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On May 31 2010 03:13 Edmon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 02:43 InRaged wrote:
Edmon, Good thing you took your time and have posted that real game example. Cause now it's clear as day that you have absolutely no clue what are you talking about.
See, if you note, as I entirely predicted almost every post since mine has become a discussion about the banchee rush. Everyone has preconcieved ideas about what makes this rush good, bad, counterable, uncounterable, balanced, unbalanced, etc based entirely on their own experiences. I cannot defeat your experience, because you've experienced it and therefore it must be right. You cannot see outside of your own experiences, hence why I discussed something made up, to avoid this pit.
What does it even mean?
You also state quite strongly that the end result is not the same. It clearly is, if you get cloak. Do people always get cloak or not? This was something I would have to research carefully and adjust to accordingly. Lets say they don't, we could adjust rocketpod to just 50-50 and keep the delay, bringing cloak up to 150-150. Balance needs data, time, experimentation to be successful.
Result isn't quiet the same, cause you completely remove perfectly valid strategy out of the game. Why? Because some bad or new to the game people don't know how to counter it. You are suggesting to remove easily counterable strategy from a strategy game because it just works. I mean, what the hell?
The zerg example is particularly potient, because players are led to believe the counter to this rush is hydras, not queens. Queens are almost seen as a drone-like unit to most casuals. So it can be some what counter intuitive to work out what you are meant to do. Especially when spore crawlers are quite unlikely to save you because they "suck" to use the terminology of the community.
So what? It's a goddamn strategy game. The whole point of the game is figuring out how to counter your opponents strategy. You think top tier players already have whole game figured out with all counter options presented to them? No, they have to constantly think on what to do with opponents and how to exploit certain holes in their builds, and finding little timing windows is much harder than figuring out Queens can shoot air too.
On May 31 2010 03:18 Vexx wrote:
Why do you guys get so hung up on his words or examples instead of trying to appreciate his point? Take a step back and realize that the only thing you guys caught about his reply was the example he used and all you were able to do was discuss his example and not his IDEA.
Because his "idea" suggests how to improve the game and yet it doesn't have any substance to it. You can't discuss such stuff in a constructive way, ok?
He says that there's such thing as "casual balance" and the game currently lacks it. What does that mean? That means that there's certain things that in his view are imbalanced for low tier players. If he can't say what exactly those things are how are we supposed to discuss his idea? Is there anything to discuss at all in such case? Or are we supposed to just go, "oh ok something nobody knows what is broken and it's good idea to have it fixed, you're totally right"?
On May 31 2010 04:05 Gnizmo wrote:
I think a better example of this concept is the recent Forge nerf. Cannon rushes against Zerg were seen as a bit too powerful early on. This could be beaten by experienced players, but new players had big problems. The solution made it weaker, but had virtually no real impact on the higher tiers of play (correct me if I am wrong).
They fixed not regular cannon rushes (those still work fine against noobs), but cannon rushes where you block your cannons with the forge+pylon from being hit. It was unusually strong against skilled players too.
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On May 31 2010 04:05 Gnizmo wrote:
I think a better example of this concept is the recent Forge nerf. Cannon rushes against Zerg were seen as a bit too powerful early on. This could be beaten by experienced players, but new players had big problems. The solution made it weaker, but had virtually no real impact on the higher tiers of play (correct me if I am wrong).
They fixed not regular cannon rushes (those still work fine against noobs), but cannon rushes where you block your cannons with the forge+pylon from being hit. It was unusually strong against skilled players too.
i think they lowered forge health for the gateway forge rebuild pylon cheese vs terran. before, you could just build everything in their sight range, keep building pylons, and have cannons before the marines were done.
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On May 31 2010 05:02 InRaged wrote:
What does it even mean?
Imagine you bought a Toyota car. It broke down in the first month. Then you got another one and that one broke down after a month. Then a 3rd one and that one broke down after month.
Experience has taught you that Toyota's are unreliable, they could statisically be the most reliable cars on earth but you know that they aren't. You had 3 of the bastards and they all broke down on you. You cannot be told any different, because you'd had the experience so it must be true. In reality you are victim of cruel fate and random chance. But people aren't very rational, they don't see the world through stats, just personal experience. This sometimes blinds us to things that are actually true on reflection.
I think my points might be too advanced for you, no offense meant, but you might be happier in another thread.
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On May 30 2010 20:26 Edmon wrote:
Now, I know a lot of people were clamouring for me to give a solid example of a cheese actually in the game and address it without damaging the "competitive game". Sadly, I kind of predict that this will now make the thread all about this cheese rather than the arching points I've made, but whatever, I'll bite.
The cheese I want to address is bancheese vs zerg. The "pro" version of this cheese is to wall off, grab two fast banches and go queen hunting. Once the queen at the expand and at the main (if zerg is fast exanding) are dead, the game is over. Hydra's generally can't make it out in time, so the only real defence is more queens (a decision you'd only make if you knew this was coming). Sadly, zerg have terribad scouting and a terran wall-off will stop low and mid skilled players from detecting this cheese is coming before it's too late. [1]
The terran player can expand into cloak and reinforce enough to ensure any additional queens that are produced are nuked. This is a relatively risk free and easy cheese to pull off against zerg as they have a heavily delayed basic anti-air combat unit in the hydra.
