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![[image loading]](http://i1046.photobucket.com/albums/b461/ImSkeptical/PhilosophyandStarcraft.jpg) If only you shot up, then Zerg would only have to build 1 unit.
The thing about studying a subject in a casual manner, as I have done with Philosophy, is you never really get to test your knowledge. There’s no end of semester exam, no major essay or project, so you can never really tell if you’ve learnt anything. So I thought I’d try flexing this intellectual muscle on that other intellectual exercise, Starcraft. Hopefully out of the wall of text I create, you’ll find something of interest.
So how does Philosophy relate? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be about the meaning of life and all that jazz? Are you just bringing it up to be all elitist and bourgeois? Well yes, but don’t we all enjoy being pretentious and special, I mean, isn’t that why we’ve all gravitated to this unique hobby? But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. And why do I think we need to think about this in relation to balance, specifically that of Starcraft 2? Well because talk about it is rampant on this forum, so clarifying what everyone is trying to communicate is of utmost important. By bringing to light underlying assumptions about what we mean by the term balance, we can proceed to critically examine and discuss them.
So right of the bat, balance is good. Everyone agrees that balance leads to fun, and if the game isn’t balanced, we aren’t going to have much fun. Let us examine why. First of all, we are all aware balance does not equate to fun, you can have a balanced game, but have it dead boring, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. But what balance allows for is competition. A perfectly balanced game allows us to attribute the player directly to his performance. Here we find what I think everyone will agree as the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment. Effort, commitment, practice, inherent skill, positive mindset, these are all seen as the virtues of any player, amateur or professional. This idea, of performance in the game being a direct reflection of your person, I think is the underlying assumption of what we mean by a balanced game. We could use some other dirty definition like, players having equal chance of winning, but I think that introduces a game like playing heads or tails. Clearly not what we want.
But now we have a problem, several in fact. I’ll start with the most pressing matter. These qualities, practice, inherent skill, etc., are subjective, as in there is no way to measure them. Seeing as how that is the foundation of how we would ideally like to define balance, this leaves us with no direct measure of the concept. So does this mean it’s impossible to tell if a game is balanced? Some of you right now might be going, “Oh yeah, Philosophy. Proving the earth doesn’t exist and all manner of nonsense. I know how to tell if a game is balanced”. Well you’re right. We can tell if a game is balanced. Why? Because language doesn’t have any inherent meaning, we as humans just give it meaning after the fact. Just because it is ambiguous what balance actually looks like, doesn’t mean we don’t know it when we see it. We have a general idea of what it’s supposed to look like, and we slap the term balance to it. Perfectly fine, unless we want to go into greater depth, and who doesn’t have time to waste?
So what methods can we employ to identify balance? The most common, and the one given most credence to here on TL is argument from authority. Though a negative sounding term, it’s really not that bad. Essentially, the more experienced the player and the higher the skill level, the more weight we give to their opinion. Once again, not a bad way of going about it, the top players are those that have put in the effort, who have the skill; their opinion is therefore much more likely to be well informed. Furthermore balance at the top level is what is valued most due to all us spectators. However we must be aware of why we put weight behind their views, and thus are able to still remain critical of the views they present. Just because they are a top player, does not mean they are immune to being wrong. They might be seeing the game purely from a closed meta-game, where roaches and hydras are the only effective units. They might be misinformed or ignorant about certain mechanics or strategies that allow for different styles of play. They might be angry after successive losses and be writing out of emotion. He could simply be coming up against better players. All these should be kept in mind in examining any claim, especially your own. In fact I would’ve written more here on personal claims, but the newest forum rules express guidelines more than adequate, and has stoped from posting those beyond help.
![[image loading]](http://i1046.photobucket.com/albums/b461/ImSkeptical/PhilosophyandStarcraft2.jpg) A post count like that demands respect.
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics.
![[image loading]](http://i1046.photobucket.com/albums/b461/ImSkeptical/PhilosophyandStarcraft3.jpg) Dare we argue with Science???
So these two sources can’t give us a definitive hold on the elusive concept of balance. It seems like we’re never going to get there. And now I bring up the mindset on balance promoted by people like the much respected Day [9]. We should stop caring so damn much. With so many variables it is ridiculously hard to claim the game is imbalanced or balanced, let alone a single unit. The article “Power Overwhelming” I was a huge fan of, as it makes a point I don’t think emphasised enough. Overpowered units are fun to watch and play. It’s that game that needs to be balanced. The fact that half the balance of Starcraft isn’t amongst units but amongst the timings those units can come out, something that is contingent upon when people build them in their builds, and thus is something that will shift and shift from paradigm to paradigm as Starcraft 1 is still doing, holy crap.
![[image loading]](http://i1046.photobucket.com/albums/b461/ImSkeptical/PhilosophyandStarcraft4.jpg) How did we ever come to think 200 supply, fully upgraded Terran mech was balanced?
This does not mean I want discussion on the forum to stop in relation to balance. It would just be nice if instead another mindset was taken, one focusing on what we as a player can actually do to deal with a problem. First make the assumption that the game is already balanced. Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill.
Unless every single Protoss only rushes Motherships for more than a month, then we might have issues.
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The Responding Walls of Text You Might Enjoy
+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 22:33 Prog wrote:Show nested quote +[...]Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill. It might seem at first glance, that we can't change the game sc2, but we might change the language game by speaking of "x should be F" or "y is P" and part of the language game will be Blizzard. The point of judgements in a language game like "sc2 balance" is not to give precise statements about the current balance, is about (re)defining the rules of the language game by creating rules of using terms in that language game intersubjectivly. The rules of language games are not private (as Wittgenstein showed in the Philosophical Investigations), they are found while playing the language game together. You can see that in every balance discussion in every game: Someone caims x is too strong/too weak/whatever and others react to that statement. In the long run there will be eventually a point in which the community (or the biggest part of it) agrees on how to judge about the balance of x. But what happened here is not, that x is so-and-so balanced and some people had been wrong seeing x's balance differently, while others were right. The community decided on how to use the term "balanced so-and-so" by seting a rule of the term "balance so-and-so" to be used for x via the discussion. The time needed to set up such rules together obviously differs, but the way the discussing and developing the language game in principle stays the same. Now bringing Blizzard (or developers in general) into the language game: Developers are part of the same language game insofar as that language game is their only source for balance. If the whole community agrees that something x is too strong, Blizzard can't just say "you are wrong" - how should they? On what basis would a developer be able to judge in contradiction to what the players agreed on? When there is a sufficiant agreement, developers are bound by the players. When there is no clear agreement in the community, developers take part in that developement of the language game themselves. They are the ones comparing arguments and databases, but they are not independently deciding - they just play a certain role in the balance-game. Thus balance discussions are highly important for us players and for developers. Here comes someone who has actually read Wittgenstein and not just synopsises and interpretations of, showing me for the ignorant fool I am xD. As is the plight of the lazy layman. And yes, there is a good point to be had in the fact that by making suggestions, we can inform Blizzard on changes that may very well be good. The last 2 paragraphs are more opinion that I was trying to sneak in with the rest being about critical examination of argument which everyone can agree on. Essentially, I feel that the time spent thinking of how the game should be to be balanced be better put to use working out the game, not only because we are not developers, but because I feel it will lead to a more "balanced game". But yes, suggestions by the community on direct changes will always be valid in the sense you discuss.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 22:58 Black Octopi wrote:Show nested quote +The thing about studying a subject in a casual manner, as I have done with Philosophy, is you never really get to test your knowledge. There’s no end of semester exam, no major essay or project, so you can never really tell if you’ve learnt anything. So I thought I’d try flexing this intellectual muscle on that other intellectual exercise, Starcraft. Hopefully out of the wall of text I create, you’ll find something of interest. Translation: Blah blah... Intro: I like philosophy Show nested quote +So how does Philosophy relate? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be about the meaning of life and all that jazz? Are you just bringing it up to be all elitist and bourgeois? Well yes, but don’t we all enjoy being pretentious and special, I mean, isn’t that why we’ve all gravitated to this unique hobby? But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. And why do I think we need to think about this in relation to balance, specifically that of Starcraft 2? Well because talk about it is rampant on this forum, so clarifying what everyone is trying to communicate is of utmost important. By bringing to light underlying assumptions about what we mean by the term balance, we can proceed to critically examine and discuss them.
So right of the bat, balance is good. Everyone agrees that balance leads to fun, and if the game isn’t balanced, we aren’t going to have much fun. Let us examine why. First of all, we are all aware balance does not equate to fun, you can have a balanced game, but have it dead boring, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. But what balance allows for is competition. A perfectly balanced game allows us to attribute the player directly to his performance. Here we find what I think everyone will agree as the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment. Effort, commitment, practice, inherent skill, positive mindset, these are all seen as the virtues of any player, amateur or professional. This idea, of performance in the game being a direct reflection of your person, I think is the underlying assumption of what we mean by a balanced game. We could use some other dirty definition like, players having equal chance of winning, but I think that introduces a game like playing heads or tails. Clearly not what we want. Translation: I want to use philosophy to make a argument here. Yes I like to use words, its fun, uses time that would've been spent doing nothing, and is fun for the whole family.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 24 2010 01:55 Failsafe wrote:My novice opinion is that there's a lot of support for testing by playing. We've solved tic tac toe and checkers, but we can't solve chess (at least not by brute force). And if we can't solve a simple game like chess, how can we solve a much more complicated game like SC2? A favorite professor of mine gave a little aside about solving chess by brute force which I'm reproducing in the spoiler below. If you've got any interest in game theory or chess or any intellectual curiosity whatsoever you should check it out because it's pretty interesting. + Show Spoiler + In chess there is a finite upper limit of turns per single game (~6,000). However, a single game can only represent a single chain of events, and all the other possible chains of events go unobserved.
So let's say you see that there are only 6,000 possible moves per game, and since 6,000 is finite, you decide to work through them all (or get a computer to do it). How would that go?
