Official State of the Game Podcast Thread - Page 692

On April 06 2011 18:07 Talin wrote:


Wait, so you think Day9 is biased and professional players are not? Pro players want to win, and they preferably want to win as easy as possible - if they feel they can put pressure on people who balance the game to get even a tiniest advantage, they will. Add hordes of lower level players who can't win with the race because they're just bad will hop on the bandwagon, and it becomes really easy to create the illusion that the game is broken and the race is unplayable.

Remember the period when Protoss players had really mediocre results (especially in Korea) and Genius said he would change his race unless it got buffed? It turned out that most Protoss players just

a) Weren't good enough to compete for the top at the time.
b) Didn't have the game as figured out as they do now.

And note that Protoss never got buffed.

The game most definitely isn't figured out. It's not even close. Just the early game in SC2 is even more complex (due to macro mechanics) and has a lot more options and timings than BW early game had. It's a long process, it has been that way in every Blizzard RTS. Only a few brilliant individuals revolutionized their race's gameplay in BW, some of it even took as long as half a decade after the last patch.

Ultimately, the "game is broken" mentality will only hurt you as a player - just like it hurts Idra actually. You will be less good and less successful with that mindset, it's absolutely the wrong mindset for a player to have. It's not a player's job to consider game balance (players tend to be bad at game design anyway).

On April 06 2011 18:15 Skrelt wrote:

protoss did get buffed. Scouting made easyer, obs for lesser cost and pheonix build time decreased. I know these sound as small changed but it where buffs ^^

On April 06 2011 18:18 Talin wrote:


Oh, damn. Completely forgot about those, but yeah you're right. =p

It's not like we saw a big resurgence of air play anyway. I'd say it had a minimal effect on the metagame really.

On April 06 2011 18:40 Coolwhip wrote:
I was looking forward to hearing about their thoughts on the MLG fiasco, but going by the comments here they ignored it?

On April 06 2011 15:07 mnofstl007 wrote:



The problem lies with leagues being run in a format that requires players that participate to be unable to participate in any other tournament. The NASL is doing just that. There will be no way for competitors to compete in the NASL and other large competitions simultaneously, unless they basically say in "X tournament IDC how i do" "in Y tournament I am going to focus all of my time/energy on each match."

The best part of MLG or Blizzcon is the fact that they are not complete time controllers of players. Ya they require players to completely dedicate a total of... 3 whole days to them. But that is COMPLETELY different than having to dedicate yourself to 3 hours, per night, for 5 days a week.

And I understand that most likely this is an exaggeration, but the problem is there are 2 players in every match. So unless you are running a tournament with VERY similar brackets to NASL, you will have to worry about schedules/conflicts in them with players.

"Well how bout you two play on tues night?" "Well i have a nasl match that night." "Ok thurs night. "Well he has one that night." "Ok Saturday night." "well that is my next match/or my teammates match that i have to help him with/prepare/cheer."

Things like this.

I completely LOVE that NASL is trying to give as many quality games as possible, but they are monopolizing too much time.

Not to mention flooding so much content that viewers will come to a point where they have 60 hours of matches available to watch per week.

I dont know about the rest of the viewers, but I like following a tournament completely, and as many as I can in fact. I can follow the TSL and GSL and MLG all at once. But you can't completely follow the NASL and GSL at once.

They are beginning to split viewerships = less desire for sponsors because instead of ALL 100,000 people watching one, it will be 30 here, 30 here, 40 there. = Less viewers per tournament= less desire to sponsor cause numbers aren't nearly as impressive as "we had over 100,000 people watching live!" to sponsors' ears.

To be completely 100% honest I would rather watch 4 seperate 1 week tournaments, than 1 tournament that is a month long. Because with 4 shorter tournaments you can pick and choose which ones you care about.

But again, maybe this is just me. But i like to follow a tournament from beginning to end. (I am one of those people who refuses to watch a movie anything more than 15 minutes after it started, if I havent seen it. And same with Sports, I want to see the whole thing from beginning to end, so i understand what really happened.)

The amount of content the NASL is going to put out is INSANE. How many people can afford to spend 20 hours a week just following matches?

IMO the NASL is saying, "Please only watch us" when their tournament is running. And I would have no problem with this, if their tournament wasn't 1 month long."


But again, maybe this is just me, because like i have said multiple times previously already, if I am going to follow something, I want to follow it completely.

IMO NASL is making people pick which tournaments to follow, and it isn't necessary to. Right now the scene is still growing, and shouldn't be forcing people to make this decision, when the scene is so new.

On April 06 2011 18:22 Skrelt wrote:

i think for low levels yesh. but i dont know exactly how it was and is now for higher levels.

On April 06 2011 19:08 mcc wrote:

I don't think those buffs played any important role in the protoss rise. Protoss play against terran does not depend on phoenixes(although they are used in many games) , so only observer buff remains and it is hard to attribute all the recent protoss success to it alone. So the core point of Talin's post remains. But maybe it can still be argued that although there were no protoss buffs, there were terran nerfs(so indirect protoss buffs). But there were also protoss nerfs so ...

On April 06 2011 15:07 mnofstl007 wrote:



[...]

They are beginning to split viewerships = less desire for sponsors because instead of ALL 100,000 people watching one, it will be 30 here, 30 here, 40 there. = Less viewers per tournament= less desire to sponsor cause numbers aren't nearly as impressive as "we had over 100,000 people watching live!" to sponsors' ears.

[...]

On April 06 2011 17:57 FIRETRUCK wrote:
why dont zergs get a maxed army with 10 infestors, engage and get 80 infested marines? I think there's way too much of an emphasis on fungal growth.

On April 06 2011 19:43 Bagi wrote:
When discussing what changed with protoss, I think maps need to be considered as well. Bigger maps make any kind of early aggression that much harder to pull off, and protoss was always the race that benefited from a longer macro game.

Also there are certain metagame changes like going more sentry-heavy openings (with improved FF placement), getting double forge to make gateway units scary, etc.

I see protoss players are doing damage control here, but you only have to look back to terran in earlier patches and you'll see what happens when a race is generally deemed OP. Terran was nerfed many patches in a row, and I see no reason why "the current protoss" wouldn't deserve similar treatment. Any excuses about the metagame not being figured out will be moot, just like they were with terran.

On April 06 2011 19:41 Novalisk wrote:
I didn't like the part where Tyler hinted that the NASL will give you your money's worth more than the GSL.

More games=/=more quality content. As a player you might want more games to study, but a spectator(majority of the viewerbase judging by a recent poll) will likely want a better viewing experience, which the NASL has yet to show.