After Balance Patch 13 and 14 I feel Blizzard has begun to favor inelegant balance solutions instead of elegent design choices in order to prepare HOTS for release, and it's having an adverse effect on Terran unit strength and tech advancement.
The Hellbat is an under costed, poorly designed unit as it is. Besides the logical inconsistencies of transforming from a car that can't be healed into a suit of armor that can be healed by a Medivac by gaining the biological attribute, it now apparently increases in mass and size thru' transformation to the point where 4 Hellions could fit in a Medivac but now only 2 Hellbats can fit in a Medivac in arguably one of the most illogical, and inefectual, ways to nerf Hellbat drops (Terrans can still circumvent the nerf by building a Reactor on the Barracks, exchanging the Reactor with the Factory for 4 Hellions and then exchanging the Reactor with the Starport for 2 Medivacs and have an equivalent drop)
If Blizzard wants to retain the current power level of the Hellbats, then the problem Blizzard has to address is the timing of the Hellbat drops and the tech advancement of the Terran race. As it stands, the Armory is the key offender, because for 150/100 resources and 65 seconds of build time the Armory gives Terrans an upgrade from Hellions to Hellbats, access to Thors, access to 2/2 infantry upgrades and access to 1/0 vehicle upgrades compared to spending 25/25 resources and 25 seconds of build time on a Tech Lab and 150/150 resources and 110 seconds of research time on Infernal Pre Igniter. As it is, who would build a Tech Lab and research Infernal Pre-Igniter over building a Reactor and an Armory in any build order in HOTS? What incentive does Terran have to reduce their production capacity for Hellions and Widow Mines, delay their Battle Hellions and vehicle upgrades in favor of a dead end tech path?
Building an Armory is just clearly superior to researching Infernal Pre-Igniter in HOTS, and after removing Siege Tech and buffing Siege Tanks what does Terran have to actually bother researching at the Tech Lab in any build order? Now that Siege Tanks receive free Siege Tech, researching Infernal Pre-Igniter is clearly worse than an Armory, Infernal Pre-Igniter is no longer compatible with Battle Hellions and Drilling Claws are by no means necessary, Blizzard has only succeeded in making Terran Mech's tech path Factory -> Armory.
As it is, Blizzard has retarded Terran's ability to open Proxy Reapers into Hellbat drop by increasing the cargo space of Hellbat, because they either need to build the Barracks at home in order to produce a Reactor for the Factory and Starport or Terrans have to transform the Hellions in the opponent's base and can only micro 2 of the 4 Hellbats with the Medivac. And while I'm sure this will be a nuisance to the Terran Hellbat drop, it does nothing to address other Hellbat timing attacks or give the Factory Tech Lab upgrades any signifigance.
Furthermore, in TvZ Terrans can all but shut down early Zerg aggression with Siege Tanks that gain free Siege Tech immediately and burrowed Widow Mines. Burrowed Widow Mines aside, what difference has free Siege Tech made in TvP that merrits soft countering early aggression in TvZ? Is Mech any more viable in TvP after giving Siege Tanks free Siege Tech? Arguably no, and TvZ has only suffered for it (as well as the intelligable game design of the Factory Tech Lab).
If Blizzard wants to address the balance of Hellbat drops while reducing the utility of the Armory and making the Factory Tech Lab relevant, I believe Blizzard should removed the Infernal Pre Igniter upgrade from the Factory Tech Lab and replace it with the Transformation Servos upgrade and return Siege Tech to the Tech Lab. By requiring Terrans to build a Tech Lab in order to research Transformation Servos, Blizzard can more effectively cost and delay the arrival of Hellbats while making players choose thoughtfully between a Reactor for production, a Tech Lab for upgrades and Transformation Servos for Hellbats or Siege Tech for Siege Mode while the Armory still remains relevant for providing access to Thors and upgrades. Blizzard could try Transformation Servos for 150/150 resources and 110 seconds build time, remove the Armory requirement and adjust from there.
The Hellbat aside, the second problem is the Spore Crawler, Overlord speed upgrade and the Widow Mine. While I feel the Widow Mine has come into its own as a unit in TvZ, the problem is that the Widow Mine's Burrow has forced Blizzard to make "odd" changes to Zerg's detection and scouting by giving Zerg free access to Spore Crawler tech and moving the Overlord speed upgrade to the Hatchery. The problem tho' is that giving Zerg free Spore Crawler tech does not allow Zerg to be aggressive vs an opponent who is using Widow Mines defensively and the Overlord speed upgrade is a very costly investment in the early stages of the game for scouting information.
In order for Blizzard to address the impact of the Widow Mine in TvZ, I think it'd be better if Blizzard returned the Spore Crawler tech to the Evolution Chamber and moved Overseer tech to the Hatchery instead of Overlord speed tech. That way, Zerg could gain additional scouting information for only 50/50 resources and significantly sooner compared to the Overlord speed upgrade and give detection that the Zerg could use both offensively and defensively vs a player using Widows Mines either offensively or defensively. Furthermore, it prevents Zerg from having multiple, annoying ways of denying opponent's from taking their 2nd or 3rd by either Burrowing a unit or puking creep so early. If having access to the Overseer tech so early reduces the skill level of knowing when to send in Overlords for scouting information or prove too great of a soft counter vs other cloaked units, then Overseer tech could require an Evolution Chamber as well in order to delay the timing of the Overseer and require Zerg to tech to detection regardless of whether or not its an Overseer or Spore Crawler.
Anyway, I'm sure this is TLDR for the majority of TOL, but I really think Blizzard's "ugly" design choices in favor of rash balancing has impacted SC2 and HOTS for the worse. Early Zerg aggression vs Terrans is just in a laughable state after the free Siege Tech and Widow Mine, Hellbats are still too early (and or fast) in the tech tree and the upgrades at the Factory Tech Lab are no where near as meaningful as Barracks Tech Lab or even the Starport Tech Lab (getting Cloak for Banshees is still a major build order decision compared to anything the Factory Tech Lab has to offer).
There are just my ideas on how to get Terran's tech path back in line and bring TvZ closer into balance for the early game. Because as it stands, Blizzards current design choices for Terrans are just inorganic and TvZ has lost a lot of early aggression options for Zerg in HOTS that really takes away from the race's versatility in the match up. I could probably say the same for the MSC in TvP, but that's another thread entirely.
Thanks for reading, and if anyone could repost this to the Blizzard forums I would appreciate it.
On February 14 2013 22:07 Tuczniak wrote: Although I agree with most of things you wrote, having overseer at hacthery would mean too easy scouting. I don't think it would be good.
I agree with your criticism in sentiment, because I don't want to eliminate the playskill of knowing when to send in Overlords for scouting information either. However, the problem is that Zerg is the only race without access to mobile detection in the early game in order to off set the Widow Mine - Terrans can Scan and Protoss can build either Observers or Oracles much earlier than Zerg can research Lair and Morph Overseers.
I think you can move Overseers to Hatchery tech, require an Evolution Chamber amd increase the morph time in order to get Overseers onto the field either slightly before or slightly after Widow Mines come online while not making them an uber scout. It makes some sense, because the structure for upgrades + anti-air + detection is a Broodwar and Starcraft staple tech structure, and considering Zerg already have mobile detection in the form of the Spore Crawler (sort of) I don't think increasing that mobile detection to an Overseer is that unreasonable.
A drone, 75/0 resources, 35 seconds of build time, 50/50 resources and 17 seconds of morph time is 1 Drone, 125/50 resources and 52 seconds for an Overseer compared to reduced Queen production, 100/100 resources and 60 seconds research time. Yeah, moving Overseers to Hatchery tech + requires Evolution Chamber is functionally equivalent to moving Overlord speed to Hatchery tech in terms of scouting the opponent's base and it allows Zerg to mount an offensive vs. Widow Mines - I think it's a significantly better decision than free Spore Crawler tech and Overlord speed at Hatchery.
Edit: It also addresses Burrow in ZvZ, which is an added benefit.
I probably agree with your opinions about Hellbats, so I can't be arsed to read all that text sorry!
On the case of overseer at Hatchery, I think it's completely unreasonable to say that Protoss gets their mobile detection earlier than Overseer, as the only reason that it is the case in the current metagame is because protosses tech straight to those tech buildings. If Zerg went Pool -> Lair asap, they would get the overseer quicker than Protoss.
The fact that you can stay on hatchery tech for so long only proves the point that Zerg tier 1 is increadibly powerful, moving overseers to hatchery tech would only empower that notion.
When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote: (Terrans can still circumvent the nerf by building a Reactor on the Barracks, exchanging the Reactor with the Factory for 4 Hellions and then exchanging the Reactor with the Starport for 2 Medivacs and have an equivalent drop)
that's not an "equivalent drop" at all.. it'll hit later and cost more. That's basically what HB drops needed anyway, they were available too early. That said, Blizzard's design choices since basically the start of the beta have been completely ridiculous. They've been throwing shit at walls, in an attempt to see what sticks -- if they just stuck with their original concepts more closely while at the same time adding more units (why just 3 per race?) and fixed some of the fundamentally broken concepts of WOL, HOTS would've been in a much better place. Blizzard have been both directionless and afraid to deviate from WOL "balance" (which is a badly balanced product as it currently stands) As it is, HOTS is not worth the price of entry
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
I am one of the people who doesn't care how they balance the game, as long at they do it. These threads about the "elegance" of specific design choices seem to accomplish very little and provide few solutions beyond "do it better". Blizzard seems focused on keeping units powerful, while limiting their ability to be used in cheap ways. I think this is good for the game, but leads to some odd thing that are done to balance the game. But it keeps the game active and units powerful, which is what we need.
i fully agree, and i wonder how fast they make such retarded changes if terrans have slightly more power.. i imagine blizzard office where stupid non-gamer manager asks Kim or Browder "People complain to me for your.. those.. humans.. WTF, if you got another mass complainig to humans we'll lose 10% of our sells, DO SOMETHING, search on forums" and they're like "but.. oh... wai.. wa... okay, we'll release a patch tomorrow" and he say: "NO, I NEED THAT PATDC OR WHATEVER YOU MEAN BY THIS WORD TODAY"!
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Obviously not everything can make perfect sense, the difference tho' is that whenever something can make sense then it should make sense if at all possible. My point is there are other, precedented changes that Blizzard considered regarding Hellbats, Transformation Servos, that would be a better mechanism for adjusting the resources and time necessary to access Hellbats than the Armory, which has a fixed resource cost and build time compared to an upgrade which could have a variable resources cost and research time based on playtesting, and Hellbats magically growing in mass and size in order to keep them from filling a Medivac.
So, I agree, some things just don't make sense, but it's a matter of degree to which they don't make sense. Magically growing Hellbats and mysteriously de-activing Infernal Pre Igniters are just unnecessarily illogical.
I like what you said a lot. Many of the points are really spot on. Siege upgrade removal was a really awkward way to make mech viable in TvP. Spore for early detection against widow mine as well. I feel like they are getting lazy on how they approach the balance issues
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Obviously not everything can make perfect sense, the difference tho' is that whenever something can make sense then it should make sense if at all possible. My point is there are other, precedented changes that Blizzard considered regarding Hellbats, Transformation Servos, that would be a better mechanism for adjusting the resources and time necessary to access Hellbats than the Armory, which has a fixed resource cost and build time compared to an upgrade which could have a variable resources cost and research time based on playtesting, and Hellbats magically growing in mass and size in order to keep them from filling a Medivac.
So, I agree, some things just don't make sense, but it's a matter of degree to which they don't make sense. Magically growing Hellbats and mysteriously de-activing Infernal Pre Igniters are just unnecessarily illogical.
Problem with your suggestion is that you seem to be changing a lot of the moving parts. It might be feasible if Blizzard had more time to tweak. Although the cargo change is not elegant, it is only 1 change and will have minimal affect once multiple medivacs are out and it does delay the timing which was the main concern.
I am not saying your ideas are bad. They might even be better. But your changes could have much larger affect on the rest of the game. Think of how just changing range on queens and speeding up OLs did to WoL TvZ.
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Obviously not everything can make perfect sense, the difference tho' is that whenever something can make sense then it should make sense if at all possible. My point is there are other, precedented changes that Blizzard considered regarding Hellbats, Transformation Servos, that would be a better mechanism for adjusting the resources and time necessary to access Hellbats than the Armory, which has a fixed resource cost and build time compared to an upgrade which could have a variable resources cost and research time based on playtesting, and Hellbats magically growing in mass and size in order to keep them from filling a Medivac.
So, I agree, some things just don't make sense, but it's a matter of degree to which they don't make sense. Magically growing Hellbats and mysteriously de-activing Infernal Pre Igniters are just unnecessarily illogical.
Problem with your suggestion is that you seem to be changing a lot of the moving parts. It might be feasible if Blizzard had more time to tweak. Although the cargo change is not elegant, it is only 1 change and will have minimal affect once multiple medivacs are out and it does delay the timing which was the main concern.
I am not saying your ideas are bad. They might even be better. But your changes could have much larger affect on the rest of the game. Think of how just changing range on queens and speeding up OLs did to WoL TvZ.
Half of the changes I'm suggesting are reverting the changes that Blizzard implemented, free Spore Crawler tech, free Siege Tech tech and using pre-existing upgrades like Transformation Servos as a balancing mechanism for Hellbats. Other than losing the Infernal Pre-Igniter buff for Hellions in the late game and giving Zerg earlier, mobile detection (a form of which previously existed in BW) can you think of anyway my suggestion would adversely affect the balance of the game from WoL as a starting point?
Returning to precedent doesn't seem nearly as dramatic as a range and speed buff.
Oh did they remove the mechanical unit flag from the Hellbat? Didn't noticed. Or the OP isn't really informed as it was one of the main topics everywhere that you can heal and repair them at once.
But the OP, besides just ranting about Hellbats. Hits a few nice points. The last changes from Blizzard were not elegant and just felt like: "well we don't know how to fix the ideas we brought in in any other way". I may dislike the Spore crawler change though, because it is exactly what I was worried about with them introducing Muta regen. The need for something that kills Mutas not only weakening them.
On February 15 2013 00:27 FeyFey wrote: Oh did they remove the mechanical unit flag from the Hellbat? Didn't noticed. Or the OP isn't really informed as it was one of the main topics everywhere that you can heal and repair them at once.
But the OP, besides just ranting about Hellbats. Hits a few nice points. The last changes from Blizzard were not elegant and just felt like: "well we don't know how to fix the ideas we brought in in any other way". I may dislike the Spore crawler change though, because it is exactly what I was worried about with them introducing Muta regen. The need for something that kills Mutas not only weakening them.
You're right, it's not a major part of my argument but it's clearly an oversight. My point was a lot of seemingly non-sensical changes have been made to the Hellbat in order to try and balance the unit - gaining the Bio tag in order to be healed by Medivacs, losing Infernal Pre-Igniters in battle armor mode, increasing in mass and size in order to reduce Medivac carrying capacity etc. all seem a bit odd design wise.
I'm ok with the damage modifiers to Spore Crawlers and Widow Mines, those are sort of the invisible dials of the game that achieve game balance without being noticed, or anywhere near as ridiculous as the Hellbat cargo size nerf.
I can't wait till people get used to the hellbat mechanics and stop whining about things that are essentially irrelevant. As long as the unit has its place in a metagame but isn't too strong, it's fine.
On February 15 2013 00:27 FeyFey wrote: But the OP, besides just ranting about Hellbats. Hits a few nice points. The last changes from Blizzard were not elegant and just felt like: "well we don't know how to fix the ideas we brought in in any other way". I may dislike the Spore crawler change though, because it is exactly what I was worried about with them introducing Muta regen. The need for something that kills Mutas not only weakening them.
As someone who has criticized the Blizzard dev team for their "stupid design decisions" for some time now I can only hope that they will continue this kind of nonsense in the future because it seems unlikely that they will make the necessary changes to make SC2 easy to balance. The only hope I have left is that they make it really ridiculously complicated and "run it into the ground" and then HAVE TO start balancing from scratch. The whole game as it is is just too focused on high economy and big productions to be easily balanced and those things need to go to make it easier.
As for Mutalisks and Spore Crawlers ... how about a "net"-clicky which captures one of them and drags it to the ground like the Warcraft 3 spell from the wolf riders? As I pointed out above somewhere the problem with the Battle Hellions didnt start with them being droppable from Medivacs but rather with the turbo boost and the ability to be healed by Medivacs. The problem with Mutalisks probably comes from their boosted health regen and that is where they should have started instead of making the game more complicated.
On February 15 2013 00:44 Bagi wrote: I can't wait till people get used to the hellbat mechanics and stop whining about things that are essentially irrelevant. As long as the unit has its place in a metagame but isn't too strong, it's fine.