One way of looking at it is to identify all of the moves you can make to open the game (assuming you're white). I think there's 20. Each of eight pawns can move either one space or two spaces, and there are two moves for each of the two knights. Then you can consider all your opponent's possible first moves (also 20, I think). Then you can consider all of your moves for turn 2, and all of your opponent's moves for turn 2, and so on. That's pretty much the foundation of the brute force method. But the problem is: you run out of atoms. The possibilities grow so rapidly that within the first 20 turns there are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
This probably means that we can't solve chess by brute force. Maybe there's some smaller stuff we could manipulate, or maybe we could break down our diagnosis into separate trees where each tree grows out of a single first move and then represents all the actions that may follow. Then we could prune the trees and eliminate strategies that deadend...
In any case, it looks hard to solve chess by brute force, if it can be done at all.
Chess is finite and deals with discrete variables. SC2 is not clearly finite nor discrete, nor can I imagine any finite and discrete approximation of SC2 that would be as simple as chess and yet still resemble SC2. If even a relatively simple game like chess can't be solved by brute force, how can we expect to solve the much more complex game of SC2? This seems to imply that we can never be certain of an optimal strategy/strategies for SC2, and without mathematically optimal strategies, it seems weird to talk about "balance" in a game theoretic sense. If we had optimal strategies, then we could observe the outcomes of those strategies, and then balance so that each race had multiple optimal strategies and all optimal strategies ended in a tie (or something like that). We could evaluate how deviations from optimal strategies affected our expectations. We could probably come up with some pretty good stuff like: suppose player A only has 350 APM instead of the optimal infinity, and player B only has 300 APM instead of the optimal infinity, then how does the game go if the APM distribution is like this? On the one hand, this all seems academically interesting but on the other hand it's also sorta dry and never gonna happen. It also seems like it's not really the SC that we know. What's lacking? Well, what about "metagame" equillibrium? Since matches in SC2 are often repeated games, repetition totally changes equillibria and optimal strategies. Moreover, SC2, unlike chess, is a game of incomplete information. Together with the fact that SC2 is often played as a repeated game, we have to adjust for the "mind games." I think most good SC1 players would agree that having a grasp on the mind games is as important if not more important than any other single element of gameplay. Consider how many good SC1 foreigners also turned out to be huge poker successes. I'm sure that if you used statistical regression, being a top SC1 player would be a great predictor of poker success. Consider SC1. It's possible that if we had optimal strategies for SC1 assuming complete information (allied vision without the ability to shoot cloaked units unless you had a detector) and assuming that the game would not be repeated, and then we had perfect players to carry out these optimal strategies, SC1 might be "balanced" something like: Z > T, P > Z, T > P. And these outcomes would occur 100% of the time on all maps (for the sake of argument). However, even if this was the case, and it could well be, we will probably never actually know. Ultimately, what we do know is: players are not perfect (they cannot flawlessly execute a strategy; they cannot even consistently execute the same strategy); most major tournaments depend on repetition; and players' information is not complete. We cannot solve even the simple case where we assume complete information and no repetition. But suppose we could. Suppose we could even solve the case of incomplete information and repetition. How would we account for imperfections in the players? We would completely have to retool our models to consider the marginal value of each action. Suppose for our optimal strategies we have "balanced" PvT. That is, P = T where both players' perfectly execute their optimal strategies. But now suppose we have imperfect players. Suppose that one equillibrium, that is the result is again P = T occurs where P's APM is 5,000 and P's APM is 300? The equillibrium isn't feasible. What about burst APM? Suppose that an equillibrium occurs where P's APM is 200 and T's APM is 250, but in order for it to occur P must be able to have an APM burst of 3,000 at a crucial moment where he's required to build and chrono boost an observer, a probe, a dark templar, a mothership, and an air weapons upgrade in whatever fraction of a second 3,000 APM implies. That's another non-feasible equillibrium. It would be nice to type a conclusion to this wall of text but whatever You could conclude, even though SC1 has such a developed metagame, its impractical to the point of impossible to abstract it in a way we could claim it balanced in a clean game-theory sense because of the complexities of realtime, intricate games of imperfect misinformation. We have simply accepted it as 'balanced', because it seems that way after such extensive play, so Mr. Skeptical is awesome xD. Hope I followed what you said properly :D
+ Show Spoiler +On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. My point is that 'true balance' isn't a concept worth looking into, and we should get on with moving discussion from 'balancing a unit' to 'strategizing against a race'. Especially in the early stages of a beta, because I see it might be harmful if changes that are pushed for the community are simply a reflection of the meta-game. Because it just means the patches are changing the game, not individual players. Someone like sAviOr may have just caused Blizzard to increase the time it takes to get hive if this kind of attitude was taken, cutting off us seeing Bisu and his creativity.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 27 2010 11:42 Half wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 06:29 Rabiator wrote:
Its actually funny how you identify the trap and then fall into it yourself again by focusing on the word "balance" again yourself. A lone siege tank can never be balanced, because you need a counterpoint to balance it with. Even comparing its power with other units (thats just a different word for balance) doesnt work in a game as complex as Starcraft and the only thing you might attempt is to balance the whole package (by the total win/loss ratios on the ladder) ... I never focused on the word balance, I utilized it. The post starts by claiming that balance is not the end goal, and then elaborates on the irrelevant point on how balance can never be determined in such a brief amount of time. The SC2 siege tank is weaker then the SC1 siege tank. This represents a move away from positional play. As a player, I can find positional play to be entertaining, and thus, I could posit a argument for the buffing of siege tanks despite the fact that terran are not objectively underpowered, because as you said, despite the fact that siege tanks a weak, they do not exist in a vacuum. Despite this, I can still advocate buffing siege tanks in order to shift the gameplay in a direction I find fun, a balance suggestion that does not depend on a absolute, logistical, non-meta understanding of the actual balance. Show nested quote +
... but for an individual unit you could determine if it is making the game less challenging or not fun. The prime example here is the Sentry with its Forcefield. Today I saw a game between Zerg and Protoss (ZOTAC cup finals) and the Protoss trapped the Zerg inside his main base for maybe two minutes or so by using Forcefield with nothing to be done by the Zerg except waiting for the Nydus Network to finish. I can imagine that not being much fun if you are on the receiving end and its certainly not very challenging to pull off on the side of the Protoss. Zerg won it eventually, but the tactic in itself is absolute in its effect (it totally blocks movement instead of slowing it down) and isnt counterable by the opponent and that makes me somewhat skeptical on the design of the spell.
One of the better examples is the way many Terran players are complaining themselves about the overall usefulness of the Marauder compared to the other units in their arsenal. They would like a shift of power from this unit towards others and that is a totally different way of handling things than non-Protoss who complain about Immortals or non-Zerg who complain about the Roach.
I meant individual player, as in "If I'm the only guy who likes siege tanks, and nobody else does, my opinion is irrelevant". I agree with your analysis on the Sentry, but its completely irrelevant to the segment you quoted and actually supports my point o.o. In fact, it is my point in its entirety. We seem to be in agreement lols. I'm saying the same thing. I can't determine all the intrinsic ways the Sentry interacts with the game and all the complex relationships and as I result I don't truly understand the balance of the sentry or the balance of the protoss. Nobody does, there are too many variables, even blizzard doesn't, they just have a lot more experience and data to make intelligent guesses off of. However, I can determine that the force field perma blocking of ramps is just no fun at all. And thus, I can suggest a change made to balance to discourage this practice, backing it up with replays of pro games, and most people would agree that it isn't fun. Thus, I've made a legitimate contributory suggestion towards balance without truly understanding its intricacies because balance isn't the core goal, fun and dynamic play are. The OP takes the idea of "we know nothing" too far. While we can't disagree with the balance of the siege tank in relationship to balance, we can easily do so in relationship to fun, or rather, the units effect on the direction of gameplay in relationship to fun, and make a valid point out of it.
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wow. was expecting to read flame-able material that i could whale on you for.
actually a seriously good read. i never thought of the whole game in the context of that sort of analysis before.
gg.
(LOL and the size of your article should stop spammers from commenting =P ).
edit: and holy crap, you're ozzie!! FELLOW OZZIE!! OI OI OI!! lets chuck a few shrimps on the barbie, rite? =D
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Wow, great read. My hat off to you sir!
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Yay. Aussie. Thats meee
But yeah thats totally the mindset people should be going for. Boxer showed the proscene the viability of terran way back when in Broodwar, and similar things should happen for SC2.
Yeah.
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I completely agree with the OP. If only more new SC2 beta players would think this way.
On April 23 2010 21:47 mynameisbean wrote:
edit: and holy crap, you're ozzie!! FELLOW OZZIE!! OI OI OI!! lets chuck a few shrimps on the barbie, rite? =D
As an Aussie, I am embarassed..
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Great read, I'm starting philosophy this term as well, maybe I could become as good as you.
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That was an excellent read. I agreed on every point, especially on the point of needing to overcome something that seemed imbalanced with something that is just even better.
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wow
the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment.
That is just the most genious line ever. I wouldnt say; i had never thought of balance that way, but you just put the words in my head.
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Very nice read, should almost be featured =), reminded me why i love to study philosophy and can't wait till i start with again on university
who said that people with low post count didn't have anything good to say
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Great read!
Welcome to Team Liquid!
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[...]Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill.
It might seem at first glance, that we can't change the game sc2, but we might change the language game by speaking of "x should be F" or "y is P" and part of the language game will be Blizzard. The point of judgements in a language game like "sc2 balance" is not to give precise statements about the current balance, is about (re)defining the rules of the language game by creating rules of using terms in that language game intersubjectivly. The rules of language games are not private (as Wittgenstein showed in the Philosophical Investigations), they are found while playing the language game together. You can see that in every balance discussion in every game: Someone caims x is too strong/too weak/whatever and others react to that statement. In the long run there will be eventually a point in which the community (or the biggest part of it) agrees on how to judge about the balance of x. But what happened here is not, that x is so-and-so balanced and some people had been wrong seeing x's balance differently, while others were right. The community decided on how to use the term "balanced so-and-so" by seting a rule of the term "balance so-and-so" to be used for x via the discussion. The time needed to set up such rules together obviously differs, but the way the discussing and developing the language game in principle stays the same.
