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On May 27 2010 06:36 Shiladie wrote:
You never balance around the people who don't know how to play the game...
If they lose to a strat that has a counter, the fix isn't to nerf the strat, it's for them to learn the counter.
But this would make too much sense and would require the OP to learn the game instead of just having the game be super easy for him to win.
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On May 27 2010 06:48 Jibba wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2010 06:38 jusayO wrote:
I would also like to add one more point to my response...
Street Fighter... Beloved fighting game, simple enough for your average person to play, win, play with their friends and win/lose to their hearts content. With complexity to make it one of the most competitive games we've ever seen.
Projectile spam is enough to beat anyone that's "casual."How is that different from something like void rays or banshees? Blizzard has already made a ton of concessions to that group, and every single person that's played both can tell you SC2 is much, much easier to get into than BW. How much further do you expect them to go? Also, lol @ millions playing CSS and even more at being NightFall's bitch. ^^
Not since SF2.
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On May 27 2010 07:11 Chriamon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2010 06:38 jusayO wrote:
I would also like to add one more point to my response...
Street Fighter... Beloved fighting game, simple enough for your average person to play, win, play with their friends and win/lose to their hearts content. With complexity to make it one of the most competitive games we've ever seen.
I don't play DoTA/HoN/LoL but they seem to follow suit in my mind given the limitations, and roles their hero system has.
Accessible by everyone, yet it's very apparent when there's skill differences involved... And I'm sure this is how SC2 will end up, whether the 5,000 people on TL daily want it to or not. I'm confused by your examples. You give street fighter, and say its balanced for both casuals and competitive play, and then bring up dota/HoN/LoL, which at a casual level is completely pointless to play. Dota/HoN have such a high learning curve that there is almost no point to playing casually, because you will get rolled by someone even marginally better than you, or someone who actually plays as a team.
As I said, I don't play DoTA or HoN but I have friends that do... And even the most competitive/skilled player in my real life friend base (I guess he's somewhat well known still.. Grumpy-Bear/Lews-Therin) said "it's a simple concept and functionality, with as much complexity as you want it to entail, but teammates can really hold you back." So I was just going by his description, as I am the Starcraft player, so I automatically think my game of choice outweighed his since arrogance is cool.
Apologies to players of both these games, but hopefully you see my point.
Jabba, apology accepted. My heart is forever with NERDPOLICE, unfortunately Shredder killed NP when Cal deemed he was cheating in the one game he played with us. Oh the drama that is totally the opposite of what I am now, haha.
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This post is wrong. You have to balance around the highest level of play or by definition the game is not balanced. The only reason to balance around casual play is to make money not make a good game. The only reason you state for casual balance is summed up in the following quote:
The point I am trying to make is this. A casual player could be the next WhiteRa or Sen. You just don't know. But if they lose 10 times to a cheese, they aren't going to think "well, I need to L2P". They will just leave because they think the game is shit and your game will die. Had they stayed, prehaps they would have become great. But they didn't because the cheese has killed the game for them early, when they are still deciding "Do I like this game?".
This is wrong as well. Any player that quits after losing 10 times to a cheese will not become the next great player. I know it takes a lot more determination and commitment to become pro in any sport.
However, blizzard is a company and I can see why they would want to balance around the casual fan base. This seems very short sighted. In the long run I think making a quality game will generate more profit. Look at SC1, it was not balanced around casual level play and has become one of the most successful game of all time.
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I think the gist of most of the responses is that you cannot balance the game around people who dont have a strong understanding of the game.
I don't see why this OP and thread are so long winded.
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I agree with the OP to the extent that cultivating active long-term interest in the multiplayer game is a worthwhile goal. At the same time, I agree with others that Starcraft should retain its unique character: if you don't like it, other games are available.
Where I think the OP goes wrong, and consequently alienates many readers, is his analysis of the 'problem'. To quote Michael Douglas: cheese is good. Cheese works. Or something. Anyway, it adds drama and depth, and successfully scouting and beating it is both fun and rewarding. We like cheese.
However.
If the skill required to scout, identify and defend against a strategy - any strategy at any level - is vastly greater than that required to execute it, the game is broken. Everyone loses. The person executing the strategy loses because he's being trained to rely upon a crutch which will be kicked from under him when he rises in the rankings. The people facing the strategy lose because it encourages blaming the game for their losses rather than the mature, introspective approach to self-improvement for which we all strive.