It is so true. The warhound fills a roll that terran needed, which is a tank and unit that can deal with protoss/zerg mineral dump harassment end game(zealots and lings). We have bigger fish to fry, like the Medivac speed boost needing a longer cool down or an energy cost(the second might be a problem and really limit the ability), the Sky-protoss end game army vs zerg, weird endgame widow mine issue due to their low attack priority and so much more.
Also, HotS did one thing right, if you listen to SotG. Fewer colossi all around. Now we will only have 1 or 2 per game, rather than a wall of them.
I agree with the terran ideas, the zerg overseer at hatch tech is a no, that's like overlords in BW and they are trying to avoid Zerg being "detectorific"
When the hellion transforms into a Hellbat, the operator becomes more exposed, which is why it gains the biological tag (which has advantages and disadvantages).
The rearrangement of parts also leads to an increase in the amount of space occupied (a common geometry occurrence), leading to Hellbats taking up more space in the Medivac than Hellions, and their inability to fit into a bunker.
Neither of these is un-intuitive unless you have the capacity for conceptual thought of a 10-year-old.
First I would like to note that it's really messed up that multiple of the people having complaints about this don't even play the beta. It's been really frustrating lately that you can't even have a logical debate/conversation with people here because they like to comment on balance of a game that they haven't even played and act like they know better than the people who do.
While I can understand some debate on Patch 13 (even though after fitting OL Speed in to my build order it's making a much bigger difference than I thought it would, and so far I've countered Mutas pretty well with Spore/Hydra - seems these changes have better results during testing than in theory) I disagree with the complaints about patch 14 completely.
Contrary to the complaints, Hellbats alone aren't the problem. How many times have you felt it was impossible to deal with Hellbats that marched across the map? That's not asking if you have ever lost to a push that involved Hellbats, that's asking if it seems impossible to deal with. They are easily counterable if used in that fashion. This indicates that Hellbats alone are not the problem.
The complaints about their cost of only minerals is pretty silly too. And this is coming from a Zerg player (when all Zergs units who counter Hellbats cost gas). You can't expect each race not to have their own advantages and disadvantages, and I wouldn't want to take this advantage away. This is more similar to BW balance where Vultures didn't cost gas either, while having different strengtths they were used for harass in every matchup and were completely game changing in some.
A lot of people have claimed the Medivac Thrusters are the problem, if that's the case then how come every other unit in the game isn't problematic when you patch them in to Medivacs? This makes it obvious that the problem isn't Medivacs, and Hellbats alone aren't a problem without Medivacs.
So whats the problem? It's their synergy. But the synergy between them DOES require a bit of micro, so it can be a good thing. That's why the change they did actually WAS an elegant change. It kept the synergy between the 2 units in the game, made it require EVEN MORE micro, it delayed the tech for the same early aggression enough for it to be defendable but still viable with good micro, and it didn't nerf the base units at all (which aren't havent issues in other circumstances).
I also find complaints about Hellbat supply silly. A lot of people try to attack this change for its "logic" and act like that has any basis on game balance or game design decisions, when it's neither. Considering it's relativity to everything else in the game, this is nothing but a nitpick. Where is the logic in fitting Thors in to a medivac, for fitting only 8 marines when you would be able to fit far more of them in a single vehicle? Where is the logic in Zerg cargo?
Let's not get it twisted, cargo size is NOT for the "logic", it's for the balance of the game, plain and simple. This is exactly why the change makes sense - because it's the best thing for balance. Anyone claiming this change is bad balance or bad game design should be ashamed of themselves because they aren't valuing either of those 2 ideals. Your suspension of disbelief is for some reason not applying to the cargo changes, but your still suspending your disbelief of dozens of other illogical things that happen in the game, because it's a game and not a simulation, and you have to suspend your disbelief in every game to sacrifice for game design and balance. Otherwise Battlecruisers would block the entire field and destroy as many units as 4 nukes can every time they came crashing to the ground.
I also find the arguments of the OP poorly thought out. He says "but now only 2 Hellbats can fit in a Medivac in arguably one of the most illogical, and inefectual, ways to nerf Hellbat drops". How could you say it's ineffectual? Have you actually played against it since patch? It's much easier to hold off. And I already explained the problem was with the synergy between the two units. This means it IS a logical change. It nerfs the synergy between the units, makes it come out at a later timing for the same amount of aggression, while still keeping it as a viable strat, just later in the game and requiring more micro. All the other people here who have proposed fixes would not accomplish all that this change did, and would cause other balance issues in the game. It's the most logical idea that anyone has discussed here... I don't understand how people could be so ignorant that they complain about things without actually testing them, or without actually analyzing what the actual problem is with the strategy...
Also the argument in the OP about "If Blizzard wants to retain the current power level of the Hellbats, then the problem Blizzard has to address is the timing of the Hellbat drops and the tech advancement of the Terran race."... That's exactly what this nerf did!!! How can you not see that? For a 4 hellbat drop it used to get in to the enemy base at 6:30, now you can get a 4 hellbat 2 medivac drop in the base at 7:12. This is directly addressing the timing of the drops. This is also in line with the early aggression for the other races as well. This shows how illogical this entire topic is, when it's masking itself as if it's discussing logic and good game design. Even the changes that were healthy for the game design and logical get complained about, and the arguments against them are completely illogical.
Then look at how the OP claims the problem is one thing, and then other posters claim it's other things. From Hellbats themselves, to Medivacs, to Terrans tech advancement. So apparently every aspect of the race is a problem. And people have problems with every other race too. People just complain about everything and it's in no way healthy at all. Thank god the game is not balanced or designed around this kind of mindset.
Then on to the issue of Reapers, which brings up another great example. When they first did the Reaper changes people were making just as big of a shit storm as they are making for the current changes. But now people are actually complaining about Reaper harass? This speaks volumes for how fickle the community is and how silly it is that they complain about every damn thing without trying the changes themselves. This is the exact thing that frustrates me and the reason I'm responding to this post. Even though people should have learned from the past, they still make the same mistakes, and go on complaining about everything when things didn't turn out how they expected last time either.
Also, the OP's Reaper complaints show a bit of ignorance about the balance of the game as well. Because if they go with a heavy harass based strat such as reapers in to hellbats they are sacrificing the strength of a mid game push significantly, leaving them vulnerable to aggression. Something that the OP goes on to say is a good thing in the next paragraphs. The strat being discussed has very big weaknesses that could be exploited, and isn't a problem in balance atm.
Widow mines in TvZ aren't a problem either. The harass can be deadly if you aren't ready for it, but can easily be countered if you scout and prepare for it, as it should be. Contrary to your claims you CAN be aggressive on a player that uses them for defense, it just requires micro. Likewise if the mines are microed well and have good placement they can be useful against Zerg. In both cases they require micro for both players (and not just drop one and forget) so what's the problem?
Let's not even get in to all the multitudes of ways that your proposed change of Overseer tech would be unhealthy for the game and unbalanced in every matchup, giving easy denial of tech strats for the early game that have the potential to ravage enemies early game, and far more powerful scouting with changelings, and by far the earliest mobile detection in game. Every matchup would be ravaged.
Also the claims that Zerg lost early game aggression... I'm a Zerg player who has off raced Terran a bit since HotS. Zerg did not lose early game aggression in any way, our early game aggression is even stronger than it was in WoL and we have more options than we did before. The ZvT matchup is an amazing matchup atm, probably the best in the game, and definitely way more exciting than it was in WoL. It honestly sounds like you aren't a Zerg player because if you were I doubt you would be claiming those things, which brings up the subject as to why you are complaining about balance of a race you dont play?
The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
It feels like both with the muta patch and the hellbat patch, Blizzard has got into a cycle of breaking things then breaking other things or doing oddball patches in an attempt to unbreak them rather than simply revoking the bad patch and trying something else.They completely wrecked ZvZ and turned it into a muta war with the muta patch so instead of putting mutas back to how they were or buffing them in a different way that would maybe prevent muta wars they did that awkward patch to spores for ZvZ, then they also had to buff phoenixes to make it so Protoss didn't die to mass muta every game, but because of the buff is still forces muta vs. Protoss into being a really weird matchup where Protoss has to get mass phoenixes or starve and die because they can't expand or move out
Same with hellbats. At first they weren't an issue but then Blizzard did those dumb patches that massively boosted their damage and made them healable. Then instead of revoking those patches or trying something else after it was shown to be bad they do weird stuff like make it so there can only be 2 in a medivac instead of trying actual useful stuff like removing that dumb bio tag or modifying their damage so they don't trade almost equally with units that are supposed to hard counter them.
I used to always think Blizzard was on the right track and the community was crazy and that we needed to wait but now I am kinda thinking the community has a point. None of these patches make sense anymore. The latest patch is just a bandaid fix for two rather large issues, medivacs speed and the extreme utility of hellbats for cost. If they keep doing weird stuff like this I can't even imagine what they will try to do with Protoss air when they try and bandaid fix that. Seeing every race having to blindly prepare for hellbat drops or die kinda indicated to me that there was a problem.
How is it unfair that terran can defend early zerg aggression with tanks, when zerg only need queens, lingspeed and time to react and make lings/roaches... Nearly every good terran player goes 3-cc, simply because zerg can super easily fend off early attacks.
On February 15 2013 03:42 BoggieMan wrote: How is it unfair that terran can defend early zerg aggression with tanks, when zerg only need queens, lingspeed and time to react and make lings/roaches... Nearly every good terran player goes 3-cc, simply because zerg can super easily fend off early attacks.
If they are defending with tanks they aren't dropping hellbats in the Zerg mineral lines at 7 min. It's a trade off.
Don't know about some of the details in OP, but I totally agree about the patches becoming a little "unnatural" lately. The increase in cargo space for hellbats in particular just felt like such an artificial change. I don't really like the unit morphing into biological and then losing it between transformations either.
I guess it's fine for the people who give no shits about anything but a balanced multiplayer, but I don't really like how they're just randomly giving up on having stuff actually make sense within the game's universe. I'm sure you could come up with some weird explanations for all this stuff, but it'd have to be pretty obviously contrived.
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Because you only need functioning brains combined with the willpower to use them + Show Spoiler +
compared to "saving them for later" while not using them
to analyze the game and find the really big flaws in the whole design philosophy behind SC2. Obviously you must be open minded enough to allow yourself to think about such things ...
Quite obviously you are right in that the Battle Hellions arent the real problem, but that doesnt change the fact that the last two patches have been rather dubious and highly specific changes which add more rules to the game and make it more complicated ... rather than the reverse. KISS ... its as easy as that. Blizzard is simply putting in too many special conditions and the game would be much better if it had fewer of those ... even if that means not putting in fancy new units.
On February 15 2013 03:08 RampancyTW wrote: When the hellion transforms into a Hellbat, the operator becomes more exposed, which is why it gains the biological tag (which has advantages and disadvantages).
The rearrangement of parts also leads to an increase in the amount of space occupied (a common geometry occurrence), leading to Hellbats taking up more space in the Medivac than Hellions, and their inability to fit into a bunker.
Neither of these is un-intuitive unless you have the capacity for conceptual thought of a 10-year-old.
Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Because you only need functioning brains combined with the willpower to use them + Show Spoiler +
compared to "saving them for later" while not using them
to analyze the game and find the really big flaws in the whole design philosophy behind SC2. Obviously you must be open minded enough to allow yourself to think about such things ...
Quite obviously you are right in that the Battle Hellions arent the real problem, but that doesnt change the fact that the last two patches have been rather dubious and highly specific changes which add more rules to the game and make it more complicated ... rather than the reverse. KISS ... its as easy as that. Blizzard is simply putting in too many special conditions and the game would be much better if it had fewer of those ... even if that means not putting in fancy new units.
So basically what you are saying is that your are not in the beta, you have no personal experience using the new units and the only reason post in these threads is to express your opinion that HotS is poorly designed? All of your sights are based on watching other play and reading things on the forums. So your sole purpose in these threads is to crap on HotS and make sure that everyone knows much you dislike the design philosophy that Blizzard uses? Because if you aren’t here for new builds, insights into the new metagame because you don’t play HotS.
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
If they keep going down this road we're going to start seeing crap like "+5 damage to mutalisks," which is basically what they want to put on spores, but it would be a little too blatant that they'd given up on not adding confusing stuff like this. Honestly, bonus biological damage on spores affects what units exactly? Overlords/overseers, brood lords, mutalisks and corruptors. None of these units are ever going to be in range of a spore but a mutalisk. They've basically just lumped bonus damage vs mutalisks into a broader category as though it hides how unnatural it is. It isn't very subtle and feels like a sharp contrast to their older patching philosophy.
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
It's not about whether things "look" elegant. The term has simply been used so I won't have to drill in the details why a modification is good or bad. I do not have a problem with a hellbat taking more cargo space as long as it addresses the problem. In fact if it really solves all issues; it will be an "elegant" solution to the hellbat drop problem. However as pointed out by the OP; the terran mech tech tree can actually use some modification. Another modification is the new spore +bio damage which was a result of poor design choice. I'll qoute Ben... on this as he really pointed it out:
On February 15 2013 03:41 Ben... wrote: It feels like both with the muta patch and the hellbat patch, Blizzard has got into a cycle of breaking things then breaking other things or doing oddball patches in an attempt to unbreak them rather than simply revoking the bad patch and trying something else.They completely wrecked ZvZ and turned it into a muta war with the muta patch so instead of putting mutas back to how they were or buffing them in a different way that would maybe prevent muta wars they did that awkward patch to spores for ZvZ, then they also had to buff phoenixes to make it so Protoss didn't die to mass muta every game, but because of the buff is still forces muta vs. Protoss into being a really weird matchup where Protoss has to get mass phoenixes or starve and die because they can't expand or move out.
First I would like to note that it's really messed up that multiple of the people having complaints about this don't even play the beta. It's been really frustrating lately that you can't even have a logical debate/conversation with people here because they like to comment on balance of a game that they haven't even played and act like they know better than the people who do.
While I can understand some debate on Patch 13 (even though after fitting OL Speed in to my build order it's making a much bigger difference than I thought it would, and so far I've countered Mutas pretty well with Spore/Hydra - seems these changes have better results during testing than in theory) I disagree with the complaints about patch 14 completely.
Contrary to the complaints, Hellbats alone aren't the problem. How many times have you felt it was impossible to deal with Hellbats that marched across the map? That's not asking if you have ever lost to a push that involved Hellbats, that's asking if it seems impossible to deal with. They are easily counterable if used in that fashion. This indicates that Hellbats alone are not the problem.
The complaints about their cost of only minerals is pretty silly too. And this is coming from a Zerg player (when all Zergs units who counter Hellbats cost gas). You can't expect each race not to have their own advantages and disadvantages, and I wouldn't want to take this advantage away. This is more similar to BW balance where Vultures didn't cost gas either, while having different strengtths they were used for harass in every matchup and were completely game changing in some.
A lot of people have claimed the Medivac Thrusters are the problem, if that's the case then how come every other unit in the game isn't problematic when you patch them in to Medivacs? This makes it obvious that the problem isn't Medivacs, and Hellbats alone aren't a problem without Medivacs.
So whats the problem? It's their synergy. But the synergy between them DOES require a bit of micro, so it can be a good thing. That's why the change they did actually WAS an elegant change. It kept the synergy between the 2 units in the game, made it require EVEN MORE micro, it delayed the tech for the same early aggression enough for it to be defendable but still viable with good micro, and it didn't nerf the base units at all (which aren't havent issues in other circumstances).
I also find complaints about Hellbat supply silly. A lot of people try to attack this change for its "logic" and act like that has any basis on game balance or game design decisions, when it's neither. Considering it's relativity to everything else in the game, this is nothing but a nitpick. Where is the logic in fitting Thors in to a medivac, for fitting only 8 marines when you would be able to fit far more of them in a single vehicle? Where is the logic in Zerg cargo?
Let's not get it twisted, cargo size is NOT for the "logic", it's for the balance of the game, plain and simple. This is exactly why the change makes sense - because it's the best thing for balance. Anyone claiming this change is bad balance or bad game design should be ashamed of themselves because they aren't valuing either of those 2 ideals. Your suspension of disbelief is for some reason not applying to the cargo changes, but your still suspending your disbelief of dozens of other illogical things that happen in the game, because it's a game and not a simulation, and you have to suspend your disbelief in every game to sacrifice for game design and balance. Otherwise Battlecruisers would block the entire field and destroy as many units as 4 nukes can every time they came crashing to the ground.