Now bringing Blizzard (or developers in general) into the language game: Developers are part of the same language game insofar as that language game is their only source for balance. If the whole community agrees that something x is too strong, Blizzard can't just say "you are wrong" - how should they? On what basis would a developer be able to judge in contradiction to what the players agreed on? When there is a sufficiant agreement, developers are bound by the players. When there is no clear agreement in the community, developers take part in that developement of the language game themselves. They are the ones comparing arguments and databases, but they are not independently deciding - they just play a certain role in the balance-game. Thus balance discussions are highly important for us players and for developers.
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Good read!
I really support your last paragraph. We are not Blizzard. We have no direct control of the game's programming or balance. We do however have full control over how the game is played and that's what we should be looking at.
As the force field thread shows, this is something which is sometimes increasingly difficult 
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I enjoy this sort of thinking, more on what to think about, the mindset, then the actual things themselves.
Prog brings up interesting points about the language game, which will over time develop our thinking of the game and what is deemed fair or unfair.
lots to think about.
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Here comes someone who has actually read Wittgenstein and not just synopsises and interpretations of, showing me for the ignorant fool I am xD. As is the plight of the lazy layman.
And yes, there is a good point to be had in the fact that by making suggestions, we can inform Blizzard on changes that may very well be good. The last 2 paragraphs are more opinion that I was trying to sneak in with the rest being about critical examination of argument which everyone can agree on.
Essentially, I feel that the time spent thinking of how the game should be to be balanced be better put to use working out the game, not only because we are not developers, but because I feel it will lead to a more "balanced game". But yes, suggestions by the community on direct changes will always be valid in the sense you discuss.
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The thing about studying a subject in a casual manner, as I have done with Philosophy, is you never really get to test your knowledge. There’s no end of semester exam, no major essay or project, so you can never really tell if you’ve learnt anything. So I thought I’d try flexing this intellectual muscle on that other intellectual exercise, Starcraft. Hopefully out of the wall of text I create, you’ll find something of interest.
Translation: Blah blah... Intro: I like philosophy
So how does Philosophy relate? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be about the meaning of life and all that jazz? Are you just bringing it up to be all elitist and bourgeois? Well yes, but don’t we all enjoy being pretentious and special, I mean, isn’t that why we’ve all gravitated to this unique hobby? But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. And why do I think we need to think about this in relation to balance, specifically that of Starcraft 2? Well because talk about it is rampant on this forum, so clarifying what everyone is trying to communicate is of utmost important. By bringing to light underlying assumptions about what we mean by the term balance, we can proceed to critically examine and discuss them.
So right of the bat, balance is good. Everyone agrees that balance leads to fun, and if the game isn’t balanced, we aren’t going to have much fun. Let us examine why. First of all, we are all aware balance does not equate to fun, you can have a balanced game, but have it dead boring, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. But what balance allows for is competition. A perfectly balanced game allows us to attribute the player directly to his performance. Here we find what I think everyone will agree as the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment. Effort, commitment, practice, inherent skill, positive mindset, these are all seen as the virtues of any player, amateur or professional. This idea, of performance in the game being a direct reflection of your person, I think is the underlying assumption of what we mean by a balanced game. We could use some other dirty definition like, players having equal chance of winning, but I think that introduces a game like playing heads or tails. Clearly not what we want.
Translation: I want to use philosophy to make a argument here.
But now we have a problem, several in fact. I’ll start with the most pressing matter. These qualities, practice, inherent skill, etc., are subjective, as in there is no way to measure them. Seeing as how that is the foundation of how we would ideally like to define balance, this leaves us with no direct measure of the concept. So does this mean it’s impossible to tell if a game is balanced? Some of you right now might be going, “Oh yeah, Philosophy. Proving the earth doesn’t exist and all manner of nonsense. I know how to tell if a game is balanced”. Well you’re right. We can tell if a game is balanced. Why? Because language doesn’t have any inherent meaning, we as humans just give it meaning after the fact. Just because it is ambiguous what balance actually looks like, doesn’t mean we don’t know it when we see it. We have a general idea of what it’s supposed to look like, and we slap the term balance to it. Perfectly fine, unless we want to go into greater depth, and who doesn’t have time to waste?
Translation: Blah blah (insert fancy wording) (insert spinning around in circles). Change topic in last few sentences. Define Axiom: We are all super geniuses and thus are able to distinguish a balance by winging it and using our mouths (no experience or logic implied).
So what methods can we employ to identify balance? The most common, and the one given most credence to here on TL is argument from authority. Though a negative sounding term, it’s really not that bad. Essentially, the more experienced the player and the higher the skill level, the more weight we give to their opinion. Once again, not a bad way of going about it, the top players are those that have put in the effort, who have the skill; their opinion is therefore much more likely to be well informed. Furthermore balance at the top level is what is valued most due to all us spectators. However we must be aware of why we put weight behind their views, and thus are able to still remain critical of the views they present. Just because they are a top player, does not mean they are immune to being wrong. They might be seeing the game purely from a closed meta-game, where roaches and hydras are the only effective units. They might be misinformed or ignorant about certain mechanics or strategies that allow for different styles of play. They might be angry after successive losses and be writing out of emotion. He could simply be coming up against better players. All these should be kept in mind in examining any claim, especially your own. In fact I would’ve written more here on personal claims, but the newest forum rules express guidelines more than adequate, and has stoped from posting those beyond help. Translation: Methods to support balance:
#1. The best and "recommended by TL.net" is the argument of authority. [note: he means listen to people here who've played SC2 (not Broodwar) for "years", you know who they are]
#2. Players who are in Platinum or managed to cheeze their way up must be listened to, because they know with out thinking.
#3. Experience players are dumb and might be seeing it from a closed perspective. [note: yes, he contradicts himself in the paragraph]
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics.
Translation: The most important statistics we need to be aware of and which are the "deciding factor" for balance are:
#1. The W/L ration of each race as played by the n00blets on "my" one and only Blizzard server in the world
#2. how easy/hard it is to "master" a race by the people on "my" server. [note: its implied there are people out there who have "mastered SC2"]
#3. If X (person of unspecified skill) can not think of counter strategy in [some unspecified very short time] then the strategy is imbalanced against the race X plays.
#4. "we need to be biased when analyzing so as to take into account the biased scenarios" [note I'm guessing this has to do with philosophy being good only when it makes no sense in plain english theorem]
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics.
Translation: Forget/Deny everything above as any good. I love "listening to" Day[9]. Axiom: balance is impossible. "Its the game that needs to be balanced not whats in it". Blah blah "I think this is SC1 and we should treat it like SC1".
This does not mean I want discussion on the forum to stop in relation to balance. It would just be nice if instead another mindset was taken, one focusing on what we as a player can actually do to deal with a problem. First make the assumption that the game is already balanced. Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill.
Translation: I want to YOU to discuss balance with out discussing balance. I want you to think positive. Only when X amount of players (on server Y) use the strategy/tactic/rush Z amount of times do we have a problem. [note: I'm going to guess this data-mining is done via guessing]
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On April 23 2010 22:58 Black Octopi wrote:Show nested quote +The thing about studying a subject in a casual manner, as I have done with Philosophy, is you never really get to test your knowledge. There’s no end of semester exam, no major essay or project, so you can never really tell if you’ve learnt anything. So I thought I’d try flexing this intellectual muscle on that other intellectual exercise, Starcraft. Hopefully out of the wall of text I create, you’ll find something of interest. Translation: Blah blah... Intro: I like philosophy Show nested quote +So how does Philosophy relate? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be about the meaning of life and all that jazz? Are you just bringing it up to be all elitist and bourgeois? Well yes, but don’t we all enjoy being pretentious and special, I mean, isn’t that why we’ve all gravitated to this unique hobby? But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. And why do I think we need to think about this in relation to balance, specifically that of Starcraft 2? Well because talk about it is rampant on this forum, so clarifying what everyone is trying to communicate is of utmost important. By bringing to light underlying assumptions about what we mean by the term balance, we can proceed to critically examine and discuss them.
So right of the bat, balance is good. Everyone agrees that balance leads to fun, and if the game isn’t balanced, we aren’t going to have much fun. Let us examine why. First of all, we are all aware balance does not equate to fun, you can have a balanced game, but have it dead boring, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. But what balance allows for is competition. A perfectly balanced game allows us to attribute the player directly to his performance. Here we find what I think everyone will agree as the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment. Effort, commitment, practice, inherent skill, positive mindset, these are all seen as the virtues of any player, amateur or professional. This idea, of performance in the game being a direct reflection of your person, I think is the underlying assumption of what we mean by a balanced game. We could use some other dirty definition like, players having equal chance of winning, but I think that introduces a game like playing heads or tails. Clearly not what we want. Translation: I want to use philosophy to make a argument here.
Yes I like to use words, its fun, uses time that would've been spent doing nothing, and is fun for the whole family.
