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United States47024 Posts
On May 26 2010 09:52 Failsafe wrote:
If race A performs a particular build race B should be able to beat that strategy more than 50% of the time if race B knows what race A is doing (given excellent players of equal skill).
This is not always necessarily true, given the nature of a game with incomplete information. If the above holds true for both race A and race B, but race A has better information-gathering ability than race B, then race A will have an advantage, because it will know what race B is doing more often than race B knows what race A is doing. Given the nonsymmetric forms of information gathering (overlords, observers, burrowed units, scans, floating buildings, etc.), this is inevitably going to be the case in one or more of the race relationships. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, race B has to be stronger in other aspects (which may involve having a strategy that is still hard to beat, even when it is scouted).
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If you can't learn from your mistakes watching your replays, reading some forum to learn how to counter some strat/cheese/etc, then, just play some custom games "20 mins NO RUSH" and you will be fine, and im sure that you will have lots of fun.
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Im gonna have to really disagree because Casuals will complain for ANY reason that they lose. This type of player will just make excuses for why they suck, blame it on the game, and quit regardless. You shouldn't mess with the game to try and help casuals because for 1, they've already got a pretty good matchmaking system in place to match bad players up against each other (and bad players don't often rush and if they do then they probably do it quite poorly)
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On May 26 2010 10:00 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2010 09:52 Failsafe wrote:
If race A performs a particular build race B should be able to beat that strategy more than 50% of the time if race B knows what race A is doing (given excellent players of equal skill).
This is not always necessarily true, given the nature of a game with incomplete information. If the above holds true for both race A and race B, but race A has better information-gathering ability than race B, then race A will have an advantage, because it will know what race B is doing more often than race B knows what race A is doing. Given the nonsymmetric forms of information gathering (overlords, observers, burrowed units, scans, floating buildings, etc.), this is inevitably going to be the case in one or more of the race relationships. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, race B has to be stronger in other aspects (which may involve having a strategy that is still hard to beat, even when it is scouted).
I agree with Yango, especially if it is a "standard" build that is supposed to give a certain player the "best" chance to win. Non-standard builds usually give an immediate advantage IF NOT SCOUTED, but if you are doing the "standard" playstyle, then it doesn't REALLY matter if you are scouted.
NOTE: An mmm ball is "standard." If you can't beat it and complain that it is imba, learn to counter it (or come up with the best counter to it) before flipping a shit about it and calling it imba lmao.
NOTE 2: it might have to do with the fact that my macro might be better than yours, gold/silver level players  .
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On May 26 2010 10:03 Kyouya wrote:
If you can't learn from your mistakes watching your replays, reading some forum to learn how to counter some strat/cheese/etc, then, just play some custom games "20 mins NO RUSH" and you will be fine, and im sure that you will have lots of fun.
Or play 3v3 fastest gogogoogogogog on bnet .
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I firmly believe that if casuals continue at it, they will eventually reach the high tier of players. As such, we should only balance at that high tier and that high tier only.
If we tailor "casually balancing," where's the line drawn? Let's hyperbolate.
Take two COMPLETE noobs of equal skill duking it out. Noob playing P will have a distinct advantage vs any Z or T noob generally due to the HP of all units. Economy is secondary as both players' economies are poor, floating high, and ill-managed, so is irrelivant. What's left is that P noob is owning with his more durable units. Both noobs will surmise that all P units are OP and need hp nerf.
Because most people reading this post are not noob to this degree, we can all see the fallacy of this argument. XYZ can be done to remedy this situation. We know the solution to be XYZ because we are better players, have a better grasp about the concepts of the game, etc.
Lower ranked players will cry elitist to this argument, but this is really the reality of it.
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In any endeavour in the world, does the lazy get protection for being lazy?
The only path to success in anything is 1. the desire to succeed and 2. the effort to achieve that desire. Potential means nothing, what-ifs won't get you anywhere. The reward is there for grabs, for those who walk the walk.
If cheese is unstoppable then it will become the dominate strategy in high level play and the game can be declared broken. Until then, Cheese is stoppable and for newbies you either always cheese back, or learn to stop it.
How about the OP and supporters actually provide some examples of current SC2 cheese being OP at low levels? What's your evidence that cheese takes less skill? You think microing a reaper vs 10 probes is easy? Or does scout on your 8th peon takes too much skill to execute? If you believe your skill level is above your opponent who might cheeses, why don't you always play safe and give yourself a small economic disadvantage given your 'skill' obviously is greater than your opponent?
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Great post zomg I think you have basically summarised everything that really needs to be said on the subject.
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Or casuals and non-casuals could stop calling everything 'cheese' and learn to scout and adapt.
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After reading like 5-10 lines in, I thought this post would be an original and abstract take on a fundamental issue of balance. This is just a long example to make a point that has been made a million times. By the way, what your describing wouldn't be cheese and neither was the infest ability in BW. If the player can't find 2 marines to attack the overlord in the center of their base after they hear the warning, why shouldn't they lose? Also it wouldn't be anywhere near 50hp per second, that would be OP.
