medivac synergy too strong. But the other two possible fixes you listed would not have been effective at fixing the issue because they affect other strategies too much. Messing with the Medivac in general would weaken it's capabilities with drops and any other unit, which are obviously intended to be viable strategies. And they could have messed with timings for blue flame yes... But that would weaken Hellbats strength as defensive units, or as a unit in general. The reliance on an upgrade was removed so that Hellbats would be easier to fit in various compositions as well, allowing you to tech switch to them as needed. Give them reliance on an upgrade and you are removing this. Both of those changes have side effects that the cargo solution did not, as well as they don't address the other problem with 4 hellbats being able to trap units in mineral lines. The cargo solution fixed that problem in addition to adjusting the timings, without weakening either unit, and contrary to your claims it stayed 100% in line with their design philosophy since WoL, just like the baneling example
On February 16 2013 10:12 Qikz wrote: Just thought I'd add to this thread that since the patch I haven't even really lost more than 5 workers to hellbats and if it's on one base and I have 2 CCs then that doesn't really matter.
You have to pull workers sure, but 2 hellbats really don't do anything and if he's gone 2 medivacs for 4 hellbats off of one base he's seriously commited so you can just go kill him later on after you gain a massive early advantage.
Nice to see people who actually tried the changes, this is similar to my results so far. 4 Hellbats 2 Medi can still do some damage, but is more in line with other strategies because they need to commit to the harass, as you said..
This, btw, is the exact reason I keep saying people should play the game before complaining. The fix pinpointed and solved the problem perfectly.
You REALLY dont get it, eh? This thread is about DESIGN and NOT BALANCE. Playing the game has zero impact for this and is totally unnecessary. Elegant game design is different from what Blizzard does (just read Grumbels definition and you might get it).
You also dont get the difference between morphing (an evolutionary one-way-process) and transforming (a reversible mechanical process).
Just to make it absolutely clear ... THIS ISNT ABOUT BALANCE!
On February 17 2013 11:02 CoR wrote: why it is illogical only 2 battle helions can take place of 4 helions ? when i lay my shirts i get alot in a bag but if i just stomp them into it its like only 2/3 of them ^_^ when they are transformed they are just not that nice to park anymore (each 2 over each other) and they have to remove the 2nd floor and because they not like line but more like circle units, they also cant put them next to each other ^^ its totaly logical they can only fit 2 in them transformed
ps: sry for english its 3am i miss 3/4 of the words i need ^^
Battle Hellions are "tougher" and thus should MORE COMPACT than Hellions. So in your comparison the Battle Hellions are the neatly folded shirts.
EPT
