On May 17 2010 19:02 Duelist wrote:
Of the top 18 players on the asian server, only one is protoss. If zerg was overnerfed, then protoss got destroyed. Should mention that in your article Artosis.

these stats are still pre-patch12 based

Klive5ive

United Kingdom6056 Posts

May 17 2010 10:09 GMT

#122

You're reasoning may be correct about balance (although I'm not sure, we don't even have proper maps yet) but certainly this change doesn't warrant a giant post or any concern beyond what we already had about Blizzards flawed design system.

You said yourself the vast majority of good players are playing Zerg. That's exactly what Blizzard doesn't want in a Beta; so they make them worse and some top players switch to other races. At least they're making changes and learning things.

Basically this thread like so many others just sounds like more needless whining.
TL is dieing a slow death.

tenno

Germany20 Posts

May 17 2010 10:12 GMT

#123

On May 17 2010 19:09 Klive5ive wrote:
You're reasoning may be correct about balance (although I'm not sure, we don't even have proper maps yet) but certainly this change doesn't warrant a giant post or any concern beyond what we already had about Blizzards flawed design system.

You said yourself the vast majority of good players are playing Zerg. That's exactly what Blizzard doesn't want in a Beta; so they make them worse and some top players switch to other races. At least they're making changes and learning things.

Basically this thread like so many others just sounds like more needless whining.
TL is dieing a slow death.

there is no dying going on ;-)

so they get proper results for balance issues with nerfing zerg? that doesnt make any sense in my opinion.

They should reconsider there changes or alter them with adding some 1 supply zerg unit in T1 or T1,5.

Its a fact they didnt take the players playing the races into account, obviously.

Apolo

Portugal1259 Posts

May 17 2010 10:12 GMT

#124

On May 17 2010 19:09 tenno wrote:

Show nested quote +

these stats are still pre-patch12 based

:O i didn't know that, but in that case, that supports my point, considering that so far protoss has been by far the most nerfed class out of the 3.

Tone_

United Kingdom554 Posts

May 17 2010 10:18 GMT

#125

Good points, nice writeup.

110595910

62 Posts

May 17 2010 10:19 GMT

#126

china will dominate in sc2------my prediction

Klive5ive

United Kingdom6056 Posts

May 17 2010 10:19 GMT

#127

On May 17 2010 19:12 tenno wrote:
Its a fact they didnt take the players playing the races into account, obviously.

Obviously you have no idea and just made that up.

KaiserJohan

Sweden1808 Posts

May 17 2010 10:24 GMT

#128

On May 17 2010 15:45 Luddite wrote:
I think it's more likely that Korea simply developed a myth that zerg was the strongest race, which caused all the really competitive players to pick zerg, which meant that zerg won all the tourneys, which reinforced the myth.

I totally agree.

crappen

Norway1546 Posts

May 17 2010 10:34 GMT

#129

If you had paid any attention to what Artosis told you, the reason zerg was so strong in the begining was it was so easy to learn and figure out. There is no myth involved.

Try go from zerg to terran, your head will explode.

Mojawi)SoJu

Korea (South)259 Posts

May 17 2010 10:41 GMT

#130

good reading!

7mk

Germany10157 Posts

May 17 2010 10:51 GMT

#131

haha I knew this article must've been from artosis before I clicked on it

On May 17 2010 14:53 Artosis wrote:
This doesn't make playing the Zerg easier, per sey

I'm usually not some kind of grammar nazi, but that really hurt my soul

KillerPenguin

United States516 Posts

May 17 2010 11:11 GMT

#132

I'm not sure why Asians prefer zerg but I don't think it's mainly to do with the number of different types of units. I play toss but I like zerg the most because they are the most easily adaptable you can completely change your strategy much faster and cheaper because you don't need 4 starports or 4 factories. That suggests that zerg would be a better race once you understand the game very well and is counter to your argument and zerg just feel kool they are stealthy deadly bugs which imo is kooler than crazy futuristic templar which of course are kooler than playing some dumb human race.

Galleon.frigate

Canada721 Posts

May 17 2010 11:11 GMT

#133

It's not that I disagree with Artossis, I'm in no place to comment as I've not met any korean player. Actually his points sound very sound.