So how can we address this? The basic thing to understand here is that this is a timing attack. It works because it can arrive 10-30 seconds (depending on skill level) before a single hydra can be produced. If reinforced, bancheese can also dominate small groups of hastily aquired hydras.
So, I sat down on saturday and I thought about solutions and here is what I came up with:
Banchee's now start with a single attack, on the model one of the rocket pods will be missing. Banchee's now have two upgrades at the starport tech lab instead of one. These are:
"Rocket Pod" 100m 100g +XTime
Adds an additional rocket pod to the banchee, improving damage.
"Cloak" 100m 100g +Ytime
Adds cloak to the banchee
This change would have these effects:
The two banchee push on zerg would have it's damage reduced or the push would be delayed by the rocket pod upgrade time and 100m 100g.
There is a new push available in an earlier cloak push but at half damage. I would definitely like to see how this plays out, but I suspect it will be much easier to stop than the original cheese.
The end result is the same, for 200m 200g, you have full damage, fully cloaked banchees. Therefore, the competitive or higher end will be mostly unaffected, except in cases where cloak is not aquired (is this often? data would need to be gathered to find out).
The biggest benefit of this change is that TimeX and TimeY can be controlled and adjusted in future balance changes to delay the two different pushes (cloaked and twopush) independantly until a good balance is reached. [2]
In conclusion, I'd just like to add that I don't feel like there is a problem out there that cannot be solved by a good designer. I feel like "oh it's too complex or too deep, etc" is just an excuse made by bad designers. [3]
Once you've indentified the problem (in this case timings), there should always be a way in which things can be adjusted (and even look cool or add depth) to fix any percieved or real issues with the game.
A percieved issue can be just as deadly as a real issue, when it comes to those players still deciding if this is the game for them. This is why the void ray got hit with the nerf bat and I do feel that it was the right decision for the overall health of the game (that said, I would have tried a different balance change to preserve the end game). [4]
Anyway, thats enough wall of text for now.
Thanks for reading.
Trying to make the game more casual-friendly is a sure-fire way to destroy it at high-level play, in my opinion.
I can see the logic behind this proposal, and I appreciate that you spent a great deal of time and effort in writing it and conveying your ideas. I will try to get across why I think it's just not going to work out so well. I'll use the specific examples you provided, but I'll also expand on other ideas as well.
[1] Your analysis is great and reflects exactly what lower-level players will think and see when this happens to them. However, there are many hidden subtleties at play here that come into their own at high levels.
First off, this cheese will die to other cheeses at this level of play. A Terran who plays at this level and thinks "I'm going to do my Banshee rush" will likely fall apart when a 9 Pool materializes early Zerglings into his base. In a similar manner, cheese is often fragile against other cheese.
Secondly, we are considering everything from the Zerg player's perspective. What about the Terran? Does he just insta-win against every Zerg? At some point, he will get crushed every game when he gets to the higher levels and his cheese is countered properly. What does he do then? All of his practice time went into exploring his Banshee rush build. What other options does he have against Zerg? He is in an uncertain position at this point. All of those wins he gained from his Banshee rush turned out be (almost) a waste of his time in terms of becoming a better player.
What effect will that have on the Terran player? Is he going to keep doing the Banshee rush? Think carefully about this one.
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Now back to the Zerg. Let's say he is a lower-level player and plays close to "standard" every game. "Standard" in this case means he feels like he can survive with this build. Survival is a key theme in understanding an RTS. The entire theory behind playing and watching RTS is survival. Pros do builds that allow them to "cheat" out as much economy as possible while still being able to survive. When a new player starts playing, they will very quickly learn the limits of survivability.
If someone comes into SC2 and goes 12 Hatch every game because he heard about this guy Jay Dong that does it, he will quickly learn that it is not a reasonable thing to use against every race. He may try other things. He'll find a forum somewhere where people talk about builds and certain units and tactics etc. This is how everyone starts playing an RTS. No one sits down in front of the machine all day long figuring out the game completely by themselves. Especially at lower levels, the metagame is a strong driving force for play. If your Banshee rush is popular in the lower levels, there will be lots of talk about it, even on Battlenet.
If after all of this, your Zerg player just becomes a raging mouth-foaming Banshee hater on Battlenet, there is practically nothing you could have done about it. People that focus on external causes to their losses just don't have the characteristic to play competitive games of ANY KIND.
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Now let's think about high-level play. A good player ( = a good learner) will realize (possibly after several hydra-rush attempts) that your Banshee rush cannot be stopped by Hydras. So rage on Battlenet forums what other options are there? Well the Queen attacks air, but isn't it silly to have more than 1 Queen per Hatch, especially so early on (common psychologically-driven misconception when learning the game)? Maybe it isn't as silly as 12 gas 1-basing vs. Terran every single game. At some point they will discover the magical 2 Queens > 1 Banshee formula - and after that they will have an easy time of dealing with any variant of your Banshee rush.
[2] By causing the timing of this attack to be delayed, you are having an adverse effect on high-level play. Banshee rushes are already extremely risky in high-level play. However, they come out just about the right time to make the Zerg nervous and can provide a transition to other Starport units later on (as well as have an available anti-ground unit). If you push the timetable for Banshees out later, you are just making them even less viable and are making any transitions they are involved in even less viable.