I also find the arguments of the OP poorly thought out. He says "but now only 2 Hellbats can fit in a Medivac in arguably one of the most illogical, and inefectual, ways to nerf Hellbat drops". How could you say it's ineffectual? Have you actually played against it since patch? It's much easier to hold off. And I already explained the problem was with the synergy between the two units. This means it IS a logical change. It nerfs the synergy between the units, makes it come out at a later timing for the same amount of aggression, while still keeping it as a viable strat, just later in the game and requiring more micro. All the other people here who have proposed fixes would not accomplish all that this change did, and would cause other balance issues in the game. It's the most logical idea that anyone has discussed here... I don't understand how people could be so ignorant that they complain about things without actually testing them, or without actually analyzing what the actual problem is with the strategy...
Also the argument in the OP about "If Blizzard wants to retain the current power level of the Hellbats, then the problem Blizzard has to address is the timing of the Hellbat drops and the tech advancement of the Terran race."... That's exactly what this nerf did!!! How can you not see that? For a 4 hellbat drop it used to get in to the enemy base at 6:30, now you can get a 4 hellbat 2 medivac drop in the base at 7:12. This is directly addressing the timing of the drops. This is also in line with the early aggression for the other races as well. This shows how illogical this entire topic is, when it's masking itself as if it's discussing logic and good game design. Even the changes that were healthy for the game design and logical get complained about, and the arguments against them are completely illogical.
Then look at how the OP claims the problem is one thing, and then other posters claim it's other things. From Hellbats themselves, to Medivacs, to Terrans tech advancement. So apparently every aspect of the race is a problem. And people have problems with every other race too. People just complain about everything and it's in no way healthy at all. Thank god the game is not balanced or designed around this kind of mindset.
Then on to the issue of Reapers, which brings up another great example. When they first did the Reaper changes people were making just as big of a shit storm as they are making for the current changes. But now people are actually complaining about Reaper harass? This speaks volumes for how fickle the community is and how silly it is that they complain about every damn thing without trying the changes themselves. This is the exact thing that frustrates me and the reason I'm responding to this post. Even though people should have learned from the past, they still make the same mistakes, and go on complaining about everything when things didn't turn out how they expected last time either.
Also, the OP's Reaper complaints show a bit of ignorance about the balance of the game as well. Because if they go with a heavy harass based strat such as reapers in to hellbats they are sacrificing the strength of a mid game push significantly, leaving them vulnerable to aggression. Something that the OP goes on to say is a good thing in the next paragraphs. The strat being discussed has very big weaknesses that could be exploited, and isn't a problem in balance atm.
Widow mines in TvZ aren't a problem either. The harass can be deadly if you aren't ready for it, but can easily be countered if you scout and prepare for it, as it should be. Contrary to your claims you CAN be aggressive on a player that uses them for defense, it just requires micro. Likewise if the mines are microed well and have good placement they can be useful against Zerg. In both cases they require micro for both players (and not just drop one and forget) so what's the problem?
Let's not even get in to all the multitudes of ways that your proposed change of Overseer tech would be unhealthy for the game and unbalanced in every matchup, giving easy denial of tech strats for the early game that have the potential to ravage enemies early game, and far more powerful scouting with changelings, and by far the earliest mobile detection in game. Every matchup would be ravaged.
Also the claims that Zerg lost early game aggression... I'm a Zerg player who has off raced Terran a bit since HotS. Zerg did not lose early game aggression in any way, our early game aggression is even stronger than it was in WoL and we have more options than we did before. The ZvT matchup is an amazing matchup atm, probably the best in the game, and definitely way more exciting than it was in WoL. It honestly sounds like you aren't a Zerg player because if you were I doubt you would be claiming those things, which brings up the subject as to why you are complaining about balance of a race you dont play?
The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
This right here, I'm getting seriously fucking tired of people complaining the whole time about things when they don't even have beta access, the patch was well done, it wasn't inelegant, it wasn't inefficient, it solved the problem and didn't break either unit, well done to Blizzard for achieving this.
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
Well people use the word elegant because it brings the discussion to a really subjected debate about how the game should be balanced. A synonym for elegant is artistic or artful, which pretty much what most of the arm chair game designers argue they could add to the game. Artful balance and design, which they claim is lacking from SC2 and the balance therein. However, if you read a lot of the posts careful, most of the arm chair game designers offer no real solutions to the balance issue, but just double down and claim that the problem runs deeper in the “core design” of the game. If you ask them how that could be fixed, they say provide a bunch of abstract things that could be done to change the game, like “reward positional play” and “allow for more skillful gameplay that allows for a high skill ceiling”. Of course, when broken down, these phrases solve nothing and do not address any specific balance problem. But it does allow you to endlessly argue that SC2 is flawed because of a number of abstract reasons.
“Elegant balance and design” is a phrase used by game design philosophers who, like traditional philosophers, deal in the abstract rather than the practical.
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Because you only need functioning brains combined with the willpower to use them + Show Spoiler +
compared to "saving them for later" while not using them
to analyze the game and find the really big flaws in the whole design philosophy behind SC2. Obviously you must be open minded enough to allow yourself to think about such things ...
Everyone knows that things play on different in-game than they do on paper. To really understand a problem with the balance OR the design of the game, you have to have experience with it. Especially in an RTS game, because RTS games are not based unit-for-unit, instead they are balanced upon timings and counters.
By your logic, then the lead balance and lead game designers of SC2 don't even have to play the game, and that's completely illogical to say the least.
Especially many of the complaints you have stated specifically. You have brought up balance complaints when you know nothing about the balance - watching a game doesn't give you a chance to develop a strategy to counter a certain composition. You have brought up design problems, when you aren't even familiar with the problems. Hell, I even caught you multiple times not even aware of the current balance changes! All these things show you are completely unqualified to participate in a discussion about balance or design.
I've never studied the medical field. Although I did do quite a bit of googling on problems myself or my family had in the past. I've watched some webmd videos. If I decided to go volunteer at the VA hospital would I be qualified to participate in a discussion with the doctors, and furthermore argue with them that I know better than them, the people who have personal experience with the discussed medical problems?
Quite obviously you are right in that the Battle Hellions arent the real problem, but that doesnt change the fact that the last two patches have been rather dubious and highly specific changes which add more rules to the game and make it more complicated ... rather than the reverse. KISS ... its as easy as that. Blizzard is simply putting in too many special conditions and the game would be much better if it had fewer of those ... even if that means not putting in fancy new units.
I can understand some complaints about the spore changes to bio being a very specific change. But the cargo changes are in NO WAY the same situation.
As I stated before, if you haven't fought Hellbat strategies yourself, if you haven't tried to come up with a strategy to counter the usage of them dozens of times, you don't know what the real problem is with the strategy.
Me and my training partner had dozens of matches. We experimented different things. We used the new feature to take control of replays. Doing this we tried to come up with strategies to counter the specific strategy from the earliest point that you are able to scout it. Even in best case scenarios, it was extremely random due to how early the drops came (earlier than you can even have 6 Roaches out). Even if you drop a spine and spore crawler at each base, it was still random. The biggest culprit of this was that each Medivac could hold 4 Hellbats. You could literally trap unitsby dropping bats on each side of them.
Another problem was Hellbats vs Roaches that early in the game were a nearly even battle. Sure, Roaches are supposed to be strong vs Hellbats, and their range is supposed to be longer. But the part that isn't listed on paper, is if you are microing Roaches w/o speed upgrade, they can still hit you with their attack while you are kiting due to the little bit of a delay in the Roaches attack speed. So it's a near trade ON TOP of the fact that you are losing workers.
And as I said, it was extremely random. If you watch the resources lost after a harass, even weak harass resulted in Terran losing less resources than the opponent.
This solution isn't confusing, because units reguarly have different cargo sizes. It's no harder to learn than any other unit in the game.
Also many people are under the impression that Hellbats and Hellions are the "same unit". Even you Rab, as you are still calling them Battle Hellions. But the part you guys don't realize is that they are (mostly) different units. Nobody changes them in mid battle. Because they take 4 seconds just to switch forms, and actually slightly longer because of the animation delay, and during this time they are still as squishy as a Hellion. Even at the Factory you could build either a Hellion or a Hellbat. In effect they are basically different units. It's not even comparable to Tanks because of the difference in range, if you try deploying a Tank they go from low range to high range, Hellions go from higher range to minimal range. To get close enough for them to attack after changing forms you will get them killed. You need to treat them as different units, not the same ones.
Again I need to stress, the cargo changes are not a "special condition". They are just a cargo type for a different unit. That's like saying Corruptors and Broodlords are the same unit. Even if they developed a way to revert Broodlords in to Corruptors, they would still not be the same unit. That's all it comes down to from a balance and design perspective.
And if you have a problem with the "logic" of it, then try applying suspense of disbelief to every other unit in the game first, then come back to Hellion. You will find many more severe problems. If they really need to come up with a way to justify being able to heal them in Hellbat form and not Hellion form, they can do that if it would really make you feel better. But it's not worth the time for them since the important part is the balance of the game. If you'd like I can do it for you: In Terrans studying the Zerg larvae and how they evolve, they discovered a way to combine their mechanic technology with organic tissues and developed the Hellbat as a half-living organic battle suit. Happy now?
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
It's not about whether things "look" elegant. The term has simply been used so I won't have to drill in the details why a modification is good or bad. I do not have a problem with a hellbat taking more cargo space as long as it addresses the problem. In fact if it really solves all issues; it will be an "elegant" solution to the hellbat drop problem. However as pointed out by the OP; the terran mech tech tree can actually use some modification. Another modification is the new spore +bio damage which was a result of poor design choice. I'll qoute Ben... on this as he really pointed it out:
On February 15 2013 03:41 Ben... wrote: It feels like both with the muta patch and the hellbat patch, Blizzard has got into a cycle of breaking things then breaking other things or doing oddball patches in an attempt to unbreak them rather than simply revoking the bad patch and trying something else.They completely wrecked ZvZ and turned it into a muta war with the muta patch so instead of putting mutas back to how they were or buffing them in a different way that would maybe prevent muta wars they did that awkward patch to spores for ZvZ, then they also had to buff phoenixes to make it so Protoss didn't die to mass muta every game, but because of the buff is still forces muta vs. Protoss into being a really weird matchup where Protoss has to get mass phoenixes or starve and die because they can't expand or move out.
So, wait, by your own admission, you don’t have a problem with the change itself as long as it gets the job done? So you want argue the “artistic merits” of the new balance changes? I mean, that’s is what these arguments are all about. If the balance changes have “natural lines” and if they are easily comprehended by the viewer and player. That flow of the balance and progression of the match ups are pleasing to peoples expectations of the gameplay and feel natural.
I mean, people can have that argument, but I would rather just play more SC2.(Can’t now, on break at work).
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: First I would like to note that it's really messed up that multiple of the people having complaints about this don't even play the beta. It's been really frustrating lately that you can't even have a logical debate/conversation with people here because they like to comment on balance of a game that they haven't even played and act like they know better than the people who do.
While I can understand some debate on Patch 13 (even though after fitting OL Speed in to my build order it's making a much bigger difference than I thought it would, and so far I've countered Mutas pretty well with Spore/Hydra - seems these changes have better results during testing than in theory) I disagree with the complaints about patch 14 completely.
Contrary to the complaints, Hellbats alone aren't the problem. How many times have you felt it was impossible to deal with Hellbats that marched across the map? That's not asking if you have ever lost to a push that involved Hellbats, that's asking if it seems impossible to deal with. They are easily counterable if used in that fashion. This indicates that Hellbats alone are not the problem.
The complaints about their cost of only minerals is pretty silly too. And this is coming from a Zerg player (when all Zergs units who counter Hellbats cost gas). You can't expect each race not to have their own advantages and disadvantages, and I wouldn't want to take this advantage away. This is more similar to BW balance where Vultures didn't cost gas either, while having different strengtths they were used for harass in every matchup and were completely game changing in some.
A lot of people have claimed the Medivac Thrusters are the problem, if that's the case then how come every other unit in the game isn't problematic when you patch them in to Medivacs? This makes it obvious that the problem isn't Medivacs, and Hellbats alone aren't a problem without Medivacs.
So whats the problem? It's their synergy. But the synergy between them DOES require a bit of micro, so it can be a good thing. That's why the change they did actually WAS an elegant change. It kept the synergy between the 2 units in the game, made it require EVEN MORE micro, it delayed the tech for the same early aggression enough for it to be defendable but still viable with good micro, and it didn't nerf the base units at all (which aren't havent issues in other circumstances).
I also find complaints about Hellbat supply silly. A lot of people try to attack this change for its "logic" and act like that has any basis on game balance or game design decisions, when it's neither. Considering it's relativity to everything else in the game, this is nothing but a nitpick. Where is the logic in fitting Thors in to a medivac, for fitting only 8 marines when you would be able to fit far more of them in a single vehicle? Where is the logic in Zerg cargo?
Let's not get it twisted, cargo size is NOT for the "logic", it's for the balance of the game, plain and simple. This is exactly why the change makes sense - because it's the best thing for balance. Anyone claiming this change is bad balance or bad game design should be ashamed of themselves because they aren't valuing either of those 2 ideals. Your suspension of disbelief is for some reason not applying to the cargo changes, but your still suspending your disbelief of dozens of other illogical things that happen in the game, because it's a game and not a simulation, and you have to suspend your disbelief in every game to sacrifice for game design and balance. Otherwise Battlecruisers would block the entire field and destroy as many units as 4 nukes can every time they came crashing to the ground.
I also find the arguments of the OP poorly thought out. He says "but now only 2 Hellbats can fit in a Medivac in arguably one of the most illogical, and inefectual, ways to nerf Hellbat drops". How could you say it's ineffectual? Have you actually played against it since patch? It's much easier to hold off. And I already explained the problem was with the synergy between the two units. This means it IS a logical change. It nerfs the synergy between the units, makes it come out at a later timing for the same amount of aggression, while still keeping it as a viable strat, just later in the game and requiring more micro. All the other people here who have proposed fixes would not accomplish all that this change did, and would cause other balance issues in the game. It's the most logical idea that anyone has discussed here... I don't understand how people could be so ignorant that they complain about things without actually testing them, or without actually analyzing what the actual problem is with the strategy...
Also the argument in the OP about "If Blizzard wants to retain the current power level of the Hellbats, then the problem Blizzard has to address is the timing of the Hellbat drops and the tech advancement of the Terran race."... That's exactly what this nerf did!!! How can you not see that? For a 4 hellbat drop it used to get in to the enemy base at 6:30, now you can get a 4 hellbat 2 medivac drop in the base at 7:12. This is directly addressing the timing of the drops. This is also in line with the early aggression for the other races as well. This shows how illogical this entire topic is, when it's masking itself as if it's discussing logic and good game design. Even the changes that were healthy for the game design and logical get complained about, and the arguments against them are completely illogical.
Then look at how the OP claims the problem is one thing, and then other posters claim it's other things. From Hellbats themselves, to Medivacs, to Terrans tech advancement. So apparently every aspect of the race is a problem. And people have problems with every other race too. People just complain about everything and it's in no way healthy at all. Thank god the game is not balanced or designed around this kind of mindset.
Then on to the issue of Reapers, which brings up another great example. When they first did the Reaper changes people were making just as big of a shit storm as they are making for the current changes. But now people are actually complaining about Reaper harass? This speaks volumes for how fickle the community is and how silly it is that they complain about every damn thing without trying the changes themselves. This is the exact thing that frustrates me and the reason I'm responding to this post. Even though people should have learned from the past, they still make the same mistakes, and go on complaining about everything when things didn't turn out how they expected last time either.
Also, the OP's Reaper complaints show a bit of ignorance about the balance of the game as well. Because if they go with a heavy harass based strat such as reapers in to hellbats they are sacrificing the strength of a mid game push significantly, leaving them vulnerable to aggression. Something that the OP goes on to say is a good thing in the next paragraphs. The strat being discussed has very big weaknesses that could be exploited, and isn't a problem in balance atm.
Widow mines in TvZ aren't a problem either. The harass can be deadly if you aren't ready for it, but can easily be countered if you scout and prepare for it, as it should be. Contrary to your claims you CAN be aggressive on a player that uses them for defense, it just requires micro. Likewise if the mines are microed well and have good placement they can be useful against Zerg. In both cases they require micro for both players (and not just drop one and forget) so what's the problem?
Let's not even get in to all the multitudes of ways that your proposed change of Overseer tech would be unhealthy for the game and unbalanced in every matchup, giving easy denial of tech strats for the early game that have the potential to ravage enemies early game, and far more powerful scouting with changelings, and by far the earliest mobile detection in game. Every matchup would be ravaged.