Show nested quote +But now we have a problem, several in fact. I’ll start with the most pressing matter. These qualities, practice, inherent skill, etc., are subjective, as in there is no way to measure them. Seeing as how that is the foundation of how we would ideally like to define balance, this leaves us with no direct measure of the concept. So does this mean it’s impossible to tell if a game is balanced? Some of you right now might be going, “Oh yeah, Philosophy. Proving the earth doesn’t exist and all manner of nonsense. I know how to tell if a game is balanced”. Well you’re right. We can tell if a game is balanced. Why? Because language doesn’t have any inherent meaning, we as humans just give it meaning after the fact. Just because it is ambiguous what balance actually looks like, doesn’t mean we don’t know it when we see it. We have a general idea of what it’s supposed to look like, and we slap the term balance to it. Perfectly fine, unless we want to go into greater depth, and who doesn’t have time to waste? Translation: Blah blah (insert fancy wording) (insert spinning around in circles). Change topic in last few sentences. Define Axiom: We are all super geniuses and thus are able to distinguish a balance by winging it and using our mouths (no experience or logic implied). Show nested quote +So what methods can we employ to identify balance? The most common, and the one given most credence to here on TL is argument from authority. Though a negative sounding term, it’s really not that bad. Essentially, the more experienced the player and the higher the skill level, the more weight we give to their opinion. Once again, not a bad way of going about it, the top players are those that have put in the effort, who have the skill; their opinion is therefore much more likely to be well informed. Furthermore balance at the top level is what is valued most due to all us spectators. However we must be aware of why we put weight behind their views, and thus are able to still remain critical of the views they present. Just because they are a top player, does not mean they are immune to being wrong. They might be seeing the game purely from a closed meta-game, where roaches and hydras are the only effective units. They might be misinformed or ignorant about certain mechanics or strategies that allow for different styles of play. They might be angry after successive losses and be writing out of emotion. He could simply be coming up against better players. All these should be kept in mind in examining any claim, especially your own. In fact I would’ve written more here on personal claims, but the newest forum rules express guidelines more than adequate, and has stoped from posting those beyond help. Translation: Methods to support balance: #1. The best and "recommended by TL.net" is the argument of authority. [note: he means listen to people here who've played SC2 (not Broodwar) for "years", you know who they are] #2. Players who are in Platinum or managed to cheeze their way up must be listened to, because they know with out thinking. #3. Experience players are dumb and might be seeing it from a closed perspective. [note: yes, he contradicts himself in the paragraph] Show nested quote +The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics. Translation: The most important statistics we need to be aware of and which are the "deciding factor" for balance are: #1. The W/L ration of each race as played by the n00blets on "my" one and only Blizzard server in the world #2. how easy/hard it is to "master" a race by the people on "my" server. [note: its implied there are people out there who have "mastered SC2"] #3. If X (person of unspecified skill) can not think of counter strategy in [some unspecified very short time] then the strategy is imbalanced against the race X plays. #4. "we need to be biased when analyzing so as to take into account the biased scenarios" [note I'm guessing this has to do with philosophy being good only when it makes no sense in plain english theorem] Show nested quote +The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics. Translation: Forget/Deny everything above as any good. I love "listening to" Day[9]. Axiom: balance is impossible. "Its the game that needs to be balanced not whats in it". Blah blah "I think this is SC1 and we should treat it like SC1". Show nested quote +This does not mean I want discussion on the forum to stop in relation to balance. It would just be nice if instead another mindset was taken, one focusing on what we as a player can actually do to deal with a problem. First make the assumption that the game is already balanced. Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill. Translation: I want to YOU to discuss balance with out discussing balance. I want you to think positive. Only when X amount of players (on server Y) use the strategy/tactic/rush Z amount of times do we have a problem. [note: I'm going to guess this data-mining is done via guessing]
Please, if you want to critique somthing, you have to read it.
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Great read, like you i also enjoyed the power overwhelming article, people don't seem to realize that the original Starcraft(lol 4 pool) took years to balance. Constantly calling certain things OP and then saying they need "nerfing" rather than trying to come up with some mad strat/bo to overcome it just ends up with new balance issues being made.
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I'd rather they track tech and production values of those replays too for these statistics. See who won with what, and what kind of BO prevalence are we seeing There's a difference between 50/50 wins/losses and an interesting game to play, to watch, and to master. I think it's a no-brainer that there should at least be some effort put toward more variety in unit composition. Risk builds tension, tension creates drama, drama makes entertainment.
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Balance should primarily be fixed internally within the rules of the games, and secondarily externally by changing the rules of the games. However finding that internal balance takes time, and time is money. If I discount the very obvious imbalances and the very small ones, and just focus on those in between, I believe these external fixes is a way of jumping ahead in time. It may not be a perfect time machine, but it gives a clue to what the game will look like if unit X is not as prevalent.
Therefore imba-discussions, whiny as many of them are, fill an important role right now. Though in the long run they aren't what will improve the gameplay.
On April 23 2010 22:58 Black Octopi wrote:+ Show Spoiler +The thing about studying a subject in a casual manner, as I have done with Philosophy, is you never really get to test your knowledge. There’s no end of semester exam, no major essay or project, so you can never really tell if you’ve learnt anything. So I thought I’d try flexing this intellectual muscle on that other intellectual exercise, Starcraft. Hopefully out of the wall of text I create, you’ll find something of interest. Translation: Blah blah... Intro: I like philosophy So how does Philosophy relate? I mean, isn’t it supposed to be about the meaning of life and all that jazz? Are you just bringing it up to be all elitist and bourgeois? Well yes, but don’t we all enjoy being pretentious and special, I mean, isn’t that why we’ve all gravitated to this unique hobby? But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. And why do I think we need to think about this in relation to balance, specifically that of Starcraft 2? Well because talk about it is rampant on this forum, so clarifying what everyone is trying to communicate is of utmost important. By bringing to light underlying assumptions about what we mean by the term balance, we can proceed to critically examine and discuss them.
So right of the bat, balance is good. Everyone agrees that balance leads to fun, and if the game isn’t balanced, we aren’t going to have much fun. Let us examine why. First of all, we are all aware balance does not equate to fun, you can have a balanced game, but have it dead boring, e.g. rock, paper, scissors. But what balance allows for is competition. A perfectly balanced game allows us to attribute the player directly to his performance. Here we find what I think everyone will agree as the core idea of balance; that a win is earned purely from personal commitment. Effort, commitment, practice, inherent skill, positive mindset, these are all seen as the virtues of any player, amateur or professional. This idea, of performance in the game being a direct reflection of your person, I think is the underlying assumption of what we mean by a balanced game. We could use some other dirty definition like, players having equal chance of winning, but I think that introduces a game like playing heads or tails. Clearly not what we want. Translation: I want to use philosophy to make a argument here. But now we have a problem, several in fact. I’ll start with the most pressing matter. These qualities, practice, inherent skill, etc., are subjective, as in there is no way to measure them. Seeing as how that is the foundation of how we would ideally like to define balance, this leaves us with no direct measure of the concept. So does this mean it’s impossible to tell if a game is balanced? Some of you right now might be going, “Oh yeah, Philosophy. Proving the earth doesn’t exist and all manner of nonsense. I know how to tell if a game is balanced”. Well you’re right. We can tell if a game is balanced. Why? Because language doesn’t have any inherent meaning, we as humans just give it meaning after the fact. Just because it is ambiguous what balance actually looks like, doesn’t mean we don’t know it when we see it. We have a general idea of what it’s supposed to look like, and we slap the term balance to it. Perfectly fine, unless we want to go into greater depth, and who doesn’t have time to waste? Translation: Blah blah (insert fancy wording) (insert spinning around in circles). Change topic in last few sentences. Define Axiom: We are all super geniuses and thus are able to distinguish a balance by winging it and using our mouths (no experience or logic implied). So what methods can we employ to identify balance? The most common, and the one given most credence to here on TL is argument from authority. Though a negative sounding term, it’s really not that bad. Essentially, the more experienced the player and the higher the skill level, the more weight we give to their opinion. Once again, not a bad way of going about it, the top players are those that have put in the effort, who have the skill; their opinion is therefore much more likely to be well informed. Furthermore balance at the top level is what is valued most due to all us spectators. However we must be aware of why we put weight behind their views, and thus are able to still remain critical of the views they present. Just because they are a top player, does not mean they are immune to being wrong. They might be seeing the game purely from a closed meta-game, where roaches and hydras are the only effective units. They might be misinformed or ignorant about certain mechanics or strategies that allow for different styles of play. They might be angry after successive losses and be writing out of emotion. He could simply be coming up against better players. All these should be kept in mind in examining any claim, especially your own. In fact I would’ve written more here on personal claims, but the newest forum rules express guidelines more than adequate, and has stoped from posting those beyond help. Translation: Methods to support balance: #1. The best and "recommended by TL.net" is the argument of authority. [note: he means listen to people here who've played SC2 (not Broodwar) for "years", you know who they are] #2. Players who are in Platinum or managed to cheeze their way up must be listened to, because they know with out thinking. #3. Experience players are dumb and might be seeing it from a closed perspective. [note: yes, he contradicts himself in the paragraph] The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics. Translation: The most important statistics we need to be aware of and which are the "deciding factor" for balance are: #1. The W/L ration of each race as played by the n00blets on "my" one and only Blizzard server in the world #2. how easy/hard it is to "master" a race by the people on "my" server. [note: its implied there are people out there who have "mastered SC2"] #3. If X (person of unspecified skill) can not think of counter strategy in [some unspecified very short time] then the strategy is imbalanced against the race X plays. #4. "we need to be biased when analyzing so as to take into account the biased scenarios" [note I'm guessing this has to do with philosophy being good only when it makes no sense in plain english theorem] The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different, so although it seems in the majority of the top players Terran is even, when the Zerg player just gets that much better the game breaks down and Zerg’s completely dominate. Maybe the majority of Protoss players don’t know about this build that would demolish their opponent, so the stats look normal. Maybe a cheese that’s hard to defend is resulting in a high win rate, but with a small number of players able to beat it after a lot of specific practice against it there’s nothing for that race to do. All of these issues need to be examined on an individual game level, or will only appear in more specific analysis, or only after a longer period of time. We thus need to keep these kinds of biases in mind when interpreting statistics. Translation: Forget/Deny everything above as any good. I love "listening to" Day[9]. Axiom: balance is impossible. "Its the game that needs to be balanced not whats in it". Blah blah "I think this is SC1 and we should treat it like SC1". This does not mean I want discussion on the forum to stop in relation to balance. It would just be nice if instead another mindset was taken, one focusing on what we as a player can actually do to deal with a problem. First make the assumption that the game is already balanced. Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill. Translation: I want to YOU to discuss balance with out discussing balance. I want you to think positive. Only when X amount of players (on server Y) use the strategy/tactic/rush Z amount of times do we have a problem. [note: I'm going to guess this data-mining is done via guessing]
Translation: I have nothing to say but I like the sound my keyboard makes when I hit the keys.
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@ OP
Please stop posting stuffs such as this k? This is a competitive game, we don't want every noob in the world to learn how to get better, we want them to whine about IMBA for the rest of their life as long as they play Sc2 and never get better because of it.