Let's look at it from another perspective, though. Say the timing was pushed back by 40 ticks. Now, pushing it back that far is going to make Banshees just completely unviable as an opening choice for Terran. This means that Zergs will have an extra 40 ticks if they suspect this coming. With that much time, they will just outright crush it when it comes, and they will be far ahead in the meantime.
But what effect does this have on the lower level players? 40 ticks is a lot to a high-level player who has tight timing, good scouting, a working understanding of the races, and a plan. But 40 ticks to a lower-level player (a player of the caliber who would conclude that rushes are "unbeatable") is practically nothing. For players who cannot properly use their time, 40 ticks might as well be 5 or 10 ticks. So these lower-level players will still likely lose to this rush if they lost to it before. Then it's back to part [1] all over again.
What about the player that is performing the Banshee rush? When he sees that his rush is moved back 40 ticks, there are three options:
a) The player is good enough to know that a 40 tick nerf to the Banshee timing is going to make it completely unviable (at their level).
b) The player is bad enough that they will read "Banshees nerfed" and never do the rush again and complain about Blizzard nerfing all the good strategies into the ground.
c) The player is bad enough that they feel practically no difference in their performance of the rush, and they keep doing it.
In all three of these situations, the game is worse off. Part b) will likely cause a metagame shift into yet another popular rush (perhaps with some other race). And we can do the process all over again using the same concepts.
[3] You're right that this is a bad argument. In fact, any number of subtle changes can be figured out by thinking as in part [2]. It just gets much much harder the more changes you make.
Let's say we toned the Banshee rush down by 40 ticks to deal with the problem. So now what happens? People switch to Zerg and do an 8 Pool --> Queen --> expansion. This is not even all-in or extremely cheesy, it is just a super-aggressive build that can transition (weakly) into more economic play.
So we go through part [1] again and push the timing back for early Zerglings. Then what? Well some other rush comes in and we push the timing back for that.
After much painstaking work, can we ever finally proof the game against low-level players being discouraged? The answer is of course: no we can't.
Timing attacks will kill any low-level player and are not difficult to learn with some practice. Then do we push back the timing attacks?
What this is going to lead to is every Zerg going 15 Hatch 16 Pool every game, and no one making attacking units until 5:00 into the game. This movement of swift attacks and cheeses farther back into the game makes those swift attacks and cheeses completely unviable so that you have to wait for the next thing in line. But all you are doing is removing the excitement and decision making from the beginning of the game.
Starcraft is an exciting experience because players can make real strategic decisions in the very first second of the game - all the way up to the end. You can't just turtle and mass every single game. Someone is bound to cheese you, either aggressively or economically. That is part of the beauty of Starcraft.
[4] A perceived issue is not as important as a real issue, unless you don't take "real issue" to mean "a problem in high-level play". The Void Ray nerf was completely expected. It outranged and outmicroed all of its counters early on against Terran even at high levels of play. The nerf to it will almost certainly not have any effect on low-level players except to change the low-level metagame because of the perception (like you were saying).
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Banshee rush might win 80% of the time in silver league or lower therefore it's imba. Where are you going to draw the line? There are a number of strategies that will be imba just because people have flaws in their mechanics and builds. What next? All we can build is rines lings and zeals and we have a 7 minute no rush rule? Starcraft is an unforgiving game and lots of people still won't play sc2 because it's too competitive for them.
I have an idea, how about blizzard fixes all the games so that we're really playing bots and they let us win 80% of the time so we all think we're flash?
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On May 31 2010 05:02 InRaged wrote:
He says that there's such thing as "casual balance" and the game currently lacks it. What does that mean? That means that there's certain things that in his view are imbalanced for low tier players. If he can't say what exactly those things are how are we supposed to discuss his idea? Is there anything to discuss at all in such case? Or are we supposed to just go, "oh ok something nobody knows what is broken and it's good idea to have it fixed, you're totally right"?
You're not very good at dealing with abstract ideas are you. This thread isn't about "thing X is broken let's fix it!" It's putting forth the idea that balancing for casuals is the best way to balance the game. This is an idea that can be discussed without concrete examples. He is trying to say that adjusting for casuals won't screw up the pros as badly as adjusting for the pros could screw up the casuals. I see what he is saying. I don't know if I agree with it, but it can be talked about without having to mention Banshees or any other unit really.
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On May 31 2010 06:58 MamiyaOtaru wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 05:02 InRaged wrote:
He says that there's such thing as "casual balance" and the game currently lacks it. What does that mean? That means that there's certain things that in his view are imbalanced for low tier players. If he can't say what exactly those things are how are we supposed to discuss his idea? Is there anything to discuss at all in such case? Or are we supposed to just go, "oh ok something nobody knows what is broken and it's good idea to have it fixed, you're totally right"? You're not very good at dealing with abstract ideas are you. This thread isn't about "thing X is broken let's fix it!" It's putting forth the idea that balancing for casuals is the best way to balance the game. This is an idea that can be discussed without concrete examples. He is trying to say that adjusting for casuals won't screw up the pros as badly as adjusting for the pros could screw up the casuals. I see what he is saying. I don't know if I agree with it, but it can be talked about without having to mention Banshees or any other unit really.
I actually believe you can do both, if you are very careful about it.
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DefMatrixUltra, you have an excellent post. I just think that prehaps you are looking at too extreme a result at each end (Viable vs Not Viable). I am looking for the balance that makes the cheese "profitable" and gives "An advantage", it's worth doing, but isn't "instantly fatal". A fine line indeed, but it's the ideal I am for  .