Also the claims that Zerg lost early game aggression... I'm a Zerg player who has off raced Terran a bit since HotS. Zerg did not lose early game aggression in any way, our early game aggression is even stronger than it was in WoL and we have more options than we did before. The ZvT matchup is an amazing matchup atm, probably the best in the game, and definitely way more exciting than it was in WoL. It honestly sounds like you aren't a Zerg player because if you were I doubt you would be claiming those things, which brings up the subject as to why you are complaining about balance of a race you dont play?
The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Ahh...that's the stuff.
True Tip: Play some HOTS!
It is majorly fun and the recent patches just made it overall better to play. To get a better experience and insight, play random. You will see that:
1) the hellbat fixed was actually a pretty "slick" fix and doesn't affect how it works in the main army 2) free siege tech makes perfect sense for a siege unit - want siege unit build siege unit 3) widow mines are very dynamic units and creates interesting play with its 3 second burrow (and the upgrades IS actually useful) 4) spores buff made defensive hydra/infestor play viable while a player with better muta control can still take games 5) zerg has no problem with early widow mines (you can already see them...just run 1 zergling in and you may pass) or any real need for early mobile detection 6) reapers are actually way better than it ever was. the trade off between damage and speed is at a fun state.
I won't get into protoss because the OP is specifically talking about T and Z. One thing I agree with the OP is that the blue flame will rarely be upgraded. Whether that is a problem is blizzards call on how they want the game to be. Blue flame to hellions is like cloak to banshees, you can use them to harass without it, but it'll make the harass stronger and requires more to defend it. Other than for that purpose it won't be used. I do feel that hellbats w/ medivacs are a bit overly strong early on against zealots and zerglings and makes you not want to build any zealots/zerglings as long as hellbats are on the field. Perhaps a fix would make the blue flame upgrade give the (+5 vs light) to hellbats as well and make hellbats do 18 + 7 light preupgrade.
Also, TBH the bio tag and healing doesn't bother me, a marauder is also a guy in a mechanical suit...so is the marine actually.
OK... so I was expecting to see some analysis on things like "bio tag on a unit morphed from a car" or "too many damage/armor types in the game" after reading the thread title and the opening line. Instead you made a lengthy post about how hatch tech Overseers would have a similar effect on TvZ as hatch tech spore+overlord speed.
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
I do think that using the term "fundamental design issues" generally means you don't know what you're talking about. What often happens is that someone points out what he dislikes about the game, then adds the meaningless comment of "fundamental design issue" at the end to make it more ominous. A game is just a set of rules that end up creating gameplay, any particular ruleset might not give you the gameplay you like, but that's not the fault of the game, that's just a mismatch in expectations. (similar to music taste, really) And if enough people dislike something about a game, then that's cause for alarm, that's about it.
Elegant and inelegant are dangerous terms, since everyone will have different standards and different definitions of it, so obviously there's a risk for the discussion to devolve into arguing about semantics. Mind you that some people think that chess is an example of incredibly inelegant design thanks to all the different rules for the units, and they'll go post on chess forums that Go is the more elegant and better game, whereas I personally consider such debates annoying.
Furthermore, balance in a competitive game is something that's impossible to get right. Either you use bandaids or you accept that you won't have decent balance or even good gameplay. This would even include different armor types, a good example of bandaid fixes to allow units to work in exactly the way we'd like them to.
Personally I think that one should aim for, say, a solid foundation and then a sort of varnish on top of it to obscure all the slight imbalances. (Of course, this is very abstract and it's not something I can really use in an argument, as something the game measurably fails at. ) In this sense it's okay to come up with all these complicated rules for the hellbat, just to get it to work. I have some misgivings, however: varnish should only be applied to a finished product, this early in the metagame for HotS, such a set of specific rules for the hellbat seems like it would leave strange artifacts once the metagame progresses.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
I don't see what's the big deal of +damage to shield or +damage to bio. It's not unnatural. It's not like the +damage to bio or +damage to shield is anything new. Archons have +damage to bio. EMP is practically +damage to shield. removing 100 shield....same thing. Technically widow mines attacks are spells to begin with so you can just think of it as a rocket that does damage with a mini emp shell attached. These changes aren't any weirder than what is already in the game.
There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this. It won't happen but anyone without a replay I take with a grain of salt and a rip of a bong. To many illinformed posts going around and its aggrivating to those who want to help Blizzard and help SC2 become even better. There will still be stupid posts but at least we can say hey your silver and in your replay you clearly did not even see the medivac coming a mile away and drop BH in your mineral line, and then the silver player can't spew BS like he is GM.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc.
BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about.
How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain...
On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote: There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this.
On February 15 2013 07:11 Thieving Magpie wrote: Between emp mines and overweight hellions Blizz is chucking flavor out the window
This really doesn't actually mean anything at all.
The added damage to shields on widow mines was to make them actually good against toss again without making them crazy, crazy strong against zerg and terran. The big thing with the mines is that the only race before that patch they were useless against was Toss and if anything it was against Toss that they needed to be good. They couldn't even kill a damn zealot :p
After the patch I've definately found a lot more use for widow mines in TvP (I play Tank/Hellion/Hellbat/Viking) and it's great. I finally have a support unit that can defend against flanks, although I would prefer if it was 1 supply. My army always suffers because of it and having them close to my army causes more minedrags than good :p
Flavour doesn't matter. Game balance does.
They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote: They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
I agree with the some of the OPs thoughts, especially the point about free seige tech. Somebody please tell me, what problem exactly did that change solve? compare that with the problems that it undoubtedly created for the other races. Now tell me how a hellion transforming into a hellbat gives it biological properties. Its like they took these retarded ideas and forced themselves to create the illusion of balance by constantly tinkering with a broken formula. I have no expectations at all for how I think this expansion is going to do. Also, did they not say that they were going to try to break up the deathballs, make mech viable in tvp, and (i guess they didnt say this, but its a reasonable expectation) and make lategame zerg more than broodlord infestor? What posetive changes have we seen in regard to any of those concepts? absolutely none if you ask me, I think if anything its gotten worse.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc.
BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about.
How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain...
On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote: There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this.
That would be marvelous.
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
One of the things I am sensing beneath many people's posts is the concern with the damage system not being sophisticated enough to handle the different types of relationships between units that Blizzard wants.
On the critiques of "armchair designers" and "fundamental design issues" + Show Spoiler +
Now whether or not this is actually an issue is something that one could label a "fundamental design issue" and with that in mind, it could use another look (just like everything from warpgates to high ground mechanics, macro mechanics and resource income might also require a look). Now for many of these, Blizzard has said that they are happy with how they operate, and that means that Blizzard will not consider changing those things, even if they happen to be flawed.
Ideally, Blizzard would be (ideally, would have been, during WoL alpha/beta) trying to take into account how these base design assumptions affect the game and if they noticed things that were not working well they would opt to change them in HotS or LotV. But no one sees this because they assume the foundation of their game is 100% solid without actually knowing for sure (many fans/players, not just "armchair designers" would argue that it is not).
So back to my original point: a good bonus damage system might require a revamp, allowing more sophisticated and precise unit interactions. But we'll never know because Blizzard has refused to test it.
As an example, they could add a building armor type (why are all buildings armored?), or add different armor types beyond light/armored/massive, and also tidy up the modifiers that they have (psionic, biological, shields, mechanical, robotic, etc). It's weird if the bio modifier exists only for 1 or 2 units bonus damage. Those types of modifiers should be reserved for abilities mostly.
One of the interesting things about Broodwar was that, while it was archaic in many ways, it allowed units with different types of damage to do different amounts of damage to different armor types. So a colossus could do (as a very crude example), (15+10)*2 vs light, (15+5)*2 vs armored, and finally, only 15*2 vs massive. It doesn't even have to be that complicated: they just need to get a system in place that is flexible and simple enough to offer a solution to almost any set of issues. Once you leave the established framework, it becomes weird and people start wondering why the shield modifier suddenly exists (even though it originally existed in beta for the colossus).
On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote: They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
Rather than specific units doing bonus damage to other unit types, there were damage types that did different damage to specific unit classes. Explosive damage, concussive damage and standard damage were a few of the damage types. I am not as much of an expert in the damage types, but most some units took reduced damage from specific damage types. SC2 does the reverse, where some units take more damage from other units, which is pretty much the same thing, but easier to wrap your head around.
On February 15 2013 07:26 Plansix wrote: I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
It's pretty debatable whether or not BW was simpler. Yes +dmg is nice because you can calculate/memorize it easierly, but the size/dmg type relationship didn't have as much mix and match overlap. 100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting. With +dmg you also give up the advantage of having 3 levels of damage (the 100/75/50 relationship BW damage types had) that give more control. It's too cumbersome to give a unit 20 damage +10 heavy +5 light.
On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote: They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
-Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks -Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units -Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units -Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc.
BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about.
How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain...
On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote: There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this.
That would be marvelous.
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc.
BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about.
How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain...
On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote: There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this.
That would be marvelous.
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible.
Well if that's true, it kinda dumb. Hidden systems suck, are confusing and raise the learning curve on the game. It's bad for everyone.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc.
BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about.
How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain...
On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote: There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this.
That would be marvelous.
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible.
Well if that's true, it kinda dumb. Hidden systems suck, are confusing and raise the learning curve on the game. It's bad for everyone.
I'm just saying that people would not have been happy with 70 to large, 35 to medium 17.5 to small.
On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote: They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
-Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks -Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units -Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units -Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units.
etc...
That's not etc.. like it's some complex system. You have 4 damage types, 3 sizes, and each damage type does 100% to one size, 75% to another, and 50% to a third. Then a single exception for shields. By comparison the list of units with each +dmg type and units with that type is much larger.
If I ask you how many auto-attacks do 100% damage to zerglings in BW it'd be far easier to think of all the concussive & normal damage units in the game than it would be to look up every single unit in SC2 and list all the ones that either have +dmg to bio, +dmg to light, or no +dmg to anything (thus doing 100% dmg to zerglings). The %s run into issues more with understanding upgrades and calculating # of hits to die, which is important, but hardly more complex.
I agree with a lot of the op's points. There's been an eleventh hour attempt by the hots team to make the widow mine and hellbat band aids capable of covering every weakness Terran has in both bio and mech. While this isn't bad in and of itself, there are just too many weaknesses to cover... The result is a hellbat that needed to be buffed in odd ways to help both mech and bio, and nerfed in strange ways (cargo space) to make up for its borderline op stats, which themselves were necessary to force mech into being viable vs toss despite the lack of inherent bonus damage vs shields (a key factor in making bw mech viable, with vultures not being so hard countered by goons and tank's explosive damage able to shave off tons of zealot health).
Simple fact is that toss units are simply larger and less vulnerable to splash than the other races... Without an "all bonus damage applies fully to shields" rule, this presents an insurmountable problem: you can't balance mech, with its reliance on splash, vs toss without making it op vs Zerg. Blizz is trying to get around this by turning hellbats into a "biomech" unit - a sloppy solution. The cargo size change, meanwhile, is yet another symptom of the fact that hellbats are much better than hellions in nearly any scenario - possibly too good for their cost.
Its hard to find ways to fix the inherent problem of mech v toss without falling back on brood war concepts: specifically, the bonus damage vs shields. Damage "types" are not much different from bw -> sc2, so I dont see any reason to focus on them; its the shield damage that matters here. One thing that might work is slightly reducing the splash radius and increasing the attack damage of mech units - while taking care not to create problems like tanks 1 shotting infestors. This would make mech more viable on the back of tanks, hellions and reduce pressure on hellbats, mines to "do work" in this matchup, with the result that the mine buff vs shields and hellbats crazy stats could be toned back. And then cargo size could also be rolled back....
With a more solid foundation, you don't need as many complex, unit specific rules and workarounds to create balance.
On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote: They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game.
Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
-Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks -Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units -Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units -Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units.
etc...
That's not etc.. like it's some complex system. You have 4 damage types, 3 sizes, and each damage type does 100% to one size, 75% to another, and 50% to a third. Then a single exception for shields. By comparison the list of units with each +dmg type and units with that type is much larger.
If I ask you how many auto-attacks do 100% damage to zerglings in BW it'd be far easier to think of all the concussive & normal damage units in the game than it would be to look up every single unit in SC2 and list all the ones that either have +dmg to bio, +dmg to light, or no +dmg to anything (thus doing 100% dmg to zerglings). The %s run into issues more with understanding upgrades and calculating # of hits to die, which is important, but hardly more complex.
I don't think Brood War is the gold standard of elegant game design. Which I think demonstrates why such words are tricky: because we like a game we want to use it as an example of elegance, even if there might not be anything about BW that makes it particularly so.
Zerg has hardly any modifiers. In HotS only corruptors and banelings seem to have damage bonuses. I think this shows that a game need not have a complicated bonus system, you can have units be strong vs each other without specifically encoding it in the game as a rule.
On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote: I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really?
Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters?
Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand.
Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout.
It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL.
It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining.
On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote: To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with.
Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate...
All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head.
You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes.
+damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false.
They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now. At least if you learn the unit types and what units happen to have bonus damage then you can get a general sense of how units should counter each other.
It starts to feel like they're abusing their own system a bit though when they want to buff spores vs mutas specifically in ZvZ, but to work within their ruleset they're only allowed to buff it vs a whole unit type, which conveniently works out because spores never touch any other bio fliers. The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that.
On February 15 2013 07:37 Logo wrote: 100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting.
Disagree. Because that's simplifying how BW worked.
Sure it was 100% damage to shield, but all the damage types had different ratios for all the different unit sizes.
It's a lot easier to remember X damage to shield, rather than this attack does X damage to shield, X damage to small, X damage to med, X damage to light, for every unit type.
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote: Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now.
The modifiers were +35 to shield, and +15 vs bio. How could u act like that's any different from all the other modifiers in the game? You gave examples of some, how could u act like they haven't added other modifiers?
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that.
So it's weird and unprecedented to be influenced by Brood War, in a game and expansion that takes a lot of influence from Brood War? How do you figure?
On February 15 2013 07:37 Logo wrote: 100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting.
Disagree. Because that's simplifying how BW worked.
Sure it was 100% damage to shield, but all the damage types had different ratios for all the different unit sizes.
It's a lot easier to remember X damage to shield, rather than this attack does X damage to shield, X damage to small, X damage to med, X damage to light, for every unit type.
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote: Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now.
The modifiers were +35 to shield, and +15 vs bio. How could u act like that's any different from all the other modifiers in the game? You gave examples of some, how could u act like they haven't added other modifiers?
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that.
So it's weird and unprecedented to be influenced by Brood War, in a game and expansion that takes a lot of influence from Brood War? How do you figure?
Because dude, +15 bio on an SC2 archon is so much harder to remember than -7.5 to medium and -15 to small unless you get upgrade--in which case you get even more fractions as now you're looking for 25% of a +3 attack as well as 25% of a +9 attack.
I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
On February 15 2013 09:25 Falling wrote: I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
Moving shot is not elegant. But neither is move cancels and hit boxes in fighting games.
I think people are unhappy and, because its unclear to them how to properly lash out, they lash out at whatever is most visible and recent. For example, the problem with BW having moving shot and SC2 not having moving shot is not that Moving Shot is needed in a videogame; the Moving Shot allowed people to "out-skill" someone with a maneuver that is not gained from planning, but is gained from practice. People miss that they old days when "build order losses" could be salvaged if your opponent forgot to micro since "he's pretty much won anyway" and you overcome the deficit because of mechanics like moving shot, or because the RNG of high ground allowed your tank to survive 6-7 tank shots allowing you to win the fight. Or because your opponent was bad at moving his army and so random dragoons suddenly wandered out to the wilderness to be killed off by your pack of lings slowly whittling down the advancing protoss deathball.
The moving shot, the high ground, the cargo size of the Hellion--those are all arbitrary things that people complain about because it seems comforting to attack something that looks present and visible. But its actually a much deeper hurt that is being hidden.
On February 15 2013 07:25 Aveng3r wrote: I agree with the some of the OPs thoughts, especially the point about free seige tech. Somebody please tell me, what problem exactly did that change solve? compare that with the problems that it undoubtedly created for the other races. Now tell me how a hellion transforming into a hellbat gives it biological properties. Its like they took these retarded ideas and forced themselves to create the illusion of balance by constantly tinkering with a broken formula. I have no expectations at all for how I think this expansion is going to do. Also, did they not say that they were going to try to break up the deathballs, make mech viable in tvp, and (i guess they didnt say this, but its a reasonable expectation) and make lategame zerg more than broodlord infestor? What posetive changes have we seen in regard to any of those concepts? absolutely none if you ask me, I think if anything its gotten worse.
It makes opening mech in TvP a hell of a lot safer and this is coming from someone who tank/hellion/viking'd all the way through WoL as well as tank/hellbat/hellion/viking since I got a betakey.
On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote: Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish.
This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this?