In a serious note, on sc1 blizzard didn't balance the game as much as the players did. They stop balancing after 1.08, that's over 9 years ago. We the players and map makers work hard to balance it in the past 9 years while blizzard sits back and amazed at what we accomplish with the basic tools they provided @1.08. Does sc2 have all the basic tools sc1 had at 1.08? almost? but not there yet? We don't know.
How do we know if what we have right now is enough for the community and map makers to carry the game like it did in sc1? By playing a lot and think about how to win with the tools blizzard gave us or whine about the tools they gave us?
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My novice opinion is that there's a lot of support for testing by playing. We've solved tic tac toe and checkers, but we can't solve chess (at least not by brute force). And if we can't solve a simple game like chess, how can we solve a much more complicated game like SC2?
A favorite professor of mine gave a little aside about solving chess by brute force which I'm reproducing in the spoiler below. If you've got any interest in game theory or chess or any intellectual curiosity whatsoever you should check it out because it's pretty interesting.
+ Show Spoiler + In chess there is a finite upper limit of turns per single game (~6,000). However, a single game can only represent a single chain of events, and all the other possible chains of events go unobserved.
So let's say you see that there are only 6,000 possible moves per game, and since 6,000 is finite, you decide to work through them all (or get a computer to do it). How would that go?
One way of looking at it is to identify all of the moves you can make to open the game (assuming you're white). I think there's 20. Each of eight pawns can move either one space or two spaces, and there are two moves for each of the two knights. Then you can consider all your opponent's possible first moves (also 20, I think). Then you can consider all of your moves for turn 2, and all of your opponent's moves for turn 2, and so on. That's pretty much the foundation of the brute force method. But the problem is: you run out of atoms. The possibilities grow so rapidly that within the first 20 turns there are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
This probably means that we can't solve chess by brute force. Maybe there's some smaller stuff we could manipulate, or maybe we could break down our diagnosis into separate trees where each tree grows out of a single first move and then represents all the actions that may follow. Then we could prune the trees and eliminate strategies that deadend...
In any case, it looks hard to solve chess by brute force, if it can be done at all.
Chess is finite and deals with discrete variables. SC2 is not clearly finite nor discrete, nor can I imagine any finite and discrete approximation of SC2 that would be as simple as chess and yet still resemble SC2. If even a relatively simple game like chess can't be solved by brute force, how can we expect to solve the much more complex game of SC2?
This seems to imply that we can never be certain of an optimal strategy/strategies for SC2, and without mathematically optimal strategies, it seems weird to talk about "balance" in a game theoretic sense. If we had optimal strategies, then we could observe the outcomes of those strategies, and then balance so that each race had multiple optimal strategies and all optimal strategies ended in a tie (or something like that). We could evaluate how deviations from optimal strategies affected our expectations. We could probably come up with some pretty good stuff like: suppose player A only has 350 APM instead of the optimal infinity, and player B only has 300 APM instead of the optimal infinity, then how does the game go if the APM distribution is like this?
On the one hand, this all seems academically interesting but on the other hand it's also sorta dry and never gonna happen. It also seems like it's not really the SC that we know. What's lacking?
Well, what about "metagame" equillibrium? Since matches in SC2 are often repeated games, repetition totally changes equillibria and optimal strategies.
Moreover, SC2, unlike chess, is a game of incomplete information. Together with the fact that SC2 is often played as a repeated game, we have to adjust for the "mind games." I think most good SC1 players would agree that having a grasp on the mind games is as important if not more important than any other single element of gameplay. Consider how many good SC1 foreigners also turned out to be huge poker successes. I'm sure that if you used statistical regression, being a top SC1 player would be a great predictor of poker success.
Consider SC1. It's possible that if we had optimal strategies for SC1 assuming complete information (allied vision without the ability to shoot cloaked units unless you had a detector) and assuming that the game would not be repeated, and then we had perfect players to carry out these optimal strategies, SC1 might be "balanced" something like: Z > T, P > Z, T > P. And these outcomes would occur 100% of the time on all maps (for the sake of argument). However, even if this was the case, and it could well be, we will probably never actually know.
Ultimately, what we do know is: players are not perfect (they cannot flawlessly execute a strategy; they cannot even consistently execute the same strategy); most major tournaments depend on repetition; and players' information is not complete. We cannot solve even the simple case where we assume complete information and no repetition. But suppose we could. Suppose we could even solve the case of incomplete information and repetition. How would we account for imperfections in the players?
We would completely have to retool our models to consider the marginal value of each action. Suppose for our optimal strategies we have "balanced" PvT. That is, P = T where both players' perfectly execute their optimal strategies. But now suppose we have imperfect players. Suppose that one equillibrium, that is the result is again P = T occurs where P's APM is 5,000 and P's APM is 300? The equillibrium isn't feasible.
What about burst APM? Suppose that an equillibrium occurs where P's APM is 200 and T's APM is 250, but in order for it to occur P must be able to have an APM burst of 3,000 at a crucial moment where he's required to build and chrono boost an observer, a probe, a dark templar, a mothership, and an air weapons upgrade in whatever fraction of a second 3,000 APM implies. That's another non-feasible equillibrium.
It would be nice to type a conclusion to this wall of text but whatever
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Take note forum noobies, this is how to post! Kudos sir!
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Not bad, Skeptical, not bad at all.
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+ Show Spoiler +On April 24 2010 01:55 Failsafe wrote:My novice opinion is that there's a lot of support for testing by playing. We've solved tic tac toe and checkers, but we can't solve chess (at least not by brute force). And if we can't solve a simple game like chess, how can we solve a much more complicated game like SC2? A favorite professor of mine gave a little aside about solving chess by brute force which I'm reproducing in the spoiler below. If you've got any interest in game theory or chess or any intellectual curiosity whatsoever you should check it out because it's pretty interesting. + Show Spoiler + In chess there is a finite upper limit of turns per single game (~6,000). However, a single game can only represent a single chain of events, and all the other possible chains of events go unobserved.
So let's say you see that there are only 6,000 possible moves per game, and since 6,000 is finite, you decide to work through them all (or get a computer to do it). How would that go?
One way of looking at it is to identify all of the moves you can make to open the game (assuming you're white). I think there's 20. Each of eight pawns can move either one space or two spaces, and there are two moves for each of the two knights. Then you can consider all your opponent's possible first moves (also 20, I think). Then you can consider all of your moves for turn 2, and all of your opponent's moves for turn 2, and so on. That's pretty much the foundation of the brute force method. But the problem is: you run out of atoms. The possibilities grow so rapidly that within the first 20 turns there are more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
This probably means that we can't solve chess by brute force. Maybe there's some smaller stuff we could manipulate, or maybe we could break down our diagnosis into separate trees where each tree grows out of a single first move and then represents all the actions that may follow. Then we could prune the trees and eliminate strategies that deadend...
In any case, it looks hard to solve chess by brute force, if it can be done at all.
Chess is finite and deals with discrete variables. SC2 is not clearly finite nor discrete, nor can I imagine any finite and discrete approximation of SC2 that would be as simple as chess and yet still resemble SC2. If even a relatively simple game like chess can't be solved by brute force, how can we expect to solve the much more complex game of SC2? This seems to imply that we can never be certain of an optimal strategy/strategies for SC2, and without mathematically optimal strategies, it seems weird to talk about "balance" in a game theoretic sense. If we had optimal strategies, then we could observe the outcomes of those strategies, and then balance so that each race had multiple optimal strategies and all optimal strategies ended in a tie (or something like that). We could evaluate how deviations from optimal strategies affected our expectations. We could probably come up with some pretty good stuff like: suppose player A only has 350 APM instead of the optimal infinity, and player B only has 300 APM instead of the optimal infinity, then how does the game go if the APM distribution is like this? On the one hand, this all seems academically interesting but on the other hand it's also sorta dry and never gonna happen. It also seems like it's not really the SC that we know. What's lacking? Well, what about "metagame" equillibrium? Since matches in SC2 are often repeated games, repetition totally changes equillibria and optimal strategies. Moreover, SC2, unlike chess, is a game of incomplete information. Together with the fact that SC2 is often played as a repeated game, we have to adjust for the "mind games." I think most good SC1 players would agree that having a grasp on the mind games is as important if not more important than any other single element of gameplay. Consider how many good SC1 foreigners also turned out to be huge poker successes. I'm sure that if you used statistical regression, being a top SC1 player would be a great predictor of poker success. Consider SC1. It's possible that if we had optimal strategies for SC1 assuming complete information (allied vision without the ability to shoot cloaked units unless you had a detector) and assuming that the game would not be repeated, and then we had perfect players to carry out these optimal strategies, SC1 might be "balanced" something like: Z > T, P > Z, T > P. And these outcomes would occur 100% of the time on all maps (for the sake of argument). However, even if this was the case, and it could well be, we will probably never actually know. Ultimately, what we do know is: players are not perfect (they cannot flawlessly execute a strategy; they cannot even consistently execute the same strategy); most major tournaments depend on repetition; and players' information is not complete. We cannot solve even the simple case where we assume complete information and no repetition. But suppose we could. Suppose we could even solve the case of incomplete information and repetition. How would we account for imperfections in the players? We would completely have to retool our models to consider the marginal value of each action. Suppose for our optimal strategies we have "balanced" PvT. That is, P = T where both players' perfectly execute their optimal strategies. But now suppose we have imperfect players. Suppose that one equillibrium, that is the result is again P = T occurs where P's APM is 5,000 and P's APM is 300? The equillibrium isn't feasible. What about burst APM? Suppose that an equillibrium occurs where P's APM is 200 and T's APM is 250, but in order for it to occur P must be able to have an APM burst of 3,000 at a crucial moment where he's required to build and chrono boost an observer, a probe, a dark templar, a mothership, and an air weapons upgrade in whatever fraction of a second 3,000 APM implies. That's another non-feasible equillibrium. It would be nice to type a conclusion to this wall of text but whatever
You could conclude, even though SC1 has such a developed metagame, its impractical to the point of impossible to abstract it in a way we could claim it balanced in a clean game-theory sense because of the complexities of realtime, intricate games of imperfect misinformation. We have simply accepted it as 'balanced', because it seems that way after such extensive play, so Mr. Skeptical is awesome xD. Hope I followed what you said properly :D
Thanks for the encouraging praise as well as interesting discussion everyone. Writing is fun when your stats get wiped multiple times.