I think your post has a lot of great points I can agree with, losing to something that has an obvious "Oh I should have done this, or I might try this next time" is a good learning experience compared to a cheese that invites a "Wtf, wtf, wtf, how do I beat that?" response. It's a fine line to be sure.
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Isn't the problem that cheeses/rushes make games good in that you don't always have a long macro game? Instead you have micro battles of small numbers of units where one blow can be deciding.
If you know it will always be a macro game it only appeals to one audience.
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On May 31 2010 06:45 Edmon wrote:
Imagine you bought a Toyota car. It broke down in the first month. Then you got another one and that one broke down after a month. Then a 3rd one and that one broke down after month.
Experience has taught you that Toyota's are unreliable, they could statisically be the most reliable cars on earth but you know that they aren't. You had 3 of the bastards and they all broke down on you. You cannot be told any different, because you'd had the experience so it must be true. In reality you are victim of cruel fate and random chance. But people aren't very rational, they don't see the world through stats, just personal experience. This sometimes blinds us to things that are actually true on reflection.
Oh I get it. It's really unfortunate that the game doesn't have replays and ways to communicate with others so players are forced to rely on their own experience exclusively.
Even more sad is that future gosu and strategy masters that gonna rival White_ra alikes are irrational, stubborn beings who can't be bothered with finding counters to the strategies they can't overcome.
On May 31 2010 06:45 Edmon wrote:
I think my points might be too advanced for you, no offense meant, but you might be happier in another thread.
Yeah, dodge my arguments, cause I'm too stupid to understand yours anyway, gj
On May 31 2010 07:12 Edmon wrote:
I think your post has a lot of great points I can agree with, losing to something that has an obvious "Oh I should have done this, or I might try this next time" is a good learning experience compared to a cheese that invites a "Wtf, wtf, wtf, how do I beat that?" response. It's a fine line to be sure.
Yup. Except it's usually being outplayed in macro war by better player that makes casuals go "wtf".
On May 31 2010 06:58 MamiyaOtaru wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 05:02 InRaged wrote:
He says that there's such thing as "casual balance" and the game currently lacks it. What does that mean? That means that there's certain things that in his view are imbalanced for low tier players. If he can't say what exactly those things are how are we supposed to discuss his idea? Is there anything to discuss at all in such case? Or are we supposed to just go, "oh ok something nobody knows what is broken and it's good idea to have it fixed, you're totally right"? You're not very good at dealing with abstract ideas are you. This thread isn't about "thing X is broken let's fix it!" It's putting forth the idea that balancing for casuals is the best way to balance the game. This is an idea that can be discussed without concrete examples. He is trying to say that adjusting for casuals won't screw up the pros as badly as adjusting for the pros could screw up the casuals. I see what he is saying. I don't know if I agree with it, but it can be talked about without having to mention Banshees or any other unit really.
I'm fine with abstract ideas. This topic is way too sensitive to be abstract though, as there's way too many awful players eager to cry imbalance on whatever stuff they had recently lost to.
Besides all what I ask for is to describe how exactly cheesy strategies ruin "casual balance" and how are they related to this balance idea at all. He seems to think that good players aren't affected by cheese, when the only difference between them and bad players is that they know better how to handle such strategies. But that doesn't mean anything at all, cause good players know better how to handle every single strategy, not limited to just cheesy ones. That's why they are good players in the first place!
All I see in this thread is an attempt to discuss removal of risky/cheesy strategies in disguise of some made up "casual balance".
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Assumptions galore in this whole thread idea:
1: Any rush takes less skill, aka "I lost to rush but I'm somehow a better player" This underpinns that there's something out of balance. My impression is simply if someone lost to any rush outright, that someone is a lesser player to begin with. Lesser players lose in a game, nothing new here.
Suggested alternative perspective: For the 'cheesed' player to use cheese as well, and see how they fare. They would either: lose just like before, or actually win a few games and move up a league or 2 until their 'cheese' gets shut down.
2: It is possible to balance on anything other than the top tier. The whole idea of balance is there's a reference point to balance against, and even to fix some perceived balance issue, there must be evidence that something is broken. At top tier, you will see dominate strategies as evidence, or win rates etc. At lower tier, the 'reference point' becomes vague. How do you define casual player, their relative skill level or to balance? The whole idea of introducing features that somehow can impact a certain skill level, whilst not another, is absurd. For any arbitary 'skill level' you've chosen, there will be those that are above or below it, and for those below the ability/feature = 'OP' and those above = 'Useless'. Comes cycle 2. The whole idea is pointless.
I am looking for the balance that makes the cheese "profitable" and gives "An advantage", it's worth doing, but isn't "instantly fatal". A fine line indeed, but it's the ideal I am for .
Isn't this exactly what cheese is at top tier anyway? By making cheese also not instantly fatal for lower levels will definately reduce their utility at top tiers. There's no win-win here, and really the line does not exist and this idea exists as an ideal.
3. Cater for the casuals somehow means something to Blizzard. Sure there's a loose connection however there's inconclusive evidence that:
Casual players who quit = revenue lost for Blizzard
Casual players who quit = loss to community, or that they would've stayed if 'casual balance' exists.