It's not about whether things "look" elegant. The term has simply been used so I won't have to drill in the details why a modification is good or bad. I do not have a problem with a hellbat taking more cargo space as long as it addresses the problem. In fact if it really solves all issues; it will be an "elegant" solution to the hellbat drop problem. However as pointed out by the OP; the terran mech tech tree can actually use some modification. Another modification is the new spore +bio damage which was a result of poor design choice. I'll qoute Ben... on this as he really pointed it out:
On February 15 2013 03:41 Ben... wrote: It feels like both with the muta patch and the hellbat patch, Blizzard has got into a cycle of breaking things then breaking other things or doing oddball patches in an attempt to unbreak them rather than simply revoking the bad patch and trying something else.They completely wrecked ZvZ and turned it into a muta war with the muta patch so instead of putting mutas back to how they were or buffing them in a different way that would maybe prevent muta wars they did that awkward patch to spores for ZvZ, then they also had to buff phoenixes to make it so Protoss didn't die to mass muta every game, but because of the buff is still forces muta vs. Protoss into being a really weird matchup where Protoss has to get mass phoenixes or starve and die because they can't expand or move out.
So, wait, by your own admission, you don’t have a problem with the change itself as long as it gets the job done? So you want argue the “artistic merits” of the new balance changes? I mean, that’s is what these arguments are all about. If the balance changes have “natural lines” and if they are easily comprehended by the viewer and player. That flow of the balance and progression of the match ups are pleasing to peoples expectations of the gameplay and feel natural.
I mean, people can have that argument, but I would rather just play more SC2.(Can’t now, on break at work).
Indeed but what I'm pointing at is that it's not just the "shape" of game that changes from one design to another it actually affects the game play. It's beyond just achieving balance after all; checkers and chess are both really balanced games but there is a huge difference between one and the other. Specifically; the flow of the game and the abilities do affect gameplay too.
On February 15 2013 07:25 Aveng3r wrote: I agree with the some of the OPs thoughts, especially the point about free seige tech. Somebody please tell me, what problem exactly did that change solve? compare that with the problems that it undoubtedly created for the other races.
You misunderstand. You are thinking on a unit for unit basis.
As I mentioned earlier, the state of balance in RTS game isn't really about the balance of the units towards each other.
The units strength is just to determine which units can counter which other units. The reason for the siege tank research being moved earlier is because it affects the timings of the game. As long as the units base role and functionality are in place, the timings are the most important thing that has to be addressed for balancing the races in matchups.
Look at things from a timing perspective and you will see that it starts to make sense. Even with a harass type opener, you can get the first tank out and in to siege mode around the 7min mark (if you are using the new Hellbat harass with 2 medivacs, slightly later - this is one reason the hellbat harass was problematic before, you used to be able to do the 4 hellbat harass and still get a tank out at 7 mins). 7 mins matches up with the timings of early aggression from the other races (7 Burrow Roaches, 10 non-burrow Roaches, Protoss gateway timing pushes). This allows them a method of defending if they scout the opponent and choose to go a defensive build rather than aggressive.
When looking at TvP there was 2 choices. Either balance the units, or balance the timings. First check if any of the enemy units are causing problems in ALL matchups. This explains the Void ray supply nerf. Then you will look at if any of your own units are lacking in all matchups, in this case if they were to look at Tanks, they are not lacking in the other matchups (in TvZ they completely counter most tech before T3). Then you will look at the timings. In which case tweaks of timings would actually be beneficial for siege tanks in all three matchups.
Now tell me how a hellion transforming into a hellbat gives it biological properties. Its like they took these retarded ideas and forced themselves to create the illusion of balance by constantly tinkering with a broken formula.
Your masking this as a balance complaint but your complaint is about if it's logical or not, rather than a balance complaint. The change was for gameplay reasons, not to make sense from a logical standpoint. As I said in an earlier post, if you really want them to come up with some lore to justify it, they can - this is a sci fi setting you can come up with a justification for nearly anything - in my earlier post I came up with one in seconds.
Also, did they not say that they were going to try to break up the deathballs, make mech viable in tvp, and (i guess they didnt say this, but its a reasonable expectation) and make lategame zerg more than broodlord infestor? What posetive changes have we seen in regard to any of those concepts? absolutely none if you ask me, I think if anything its gotten worse.
Yet another person that indicates they don't even play the beta.
Nearly every new unit (aside from the protoss ones) discourage deathballs. The changes to most existing units discourage deathballs, and most units with non-caster AoE got buffed (which counter deathballs). Mechs received a number of buffs and most of the strong TvP specs involve mech. And most of all, BL/Infestor isn't even an ideal strat anymore. Infestors were the most nerfed unit in HotS, and BL/Infestor isn't nowhere near as viable as other strats.
On February 15 2013 09:25 Falling wrote: I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
Moving shot is not elegant. But neither is move cancels and hit boxes in fighting games.
I think people are unhappy and, because its unclear to them how to properly lash out, they lash out at whatever is most visible and recent. For example, the problem with BW having moving shot and SC2 not having moving shot is not that Moving Shot is needed in a videogame; the Moving Shot allowed people to "out-skill" someone with a maneuver that is not gained from planning, but is gained from practice. People miss that they old days when "build order losses" could be salvaged if your opponent forgot to micro since "he's pretty much won anyway" and you overcome the deficit because of mechanics like moving shot, or because the RNG of high ground allowed your tank to survive 6-7 tank shots allowing you to win the fight. Or because your opponent was bad at moving his army and so random dragoons suddenly wandered out to the wilderness to be killed off by your pack of lings slowly whittling down the advancing protoss deathball.
The moving shot, the high ground, the cargo size of the Hellion--those are all arbitrary things that people complain about because it seems comforting to attack something that looks present and visible. But its actually a much deeper hurt that is being hidden.
I don't think I was saying moving shot was elegant- or at least the coding that allowed it probably wasn't. Although, if you ignored the 'under the hood' it was certainly amazing to execute and amazing to observe. I'm not sure I would put cargo size the same category with how a unit behaves at the movement level. When we're breaking down burst shot vs extended dps, time between attacking and moving, cooldown between attacks, etc we're getting pretty deep. To go deeper I guess you could look at economics- how quickly income is accumulated and spent. Speed of max and remax relative to the distances between bases and number of bases. But I guess that's a bit of a tangent.
But certainly the size that a unit takes up in a medivac is pretty periphery unless all we are doing is tweaking the game.
I'd honestly rather everything in the game be imba.
also I didn't really feel hellbats were all that imba anyways (it also hasn't been 3months+)
as for "elegant or inelegant" design/balance, idk I don't really care as long as the game itself becomes "balanced", but it takes awhile to know if it is or not.
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Because you only need functioning brains combined with the willpower to use them + Show Spoiler +
compared to "saving them for later" while not using them
to analyze the game and find the really big flaws in the whole design philosophy behind SC2. Obviously you must be open minded enough to allow yourself to think about such things ...
Everyone knows that things play on different in-game than they do on paper. To really understand a problem with the balance OR the design of the game, you have to have experience with it. Especially in an RTS game, because RTS games are not based unit-for-unit, instead they are balanced upon timings and counters.
By your logic, then the lead balance and lead game designers of SC2 don't even have to play the game, and that's completely illogical to say the least.
It is NOT illogical, because you havent understood the point of this thread. Its about "too complicated design" versus "elegant and streamlined design making things easier". Its not about "is this unit balanced?" but rather about "is this method they employ to make it balanced too complicated or not?" To figure out if something is balanced you kinda need to play the game, but to see that they needlessly complicate things you dont.
On February 15 2013 03:20 Spyridon wrote: The fact that you need someone else to post it on the Blizzard forums basically proves what I was saying earlier... that you don't even play the beta yet are complaining about balance. Why is that even allowed on these forums?
Because you only need functioning brains combined with the willpower to use them + Show Spoiler +
compared to "saving them for later" while not using them
to analyze the game and find the really big flaws in the whole design philosophy behind SC2. Obviously you must be open minded enough to allow yourself to think about such things ...
Everyone knows that things play on different in-game than they do on paper. To really understand a problem with the balance OR the design of the game, you have to have experience with it. Especially in an RTS game, because RTS games are not based unit-for-unit, instead they are balanced upon timings and counters.
By your logic, then the lead balance and lead game designers of SC2 don't even have to play the game, and that's completely illogical to say the least.
It is NOT illogical, because you havent understood the point of this thread. Its about "too complicated design" versus "elegant and streamlined design making things easier". Its not about "is this unit balanced?" but rather about "is this method they employ to make it balanced too complicated or not?" To figure out if something is balanced you kinda need to play the game, but to see that they needlessly complicate things you dont.
Your last sentence sums things up exactly.
To figure out if its balanced you need to play the game, and you have been one of the loudest screamers on the HotS forum about balance. And you don't play the game.
And you talk about needless complicated. You have stated on this forum that you would have designed SC2 like BW with just 3 or so new units for each race (if youd like I can search through and quote it, but I don't want to waste the time). Meanwhile, BW's damage system was more complicated than this one (see above discussion in this topic for why).
It seems in the end you just want to complain about every aspect of SC2's design, and you switch up topic as it suits you, no matter how much it contradicts your earlier statements.
Elegant in this sense is silly to argue about. Everyone on this forum is going to have a different idea to what "elegant game design" is. And apparently you have misread the topic, because it's clearly stated where its balance vs design. Which is a perfect example of what I just said - your definition of elegant is different from others here.
And when it comes to game design, most the people here don't even know what that means... Especailly with how people here are tossing the words around. A games design, and a games design theories, are two very different things, and 90% of the peoples design complaints are actually balance complaints that has nothing to do with the design.
@Spyridon the damage systems may be six of one and half dozen of the other, but you have to admit that hellbat has turned into one odd duck. The only equivalent I can think of is if Tanks in attack mode were bio and could be healed and you could fit 2 in a drop ship and in siege mode they couldn't be healed, but instead could be repaired and now you could only air lift one of them with a drop ship.
Granted they can change the game however they want, give labels however they want. But of all the ways to balance out a unit... it becomes exceedingly odd. The two modes are diverging so much as to be two separate units in one. A sort of Clark Kent-Superman thing. It would be fun if in the next step, you could buy the vehicles at different prices. Hellions cost mineral, but buy them in hellbat mode and they're cheaper on minerals and more gas heavy. Or maybe they cost different supply depending on what mode you were in- bump up to 220/200 by switching modes You could do it, but why? Surely there is a better solution.
On February 15 2013 19:12 Falling wrote: @Spyridon the damage systems may be six of one and half dozen of the other, but you have to admit that hellbat has turned into one odd duck. The only equivalent I can think of is if Tanks in attack mode were bio and could be healed and you could fit 2 in a drop ship and in siege mode they couldn't be healed, but instead could be repaired and now you could only air lift one of them with a drop ship.
Granted they can change the game however they want, give labels however they want. But of all the ways to balance out a unit... it becomes exceedingly odd. The two modes are diverging so much as to be two separate units in one. A sort of Clark Kent-Superman thing. It would be fun if in the next step, you could buy the vehicles at different prices. Hellions cost mineral, but buy them in hellbat mode and they're cheaper on minerals and more gas heavy. Or maybe they cost different supply depending on what mode you were in- bump up to 220/200 by switching modes You could do it, but why? Surely there is a better solution.
Well, but isn't that what they have been going for? I mean, just because the transformation does not cost any resources and is reversable - they are two different units with different stats and roles. Seems like the "Hellbats are not a new unit" - whiner-propaganda was very succesful.
Why is there always a huge wave of QQ with each new feature and how it applies to mineral line raiding? Why don't they just boost worker HP and reduce worker damage to fix this forever?
People are allowed to disagree on aspects of design and how they're implemented to achieve balance, but frankly you've done nothing but disagree as opposed to offering anything thoughtful or constructutive. I never once mentioned Reapers as a point of design or balance in my OP other than to say you have to choose between Proxy Reapers or keeping your Barracks at home in order to build a Reactor for 2xMedivacs, other than that I don't see anything else in your rant worthy of addressing.
And yes I've played the Beta, it's just not on my account.
On February 15 2013 09:25 Falling wrote: I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
Elegance is subjective and it's not something easily defined within the context of game design, I'd define it as having simplicity of form and complexity of play. There are just certain things that I personally feel are ugly as a game designer and as a player, a unit that has two separate cargo values in two different forms for the sole purpose of game balance just seems unnecessarily confusing and more of a "band aid" fix.
Maybe some people think it's a clever nerf because it only affects Hellbat drops, and that's all they wanted it to affect, but I have a suspcion the unit in and of itself is still imbalanced based on its power level or how its accessed inside of the Terran tech tree. Time will tell on that I suppose.
On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote: Terrans can still circumvent the nerf by building a Reactor on the Barracks, exchanging the Reactor with the Factory for 4 Hellions and then exchanging the Reactor with the Starport for 2 Medivacs and have an equivalent drop
Yeah, no. Stopped reading there. Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote: Terrans can still circumvent the nerf by building a Reactor on the Barracks, exchanging the Reactor with the Factory for 4 Hellions and then exchanging the Reactor with the Starport for 2 Medivacs and have an equivalent drop
Yeah, no. Stopped reading there. Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
I get it comes 40 seconds later in exchange for the 2nd Medivac, my point is the drop still exists in a timing that's precarious. If the drop completely falls out of favor as a result of the nerf so be it, I'm still seeing people try the 4x Hellbat drop on the ladder as of now.
On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote: Terrans can still circumvent the nerf by building a Reactor on the Barracks, exchanging the Reactor with the Factory for 4 Hellions and then exchanging the Reactor with the Starport for 2 Medivacs and have an equivalent drop
Yeah, no. Stopped reading there. Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about.
I get it comes 40 seconds later in exchange for the 2nd Medivac, my point is the drop still exists in a timing that's precarious. If the drop completely falls out of favor as a result of the nerf so be it, I'm still seeing people try the 4x Hellbat drop on the ladder as of now.
You miss the important things:
1) The Hellbat drop could be played of 1 gas. This isn't possible if you need 2 Medivacs. 2 Gas highly limits your mineral income, which results in being unable to get a CC behind it.
2) Even before the Hellbat drop was very all-in in the sense that you could do heavy economic damage, but at the same time were VERY weak to counter attacks and your units lacked the ability to outright kill your opponent in a way a Roach/Gateway all-in could. Trust me, I lost countless games in which I killed 20+ workers but lost to MS Core + Gate units or Roach/Ling a minute later.
3) Switching the reactor to the Starport leaves you with even less production. You would have literally nothing but your drop and a naked Rax and Factory. Almost any amount of units would be able to kill you and despite being a 1/1/1 build the transition possibilities are very awkward due to the lack of add-ons.
Really, at this point playing a Hellbat drop is simply retarded.
Elegant or not, they need to fix the problems in the beta. It's too expensive and time consuming to make elegant redesigns, in order to please wanna be game designers in the community. HOTS is fun to play, but maybe it will have a lot of problems when it comes out. You can hate and theorycraft all day, but it's still too early to tell how good HOTS will be design-wise. The game has to be released and cannot remain in beta for another year. Not to mention the unit overhauls and UI changes that were made in the last few months. I think Browder's team are doing the best they can given the circumstances and I believe that HOTS will be a very good game. Chill and enjoy the game.
On February 15 2013 23:30 Inex wrote: Elegant or not, they need to fix the problems in the beta. It's too expensive and time consuming to make elegant redesigns, in order to please wanna be game designers in the community. HOTS is fun to play, but maybe it will have a lot of problems when it comes out. You can hate and theorycraft all day, but it's still too early to tell how good HOTS will be design-wise. The game has to be released and cannot remain in beta for another year. Not to mention the unit overhauls and UI changes that were made in the last few months. I think Browder's team are doing the best they can given the circumstances and I believe that HOTS will be a very good game. Chill and enjoy the game.
I am with this guy. This entire discussion is based on style over substance, which I don’t agree with in a practical topic like balance. If people want to talk about a more streamlined user inter face, curser labels that better show what changes you are making during game play(ie a + sign when added units to a control group, - sign when removing), graphs that show during replays and other awesome stuff, I am all about it. However, these discussions of “could there be a better solution to balance” are self indulgent and detract from the general discussion of HotS itself. I like talking about game theory and design as much as the next guy, but these discussions have dominated the forums for way to long.
I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all?
On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote: I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all?
Because people want things to "make sense" in a game where 20 dudes on the ground with machine guns can somehow bring down a fully armed battlecruiser larger than a city block, where emps drain away ancient alien psychic crystal energy, and where alien bug monsters eat gas to transform into different kinds of alien bug monsters.
On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote: I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all?