Now, I'm not saying such strategies actually exist in SC2. But I would say it can often feel like they do, especially when you get hit by two or three different and savagely effective ploys in quick succession. But the answer is not, as the OP advocates, to mercilessly prune 'cheesy' strategies. The answer is to enable and drive the right kind of learning. Yes, people can come to a website like this, ask questions, post replays, savour the feeling of profound inadequacy Day9's analyses prompt in the merely human, etc etc - and at the 'enthusiast' level of play upwards that's absolutely fine. But why not join everything up? Why not build the right kind of learning right into the game itself; help more people become enthusiasts in the first place?
Here's what I'd like to see: code added to the game able to recognise specific strategies (based on data submitted by the community) and offer helpful advice (also community-sourced) to those on the losing end. "Ah, you got cannon-rushed. Here's a replay of someone spotting that and fending it off. Look at what your opponent sacrificed in terms of economy." Or: "Your opponent performed a passable/competent/expert immortal timing push. Here's what to look for in future." Or: "Your opponent was Terran. Shit happens." And so forth.
Make it so the player can browse for 'mentor packs' to install (I'm quite sure TL's would be a popular choice). Add more information to the stats screen, calling the player's attention to the things better players know are important, like becoming supply blocked, having too much money in the bank, how long it took expansions to pay for themselves and how long they remained unsaturated, how much spawn larvae/chronoboost/mule was wasted, periods when extractors had no drones assigned...
You get the idea, anyway: make sure everyone who buys the game can't help but also buy into the mentality of an SC2 enthusiast. That is all.
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Historically speaking, most PC games I can think of that had long lifespans (years) were balanced from the highest level down. Balancing the other way is a recipe for disaster because you lose all the competitive player pool. When you lose the competitive player pool, you lose tourneys, you lose talent, you lose sponsors throwing money at you to advertise THEIR gear to people they know will spend top dollar for it.
Balancing for scrubs creates a game for scrubs. This is competition. THIS IS STARCRAFT!
Edit: Please don't think I'm bashing. I was a part of a community I loved which fell apart when the developers decided the game needed to be more balanced at the lower levels. Guess what happened, three sequels, each with the community dwindling smaller and smaller because all of the hardcore guys left for something better.
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I disagree with what he says, removing cheeses would be removing a huge part of the game, my first game of SC2 I lost to DT's, I felt cheated and dissapointed, was bitter at a cloaked unit in the game and had no knowledge of revealing it (I was a Terran with plenty energy to scan...) Though I quickly realised and I would never allow something like that to happen again.
A person loses to a cheese once, maybe twice, not much more then that , if I lose to a cheese I ALWAYS look at the replay, I want to see how I could have prevented it.
Also to not balance this game for competitive play you might as well not balance it at all, if you balanced for the casual Terran would be terrible and Protoss Godlike (10 hp Marauders  ), it would be like putting a 10 year old child in control and who balances for there faveourite race and units (omg I hate Reaper rush lets remove them bam).
A game like HoN/DotA also had many debate over comptitive balance over pub balance, pubs complain about stealth heroes because they never have the means to reveal it, but in competitive games of that you never see those heroes, why? Because a decent player puts in the effort and hard counters it.
All cheeses can be hard countered and a player who refuses to learn it shouldnt be playing this game and go to MW 2
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Umpteen said it well. I found it slightly humorous that many proponents on the 'casual balance' idea referred the community as elitist. What I see is an assumption that cheese takes less 'skill' or cheese is easy. Countless people in this thread has already pointed out, cheese is not in fact easy, which is why it dies in execution (but never the intent, which brings in the safe and risky builds) in higher leagues. Perhaps instead it's the proponents that are elitist in their belief that newbie's inablity to cope with cheese is not a deficiency in skill? Ie response "you only won because you rushed blah blah"
The claim that in lower leagues cheese is rampart is also a contradiction. If these people rush and are indeed successful, they will soon move to higher leagues and become incompetent. If they are stuck in the same league despite cheesing, it simply means other players in same league deal with it competently. Which begs the question maybe it's the whiner who are not skilled enough to be in the division they are in, and the solution is an even lower league.