Give your Toyota example, is it in Toyota's best interest to introduce some program at prohibitive cost that somehow safeguards against 1 month failures 100% (yes, the idea is about as realistic as balance the game at all arbitary 'skill levels' of a game), because a few buyers, statistically unlucky to experienced a couple duds? So what if the few buyers had 'negative experience' and their impression of Toyota is forever tarnished?
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Russian Federation145 Posts
You're wrong about casual players improving. I'm sorry to say this, but it needs to be said: You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
In my general experience as a league admin of the American Natural Selection community, I can assure you that the players who are filtered by the frustrating game features wouldn't ever come close to succeeding in the competitive scene. I've seen it all first hand. I made the mistake of taking initiative in the dying mod to draft new teams. I helped organize the remaining American competitive NS players to teach the "casuals" how to really play the game. I would venture to say that NS is the hardest game on casuals by far, so those that stick around are the hardiest of the bunch, and yet our initiative failed. We've tried this several times, at the tournament peak even (number of registered 6man teams in CAL was >200), and failed at every turn.
It takes a lot of willpower to improve and significant talent to get to the top. Casual players don't have either by definition. If they had talent, they'd be good at the game and therefore enjoy it. (people always like what they're good at) If they were willing to improve, they wouldn't need the developers to hold their hands for them.
So how are the competitive players different? They have a different attitude about video games in general. The players who are good at one game are most likely to be good at many others. These players aren't a static property of one game. They move around and improve at games where money is present. The prize money up top is what attracts them. That's the meaning of the word professional. As of right now, StarCraft is in a league of its own when it comes to prize money. This attracts the best players such as Idra.
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You're right if you feel that there has to be a perfect compromise, because the amount of possible compromises is nearly infinite. The chances of someone, who doesn't completely understand the criteria of one of those two sides, of finding that compromise are zero. I have a feeling that you don't completely understand the competitive side of this issue since you're not a competitive player.
Since you don't understand both sides of the compromise, it's best not to try to find it. The best course of action with any game other than SC2 is to appeal to the "casual players."
The best course of action for Blizzard is to appeal to everyone who isn't a casual. That's what the majority of people buying the box are expecting from them. That's what Blizzard is going to need to do to appease Korea. That's the market that no company except Blizzard can reasonably appeal to.
Best of luck.
P.S: Potchip,
@ 3.
Blizzard cares about casual players who stay because those who quit will likely not recommend the game to their friends. This is now in the common sense domain for any company.
(The casuals are also a much larger market than competitive players. At least this is what Blizzard thinks. Blizzard is also extremely greedy for reasons beyond me. They are faced with the choice of making a better competitive game or making more money. They are choosing the $$ option.)
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On May 31 2010 07:46 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 06:45 Edmon wrote:
Imagine you bought a Toyota car. It broke down in the first month. Then you got another one and that one broke down after a month. Then a 3rd one and that one broke down after month.
Experience has taught you that Toyota's are unreliable, they could statisically be the most reliable cars on earth but you know that they aren't. You had 3 of the bastards and they all broke down on you. You cannot be told any different, because you'd had the experience so it must be true. In reality you are victim of cruel fate and random chance. But people aren't very rational, they don't see the world through stats, just personal experience. This sometimes blinds us to things that are actually true on reflection. Oh I get it. It's really unfortunate that the game doesn't have replays and ways to communicate with others so players are forced to rely on their own experience exclusively. Even more sad is that future gosu and strategy masters that gonna rival White_ra alikes are irrational, stubborn beings who can't be bothered with finding counters to the strategies they can't overcome. Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 06:45 Edmon wrote:
I think my points might be too advanced for you, no offense meant, but you might be happier in another thread. Yeah, dodge my arguments, cause I'm too stupid to understand yours anyway, gj Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 07:12 Edmon wrote:
I think your post has a lot of great points I can agree with, losing to something that has an obvious "Oh I should have done this, or I might try this next time" is a good learning experience compared to a cheese that invites a "Wtf, wtf, wtf, how do I beat that?" response. It's a fine line to be sure. Yup. Except it's usually being outplayed in macro war by better player that makes casuals go "wtf". Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 06:58 MamiyaOtaru wrote:On May 31 2010 05:02 InRaged wrote:
He says that there's such thing as "casual balance" and the game currently lacks it. What does that mean? That means that there's certain things that in his view are imbalanced for low tier players. If he can't say what exactly those things are how are we supposed to discuss his idea? Is there anything to discuss at all in such case? Or are we supposed to just go, "oh ok something nobody knows what is broken and it's good idea to have it fixed, you're totally right"? You're not very good at dealing with abstract ideas are you. This thread isn't about "thing X is broken let's fix it!" It's putting forth the idea that balancing for casuals is the best way to balance the game. This is an idea that can be discussed without concrete examples. He is trying to say that adjusting for casuals won't screw up the pros as badly as adjusting for the pros could screw up the casuals. I see what he is saying. I don't know if I agree with it, but it can be talked about without having to mention Banshees or any other unit really. I'm fine with abstract ideas. This topic is way too sensitive to be abstract though, as there's way too many awful players eager to cry imbalance on whatever stuff they had recently lost to. Besides all what I ask for is to describe how exactly cheesy strategies ruin "casual balance" and how are they related to this balance idea at all. He seems to think that good players aren't affected by cheese, when the only difference between them and bad players is that they know better how to handle such strategies. But that doesn't mean anything at all, cause good players know better how to handle every single strategy, not limited to just cheesy ones. That's why they are good players in the first place! All I see in this thread is an attempt to discuss removal of risky/cheesy strategies in disguise of some made up "casual balance".