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I glammed up my post with those pictures with funny captions everyone seems to like. I hope thats enough of an excuse to bump my post at a time when more people are awake xD.
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On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals.
The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance".
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Personally I think we should get rid of the word "balance" in suche a game with three totally different sides. You could try to compare an apple and an orange as to their "statistical values" (number of vitamines, calories, how long each saturates,...), but that wont tell anyone if you like one/both/neiter of them. A much better word would be "challenging". "Is the game challenging for race X?" should be the real question or "Does unit Y make it too easy (read: less challenging) for race Z to win?"
Personally I think there are a few units and basic racial mechanics which make it very easy for their race to win, but they havent really come to the focus of attention yet, because people really really really love to focus on the obvious things.
An example:
In the case of Protoss too many people complain about the 50 damage which the Immortal deals against armored units and buildings and while that is a lot there are high damage units for every race. The "real culprit" in that case is the Sentry with the Forcefield, which allows this race the unique ability to rearrange the battlefield and lock enemy units out. Combined with the really high damage of Immortals, the ever present choke points on maps near the bases and the rather pathetic hit points / armor of buildings you can take enemy armies apart in easy to swallow bites and demolish bases rather fast. It is simply easier to write down a number than to discuss something vague like a Forcefield, which can be placed brilliantly, badly or not at all. It is this flexibility of the spell which will make it really strong when the players have learned to perfect its use ... and the same is true for Fungal Growth.
The Infestor has an even more powerful ability than the one which the Marauder got flamed for a lot (slowing the movement speed of enemy units). There the cry for nerfage hasnt started, because too few players use it, because the unit requires a lot of microing and Zerg seems to be a race made for "1a2a3a" and thus the mentality of a majority of Zerg players seems like that.
The TV series Babylon 5 is actually a collection of wise words (including my signature) and you can find a quote for almost everything there if you are willing to look past the "crash-boom-bang". One of them is "Life isnt fair, because if it were fair we would deserve all the bad things happening to us." So instead of complaining about the others being too strong, people might start thinking about having a too easy time winning themselves. Its like watching two sports teams with wildly different caliber of players and playing styles and complaining about the match not being fair. It makes no sense to worry about fairness there, so why do it? All we can do is change the ground rules for all of them to keep the match challenging (which is why doping and cheating is illegal in sports). This should be the basic mindset with which we look at units and matchups and the general and specific win-loss statistics will show which race has an easier time winning compared to others. Life is partly about enjoying yourself and while having an easy win may be fun for a short while it will stop being exciting much faster than it will if you are challenged and its an even matchup.
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The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D:
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On April 25 2010 08:10 shindigs wrote:
The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D:
If we could bring people to overlook the [Philosophy] tag and start thinking about the actual content we could get a better way of debating here though, so it would definetely make sense to do it. As ImSkeptic wrote:
But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe.
Philosophy can give us insight into our own failures in our ways of thinking and thus make better people. Sadly too few people try that nowadays ...
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On April 25 2010 08:26 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 08:10 shindigs wrote:
The OP actually makes a ton of sense to me after taking a class on epistemology. Just wanted to say major props and I'll probably edit for wall of text later.
Also nominating this thread for front page spotlight (though my opinion probably won't mean anything) as this is an actual "philosophy" discussion D: If we could bring people to overlook the [Philosophy] tag and start thinking about the actual content we could get a better way of debating here though, so it would definetely make sense to do it. As ImSkeptic wrote: Show nested quote +But seriously, the study of philosophy educates us on how we think, allowing us to scrutinize what we value and believe. Philosophy can give us insight into our own failures in our ways of thinking and thus make better people. Sadly too few people try that nowadays ...
I agree. Unfortunately the terms "logic" and "philosophy" are thrown away way too often on the Internet.
I really enjoy the branch of epistemology (the study of knowledge and how we form beliefs) and its pretty amazing how this article applied it to balance and StarCraft.
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Well said. I'll admit, I honestly opened this thread up expecting another load of newbie, baseless, misinformed bullshit but was clearly proven wrong.
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I honestly loved this thread enough to register. It's not often you read something like this in a forum and since I very recently encountered this website I wasn't sure what to expect. As a philosophy major I wish i had more to say on this subject but my knowledge of starcraft is limited and game theory isn't something i've focused on ( my focus right now has been on medical ethics and logic). Anyways, great post! I hope to read more from you and i'll definately start reading up on game theory in order to add some meaningful ideas.
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On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance".
I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. My point is that 'true balance' isn't a concept worth looking into, and we should get on with moving discussion from 'balancing a unit' to 'strategizing against a race'. Especially in the early stages of a beta, because I see it might be harmful if changes that are pushed for the community are simply a reflection of the meta-game. Because it just means the patches are changing the game, not individual players. Someone like sAviOr may have just caused Blizzard to increase the time it takes to get hive if this kind of attitude was taken, cutting off us seeing Bisu and his creativity.
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On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can.
So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."?
The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players.
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On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players.
You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now.
That also touches the light in which the first post was made. We need to think about things we, the players, can do instead of what blizzard can do for us. Perfect balance can never be archieved trough the brute force of balance patches, because SC2 has a (near) infinite combination of actions that can be taken.
I personally am a fan of the approach blizzard takes. There is an unbelievable amount of variables and while this is still beta i think they are reaching a fairly balanced game already. That indeed doesn't mean that we should stop talking about balancing but sometimes what the masses want =! what the game needs.
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I think you've identified a popular misconception, then proceeded to fall right into it. Which is odd. A for effort. You're right, balance isn't the core goal, fun and competition are core goals. Balance is a means to an end. As a player, we will never be able to identify if something is balanced or not, at least not the beta. Again, You're absolutely right.
However, as you stated yourself, balance is not the point.
We can't identify whether or not something is imbalanced, but we as players can however, quite easily, identify if something is or is not fun. In which an argument from authority is actually quite valid, because if all the pro gamers are not finding the game fun, it means that the game will not be competitive, no matter how objectively balanced it is. Players can also objectively determine the cause for this lack of fun through analytical reason, because in many cases, it can be attributed to an core attribute of the game that is not subject to change as the metagame changes.
If a player finds that the lack of terran positional play is making the game not fun, we can objectively determine that the way siege tanks are balanced are causing this. Hence a balancing issue. The thesis is now "Siege tanks are underpowered", a statement solely relating to balance, but its core contention is actually one of fun. Hence, it is a perfectly apt
Whether or not the game is fun or not for an individual is irrelevant. However, If the general consensus is that it is unfun, through an imbalance, or rather, a balance in a direction contrary to what we perceive as fun AND one can objectively link this lack of fun to a non metagame element (such as siege tanks just being statistically bad, irrelevant to the current meta) a perfectly valid statement about the balance of the game has been asserted.
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On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now.
You didn't read the thread imo.
We're right back at:
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out.
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On April 26 2010 02:33 Funchucks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now. You didn't read the thread imo. We're right back at: Show nested quote +
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out.
What you could also get out of the article is that balance is actually very subjectively defined. Whether this definition comes from authority or user input, inevitably the most objective way of looking at balance is through statistics. Even then there are a ton of lurking variables that could skew the statistics so even then the numbers may fail us.
We as a community are even skewed in the perception of balance, because somehow we think the fact that 2 lurkers can annihilate an MM army constitutes a pretty "balanced" game (soft counters and micro aside).
Inevitably I feel that a consensus on balance can be reached once the community figures out some significant standard and dominant builds like Brood War. Until then we'll debate balance until StarCraft 3.
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On April 26 2010 03:41 shindigs wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 02:33 Funchucks wrote:On April 26 2010 01:28 WazZap wrote:On April 26 2010 01:13 Funchucks wrote:On April 25 2010 23:44 ImSkeptical wrote:On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
The other method for examining balance is the awesome power of statistics. Here we get to put on our glasses and get down to doing sweet science. We collect our numbers on W/L ratios of top platinum players, of each matchup, of each server. This gives us a wealth of information to judge balance; we can see the numbers right in front of us. If we were Blizzard we could just fiddle till they lined up into a pretty distribution. But of course, anyone who has any familiarity with statistics knows the downfalls of the approach. Maybe the learning curves for all the races are different It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window. You can philosowank all you like about what "true balance" is, but having roughly equal win rates for each race in each tier on the ladder is required to meet their own goals. The other key goals are appeal, fun, and relevance of skill (such that in a platinum vs. bronze match, you don't get the bronze player winning 49% of the time). These can all be considered types of balance, but they're not what people are normally talking about when they say "balance". I'll try to clarify my conclusion. It doesn't matter what Blizzard does it some sense. They can keep 'balancing' to keep statistics even, which doesn't seem like a good design philosophy, but hypothetically say they do this. What difference does this make as a player? Nothing. You're still going to try an win as much as you can. So the question is, "What difference does it make if the game is balanced so that players of equal skill level have an equal chance of winning regardless of the race they specialize in?" and the answer you come up with is "Nothing."? The mind boggles. Have you ever heard the expression, "Level playing field."? It's a concept that kind of matters, to the players. You didn't read the full comment imo. What he bassicly meant to say is that all changes the community wants isn't always the road the game needs to take. Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet against a certain build that looks to be overpowered right now. You didn't read the thread imo. We're right back at:
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
If a certain build "looks to be overpowered" statistically then it IS overpowered to people with a certain level of experience. "Maybe it's just that we haven't found the right strategy yet" only applies to balancing the higher levels of skills. Most players aren't going to hang around studying build orders for hour after hour, they're just going to play, and the stuff that's obvious matters a lot more to them than the stuff that's tricky to figure out. What you could also get out of the article is that balance is actually very subjectively defined. Whether this definition comes from authority or user input, inevitably the most objective way of looking at balance is through statistics. Even then there are a ton of lurking variables that could skew the statistics so even then the numbers may fail us. We as a community are even skewed in the perception of balance, because somehow we think the fact that 2 lurkers can annihilate an MM army constitutes a pretty "balanced" game (soft counters and micro aside). Inevitably I feel that a consensus on balance can be reached once the community figures out some significant standard and dominant builds like Brood War. Until then we'll debate balance until StarCraft 3.