The whole point of "elegant game design" is that it does NOT have "balancing adjustments for specific situations" ... because it doesnt need it. Such a game is far easier to balance.
As an example you might want to think about how the unit size and the tight clumping affects the balance between Marines and Stalkers for example. Since the Marine is much smaller you can clump more of them in the same area and this increases their "dps density" for the area occupied by the units and gives the Marines a clear advantage. In small numbers it is the Stalker which has the advantage. To "cover up" this bad design Blizzard had to add the Forcefield and Blink to make Stalkers - with their current stats - viable and any better stats would clearly make them too strong in a "few vs few" situation. The tight unit clumping and massive numbers of units which are easily produced is a clear example where bad design makes balancing harder.
How do you "figure in" stuff like Forcefield and Blink in a balance equation? That is a pretty hard one, because playing skill affects the outcome and thus shifts the balance with your rank on the ladder ... which is kinda bad. Thus simpler game design which is streamlined to be equally hard for all levels of skill is better AND far easier to balance. Just look at how many balance adjustments the game had until now (in WoL) and it still isnt stable ... because balance hangs on a knife's edge all the time instead of being robust.
Elegant game design = simple and robust balancing Complicated-situation specific game design = precarious knife's edge balance that is hard to achieve
With robust balancing the map makers have far more freedom to be creative. An example: super narrow paths close to the main base or between bases two and three are kinda "impossible" because Protoss can easily abuse them with Forcefield. Without that spell it wouldnt be a problem to have such features on a map.
On February 15 2013 19:12 Falling wrote: @Spyridon the damage systems may be six of one and half dozen of the other, but you have to admit that hellbat has turned into one odd duck. The only equivalent I can think of is if Tanks in attack mode were bio and could be healed and you could fit 2 in a drop ship and in siege mode they couldn't be healed, but instead could be repaired and now you could only air lift one of them with a drop ship.
Granted they can change the game however they want, give labels however they want. But of all the ways to balance out a unit... it becomes exceedingly odd. The two modes are diverging so much as to be two separate units in one. A sort of Clark Kent-Superman thing. It would be fun if in the next step, you could buy the vehicles at different prices. Hellions cost mineral, but buy them in hellbat mode and they're cheaper on minerals and more gas heavy. Or maybe they cost different supply depending on what mode you were in- bump up to 220/200 by switching modes You could do it, but why? Surely there is a better solution.
I had the idea of a "Warcraft 3 solution" where you could buy a Hippogriff and then mount an archer on it to get a whole new unit. Hellion + Marine = ??? Hellion + Marauder = ???
Hellions are powerful, but they have one weakness: their attack is shaped in a line, which means they get maximum efficiency when they flank OR when the opponent runs away. Battle Hellions dont have that "weakness" and combining them with the drop potential makes them rather powerful for dropping right into a clump. Theoretically they have the weakness of being slow, but Medivacs neutralize that one.
The whole problem started with a few "special goodies" like the turbo boost for the Medivac and the ability to heal Battle Hellions. The last one is rather illogical, because the driver is the same in Hellion mode too. Sure they can decide to put into the game whatever they want, but that these things will cause problems was clear from the start.
On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote: I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all?
The whole point of "elegant game design" is that it does NOT have "balancing adjustments for specific situations" ... because it doesnt need it. Such a game is far easier to balance.
As an example you might want to think about how the unit size and the tight clumping affects the balance between Marines and Stalkers for example. Since the Marine is much smaller you can clump more of them in the same area and this increases their "dps density" for the area occupied by the units and gives the Marines a clear advantage. In small numbers it is the Stalker which has the advantage. To "cover up" this bad design Blizzard had to add the Forcefield and Blink to make Stalkers - with their current stats - viable and any better stats would clearly make them too strong in a "few vs few" situation. The tight unit clumping and massive numbers of units which are easily produced is a clear example where bad design makes balancing harder.
How do you "figure in" stuff like Forcefield and Blink in a balance equation? That is a pretty hard one, because playing skill affects the outcome and thus shifts the balance with your rank on the ladder ... which is kinda bad. Thus simpler game design which is streamlined to be equally hard for all levels of skill is better AND far easier to balance. Just look at how many balance adjustments the game had until now (in WoL) and it still isnt stable ... because balance hangs on a knife's edge all the time instead of being robust.
Elegant game design = simple and robust balancing Complicated-situation specific game design = precarious knife's edge balance that is hard to achieve
With robust balancing the map makers have far more freedom to be creative. An example: super narrow paths close to the main base or between bases two and three are kinda "impossible" because Protoss can easily abuse them with Forcefield. Without that spell it wouldnt be a problem to have such features on a map.
Balancing is hard because the game has 3 COMPLETELY different races. Things like chess and TvT are inherently balanced because both players have the SAME tools. if you want a game that is simple to balance just give everyone the same units. On the other had there is no such thing as an elegant game design that has simple and robust balancing the moment different races are introduced. This is the reason seemingly arbitrary rules are put into place are to account for these differences
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
Because they're value judgements, but if you read the commentary in the Patch 14 thread I think you can clearly see a consenus of people who think that the nerf is "ugly." There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Stop and consider that last suggestion for a moment, if Hellions could no longer transform into Hellbats and Hellbats were a separate unit produced from the Factory, then there would be no incongruities between the unit being biological, taking up 4 spaces in a Medivac and not being able to use Infernal Pre-igniters and Blizzard would have far more knobs to turn when designing the unit, from unit cost to unit build time to whether or not it could be produced from a Reactor or required a Tech Lab etc.
The idea isn't even new, the original concept for the Hellbat was a Factory produced Firebat in the WoL Beta, but as soon as they decided to get "cute" with an unnecessary "Transformers" theme they made the unit design that much more difficult to balance. And while I'm not saying it can't be balanced, I think it shows you how the "ugliness" of a car that transforms into battle armor can just overly complicate matters for little pay off.
On February 16 2013 00:31 arcHoniC wrote: I really cant understand how the hell people freak out about changes that will only effect a specific situation. This is A GAME. you make ARBITRARY rules so that things are fair. If the game is fair then why do you give a shit at all?
The whole point of "elegant game design" is that it does NOT have "balancing adjustments for specific situations" ... because it doesnt need it. Such a game is far easier to balance.
As an example you might want to think about how the unit size and the tight clumping affects the balance between Marines and Stalkers for example. Since the Marine is much smaller you can clump more of them in the same area and this increases their "dps density" for the area occupied by the units and gives the Marines a clear advantage. In small numbers it is the Stalker which has the advantage. To "cover up" this bad design Blizzard had to add the Forcefield and Blink to make Stalkers - with their current stats - viable and any better stats would clearly make them too strong in a "few vs few" situation. The tight unit clumping and massive numbers of units which are easily produced is a clear example where bad design makes balancing harder.
How do you "figure in" stuff like Forcefield and Blink in a balance equation? That is a pretty hard one, because playing skill affects the outcome and thus shifts the balance with your rank on the ladder ... which is kinda bad. Thus simpler game design which is streamlined to be equally hard for all levels of skill is better AND far easier to balance. Just look at how many balance adjustments the game had until now (in WoL) and it still isnt stable ... because balance hangs on a knife's edge all the time instead of being robust.
Elegant game design = simple and robust balancing Complicated-situation specific game design = precarious knife's edge balance that is hard to achieve
With robust balancing the map makers have far more freedom to be creative. An example: super narrow paths close to the main base or between bases two and three are kinda "impossible" because Protoss can easily abuse them with Forcefield. Without that spell it wouldnt be a problem to have such features on a map.
Balancing is hard because the game has 3 COMPLETELY different races. Things like chess and TvT are inherently balanced because both players have the SAME tools. if you want a game that is simple to balance just give everyone the same units. On the other had there is no such thing as an elegant game design that has simple and robust balancing the moment different races are introduced. This is the reason seemingly arbitrary rules are put into place are to account for these differences
Balancing becomes needlessly hard due to the design decisions of Blizzard. That should be clear from the "Marines vs Stalkers" example and production speed boosts plus a high economy really combined with unlimited unit selection and automatic tight formation movement create this problem. With a lower economy, forced spreading of units while they move and a selection limit of 12 units you wouldnt have that kind of problem. It isnt the three races only ...
In big battles even the "high tech" Stalkers become "throw away and replace" units and that is caused by this high economy nonsense they chose to have for the game. Being able to quickly replace your units has become more important than tough units and how often have we heard from commentators that a Terran mech player cant afford to lose his tanks? How are they balancing the economies? Are they figuring in the production speed boosts into the balancing at all? Does it make sense to have different "timings" where race X has a production speed boost triggering while the other races dont have theirs yet? Does a later and bigger production speed boost make up for that or does it create too many "dont let them get there" strategies?
The game would be far easier to balance without any production speed and economy boost ... Many have whined about the MULE and it is the reason why there are zero gold minerals on maps anymore (except KeSPA, but they are new to that). Sure you would have fewer units, but then the game is more about your playing skill instead of your macroing skill. Watching a 2v2 battle of Zerglings vs Zerglings and have one player win that by keeping both his Zerglings alive is awesome. Watching endless waves of disposable units crash into each other is becoming boring after some time.
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
It's hard to get because most people think with their eyes. Doubling the size of a button = Big Change Changing a two-digit number to a two digit number = Small Change
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote: With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
My god, I would have loved to read the reviews. A modern game releasing with limited unit selection for the sole purpose of making the game harder enough for the tiny, hard core community that loved their previous games. Also, it doesn't support wide screen displays, because it gives the player to much of a viewing window and they need to limit what they can see. Also, the minimap is still shit, because thats the way it was before. All unit stats, held in a basic text file 7 folders deep in the system section.
Lets bring this all back to 1999, when everything was terrible and no one played videogames because they were like that.
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
The worst part about it is the whole community is flipping shit over this stuff.....
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak.
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak.
The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs.
On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote: With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
On February 15 2013 23:51 awesomoecalypse wrote: I'm not convinced that anyone has offered a coherent definition of "elegant" beyond "something I like", nor am I convinced that there is any correlation between so-called "elegance" and a game being well balanced and fun to play.
There are more simplistic ways to balance Hellbats, be it changing their DPS, their damage arc or even eliminating the Hellion transformation and making Hellbats their own unit produced from the Factory that are more congruent than what they are doing now for a lot of people.
Changing the cargo space in a medivac is so fucking simple. Changing DPS???? are you fucking serious. That changes the interaction with EVERY UNIT IN THE GAME. They isolated the problem which was hellbat DROPS and changed the variable that affected its power, cargo space. Holy crap it is so damned simple its unbelieveable.
Don't you see? It doesn't matter if the unit becomes garbage, what's important is elegance.
Seriously though, if the OP is actually suggesting that nerfing hellbat DPS is the correct way to fix the drop issue, might as well close the damn thread already.
Agreed. If people want to lower the DPS of a battle hellion, they need to make a better argument than it kicks ass in drops. If people want to say they are to powerful because they do the damage of a zealot in an AOE, I am willing to listen. Or they do to much damage to structures, which is also a point. In fact, if they did less damage to buildings as a whole, that could be an intresting flaw to the unit. But the current argument against them is pretty weak.
The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs.
On February 16 2013 02:17 Big J wrote: With a selection limit of 12 blizzard wouldn't have that problem... because the game would be dead.
Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
Rabiator, you don't play in the beta by your own admission, so I fail to understand why you continue to argue in these threads. The only real reason I can see is that you like shit on Blizzard and argue with people who are trying to discuss the game. A lot of people agree that the medivac speed likely needs a second look, but it is a good ability in concept and needs to be refined with either slower speed, acceleration or a longer cool down. The healing may no longer be an issue now that the number of hellions is limited.
On February 14 2013 21:39 MoonCricket wrote: ...TvZ has lost a lot of early aggression options for Zerg in HOTS that really takes away from the race's versatility in the match up.
And the same thing happened to Terran with an unmerited queen change which made the MU go from the most balanced state it's ever been in (statistically) to completely lopsided with no options for terran other than 3 CC builds or huge zerg blunders.
So if you want to preserve versatility in the matchup, you're way late with that son.
This sounds like a whine thread to be honest. Another player who isn't happy about blizzards design choices. What's the point of these threads exactly? For us to agree with you and hope blizzard does too? if you want to comlpain about something then post on the b.net forums, TL should not be the place to discuss balance or why X sucks and why Y needs to be changed to Z. I'm sorry to break it to you, but it's blizzards game, if they think overlord speed and hellbats should be the way they are, then that's the way they are. Believe me, it would be nice to have lurkers and T1 hydras and medics and vultures again, but do you see me making a thread about it?
The most important changes will come when more pros are playing HotS and Blizzard is able to see how the game plays out in a competitive scene.
Since the beta is pretty much done, we should be discussing ways to deal with the current balance rather than trying to change it. And we need to quit thinking that our view of the game is "superior" to blizzards, it doesn't matter if it is, blizzard will balance the game how they like.
Do you guys know why in D&D lore elves are immune to Ghoul paralysis, but not to Ghast (simply a bigger, meaner ghoul) paralysis?
It's because of the tabletop strategy game Chainmail
Elves were very expensive troops. Ghouls were cheap. Ghoul paralysis allowed them to beat Elves especially efficiency-wise and they were generally the preferred army so Elves were made immune as a balance move. And they still are in D&D 3.5e.
Not sure if this has come up but why no issues with scvs which are both healed and repaired but the hellbat are a design issue in people minds(note I'm not talking about balance just the idea of them being healed).
On February 16 2013 03:44 FLuE wrote: Not sure if this has come up but why no issues with scvs which are both healed and repaired but the hellbat are a design issue in people minds(note I'm not talking about balance just the idea of them being healed).
Because SCVs are magic and all the people complaining every noticed before.
On February 16 2013 02:42 Rabiator wrote: The damage doesnt cause the problems ... being able to turbo-boost a Medivac through the range of a turret and thus forcing wayy more to be built to be safe against something that might not come does. That same Medivac being able to heal a tankish AoE unit creates even more problems. These "specific changes" have created problems and one of them is even specific to the Battle Hellion already. The prudent way would be to take out the healing and think hard about the speed boost for Medivacs.
That is NOT the problem. You don't even play the beta how come you are acting like you know the problem better than the people who do?????
If the problem was medivac being able to "turbo boost through turret fire" then it would be having problems with other units. Nerfing the turbo boost is a bigger change that needs a lot more testing before even thinking about, because it would hurt Medivacs synergy with all other units in the game.
There isn't even a problem if you play right now. It's fixed.
How come every single suggestion people come up with, such as the ones you just listed, would harm those units with other compositions? That's why they are not good solutions, furthermore making them not an elegant solution, since they are affecting balance on a more global scale.
Like I mentioned earlier, everyones opinion of elegant is different. You stated your opinion of an elegant solution and it would affect balance of other units. In my opinion, a fix that actually pinpoints the exact problem without nerfing either of the units in any other situation, sounds like a pretty damn elegant solution to me.
Browder can declare anything as "cool" and fanboys will follow.
And the people actually playing the beta can inform the people not playing that the problem is pretty much fixed, and the haters who don't even play the beta will follow...
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.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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?
Damn, Idra says a terran/protoss unit is too powerful? Better nerf it!
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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?
Damn, Idra says a terran/protoss unit is too powerful? Better nerf it!
IdrA's opinion on balance and such is worth listening to.
Personally I thought the 4 supply cargo medivac change was one of the simpliest and most elegant yet. The unit looks different, moves different, fires different, has different health, I don't get why its weird that it also has different supply in a cargo hold.
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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?
Damn, Idra says a terran/protoss unit is too powerful? Better nerf it!
IdrA's opinion on balance and such is worth listening to.
And to be taken with a grain of salt as well, like every other professional player, because they all have an ax to grind.
On February 15 2013 03:45 Umpteen wrote: Sometimes an inelegant solution is the only one precise enough to do the job.
With (new) Blizzard is in charge, apparently yes. The gameplay is what matters the most, but seriously you gotta wonder how things went so bad. I dont think Blizzard has any clue as to what theyre doing by now. Best we can do is to cross our fingers, and hope they dont mess it up too badly. One can only hope...
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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?
Damn, Idra says a terran/protoss unit is too powerful? Better nerf it!
IdrA's opinion on balance and such is worth listening to.
IdrA is probably the last pro gamer I would listen to about balance... He is a good player and knows the game well, yes can't argue that... But he is also one of the biggest whiners on the face of the planet if we listened to his points about balance there would be only be Zerg left....
On February 16 2013 05:12 Grumbels wrote: 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?
Damn, Idra says a terran/protoss unit is too powerful? Better nerf it!
IdrA's opinion on balance and such is worth listening to.