What you should start doing is sending the OP a PM for a more personal clarification of what this thread is about instead of making an ass out of yourself in 3 posts straight even when MULTIPLE individuals are telling you that you're not getting it.
Please, stop posting. This thread is not about your inability to follow along.
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On May 31 2010 08:53 TheDrill wrote:
You're wrong about casual players improving. I'm sorry to say this, but it needs to be said: You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
In my general experience as a league admin of the American Natural Selection community, I can assure you that the players who are filtered by the frustrating game features wouldn't ever come close to succeeding in the competitive scene. I've seen it all first hand. I made the mistake of taking initiative in the dying mod to draft new teams. I helped organize the remaining American competitive NS players to teach the "casuals" how to really play the game. I would venture to say that NS is the hardest game on casuals by far, so those that stick around are the hardiest of the bunch, and yet our initiative failed. We've tried this several times, at the tournament peak even (number of registered 6man teams in CAL was >200), and failed at every turn.
It takes a lot of willpower to improve and significant talent to get to the top. Casual players don't have either by definition. If they had talent, they'd be good at the game and therefore enjoy it. (people always like what they're good at) If they were willing to improve, they wouldn't need the developers to hold their hands for them.
So how are the competitive players different? They have a different attitude about video games in general. The players who are good at one game are most likely to be good at many others. These players aren't a static property of one game. They move around and improve at games where money is present. The prize money up top is what attracts them. That's the meaning of the word professional. As of right now, StarCraft is in a league of its own when it comes to prize money. This attracts the best players such as Idra.
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You're right if you feel that there has to be a perfect compromise, because the amount of possible compromises is nearly infinite. The chances of someone, who doesn't completely understand the criteria of one of those two sides, of finding that compromise are zero. I have a feeling that you don't completely understand the competitive side of this issue since you're not a competitive player.
Since you don't understand both sides of the compromise, it's best not to try to find it. The best course of action with any game other than SC2 is to appeal to the "casual players."
The best course of action for Blizzard is to appeal to everyone who isn't a casual. That's what the majority of people buying the box are expecting from them. That's what Blizzard is going to need to do to appease Korea. That's the market that no company except Blizzard can reasonably appeal to.
Best of luck.
P.S: Potchip,
@ 3.
Blizzard cares about casual players who stay because those who quit will likely not recommend the game to their friends. This is now in the common sense domain for any company.
(The casuals are also a much larger market than competitive players. At least this is what Blizzard thinks. Blizzard is also extremely greedy for reasons beyond me. They are faced with the choice of making a better competitive game or making more money. They are choosing the $$ option.)
Surprise! I'm a competitive player that excels in most of the video games I play and the frustrating experience in some games (SC2 for example) makes me uneager to continue improving or even playing the game.
For example, consider super smash brothers brawl. This is a competitive game with an abundance of local tournaments. I am very good at this game. I can compete with the best of the best. But there is an element of the game's design that discourages me from playing more or even caring about being the best: talented players can make certain characters play in a non-conventional way where they can slide across the maps very quickly while dealing dangerous amounts of damage. They avoid a straight up fight and do what I call "abuse of game mechanics."
Defeating these players is a question of focused attention and experience. I can beat them but it is not fun in the least to play against them. I have a friend who used to whoop my butt silly in the older gamecube version. He did not purchase the new wii version because of how the new characters play and detract from the good old "standard" fighting system.
I would compare this story to SC1 and SC2 where competitive players may decide not to purchase the game because of some sort of cheese. Let's say 6pool 7 reaper in 2v2 or even resource feeding in team games. These players may have the ability to become competitive but they don't find the game interesting when the first 3-5 minutes is about not getting gayed instead of just getting your game going.
All this to say that your black and white approach and "general experience" is a load of stupidity because it is very likely that many skilled players are also concerned with fun over frustration. I'm sure top WoW arena players would do just as well in Lineage 2 if they were not discouraged by the amount of XP grind in L2.
If you do reply, I hope that it has nothing to do with the semantics of casual and competitive. In case you missed it, my main point is that your opinion on "types of people" is stupid.
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Vexx, I've presented arguments. "You're not getting it" isn't a counter-argument. Please, if you can't respond to arguments constructively then don't tell me that I'm the one who's unable to follow along.
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On May 31 2010 09:56 Vexx wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 08:53 TheDrill wrote:
You're wrong about casual players improving. I'm sorry to say this, but it needs to be said: You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
In my general experience as a league admin of the American Natural Selection community, I can assure you that the players who are filtered by the frustrating game features wouldn't ever come close to succeeding in the competitive scene. I've seen it all first hand. I made the mistake of taking initiative in the dying mod to draft new teams. I helped organize the remaining American competitive NS players to teach the "casuals" how to really play the game. I would venture to say that NS is the hardest game on casuals by far, so those that stick around are the hardiest of the bunch, and yet our initiative failed. We've tried this several times, at the tournament peak even (number of registered 6man teams in CAL was >200), and failed at every turn.
It takes a lot of willpower to improve and significant talent to get to the top. Casual players don't have either by definition. If they had talent, they'd be good at the game and therefore enjoy it. (people always like what they're good at) If they were willing to improve, they wouldn't need the developers to hold their hands for them.