From my experience churning out medicore games did nothing to impact one's bottom line, as the 'casual' gamers cannot tell. EA is a case in point. Comparing revenue drivers for subscription games like WoW to SC2 is like comparing apples to oranges. That people will be turned off from buying blizzard games due to 'negative' experience is far stretched. Majority of players never play online, and the cynic inside me says a game only need to be interesting for a period longer than the 'return allowed' period for retail then Blizzard already made a lock of the profit. The 'casual gamers' I know of in beta only play amongst themselves anyway.
When I first started as t, I noticed zerg can early ling rush and still transition into roach quickly. Then I found the only solution is to wall, as sim-city in SC doesn't work as well in SC2 with the auto-target mechanic of melee units and that units don't stack/bug AI and weaker miners in general. Then comes patch which increased Roach supply, and the build described earlier is less viable. I don't know if that was Blizzard's response to a perceived problem or simply I got better, but z seems to have adjusted in general.
There are many misinterpretations of the OP from both sides. The OP quoted the example of the overlord ability as something that maybe 'fun and important' to casuals but has no impact on competitive play. That is IMO just crap design and totally irrelevant. Where do you draw the line between redundant abilities just to please a specific mass(or niche?) of debatable attention span?
Then OP used some general restrictions on rush as a solution to rush. Firstly, there's insufficient evidence that rush is undesirable, and 2ndly, a restriction imposed on everyone for a specific group is crap design. Depth, skill ceiling etc are what makes an RTS long-lasting. I would fathon a guess that the 'community that died slowly' in a post above is DoW. It took on a path of successively generic and bland game mechanisms through successive expansions. The revenue didnt' suffer, but the community did. This is definately not what members of this community want.
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So pretty much make the game easier for the casuals benifit. YEP GREAT PHILOSOPHY
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1 thing to think of is simply what people find fun. Do low level players enjoy doing cheese, and playing vs it? Do high level players enjoy doing cheese and blocking it? Do spectators enjoy cheese?
Design fun gameplay 1st, for as wide crowd as you can, then worry about balancing.
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On May 27 2010 09:24 JohannesH wrote:
1 thing to think of is simply what people find fun. Do low level players enjoy doing cheese, and playing vs it? Do high level players enjoy doing cheese and blocking it? Do spectators enjoy cheese?
Design fun gameplay 1st, for as wide crowd as you can, then worry about balancing.
Have you ever seen a Proleague match involving cheese. They absolutely lose their shit over cheese.
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Why worry about balancing the game for a level where balance doesn't even matter?
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Today I explained to some noob not to make cannons and to make units instead as his base got stomped. The very next game he went straight for 4 pylon coverage with cannons. How do you balance for a crazed pyschopath?
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United States22883 Posts
On May 27 2010 07:30 L wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2010 06:48 Jibba wrote:On May 27 2010 06:38 jusayO wrote:
I would also like to add one more point to my response...
Street Fighter... Beloved fighting game, simple enough for your average person to play, win, play with their friends and win/lose to their hearts content. With complexity to make it one of the most competitive games we've ever seen.
Projectile spam is enough to beat anyone that's "casual."How is that different from something like void rays or banshees? Blizzard has already made a ton of concessions to that group, and every single person that's played both can tell you SC2 is much, much easier to get into than BW. How much further do you expect them to go? Also, lol @ millions playing CSS and even more at being NightFall's bitch. ^^ Not since SF2.
Uh.. against people who play without regard for improving, yes it is. Or in SFIV, you can spam lariat or tt with Abel. I'd say those are pretty much the equivalent of "cheese" against noobs in BW or SC2. Anyone can do them and consistently win until the people they're playing learn how to play properly.
On May 27 2010 09:27 terr0r wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2010 09:24 JohannesH wrote:
1 thing to think of is simply what people find fun. Do low level players enjoy doing cheese, and playing vs it? Do high level players enjoy doing cheese and blocking it? Do spectators enjoy cheese?
Design fun gameplay 1st, for as wide crowd as you can, then worry about balancing. Have you ever seen a Proleague match involving cheese. They absolutely lose their shit over cheese.
Obviously it's done appropriately to keep greedy players honest *coughFlashcough* but it's hard not to turn into a giddy little school girl when you see Jaedong or July kill that 6th larva.