Hopefully the game is fun for new players who play against other new players...Cheese shouldn't be skill-less so that a first timer can memorize the build and win until he hits platinum/diamond. BUT..
This is a game that's supposed to be aimed at competitive RTS players and the realm of E-sports. Any feature or change that has a negative effect on the competitive side of the game should immediately be thrown out or modified. In BW, people who didn't want to learn the competitive game played money maps. That game prospered like hell and had plenty of cheese in it.
Competitive players are afraid that people like yourself(no offense) who clearly don't understand what the competitive game even is, are going to get Blizzard to make negative changes to the competitive game.
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A very nice and insightful read. I only strongly disagree on the one part :
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"
It is highly unlikely that a player with such an attitude will ever be great. I'm pretty sure everyone feels like something is overpowered every once in a while, but what separates good players from bad ones (of many things) is the ability to suck it up and keep figuring out how to beat it. Learning how to play is a mountain of losses to overcome and climb. Losing 10 games to one strategy is nothing.
Still, I consider balancing the game on different tiers legit, as long as it doesn't hurt the competitive game, which cares about the balance the most anyway.
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I haven't read the whole thread but I saw that the OP took a lot of abuse on the first page from people with low reading comprehension.
Thank you Edmon for helping me understand a lot of what Blizzard has been doing, even if I still can't agree with it all - it's nice to have better perspective.
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Your post has some quite important game design considerations, however there are some things done in SC2 that aren't supported by your thoughts.
A good example is any sort of cheese that requires micro to be effective. If a casual newbie gets cheesed and stomped by someone that's completely out of their league, this is a problem of the matchmaking system, not of the "casual balance".
Let's take a borderline example: the VR nerfs. The VR harass strategy is one that requires micro to be effective, but that is devastating against an unsuspecting opponent. The counter to it both in PvT and PvZ is very simple: scout it, and get anti-air. (For Z it is as simple as getting more queens. T had a little more trouble with it, since marines alone wouldn't do the job perfectly, but it was still simple to fend off)
Now, the problem is that a huge chunk of the casual players focuses mainly in econ and attack; defense and intel not really being a big part of their gameplan, specially not when you'll need to sacrifice your econ, production or tech for it.
But amongst those casual players, there's also a noticeable chunk that does play better. These ones will know how to defend against it, and for this skill level upwards, it is something that adds a huge amount of depth in the gameplay, and even helps the weaker casuals, as it presents a path for getting better in the game.
So how do you balance this both for casuals and for more serious players? You make the strat harder. Mess up with its timing, make it cost more (forcing more commitment), make it more clumsy. This way those better players can use it against themselves.
Now let's see what Blizz did to the VR:
Patch 8:
- Charge levels 2 -> 3.
- Weak dmg: 2 (+4 armored) -> 5.
- Strong dmg: 8 (+16 armored) -> 10 (+15 armored).
- Armor: 1 -> 0.
- Cost: 200/150 -> 250/150.
Patch 13:
- Range: 7 -> 6.
Now, most of this seems to make sense... The charge levels nerf (with damage changes) was a good one, since it pretty much only made the unit less reliable. The cost change also only makes the strat a little harder.
However, the armor reduction pretty much meant that no matter how much effort you can put into the strat, a Zerg player that scouts it will be able to defend this. (It is also quite possible that even with 1 armor a Zerg player wouldn't be able to fend this off with no effort at all).
This coupled with the range nerf, means Terrans will be able to shut this down extremely easily as long as they get a few marines (and even casuals should be punished for going only marauders due to the nature of the unit).
So these two few changes, although good for weak and casual balance, are Very crippling for the other tiers of players. Maybe on the professional and competitive scene, some amazing VR micro can be pulled off, or enough macro to fit in some critical upgrade, and make the strat plausible. However, most certainly for the higher casual - lower serious tier (the one SC2 multiplayer seems to be aimed at for me), it is bad design. An effective strat became one that can only work when there is a gap in the player's skill level.
In a nutshell: casual balance is important, however you can't consider only a "mass of weak casual players" when doing it. There are skilled casual players too, and there are less skilled serious gamers that can fall quite close to the same tier. When balancing a game you absolutely can't consider it "op". It is op in one skill level, normal in another, etc... and should balance accordingly so that it becomes good on ALL levels. If through your balance you end up removing depth from the game for one skill tier, then you're probably doing it for more than one and effectively crippling the game.
And the problem gets worse still when the serious gamers (whatever skill) have a lot of influence in other skill levels (creating new strategies, guides, giving their opinion on the game, etc). At this point, you can't ignore them at all since they'll make the other players evolve (and thus every single player must be satisfied with the game in many skill levels). And should they be wrong in their analysis for some time (this happens quite a lot if the community is not big enough) you'll need reliable tools that can decide perfectly on key balance points.
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On May 26 2010 10:00 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2010 09:52 Failsafe wrote:
If race A performs a particular build race B should be able to beat that strategy more than 50% of the time if race B knows what race A is doing (given excellent players of equal skill).