So how are the competitive players different? They have a different attitude about video games in general. The players who are good at one game are most likely to be good at many others. These players aren't a static property of one game. They move around and improve at games where money is present. The prize money up top is what attracts them. That's the meaning of the word professional. As of right now, StarCraft is in a league of its own when it comes to prize money. This attracts the best players such as Idra.
---
You're right if you feel that there has to be a perfect compromise, because the amount of possible compromises is nearly infinite. The chances of someone, who doesn't completely understand the criteria of one of those two sides, of finding that compromise are zero. I have a feeling that you don't completely understand the competitive side of this issue since you're not a competitive player.
Since you don't understand both sides of the compromise, it's best not to try to find it. The best course of action with any game other than SC2 is to appeal to the "casual players."
The best course of action for Blizzard is to appeal to everyone who isn't a casual. That's what the majority of people buying the box are expecting from them. That's what Blizzard is going to need to do to appease Korea. That's the market that no company except Blizzard can reasonably appeal to.
Best of luck.
P.S: Potchip,
@ 3.
Blizzard cares about casual players who stay because those who quit will likely not recommend the game to their friends. This is now in the common sense domain for any company.
(The casuals are also a much larger market than competitive players. At least this is what Blizzard thinks. Blizzard is also extremely greedy for reasons beyond me. They are faced with the choice of making a better competitive game or making more money. They are choosing the $$ option.) Surprise! I'm a competitive player that excels in most of the video games I play and the frustrating experience in some games (SC2 for example) makes me uneager to continue improving or even playing the game. For example, consider super smash brothers brawl. This is a competitive game with an abundance of local tournaments. I am very good at this game. I can compete with the best of the best. But there is an element of the game's design that discourages me from playing more or even caring about being the best: talented players can make certain characters play in a non-conventional way where they can slide across the maps very quickly while dealing dangerous amounts of damage. They avoid a straight up fight and do what I call "abuse of game mechanics." Defeating these players is a question of focused attention and experience. I can beat them but it is not fun in the least to play against them. I have a friend who used to whoop my butt silly in the older gamecube version. He did not purchase the new wii version because of how the new characters play and detract from the good old "standard" fighting system. I would compare this story to SC1 and SC2 where competitive players may decide not to purchase the game because of some sort of cheese. Let's say 6pool 7 reaper in 2v2 or even resource feeding in team games. These players may have the ability to become competitive but they don't find the game interesting when the first 3-5 minutes is about not getting gayed instead of just getting your game going. All this to say that your black and white approach and "general experience" is a load of stupidity because it is very likely that many skilled players are also concerned with fun over frustration. I'm sure top WoW arena players would do just as well in Lineage 2 if they were not discouraged by the amount of XP grind in L2. If you do reply, I hope that it has nothing to do with the semantics of casual and competitive. In case you missed it, my main point is that your opinion on "types of people" is stupid.
Woah woah woah.
Did you seriously just use 2v2 double cheese as a justification of why serious 1v1 competitive gamers wont buy SC2? Cheese in 2v2 is a different breed all together from the completely stoppable cheese in 1v1 - You cannot compare them accurately.
Explain yourself now.
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On May 31 2010 07:46 InRaged wrote:
All I see in this thread is an attempt to discuss removal of risky/cheesy strategies in disguise of some made up "casual balance".
Been reading this thread from the start and this is the entire thread in a nut shell.
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On May 31 2010 10:30 Ryhn wrote:Show nested quote +On May 31 2010 09:56 Vexx wrote:On May 31 2010 08:53 TheDrill wrote:
You're wrong about casual players improving. I'm sorry to say this, but it needs to be said: You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
In my general experience as a league admin of the American Natural Selection community, I can assure you that the players who are filtered by the frustrating game features wouldn't ever come close to succeeding in the competitive scene. I've seen it all first hand. I made the mistake of taking initiative in the dying mod to draft new teams. I helped organize the remaining American competitive NS players to teach the "casuals" how to really play the game. I would venture to say that NS is the hardest game on casuals by far, so those that stick around are the hardiest of the bunch, and yet our initiative failed. We've tried this several times, at the tournament peak even (number of registered 6man teams in CAL was >200), and failed at every turn.
It takes a lot of willpower to improve and significant talent to get to the top. Casual players don't have either by definition. If they had talent, they'd be good at the game and therefore enjoy it. (people always like what they're good at) If they were willing to improve, they wouldn't need the developers to hold their hands for them.
So how are the competitive players different? They have a different attitude about video games in general. The players who are good at one game are most likely to be good at many others. These players aren't a static property of one game. They move around and improve at games where money is present. The prize money up top is what attracts them. That's the meaning of the word professional. As of right now, StarCraft is in a league of its own when it comes to prize money. This attracts the best players such as Idra.
---
You're right if you feel that there has to be a perfect compromise, because the amount of possible compromises is nearly infinite. The chances of someone, who doesn't completely understand the criteria of one of those two sides, of finding that compromise are zero. I have a feeling that you don't completely understand the competitive side of this issue since you're not a competitive player.
Since you don't understand both sides of the compromise, it's best not to try to find it. The best course of action with any game other than SC2 is to appeal to the "casual players."