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On May 27 2010 07:24 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On May 27 2010 06:50 CowGoMoo wrote:On May 27 2010 06:41 FabledIntegral wrote:
For example, a Protoss can play a Terran in SC1 without DTs the entire game, but the looming threat of a DT forces Terran to buy an ebay, etc. when it could be getting something else. So merely the threat of something being there has many consequences on the balance of the game and removing things for casuals will have tons of unforeseen (and seen) negative consequences. This is 1 of the many reasons why balance is so difficult. Related specifically to the DT example, most detectors in SC2 have a larger detect radius than they did in SC. This doesn't really hurt competitive play but it helps the noobs. /casual balance And how does it helps noobs specifically? Are they misplacing their turrets/scanner sweeps so horribly that increased range fixes their mistake? I just can't imagine scenario where this change helps noob more than good player. It makes it easier to deal with cloaked stuff for everyone.
How do you not see it? Constantly moving your overseer to stay within banshees is hard even for me, I can't imagine for the casual player. The increased range def would help. Concerning turrets, it's obviously exactly that, they don't need optimal placement to fend off shit, while in SC1 you literally used a single turret to prevent DT's and had to put it in a very good spot (enough to defend but not enough that it could get sniped).
I don't understand how this is a hard concept whatsoever...
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On May 27 2010 10:38 FabledIntegral wrote:How do you not see it? Constantly moving your overseer to stay within banshees is hard even for me, I can't imagine for the casual player. The increased range def would help. Concerning turrets, it's obviously exactly that, they don't need optimal placement to fend off shit, while in SC1 you literally used a single turret to prevent DT's and had to put it in a very good spot (enough to defend but not enough that it could get sniped).
I don't understand how this is a hard concept whatsoever...
According to Liquipedia and Liquipedia II, sight/detection of Overseer is equal to that of a sight upgraded Overlord in BW.
Evaluating that, Brood War detection for Zerg was much easier since all of your numerous Overlords did it and once you got a global upgrade they all had the radius that Overseers do now. For SC2 though, you need to worry about individually upgrading Overlords to Overseers just to detect (and the economic impact of that, which whether such players are aware of that or not they will be impacted by it) and as a result you'll have fewer detectors covering a smaller radius at any given time.
Now, the flip side to this is that I'm pretty sure that Overseers are always faster than BW Overlords no matter what (or, at least with equivalent speed upgrade status), but I'm not sure that's much consolation.
Total side note that when I first read your post and were complaining about Overseers having trouble keeping up with Banshees, for some reason I had a brain fart and thought you were talking about 2v2 and having your Overseers follow friendly air to which I was thinking, "Just right-click on them..." xD Total brain fart as well because really I was subbing in Vikings for Banshees as well for aiding Vikings w/Banshee hunting, lol (common occurrence when I play 2s with a friend of mine who plays Zerg) xD
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On May 27 2010 09:28 Zurles wrote:
Why worry about balancing the game for a level where balance doesn't even matter?
This is really the crux of the matter. At lower levels, players don't lose because of imbalance, they lose because they are bad. They could greatly improve their success through minor changes in play, while at higher levels, it takes a lot of effort for minor improvements so balance problems manifest themselves more. A bad player has never lost because of imbalance -- what fraction of bronze players even saturate their minerals?
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Interesting read, you have my axe for this one.
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OK, a few points. I think some people are a bit 'rose-tinted' glasses when it comes to BW. I love how the predominant feeling was that BW was perfectly balanced for pros. Where does this come from? I mean, pros don't play random which really throws out any kind of noise-removal for analysis. Four of the top five players are zerg...
Second, a lot of people here think their opinions matter more than they do. I'm just here for debate as the sport. Realistically, if Blizzard were going to choose between losing:
a) The pro-league hangers-on, so outraged by the dumbing down of their game they didn't actually buy the game, all ten of them ... I mean, most of you will buy the game either way and you know it.
b) The potential new customers they lose through word of mouth because 'playing online sux'.
Who do you think they should choose... Who do they think they'll choose...
This game ought to be balanced for weaker players, just as much as it is balanced for pros. As long as pros can consistently beat noobs (skill matters), each race has more than one strategy (not totally boring) and no race wins more than 55% of the time (not totally imbalanced), there will be a pro-scene...
The original poster was spot-on in his analysis (perhaps less so with his execution)... go read a game-theory textbook and then work in a company that sells things. Pity my Uni certificate didn't have game in the title, then people might arbitrarily listen... I'm qualified to be game-designer (did software + game theory + AI), I just didn't want to move country, so I do it my spare time instead... rather than program missiles...
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