This is not always necessarily true, given the nature of a game with incomplete information. If the above holds true for both race A and race B, but race A has better information-gathering ability than race B, then race A will have an advantage, because it will know what race B is doing more often than race B knows what race A is doing. Given the nonsymmetric forms of information gathering (overlords, observers, burrowed units, scans, floating buildings, etc.), this is inevitably going to be the case in one or more of the race relationships. Therefore, in order to compensate for this, race B has to be stronger in other aspects (which may involve having a strategy that is still hard to beat, even when it is scouted).
yeah you're right but you misunderstood what i said. all i said was that if race B has perfect information and race A doesn't, race B's winrate should converge to 50% or more.
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On May 26 2010 07:31 GMarshal wrote:
I dont really have anything to add, I just think this is a great well though out post, now if we could get all the people raging over how "imbalanced" Terran is to read this and think, rather than rage...
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!
Terran USED to be fine back when tanks didn't have the splash buff, and marauders had the 100/100 concussive shells upgrades instead of 50/50 (Its practically free now.) and then they buffed terran even more by making stim and combat shield 100/100
On Topic: Very well thought out post, if we can delay, "Cheese" While having the delayed option be a integral part of play (The overlord having energy for example) would be great, since noone would use it competitively anyway : P And would keep the casual players!!!
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On May 26 2010 10:39 gogogadgetflow wrote:
I haven't read the whole thread but I saw that the OP took a lot of abuse on the first page from people with low reading comprehension.
Thank you Edmon for helping me understand a lot of what Blizzard has been doing, even if I still can't agree with it all - it's nice to have better perspective.
Why stop at stopping cheese? To keep casual players lets make additional buttons that makes units dance to music, wave back at you, burp and take a nap! That will keep the casual players interested and will have no impact on competitive play because they, just like the changes suggested by OP has zero utility to anyone but the targeted audience! (and it must be a good change if 5% of the population is happy for 2 days, like there's no opportunity cost in introducing useless fluff rather than say... *cough* fix up battlenet 2.0)
Way to mis-appropriate events to some perceived theory! Blizzard made the changes, and people don't necessarily agree. They may be good changes in the long run or just the balance team isn't very good at it. To think Blizzard made those changes to make casuals happy is hilarious.
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While we discuss how SC2 should be balanced, it is a natural business choice to market towards the greater demographic. Having casual gamers give good reviews to their close friends may be the best advertising a gaming company can get. That alone is enough reason to assume that SC2 is already taking casual gamers into account when making balance changes and general changes to gameplay.
I really enjoyed this post because it is so true:
On May 26 2010 08:31 Failsafe wrote:
Balancing Starcraft II for low level play is impossible. [...]
Examples:
1) If player A goes air, player B probably isn't scouting so player B dies.
2) If player A rushes, then player B probably doesn't know how to wall, doesn't have a build order that prepares him for a rush, and doesn't know any tricks to help himself once the rush arrives. Player B loses.
3) If player A masses basic ground units and attacks at 10 minutes, player B has probably constructed a base with one of each tech structure and has not devoted much money to his army. He also hasn't scouted. Player B dies.
And so on. Balancing for these players doesn't work.
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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"
This would be fine, but the league method has completely nullified this,a cheese in the Bronze league isn't going to be the same as a cheese in the gold league which isn't going to be the same the same cheese in diamond league.
At one point the Beta bugged out on my and put me at rank 86 Copper League (logged on one day and just happened to be in Copper) and I had the pleasure of grinding my rank back to Gold, what I witnessed was quite interesting to be honest. The players who tend to cheese in the lower ranks do it so poorly, they stop probe production, get supply blocked, lack of micro etc etc
Balance issues start becoming a problem when anyone can Vs. anyone, but in a tired league system where you are Vs.-ing people just as good as you (or just as bad ), it becomes so easy to overcome any cheese strategy
TL;DR No one should be losing 10 games in a row to people in your own league, Cheese or not, if you are then you certainly aren't meant for that league.
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I think there's alot of misunderstanding about the idea of a casual.. remember guys that most computer games are strategically simple and are more about playing for the flashing lights and pretty graphics.
A casual by this definition is someone who wants the game to be fun. He doesn't want to work to get better at it, or if he does, he expects that to come naturally and gradually through the game..
Think of the OP as a suggestion on how to shallow out the learning curve.
Dealing with cheese is a skill that requires knowledge of the correct reactions, and the ability to carry out those reactions quickly under pressure.
I have a friend who suicided all his scvs into 3 cannons which had been made in the back of his base, trying to kill them off. New players JUST DON'T KNOW how to deal with cheese.
As long as there are strats that new players can do, which other new players can't defend, lower leagues will be a discouraging cheese-fest, the OP is suggesting that it is important to remove this aspect from the game in order to help people get onto the first rung of the ladder.
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Actually PC games are usually a lot tougher to get into vs console gaming. Especially RTS's
*edited for clarity
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EPT