The best course of action for Blizzard is to appeal to everyone who isn't a casual. That's what the majority of people buying the box are expecting from them. That's what Blizzard is going to need to do to appease Korea. That's the market that no company except Blizzard can reasonably appeal to.
Best of luck.
P.S: Potchip,
@ 3.
Blizzard cares about casual players who stay because those who quit will likely not recommend the game to their friends. This is now in the common sense domain for any company.
(The casuals are also a much larger market than competitive players. At least this is what Blizzard thinks. Blizzard is also extremely greedy for reasons beyond me. They are faced with the choice of making a better competitive game or making more money. They are choosing the $$ option.) Surprise! I'm a competitive player that excels in most of the video games I play and the frustrating experience in some games (SC2 for example) makes me uneager to continue improving or even playing the game. For example, consider super smash brothers brawl. This is a competitive game with an abundance of local tournaments. I am very good at this game. I can compete with the best of the best. But there is an element of the game's design that discourages me from playing more or even caring about being the best: talented players can make certain characters play in a non-conventional way where they can slide across the maps very quickly while dealing dangerous amounts of damage. They avoid a straight up fight and do what I call "abuse of game mechanics." Defeating these players is a question of focused attention and experience. I can beat them but it is not fun in the least to play against them. I have a friend who used to whoop my butt silly in the older gamecube version. He did not purchase the new wii version because of how the new characters play and detract from the good old "standard" fighting system. I would compare this story to SC1 and SC2 where competitive players may decide not to purchase the game because of some sort of cheese. Let's say 6pool 7 reaper in 2v2 or even resource feeding in team games. These players may have the ability to become competitive but they don't find the game interesting when the first 3-5 minutes is about not getting gayed instead of just getting your game going. All this to say that your black and white approach and "general experience" is a load of stupidity because it is very likely that many skilled players are also concerned with fun over frustration. I'm sure top WoW arena players would do just as well in Lineage 2 if they were not discouraged by the amount of XP grind in L2. If you do reply, I hope that it has nothing to do with the semantics of casual and competitive. In case you missed it, my main point is that your opinion on "types of people" is stupid. Woah woah woah. Did you seriously just use 2v2 double cheese as a justification of why serious 1v1 competitive gamers wont buy SC2? Cheese in 2v2 is a different breed all together from the completely stoppable cheese in 1v1 - You cannot compare them accurately. Explain yourself now.
A potentially serious 1v1er might start their SC2 career in a team game where there's more room for error. That's EXACTLY what I did despite my somewhat competitive SC/WC3 experience. We know that 1v1 is the ultimate competitive arena. No one is contesting that. But you guys can't keep thinking that everyone that is going to pick up starcraft is going to be a gosu competitive player off the bat. I am very inclined to reach top of ladder (rank 2 plat patch 12) but when I started SC2 beta, I just enjoyed myself for awhile in 2v2 custom games before even trying 1v1.
The point of the discussion is game design that doesn't negatively affect top level play but also keeps the game fun at lower level play. If you can keep top level play the way it is, why not make improvements for lower level play that make it more fun and less frustrating?
Look at the lower level leagues. It's all cheese. Unbeatable or not, that's not what your average joe is expecting when they pick up a RTS. Very few RTS have you getting owned within the first 2-4 minutes of the game.
So the point is, while players are still deciding whether they are enjoying the game, it is in the best interest of the community if they have a positive experience. A good example is the forge nerf that slows down cheese but keeps higher level play intact.
I really don't know why everyone is so black and white about "a good player is going to be good and get over the hurdles." I think my previous MMO example is perfect to counter that argument. There are games I could be very good at but I choose not to play cause they don't please me.
The thread is obviously very theoritical. So theoretically, yes... games should be designed around fun at lower levels (even if that's just "less frustration) and skill and competition at higher levels.
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Vexx:
I would compare this story to SC1 and SC2 where competitive players may decide not to purchase the game because of some sort of cheese.
Vexx:
A potentially serious 1v1er might start their SC2 career in a team game where there's more room for error.
I think you're slightly confused about what kind of player you want to talk about.
So which one of these two very different players do you want to talk about? You just jumped from one to the other quite abruptly.
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On May 30 2010 21:42 deL wrote:
I don't like this example because you discuss an ability that is not even looked at by top players - they never use ever - so it has no impact and won't affect both playerbases when you change it. The problem is when something balanced in top-level play but broken in bronze league is changed to fix it at the low level but disrupt the balance at the top.
For example, DTs kill new players too easily because they are invisible and new players aren't good enough to pre-emptively get turrets, or save orbital energy (assuming they even get orbital). Balance at the lower levels dictates that DTs now take longer to build, or are only cloaked until their energy runs out, or something similar. DTs at high levels are already rarely used because they are inhibitively expensive and this change to accommodate lower ranks adversely and significantly alters competitive play at the top.
not true at all. there are a whole bunch of players that use DTs on higher level of play.
it is true that DTs are stronger than in scbw because z and t have less/more expensive detection. early DTs offer you a short window of mapcontrol+strong harassing and mid/late DTs offer you harrassing at low defended spots.
there is actually no unit that is not needed in high level play besided some lategame units that are almost never seen because they either are too weak/cost or the players have too less experience with em. and those units do not cause any problems at low level play.
if blizzard would start to nerf units/strategies that must be scouted at a given time. then the whole game would be far less interesting.
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EPT