IdrA is probably the last pro gamer I would listen to about balance... He is a good player and knows the game well, yes can't argue that... But he is also one of the biggest whiners on the face of the planet if we listened to his points about balance there would be only be Zerg left....
Thats stupid. Idra might be baised, but he needs the game to be a succes since its what he does for a living. If the game is unbalanced he will lose his job. Not something he wants. Idra IS a whiner, but thats part of his personality AND his 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.
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.
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.
Also, WTF are you people talking about it doesnt seem right about the hellbat needing more capacity because it doesn't make sense. You are retards. The BC in the cinematics is like 10000times bigger than it is in the game. Is that odd? The ultralisk surives like 15 tank shots and zerglings rape marines. This is about balance not what makes fucking sense. Please contribute something other than your personal thoughts on elegance.
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.
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.
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 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What does that have to do with them being healed by medivacs, but also being able to be repaired?
Why marines and marauders can't be repaired? They are obviously guys in a mechanical suit much like SCV.
Its all madness. Its like the label have nothing to do with reality and are just their for balances purposes. I mean, I can't play a game that labels a jet fighter as light along with a guy who wears armor and lights with laser swords on his hands.
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.
What does that have to do with them being healed by medivacs, but also being able to be repaired?
Why marines and marauders can't be repaired? They are obviously guys in a mechanical suit much like SCV.
Its all madness. Its like the label have nothing to do with reality and are just their for balances purposes. I mean, I can't play a game that labels a jet fighter as light along with a guy who wears armor and lights with laser swords on his hands.
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.
What does that have to do with them being healed by medivacs, but also being able to be repaired?
Why marines and marauders can't be repaired? They are obviously guys in a mechanical suit much like SCV.
Its all madness. Its like the label have nothing to do with reality and are just their for balances purposes. I mean, I can't play a game that labels a jet fighter as light along with a guy who wears armor and lights with laser swords on his hands.
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.
On February 17 2013 11:58 Rabiator wrote: 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).
Really, it's about design and not balance? I guess that's why the word "balance" is in the title of the topic, and first sentence of the OP is discussing balance vs design decisions. Apparently you are either trolling, or lack the reading comprehension to understand that. It's about both.
This is besides the fact that the OP mentions many balance problems, and what he would have done to fix them. That is a discussion about balance, not design.
You seem to be tossing the word "design" around a lot anyway, and you are completely mis-using it. The design is the underlying theories behind the mechanics of the game. Everything that you have been naming that you think is a "design" decision is a balance decision. Same with the majority of the OP being balance decisions and not design decisions.
You also dont get the difference between morphing (an evolutionary one-way-process) and transforming (a reversible mechanical process).
As I said in my last post, call it whatever the hell you want. It doesn't change the fact that the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. If you actually had the beta you would know this by clicking a Factory and seeing the little icon for Hellbats on your command card.
You have multitudes of information showing you the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. Different names, different stats, different movement speeds, different cargo, different command cards, different pages on help, different strategy pages on the website, different training slots on a factory. Different unit.
Just to make it absolutely clear ... THIS ISNT ABOUT BALANCE!
Actually its about design and balance, even the OP said so.
Even from a design perspective, all the design decisions make sense if you consider them different units. As I said before, Blizzard considers them different units, so why don't you? They have gave you many indications of this. Stop ignoring it.
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.
That doesn't even make sense. Marauders are bigger than Marines. Ultras are bigger than Lings. In general the weaker units are smaller, tougher units are bigger. If Hellbats are tougher, why the hell would they be more compact?
I know you havent seen the animation in game, but when you change in to a Hellbat, you grow in height AND width. This is not more compact. Even though this whole "logical" argument is pointless anyway, because this is a multiplayer mode which has suspense of disbelief for obvious reasons.
You really are just trying to waste everyones time, arent you? If you think the design of the game is so bad it would do everyone here a favor if you left, because your posts aren't constructive, you trash talk strategies that you haven't even played, you go to every single topic about balance and trash talk the balance (of the game you never played) then claim your talking about design (even in topics about nothing but balance), it boggles the mind why you have been allowed to crap on so many topics. Instead of constructive topics on the HotS forum we have a bunch of people who aren't in the beta crapping up the forum and pushing down the topics that are actually informative...
On February 14 2013 22:07 Tuczniak wrote: Although I agree with most of things you wrote, having overseer at hacthery would mean too easy scouting. I don't think it would be good.
I agree with your criticism in sentiment, because I don't want to eliminate the playskill of knowing when to send in Overlords for scouting information either. However, the problem is that Zerg is the only race without access to mobile detection in the early game in order to off set the Widow Mine - Terrans can Scan and Protoss can build either Observers or Oracles much earlier than Zerg can research Lair and Morph Overseers.
I wholly disagree with this in both sentiment and logic. You can get Lair right after pool and gas if you so choose. Protoss has to invest 300 gas plus core, stargate build time for an oracle and 175 gas and core/robo build time for an observer. Terran Scan is kind of silly but it isn't going anywhere unfortunately.
So many Zergs I see now (and I say this as a former Random player who had to learn to deal with it) make the choice to go for a really quick third hatchery. If you do that, you need to be comfortable with the fact that your detection will be behind or that you'll have to make a couple preemptive spores (which I also think is a problem really, being able to make them without evo chamber). It's a tradeoff to a choice you make in game. I don't see the problem with it.
On February 17 2013 11:58 Rabiator wrote: 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).
Really, it's about design and not balance? I guess that's why the word "balance" is in the title of the topic, and first sentence of the OP is discussing balance vs design decisions. Apparently you are either trolling, or lack the reading comprehension to understand that. It's about both.
This is besides the fact that the OP mentions many balance problems, and what he would have done to fix them. That is a discussion about balance, not design.
You seem to be tossing the word "design" around a lot anyway, and you are completely mis-using it. The design is the underlying theories behind the mechanics of the game. Everything that you have been naming that you think is a "design" decision is a balance decision. Same with the majority of the OP being balance decisions and not design decisions.
You also dont get the difference between morphing (an evolutionary one-way-process) and transforming (a reversible mechanical process).
As I said in my last post, call it whatever the hell you want. It doesn't change the fact that the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. If you actually had the beta you would know this by clicking a Factory and seeing the little icon for Hellbats on your command card.
You have multitudes of information showing you the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. Different names, different stats, different movement speeds, different cargo, different command cards, different pages on help, different strategy pages on the website, different training slots on a factory. Different unit.
Just to make it absolutely clear ... THIS ISNT ABOUT BALANCE!
Actually its about design and balance, even the OP said so.
Even from a design perspective, all the design decisions make sense if you consider them different units. As I said before, Blizzard considers them different units, so why don't you? They have gave you many indications of this. Stop ignoring it.
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.
That doesn't even make sense. Marauders are bigger than Marines. Ultras are bigger than Lings. In general the weaker units are smaller, tougher units are bigger. If Hellbats are tougher, why the hell would they be more compact?
I know you havent seen the animation in game, but when you change in to a Hellbat, you grow in height AND width. This is not more compact. Even though this whole "logical" argument is pointless anyway, because this is a multiplayer mode which has suspense of disbelief for obvious reasons.
You really are just trying to waste everyones time, arent you? If you think the design of the game is so bad it would do everyone here a favor if you left, because your posts aren't constructive, you trash talk strategies that you haven't even played, you go to every single topic about balance and trash talk the balance (of the game you never played) then claim your talking about design (even in topics about nothing but balance), it boggles the mind why you have been allowed to crap on so many topics. Instead of constructive topics on the HotS forum we have a bunch of people who aren't in the beta crapping up the forum and pushing down the topics that are actually informative...
1. Did you even TRY to THINK what I meant with "this is about design and not balance"? I dont think so, so let me explain ... As you figured out yourself balance and design are connected ... or are they? Balance doesnt really have a connection to the "design style", but balancing - the verb - does. If you design a game with very complicated mechanics you will make balancing the game difficult, because you have too many variables to fiddle with. If you keep your design simple and elegant you will not have as many problems with balancing ... because there are fewer variables to fiddle with.
An easy example: The bonus damage / damage reduction systems of SC2 and BW. In BW you had fixed percentages for damage reduction of certain attacks, but in SC2 every bonus damage is specially defined. Sure you might think that you have more freedom, but that isnt really the case, because you have to think about too many variables when adjusting the damage ("How much do we increase the bonus damage and how much the base damage?") So BW damage reduction was more elegant and simpler than the one from SC2 and yet it didnt make the gameplay boring. Simple and elegant does NOT equal boring or dumbed down!
There are more examples of where Blizzard made SC2 needlessly inelegant by adding mechanics which make balancing rather hard.
2. Lets find a real life equivalent of the Hellion. I would say a "Dune Buggy with a flame thrower" sounds about right. I would say that buggy is smaller than any tank and is made up of a few bars strapped together in a rather open construction. What would be the consequence of folding that construction up into a tight walker type? Would it increase in size? If yes then where does that extra material come from and why is it tougher than the already loose dune buggy vehicle? If no, why should it require more transport space in a medivac?
Hardcounter is a bad design for sc2 in my opinion, it kinda deny the possibilities to micro. For example, there is no way zealot /ling can be micro to be more effective against hellbat. The term "micro" in Blizzard's dictionary is pull back all your units until the VR timer reach zero. Is cool but is not good.
Then the other problem is they made the game too simple in certain way, like showing health bar, timer and selecting all units with 1 hotkey. The gap between amateur and pro become so small. I do understand this is for drawing more causal players to sc2 but this kinda suck.
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Zealots dodge splash from colossi because those colossi are so advanced in technology they can make the beam go exactly around the zealot without touching it. For the sake of our poor computer handling that ingame, it is not shown as it really works, but it is shown in a more simplistic way.
Zergs avoid being damaged by their own fungal because the kind of agressive bio-organism contained in the fungal is guided by the overmind to not harm his own kind (but harm other species dissident zerg factions :D)
On the other hand, you could try as hard as you would want, you could not explain why helions becomes biological when transforming into a robot. You could say the driver of the helion remains in the combat suit of the hellbat to control it, but then once again why would medivac heal the combat suit (mechanical stuff) and not the car itself when it's transformed in a helion?
For that matter, why do queens, drones and hydralisks have odd movement speed bonuses on creep? why can't reapers use stimpacks? why don't spine crawlers lose health when off-creep if uprooted? why do tempests and battlecruisers have a different attack vs air and vs ground? why do marauders have more range than a marine, yet can't shoot air? why doesn't a hellion that shoots flame not require gas? why can you mind control purely mechanical units like probes? why does a raven have an infinite supply of turrets and drones? why don't infestors, banelings, hellions, colossi do friendly fire? why do banelings take up more space than zerglings in an overlord? how can a medivac ever carry a siege tank or a thor?
Lots of silly questions one can ask. I think some of them require nothing more than suspension of disbelief and are simply nitpicking, but others are valid; it's a judgement call I suppose.
On the other hand, you could try as hard as you would want, you could not explain why helions becomes biological when transforming into a robot. You could say the driver of the helion remains in the combat suit of the hellbat to control it, but then once again why would medivac heal the combat suit (mechanical stuff) and not the car itself when it's transformed in a helion?
In the WoL campaign, you obtain Zerg bio samples and use them to research valuable upgrades for your army. Fortified bunkers, cellular reactors, regenerative bio steel are all upgrades that affect nonbiological units/buildings but were developed with biological materials. It's not unreasonable that the Raiders, or the Dominion with its superior resources, could develop a special bio armor that can be repaired using the same nanites used to heal infantry. The armor is tucked under the Hellion's regular plating; when the Hellion converts, the plates flip around with the bio armor, which uses atmospheric gases to expand and congeal. Why doesn't the Hellion use the bio armor all the time? Why doesn't the Batmobile from the Burton movies use the 'shields' all the time? It's heavy and would take up too much space, perhaps. I mean, how exactly does the Medivac's healing beam work anyway? Those nanites have to be pretty damn effective to restore a Marine crippled to the edge of death, to full health, within a matter of seconds, or even minutes.
On February 17 2013 11:58 Rabiator wrote: 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).
Really, it's about design and not balance? I guess that's why the word "balance" is in the title of the topic, and first sentence of the OP is discussing balance vs design decisions. Apparently you are either trolling, or lack the reading comprehension to understand that. It's about both.
This is besides the fact that the OP mentions many balance problems, and what he would have done to fix them. That is a discussion about balance, not design.
You seem to be tossing the word "design" around a lot anyway, and you are completely mis-using it. The design is the underlying theories behind the mechanics of the game. Everything that you have been naming that you think is a "design" decision is a balance decision. Same with the majority of the OP being balance decisions and not design decisions.
You also dont get the difference between morphing (an evolutionary one-way-process) and transforming (a reversible mechanical process).
As I said in my last post, call it whatever the hell you want. It doesn't change the fact that the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. If you actually had the beta you would know this by clicking a Factory and seeing the little icon for Hellbats on your command card.
You have multitudes of information showing you the Hellion and Hellbat are two different units. Different names, different stats, different movement speeds, different cargo, different command cards, different pages on help, different strategy pages on the website, different training slots on a factory. Different unit.
Just to make it absolutely clear ... THIS ISNT ABOUT BALANCE!
Actually its about design and balance, even the OP said so.
Even from a design perspective, all the design decisions make sense if you consider them different units. As I said before, Blizzard considers them different units, so why don't you? They have gave you many indications of this. Stop ignoring it.
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.
That doesn't even make sense. Marauders are bigger than Marines. Ultras are bigger than Lings. In general the weaker units are smaller, tougher units are bigger. If Hellbats are tougher, why the hell would they be more compact?
I know you havent seen the animation in game, but when you change in to a Hellbat, you grow in height AND width. This is not more compact. Even though this whole "logical" argument is pointless anyway, because this is a multiplayer mode which has suspense of disbelief for obvious reasons.
You really are just trying to waste everyones time, arent you? If you think the design of the game is so bad it would do everyone here a favor if you left, because your posts aren't constructive, you trash talk strategies that you haven't even played, you go to every single topic about balance and trash talk the balance (of the game you never played) then claim your talking about design (even in topics about nothing but balance), it boggles the mind why you have been allowed to crap on so many topics. Instead of constructive topics on the HotS forum we have a bunch of people who aren't in the beta crapping up the forum and pushing down the topics that are actually informative...
1. Did you even TRY to THINK what I meant with "this is about design and not balance"? I dont think so, so let me explain ... As you figured out yourself balance and design are connected ... or are they? Balance doesnt really have a connection to the "design style", but balancing - the verb - does. If you design a game with very complicated mechanics you will make balancing the game difficult, because you have too many variables to fiddle with. If you keep your design simple and elegant you will not have as many problems with balancing ... because there are fewer variables to fiddle with.
An easy example: The bonus damage / damage reduction systems of SC2 and BW. In BW you had fixed percentages for damage reduction of certain attacks, but in SC2 every bonus damage is specially defined. Sure you might think that you have more freedom, but that isnt really the case, because you have to think about too many variables when adjusting the damage ("How much do we increase the bonus damage and how much the base damage?") So BW damage reduction was more elegant and simpler than the one from SC2 and yet it didnt make the gameplay boring. Simple and elegant does NOT equal boring or dumbed down!
There are more examples of where Blizzard made SC2 needlessly inelegant by adding mechanics which make balancing rather hard.
2. Lets find a real life equivalent of the Hellion. I would say a "Dune Buggy with a flame thrower" sounds about right. I would say that buggy is smaller than any tank and is made up of a few bars strapped together in a rather open construction. What would be the consequence of folding that construction up into a tight walker type? Would it increase in size? If yes then where does that extra material come from and why is it tougher than the already loose dune buggy vehicle? If no, why should it require more transport space in a medivac?
1) Design and balance are different things, as I've stated before, but the majority if your complaints are balance complaints and not design complaints.
Your talking like BW's system was "simpler and more elegant", but that couldn't be farther from the truth. Just because all units shared the damage types doesn't mean it was simpler, nor was it easier to understand. Every single one of the damage types had MULTIPLE ratios you had to memorize, plus special affects such as always doing full damage to shields.
Once again, elegance has a different definition depending who you are talking to. You just stated your description of elegant, which you have before, but many others (here and in the old topic you brought the same argument in to) disagree with that sentiment being elegant, and hell they even disagreed with it being simpler.
Do you really think it's easier to remember "a Ghost does X damage to small units, X damage to medium units, X damage to large units, X damage to small units with shields, X damage to medium units with shields, X damage to large units with shields"? For every single unit in the game? Compared to SC2's version of "a Ghost does 10 damage, +10 to light units".
Your ignoring the fact that SC2's version was designed with the specific intent to make it easier for players to understand because the majority of SC1 players didn't fully understand how the damage compared to other units. This, by your own definition of elegant, would be more elegant than the BW system.