What I want to speak to is the expectation of 'fair' patchs. No one should expect 'fair' patches with nerfs balanced by buffs

Blizzard most likely has plans to balance out the roach at 2 food supply - and also backup plans to keep them at 1. And that almost certianly have more changes planned for the Ultra. So why didn't they put them all into patch 12?

Simply if you put down 3-4 changes to a unit in one patch, and it doesn't go exactly as planned... you can't tell which of the changes went wrong, or even what does what.

It's standard practice to make as few changes at a time as possible to see the impact. It's part of testing of any system.

This is a testing process... in many cases it's refinment and and you see fair changes... but that can only happen the unit(s) involved are not broken in the first place. If you are making serious changes you make them slowly.

Based on what I'm seeing I fully expect balance patches to continue into the live game as well.

Though Artosis is obviously correct to point out a pattern of zerg nerfs

Piy

Scotland3152 Posts

May 17 2010 11:20 GMT

#134

There were similar numbers of units for each race in the original bw though, and blizzard havent finished buffing zerg yet.

gogogadgetflow

United States2583 Posts

May 17 2010 11:23 GMT

#135

Artosis makes the mistake of thinking that only old BW pros are destined to comprise the SC2 bonjwa. I think the process of shaking the top players out of SC2 is going to be a real challenge to this type of elitism.

Wargizmo

Australia1237 Posts

May 17 2010 11:35 GMT

#136

I think Artosis' argument might be valid if Blizzard were actually balancing the game based on the top 10 players in the world. However Blizzard seems to be looking at game results and statistics across all servers and all leagues (at least plat and gold anyways). The impression I get from Blizzard's own posts are that they care much more about achieving a 50% win ratio for all matchups at gold/platinum than the specific results of a few ex SC1 pros.

ProoM

Lithuania1741 Posts

May 17 2010 11:40 GMT

#137

This article said exactly everything I wanted to say about current zerg situation. Saved me some time ^_^. Nice article, gj ;].

Generico

United States39 Posts

May 17 2010 11:47 GMT

#138

I think it's pretty clear that Zerg has the simplest macro. They have the fewest viable combat units, and the simplest production requirements, which pretty much by definition makes it easier to distill effective unit combinations and timings. I agree with Artosis that Zerg is basically just easier to figure out than the other races. It should be obvious that if that's the case, zerg players are going to have an advantage this early in the game's life cycle. For that reason, I think blizzard is making a mistake by overcompensating for the early ease of learning imparted by the race's innate simplicity. I think they're going to end up doing a lot of backpedaling as the metagame evolves.

Liquid`Nazgul

22427 Posts

May 17 2010 11:50 GMT

#139

I agree with the basics of the argument that learning curves in SC2 are largely unknown and are most likely entirely dependent on race. Having less units is an indication Zergs learning curve will rise much faster but will also get stuck after that. Not a fact though, just an indication.

Who plays which race is definitely important to the argument as well. As you can see from the whole EU community is that pretty much every single guy on top is an ex-top-gamer in some other game. The whole top 10 of the gosugamers ranking are guys that are known for their accomplishments in other games. Be it BW, War3, Supreme Commander (TLO) or WoW (Orly). It's pretty clear that out of all these games on average BW will give you the best preparation for SC2 and thus the argument that Zerg has got more ex-pros than the other races and therefor played better is totally valid.

I don't really agree with claiming overnerf based on that though, because just like we can't determine the exact learning curve of the races we also can't determine exactly how much the nerfs will do. It's very possible Zergs will continue being on top in Asia making the whole argument of overnerf invalid because no one is capable of judging exactly by how much ahead they should be. Anyway articles need strong opinions so this conclusion added to the above mentioned theories makes sense from a writers perspective.

Also Spunky is an ex-pro and plays Protoss I feel he deserves a little bit of love.

Apolo

Portugal1259 Posts

May 17 2010 11:54 GMT

#140

If some race, and i'm not talking about zerg in specific, or units end up being a little unbalanced for better or for worse, can't they just release a patch to fix that? Lots of games do that kind of balancing long after the game is for sale.