What i tried to say but alot better worded :p
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Really interesting read and a lot of valid points were brought up, and I completely agree with your Force Field example.
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Couldn't you just have said everything in about 3 sentences instead of wasting my time with a wall of text? I thought you'd have useful insights but that just wasted my time.
Here I'll summarize it for you:
-Don't blame the game, blame the player
-Don't talk about balance if you aren't a top player
-Don't use statistics blindly, look for hidden variables
Sweet I'm a philosophizer too!
Please, if you something important to say just say it and don't waste everyone's time making them read a bunch of useless crap.
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On April 26 2010 02:01 Half wrote:
I think you've identified a popular misconception, then proceeded to fall right into it. Which is odd. A for effort. You're right, balance isn't the core goal, fun and competition are core goals. Balance is a means to an end. As a player, we will never be able to identify if something is balanced or not, at least not the beta. Again, You're absolutely right.
However, as you stated yourself, balance is not the point.
We can't identify whether or not something is imbalanced, but we as players can however, quite easily, identify if something is or is not fun. In which an argument from authority is actually quite valid, because if all the pro gamers are not finding the game fun, it means that the game will not be competitive, no matter how objectively balanced it is. Players can also objectively determine the cause for this lack of fun through analytical reason, because in many cases, it can be attributed to an core attribute of the game that is not subject to change as the metagame changes.
If a player finds that the lack of terran positional play is making the game not fun, we can objectively determine that the way siege tanks are balanced are causing this. Hence a balancing issue. The thesis is now "Siege tanks are underpowered", a statement solely relating to balance, but its core contention is actually one of fun. Hence, it is a perfectly apt
Its actually funny how you identify the trap and then fall into it yourself again by focusing on the word "balance" again yourself. A lone siege tank can never be balanced, because you need a counterpoint to balance it with. Even comparing its power with other units (thats just a different word for balance) doesnt work in a game as complex as Starcraft and the only thing you might attempt is to balance the whole package (by the total win/loss ratios on the ladder) ...
On April 26 2010 02:01 Half wrote:
Whether or not the game is fun or not for an individual is irrelevant. However, If the general consensus is that it is unfun, through an imbalance, or rather, a balance in a direction contrary to what we perceive as fun AND one can objectively link this lack of fun to a non metagame element (such as siege tanks just being statistically bad, irrelevant to the current meta) a perfectly valid statement about the balance of the game has been asserted.
... but for an individual unit you could determine if it is making the game less challenging or not fun. The prime example here is the Sentry with its Forcefield. Today I saw a game between Zerg and Protoss (ZOTAC cup finals) and the Protoss trapped the Zerg inside his main base for maybe two minutes or so by using Forcefield with nothing to be done by the Zerg except waiting for the Nydus Network to finish. I can imagine that not being much fun if you are on the receiving end and its certainly not very challenging to pull off on the side of the Protoss. Zerg won it eventually, but the tactic in itself is absolute in its effect (it totally blocks movement instead of slowing it down) and isnt counterable by the opponent and that makes me somewhat skeptical on the design of the spell.
One of the better examples is the way many Terran players are complaining themselves about the overall usefulness of the Marauder compared to the other units in their arsenal. They would like a shift of power from this unit towards others and that is a totally different way of handling things than non-Protoss who complain about Immortals or non-Zerg who complain about the Roach.
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Are you sure your new here? All of a sudden a few more new posters are posting some really good first posts. great post and great job! Welcome and I know you are going to get respect and have respect!
edit: and guys don't insult the poor kid. At least he tried to make a good post. I consider it to be a great post for one his first 8 posts. I mean how often do you see posts with this much effort put into them by new posters?
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On April 25 2010 05:48 Funchucks wrote:
It is a stated goal of the Starcraft 2 design team to balance the game at ALL skill levels, from the first-time player to the obsessive who plays like it's his job, so this argument goes out the window.
It's my stated goal to ascend to Godhood, travel back to the beginning of time and remake the universe in my own image. With that goal being out of reach at the moment, I've settled for experiencing new things as much as possible.
Assuming perfect balance is possible across all tiers of skill, then that is a wonderful ending point, but between here and there, it's a good idea to start by balancing around the top tier of players and working our way down.
If the game is balanced at low levels of skill but imbalanced at high levels of skill, then the game is literally most fun to play in a state of total ignorance, which is the opposite of having depth.
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On April 26 2010 07:18 Wintermute wrote:
Assuming perfect balance is possible across all tiers of skill, then that is a wonderful ending point, but between here and there, it's a good idea to start by balancing around the top tier of players and working our way down.
Why do you think this would be a good idea?
If you balance the top tier today, they will break it tomorrow, fix it themselves the day after, and break it again next week, but people who pick up the game tomorrow will try pretty much the same things on their first day as people who pick up the game ten years from now.
If the game comes out and all the newbies are either adopting an always-zergling-rush strategy against each other or losing 90+% of their games, none of them are going to care that the zergling rush is considered weak and easily defeated by people who have spent four months playing for 18 hours a day every day. They're just going to decide that the game is broken and tell all of their friends not to bother buying a copy.
Low level balance is easier to achieve, easier to recognize, more stable, and more important to get right for the release.
Stable high level balance will probably not be achieved until years after both expansions are out.
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On April 26 2010 08:11 Funchucks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 07:18 Wintermute wrote:
Assuming perfect balance is possible across all tiers of skill, then that is a wonderful ending point, but between here and there, it's a good idea to start by balancing around the top tier of players and working our way down.
Why do you think this would be a good idea? If you balance the top tier today, they will break it tomorrow, fix it themselves the day after, and break it again next week, but people who pick up the game tomorrow will try pretty much the same things on their first day as people who pick up the game ten years from now. If the game comes out and all the newbies are either adopting an always-zergling-rush strategy against each other or losing 90+% of their games, none of them are going to care that the zergling rush is considered weak and easily defeated by people who have spent four months playing for 18 hours a day every day. They're just going to decide that the game is broken and tell all of their friends not to bother buying a copy. Low level balance is easier to achieve, easier to recognize, more stable, and more important to get right for the release. Stable high level balance will probably not be achieved until years after both expansions are out.
So if it was the aim of someone to be top tier, they should aim to break and fix balance themself, and diregard whatever Blizzard does to please the newbies? I'm assuming you see this as, 'Blizzard balancing to please the majority to get sweet cash.' Even if this is true, which it very well may be, doesn't this make disccusing specific changes to balance even more irrelevant to players who want to make the game competetive? I agree with what you say, i'm just not sure it's entirely directed at what I was trying to say xD.
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On April 26 2010 19:28 ImSkeptical wrote:Show nested quote +On April 26 2010 08:11 Funchucks wrote:On April 26 2010 07:18 Wintermute wrote:
Assuming perfect balance is possible across all tiers of skill, then that is a wonderful ending point, but between here and there, it's a good idea to start by balancing around the top tier of players and working our way down.
Why do you think this would be a good idea? If you balance the top tier today, they will break it tomorrow, fix it themselves the day after, and break it again next week, but people who pick up the game tomorrow will try pretty much the same things on their first day as people who pick up the game ten years from now. If the game comes out and all the newbies are either adopting an always-zergling-rush strategy against each other or losing 90+% of their games, none of them are going to care that the zergling rush is considered weak and easily defeated by people who have spent four months playing for 18 hours a day every day. They're just going to decide that the game is broken and tell all of their friends not to bother buying a copy. Low level balance is easier to achieve, easier to recognize, more stable, and more important to get right for the release. Stable high level balance will probably not be achieved until years after both expansions are out. So if it was the aim of someone to be top tier, they should aim to break and fix balance themself, and diregard whatever Blizzard does to please the newbies? I'm assuming you see this as, 'Blizzard balancing to please the majority to get sweet cash.' Even if this is true, which it very well may be, doesn't this make disccusing specific changes to balance even more irrelevant to players who want to make the game competetive? I agree with what you say, i'm just not sure it's entirely directed at what I was trying to say xD.
I dont think he meant that. Whatever Blizzard does wont affect their revenues much (unless they totally screw up before it hits the shelves and good advertising can sell real junk anyways), because there is no subscription for Battlenet. Once you bought the game there will be no more revenue for Blizzard until the expansions are coming out. So they dont really need to please the casual players to keep their revenues up like they did with World of Warcraft. Tweaking the balance for Brood War took years until they finally got it right.
I also think it will be kinda impossible to "balance" the game equally for all playing levels just because there are different levels of playing skill required for each of the races. Zerg are probably the easiest to learn and thus attractive for low-level-players, because you dont have to learn that many units and have a lot fewer buildings to keep track of. Just doing an a-move with a horde of Roaches and not microing at all might be enough to win the game. The same is true for Terran if you simply stick to Marauders. Once you start using a widely mixed Terran army of MMM, some Hellions, a Raven and some siege tanks however, you will need to much better control to be successful. The same is true for Protoss with their ton of caster units, because placing a Forcefield in a good spot needs to be learned. Thus Forcefield might be less "broken" in lower levels than it is in higher levels of play. On the other hands the experienced opponents will have learned how to deal with Forcefield eventually. IMO lower level play is not a good thing to look at for a comparison, because the players there are too erratic in their playing style/quality and might play a game which would have defeated a top level player but lose against some silly crap in the next one.
I apologize for using the word balance here; it should be replaced with the term "keeping a game challenging".
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Great post. I was arguing this point on the C&C board a while back because it was just so tiring and waste of effort. But I was shouted down 
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On April 26 2010 06:29 Rabiator wrote:
Its actually funny how you identify the trap and then fall into it yourself again by focusing on the word "balance" again yourself. A lone siege tank can never be balanced, because you need a counterpoint to balance it with. Even comparing its power with other units (thats just a different word for balance) doesnt work in a game as complex as Starcraft and the only thing you might attempt is to balance the whole package (by the total win/loss ratios on the ladder) ...