2) We're not in a "real life future sci-fi" setting. We don't have mechs walking around our planet, nor do we have soldiers walking around in metal exo-skeleton suits with hydraulics. We don't know the details for how it switches from a "dune buggy" to the mech.
The only little bit of information we have is A) The animation itself makes the unit grow in size in both height and width, B) it has more HP and slower runspeed indicating more mass. So what's the logical conclusion of all this? It could by all means take more cargo space.
Who knows where the extra materials come from? They are in space in a sci-fi setting with loads of alien technology. They could have this happen in so many different ways, but it's all irrelevant unless your a lore buff. Like I said in an earlier post, you could easily explain it as researchers implemented Zerg technology in to the Hellion and allowed it to morph in to the new Hellbat units, as a Bio/Mechanical hybrid. Therefore it can be healed and grow in size. That is completely justifiable in a Sci-fi setting and fits in the current SC2 lore, but apparently that's not good enough for you...
If your going to get caught up on that, why not get caught up on hundreds of marines all somehow living in one tiny barracks, scv's being healed or repaired, bc's not doing damage when they get shot down, or the any other multitudes of unexplained things?
This is all 100% besides the point anyway, because the point is Hellions and Hellbats are 2 different units. That's the important thing no matter if you are talking about design OR balance. And from a design and balance perspective, if they are 2 different units, differences between the 2 units make sense. No matter what the lore uses as a sci-fi justification to make it work.
On the other hand, you could try as hard as you would want, you could not explain why helions becomes biological when transforming into a robot. You could say the driver of the helion remains in the combat suit of the hellbat to control it, but then once again why would medivac heal the combat suit (mechanical stuff) and not the car itself when it's transformed in a helion?
In the WoL campaign, you obtain Zerg bio samples and use them to research valuable upgrades for your army. Fortified bunkers, cellular reactors, regenerative bio steel are all upgrades that affect nonbiological units/buildings but were developed with biological materials. It's not unreasonable that the Raiders, or the Dominion with its superior resources, could develop a special bio armor that can be repaired using the same nanites used to heal infantry. The armor is tucked under the Hellion's regular plating; when the Hellion converts, the plates flip around with the bio armor, which uses atmospheric gases to expand and congeal. Why doesn't the Hellion use the bio armor all the time? Why doesn't the Batmobile from the Burton movies use the 'shields' all the time? It's heavy and would take up too much space, perhaps. I mean, how exactly does the Medivac's healing beam work anyway? Those nanites have to be pretty damn effective to restore a Marine crippled to the edge of death, to full health, within a matter of seconds, or even minutes.
I think it is pretty clear that medivacs are powered by wizards and wizards can do whatever they want. Pick up thors, check. Heal robot men with drills on their hands and flamethrowers on their heads, check. Fly faster than the speed of sound, check.
On February 19 2013 01:19 Rabiator wrote: 1. Did you even TRY to THINK what I meant with "this is about design and not balance"? I dont think so, so let me explain ... As you figured out yourself balance and design are connected ... or are they? Balance doesnt really have a connection to the "design style", but balancing - the verb - does. If you design a game with very complicated mechanics you will make balancing the game difficult, because you have too many variables to fiddle with. If you keep your design simple and elegant you will not have as many problems with balancing ... because there are fewer variables to fiddle with.
An easy example: The bonus damage / damage reduction systems of SC2 and BW. In BW you had fixed percentages for damage reduction of certain attacks, but in SC2 every bonus damage is specially defined. Sure you might think that you have more freedom, but that isnt really the case, because you have to think about too many variables when adjusting the damage ("How much do we increase the bonus damage and how much the base damage?") So BW damage reduction was more elegant and simpler than the one from SC2 and yet it didnt make the gameplay boring. Simple and elegant does NOT equal boring or dumbed down!
Lol... You don't have to fiddle with more variables. It's much easier to balance if you can adjust more variables, but you absolutly don't have to. An easy (BW-) example: If you would want to tune down the damage of Tanks vs Marines specifically to make bioplay in TvT possible and make the game better, you have to accept that the tank will also do less damage vs every other unit, or you would have to make an extra category of damage (like it was done for the Devourer), or you would have to switch the Tanks damage to normal while changing the stats. Not to mention that Broodwar had a fuckton of damage modifications as well: -) the 4 reduction calibrations: concussive vs large, concussive vs medium, explosive vs medium, explosive vs small -) normal damage, concussive vs small and explosive vs large -) ability damage -) special damage -) full damage to shields -) multiple attacks -) highground and doodad 53.125% miss modification for ranged units (but not for melee units) -) dark swarm modification (only to ranged, non-splash, non-ability; but not protecting buildings) -) firebats multiple hit attack which would trigger 3times instead of 2times against certain medium/large units (at least that's what liquipedia says) -) EMP only working vs Shields -) Maelstrom only working vs bio -) Irradiate only working vs bio -) Don't ask me how Defense Matrix influencese damage exactly. I have no clue and can't find out from Liquipedia alone. It's a very special case. ...
However, the exact damage system hardly matters in BW. The game was balanced because of the movement and selection making actual unit relationship balance irrelevant. Line movement makes it irrelevant whether Unit X beats Unit Y in certain bigger amounts for many units. It really doesn't matter that Zerglings are incredibly broken in terms of costefficientness. The 12dragoons are still better than the 12Zerglings. Even more with line movement and bad targeting/friendly blocking incredibly "nerfing" melee units.
On February 19 2013 01:19 Rabiator wrote: 1. Did you even TRY to THINK what I meant with "this is about design and not balance"? I dont think so, so let me explain ... As you figured out yourself balance and design are connected ... or are they? Balance doesnt really have a connection to the "design style", but balancing - the verb - does. If you design a game with very complicated mechanics you will make balancing the game difficult, because you have too many variables to fiddle with. If you keep your design simple and elegant you will not have as many problems with balancing ... because there are fewer variables to fiddle with.
An easy example: The bonus damage / damage reduction systems of SC2 and BW. In BW you had fixed percentages for damage reduction of certain attacks, but in SC2 every bonus damage is specially defined. Sure you might think that you have more freedom, but that isnt really the case, because you have to think about too many variables when adjusting the damage ("How much do we increase the bonus damage and how much the base damage?") So BW damage reduction was more elegant and simpler than the one from SC2 and yet it didnt make the gameplay boring. Simple and elegant does NOT equal boring or dumbed down!
Lol... You don't have to fiddle with more variables. It's much easier to balance if you can adjust more variables, but you absolutly don't have to. An easy (BW-) example: If you would want to tune down the damage of Tanks vs Marines specifically to make bioplay in TvT possible and make the game better, you have to accept that the tank will also do less damage vs every other unit, or you would have to make an extra category of damage (like it was done for the Devourer), or you would have to switch the Tanks damage to normal while changing the stats. Not to mention that Broodwar had a fuckton of damage modifications as well: -) the 4 reduction calibrations: concussive vs large, concussive vs medium, explosive vs medium, explosive vs small -) normal damage, concussive vs small and explosive vs large -) ability damage -) special damage -) full damage to shields -) multiple attacks -) highground and doodad 53.125% miss modification for ranged units (but not for melee units) -) dark swarm modification (only to ranged, non-splash, non-ability; but not protecting buildings) -) firebats multiple hit attack which would trigger 3times instead of 2times against certain medium/large units (at least that's what liquipedia says) -) EMP only working vs Shields -) Maelstrom only working vs bio -) Irradiate only working vs bio -) Don't ask me how Defense Matrix influencese damage exactly. I have no clue and can't find out from Liquipedia alone. It's a very special case. ...
However, the exact damage system hardly matters in BW. The game was balanced because of the movement and selection making actual unit relationship balance irrelevant. Line movement makes it irrelevant whether Unit X beats Unit Y in certain bigger amounts for many units. It really doesn't matter that Zerglings are incredibly broken in terms of costefficientness. The 12dragoons are still better than the 12Zerglings. Even more with line movement and bad targeting/friendly blocking incredibly "nerfing" melee units.
Yup. That's only a fraction of the special situations in the game as well. For example special cases like Devourer spores not working on Carriers, etc.
SC2 system was intentionally made simplier and easier to understand. I could understand if he wasn't aware of all this, but he has argued this point in multiple different topics, so he's more than aware of how it works by now.
I have a feeling we are all getting trolled. As I said earlier in the topic it's obvious this guy has ulterior motives. He has no reason to be in every single topic discussing balance on the HotS forum when he's not even in the beta, arguing about every balance and "design decision" in the game. Has to be either trolling or a superiority complex where he thinks his opinion (based on limited information) is fact.
oh look, big j and spyridon tag teaming in missing the point again. Just because you want to shill for a game doesn't mean you can ignore when a game has flaws, which SC 2 has many, that are at the core of its soul and will never go away without introspection on blizzard's part.
On February 19 2013 10:56 Serpico wrote: oh look, big j and spyridon tag teaming in missing the point again. Just because you want to shill for a game doesn't mean you can ignore when a game has flaws, which SC 2 has many, that are at the core of its soul and will never go away without introspection on blizzard's part.
I agree SC2 has flaws. But if you want to argue or have a debate about what they are, how about providing some evidence that is actually substantial?
Rab's argument about damage types is very debatable to say the least, all but the very most hardcore BW players knew exactly what units were better against others, even players for years didn't understand the complexities of the system.
This is besides the fact that the SC2 system does exactly what Rab said would be "simpler and more elegant".
And arguments about the lore of the unit are completely pointless when it comes to design or balance.
I have no problem giving credit to a well thought out argument about the flaws, but there is a very distinct line between pointing out a flaw, and pointless hating on every single balance, design, and lore decision in the game. Which is what he has done. Aside from his one argument about the SC2 economy (which does have some merit, although his presentation is extremely opinionated) he hasn't contributed anything constructive, and even his economy argument isn't even really very constructive since all it consists of is complaining.
How can you defend someone who doesn't play beta and has involved himself in every balance discussion with non-constructive negativity? That's spreading false negative information to say the least, and every time I see it, it makes me question why it's even allowed here, since it degrades the quality of good constructive information you can receive from this forum.
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Zealots dodge splash from colossi because those colossi are so advanced in technology they can make the beam go exactly around the zealot without touching it. For the sake of our poor computer handling that ingame, it is not shown as it really works, but it is shown in a more simplistic way.
Zergs avoid being damaged by their own fungal because the kind of agressive bio-organism contained in the fungal is guided by the overmind to not harm his own kind (but harm other species dissident zerg factions :D)
On the other hand, you could try as hard as you would want, you could not explain why helions becomes biological when transforming into a robot. You could say the driver of the helion remains in the combat suit of the hellbat to control it, but then once again why would medivac heal the combat suit (mechanical stuff) and not the car itself when it's transformed in a helion?
Um...
Medivac laser can't reach driver in Hellion. When Hellbat mode activates enough of the Driver is exposed that the nanowhatevers can get inside.
Boom.
Colossi not hurting your own units when you splash--absolutely stupid. But so would banelings/lurkers hitting your own units when you splash.
The real reason? Tank splashing allies makes for cool dynamics. Firebats not setting marines and medics on fire makes for silly dynamics.
On February 14 2013 22:54 moskonia wrote: When I first read the title I thought this will be a discussion on the way to balance a game, not balance suggestions and a whine fest. You do mention some of the design, but you're clearly not focusing on that. I suggest you try to focus on either making a suggestion or on the design of the game, cause making both makes your post pretty silly.
The idea of the thread was that Blizzard's current design solutions for the Hellbat are "ugly and illogical" and that they don't address the issues of Hellbats still being an under costed, over powered unit for the minimal tech investment of an Armory and that the Factory Tech Lab upgrades no longer have any signifigance on Terran build orders. Infernal Pre-Igniters do not affect Hellbats, and building the Armory is a more cost effective investment than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniters anyway. Siege Tech is still free, despite not accomplishing its stated goal of making Mech viable in TvP, and it has had a significant impact on early Zerg aggression in TvZ, As long as Siege Tech is not an upgrade and Infernal Pre-Igniters are an ineffectual upgrade for Hellions compared to the Armory, the Factory Tech Lab upgrades will have no sigificant role in Terran build orders compared to the Barracks Tech Lab upgrades and Starport Tech Lab upgrades.
I'm not whining, I'm a random player, this is a discussion based on how Blizzard is choosing to buff and nerf Terran and its indirect effects on the Terran tech tree and ZvT. Their decisions aren't addressing the imbalance in TvZ, from free Siege Tech affecting Zerg timing attacks to free Spore Crawlers not affecting Widow Mine's ability to stop counter attacks and that if Blizzards looks at alternatives to solving its problems, from returning Siege Tech to the Tech Lab, replacing Infernal Pre-Igniters with Transformation Servos, returning the Spore Crawler to the Evolution Chamber, moving Overseer tech to Hatchery + requires Evolution Chamber then Blizzard can institute similar changes in terms of what they want to accomplish with out arbitrary, illogical changes like 1) Hellbats, which have quivalent size and mass to a Hellion, taking up twice as much space in a Medivac 2) Infernal Pre-Igniter being an upgrade that only affects the flamethrower of one unit when it is transformed into car mode but mysteriously doesn't affect the same unit when transformed into battle armor mode 3) Zerg getting essentially free tech for anti-air and immobile detection compared to the other races having to tech to anti-air and immobile detection etc. that just make you scratch your head and say WTF.
I think you can look at the design philosphy of what they are doing as a whole, like giving Spore Crawler and Widow Mines bonus Biological and Shield damage, but size, armor and category type damage bonuses are a far cry from being clearly bad design decisions compared to a transforming Hellion that increases in size and mass, Infernal Pre-Igniters that stop working in armor mode and re-writing almost canon design decisions like researching Siege Tech or a building being required for a races anti-air, immobile detection structure. I think the balance decision are ugly, and I gave examples of how design decisions regarding the Armory, Tech Lab, upgrades and moving minor tech downwards in the Zerg tech structure will accomplish what they want better without being nearly as hideous to look at.
I'm sorry I can't address the problems in TvP in the same thread from an overall perspective of inelegant balance vs elegant design, but there's only so much one thread can address. If you think that's silly, then you're entitled to your own opinion and welcome to write something better.
Well, if you really want to get into inelegant balance vs elegant design. You have to start with AoEs and why some have friendly fire and some don't. How do zealots avoid splash from their own colossi? How to Zerg units avoid fungals from their own infestors?
Zealots dodge splash from colossi because those colossi are so advanced in technology they can make the beam go exactly around the zealot without touching it. For the sake of our poor computer handling that ingame, it is not shown as it really works, but it is shown in a more simplistic way.
Zergs avoid being damaged by their own fungal because the kind of agressive bio-organism contained in the fungal is guided by the overmind to not harm his own kind (but harm other species dissident zerg factions :D)
On the other hand, you could try as hard as you would want, you could not explain why helions becomes biological when transforming into a robot. You could say the driver of the helion remains in the combat suit of the hellbat to control it, but then once again why would medivac heal the combat suit (mechanical stuff) and not the car itself when it's transformed in a helion?
Um...
Medivac laser can't reach driver in Hellion. When Hellbat mode activates enough of the Driver is exposed that the nanowhatevers can get inside.
Boom.
Colossi not hurting your own units when you splash--absolutely stupid. But so would banelings/lurkers hitting your own units when you splash.
The real reason? Tank splashing allies makes for cool dynamics. Firebats not setting marines and medics on fire makes for silly dynamics.
I already told you guys. The Hellbat was a Hellion merged with Zerg bio-technology! It's not the driver that's getting healed, it's the bio-suit itself! :p (Gameplay + balance is typically top priority when designing the game, and then lore is developed to explain it, this explanation is just an example of that. That's why it's pretty irrelevant - especially for the multiplayer portion of the game which is even more about gameplay > logic)
But seriously... The real reason is that Tanks and Widows seem to be intended as units focused on positional advantage. Splash damage causes punishment for improper positioning.
On February 19 2013 10:56 Serpico wrote: oh look, big j and spyridon tag teaming in missing the point again. Just because you want to shill for a game doesn't mean you can ignore when a game has flaws, which SC 2 has many, that are at the core of its soul and will never go away without introspection on blizzard's part.
So where am I missing the point? Rabiator said that BWs system was simple. That was his point. Unless my english is hindering me, Im arguing that it wasnt. So right against his point.
Do I say that sc2 has no flaws? Hell no. That game is flawed as shit. God, basically any game with much stupider units could play out better if it simply gets the action/production ratio right. But that doesnt mean that I will agree with rabiators "less variables make an equation easier to solve"-bullshit while the whole scientific world solves their equations by introduction of more variables.
EPT
You could do it, but why? Surely there is a better solution. 