I never focused on the word balance, I utilized it. The post starts by claiming that balance is not the end goal, and then elaborates on the irrelevant point on how balance can never be determined in such a brief amount of time.
The SC2 siege tank is weaker then the SC1 siege tank. This represents a move away from positional play. As a player, I can find positional play to be entertaining, and thus, I could posit a argument for the buffing of siege tanks despite the fact that terran are not objectively underpowered, because as you said, despite the fact that siege tanks a weak, they do not exist in a vacuum. Despite this, I can still advocate buffing siege tanks in order to shift the gameplay in a direction I find fun, a balance suggestion that does not depend on a absolute, logistical, non-meta understanding of the actual balance.
... but for an individual unit you could determine if it is making the game less challenging or not fun. The prime example here is the Sentry with its Forcefield. Today I saw a game between Zerg and Protoss (ZOTAC cup finals) and the Protoss trapped the Zerg inside his main base for maybe two minutes or so by using Forcefield with nothing to be done by the Zerg except waiting for the Nydus Network to finish. I can imagine that not being much fun if you are on the receiving end and its certainly not very challenging to pull off on the side of the Protoss. Zerg won it eventually, but the tactic in itself is absolute in its effect (it totally blocks movement instead of slowing it down) and isnt counterable by the opponent and that makes me somewhat skeptical on the design of the spell.
One of the better examples is the way many Terran players are complaining themselves about the overall usefulness of the Marauder compared to the other units in their arsenal. They would like a shift of power from this unit towards others and that is a totally different way of handling things than non-Protoss who complain about Immortals or non-Zerg who complain about the Roach.
I meant individual player, as in "If I'm the only guy who likes siege tanks, and nobody else does, my opinion is irrelevant". I agree with your analysis on the Sentry, but its completely irrelevant to the segment you quoted and actually supports my point o.o.
In fact, it is my point in its entirety. We seem to be in agreement lols. I'm saying the same thing. I can't determine all the intrinsic ways the Sentry interacts with the game and all the complex relationships and as I result I don't truly understand the balance of the sentry or the balance of the protoss. Nobody does, there are too many variables, even blizzard doesn't, they just have a lot more experience and data to make intelligent guesses off of.
However, I can determine that the force field perma blocking of ramps is just no fun at all. And thus, I can suggest a change made to balance to discourage this practice, backing it up with replays of pro games, and most people would agree that it isn't fun. Thus, I've made a legitimate contributory suggestion towards balance without truly understanding its intricacies because balance isn't the core goal, fun and dynamic play are.
The OP takes the idea of "we know nothing" too far. While we can't disagree with the balance of the siege tank in relationship to balance, we can easily do so in relationship to fun, or rather, the units effect on the direction of gameplay in relationship to fun, and make a valid point out of it.
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United States1719 Posts
On April 23 2010 21:14 ImSkeptical wrote:
This does not mean I want discussion on the forum to stop in relation to balance. It would just be nice if instead another mindset was taken, one focusing on what we as a player can actually do to deal with a problem. First make the assumption that the game is already balanced. Instead of “Force fields should be destructible”, I would prefer the discussion to be “Force fields are super badass. What should I do in order to be extra badass in order to beat someone who can force field good”. This kind of discussion actually gets us somewhere because we are not Blizzard. We are the players. We can’t change the game by changing the game; we change the game by playing it. We can make the game balanced by putting in the effort, the practice, and the skill.
I love OP, his argument is just a waaaaaaaaaaaay better worded version of mine:
On March 10 2010 13:10 rotinegg wrote:
i am seeing way too many of these threads, recycling the arguments in the same few original posts OVER and OVER and OVER again. Broodlords arent end-all units, get a mother ship and vortex them or something. Figure something out so Z is forced to make them travel in open space and have them sniped. The post about how they get killed by stalkers with blink was excellent. Sitting here and complaining without having even given thought to a possible way to counter them is doing you all no good. Threads should not be generated with the purpose of saying "OMG CERTAIN UNIT IMBA CUZ I LOST TO IT!!!1!! BLIZZARD FIX IT ST4RCRAFT2 BROKEN ZOMG T_T" Instead they should be along the lines of "Hey anybody find a good way to counter Z that goes brood lords? Having a bit of trouble." If there is enough constructive discussion and there really seems no way to stop broodlords, then maybe blizzard will make a patch.
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i am seeing way too many of these threads, recycling the arguments in the same few original posts OVER and OVER and OVER again. Broodlords arent end-all units, get a mother ship and vortex them or something. Figure something out so Z is forced to make them travel in open space and have them sniped. The post about how they get killed by stalkers with blink was excellent. Sitting here and complaining without having even given thought to a possible way to counter them is doing you all no good. Threads should not be generated with the purpose of saying "OMG CERTAIN UNIT IMBA CUZ I LOST TO IT!!!1!! BLIZZARD FIX IT ST4RCRAFT2 BROKEN ZOMG T_T" Instead they should be along the lines of "Hey anybody find a good way to counter Z that goes brood lords? Having a bit of trouble." If there is enough constructive discussion and there really seems no way to stop broodlords, then maybe blizzard will make a patch.
You know, this kind of illustrates what I'm talking about too.
I don't agree that Broodlords are overpowered or even need to be changed, I love broodlords.
However, looking at that massive broodlord thread, you'll notice that nobody good is saying Broodlords are the end all be all. That they are objectively "imbalanced". Right now, the main point of contention is that Toss need a variety of tech options requiring a economic advantage in order to counter late game mass broodlords.
What they are protesting is the direction of gameplay forcing toss to secure a economy advantage somewhere in early lategame right before broodlords or they die. The validity of that statement is debatable, but the point of contention is perfectly valid and the kind of statement a player might make about balance without requiring a deep understanding of it. Maybe Toss IS balanced around securing that economic advantage, but they personally don't like that kind of gameplay style.
Now I don't agree with that, but you can see how it can be a valid statement to make without requiring a really deep understanding, providing you can prove that 5-6 Broodlords require a greater economy to beat.
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Unfortunately, a dynamic, spectatable game a balanced game does not always make. :[
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United States1719 Posts
On April 27 2010 12:13 Half wrote:Show nested quote +
i am seeing way too many of these threads, recycling the arguments in the same few original posts OVER and OVER and OVER again. Broodlords arent end-all units, get a mother ship and vortex them or something. Figure something out so Z is forced to make them travel in open space and have them sniped. The post about how they get killed by stalkers with blink was excellent. Sitting here and complaining without having even given thought to a possible way to counter them is doing you all no good. Threads should not be generated with the purpose of saying "OMG CERTAIN UNIT IMBA CUZ I LOST TO IT!!!1!! BLIZZARD FIX IT ST4RCRAFT2 BROKEN ZOMG T_T" Instead they should be along the lines of "Hey anybody find a good way to counter Z that goes brood lords? Having a bit of trouble." If there is enough constructive discussion and there really seems no way to stop broodlords, then maybe blizzard will make a patch.
You know, this kind of illustrates what I'm talking about too. I don't agree that Broodlords are overpowered or even need to be changed, I love broodlords. However, looking at that massive broodlord thread, you'll notice that nobody good is saying Broodlords are the end all be all. That they are objectively "imbalanced". Right now, the main point of contention is that Toss need a variety of tech options requiring a economic advantage in order to counter late game mass broodlords. What they are protesting is the direction of gameplay forcing toss to secure a economy advantage somewhere in early lategame right before broodlords or they die. The validity of that statement is debatable, but the point of contention is perfectly valid and the kind of statement a player might make about balance without requiring a deep understanding of it. Maybe Toss IS balanced around securing that economic advantage, but they personally don't like that kind of gameplay style. Now I don't agree with that, but you can see how it can be a valid statement to make without requiring a really deep understanding, providing you can prove that 5-6 Broodlords require a greater economy to beat. Which I disagree with.
yea my post wasn't exactly a well-thought out and logically sound one. I wrote it in response to the 4 "Broodlords Imba" threads made less than three weeks into the beta (3 of which got closed thereafter). I do agree that protoss on equal economic footing as the zerg player during late game has a hard time fending off broodlords. I also believe, however, that it is part of the Z > P > T > Z dynamic which has existed since the conception of SC1, for P players to have to secure every inch of advantage against a Z player of equal skill to win. Regardless, I don't want to make this another broodlord balance discussion thread, and I see where you are coming from, especially because it is so hard to get an early lead as P against Z in the current state of the game.
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Amazing OP. Seriously we need more threads like this. Balance should equate to the "better" player winning. Creative out-of-the-box thinking is what will make SC2 come to full maturity and make it the game we all want it to be. By not debating over silly issues as "x" unit sucks or "y" strategy is imba and focusing more effort onto how to overcome these situations, we help blizzard so much more. I'm sure blizzard could balance the game perfectly using math and science, but then the game would be boring and have no "spark". Balancing the game around how the players play it makes for a much more interesting game. Just watch the recent match of Nony vs Moonglade (HDH Invitational), Nony uses the phoenix, a unit which is thought to be lackluster, and makes it look completely imba. Now is that a problem with game balance or player balance? I'm thinking the latter. Thanks again OP for an insightful read.
TL;DR By trying out wacky play styles and different unit compositions, we will help blizzard balance the game that much faster. I mean thats why we are in the beta right to help out blizzard?
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Wholehartedly agree with OP. It's time to move away from calling units OP and start thinking about different timings and how they affect the game. All in all a good read that just flew by even though it was a wall of text.
And teh fukk at all the ignorant and stupid people showing up and just talking down at OP about using philosophy and how that is somewhat a bad thing, who the fuck cares as long as his point is made. dont wanna read it, then dont. feeling abit down after someone used too big words for you, not anyone elses problem.
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On April 23 2010 23:45 m0nkeyknight wrote:
Great read, like you i also enjoyed the power overwhelming article, people don't seem to realize that the original Starcraft(lol 4 pool) took years to balance. Constantly calling certain things OP and then saying they need "nerfing" rather than trying to come up with some mad strat/bo to overcome it just ends up with new balance issues being made.
allthough nothing countered the 4 pool so it had to be nerfed.
just sayin
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EPT
