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On October 02 2010 06:37 kojinshugi wrote: Look at low level zerg vs high level zerg complaints about Terran. Low levels complain about marauders, because attack moving a bioball against a single control group of zerg ground units ends in death. High level zergs complain about far different things. How much of the low level complaining is really about balance, and how much of it is a basic inability to understand that Z just don't work the same way as T by design? There's even complaints about not being able to wall in your ramps, for chrissakes (what are the lings gonna do behind a wall?).
This comes down to intuitive, streamlined gameplay on the one hand and quantity of options on the other. If one is easier to play and has fewer options, and you put it up against a race that has more options but is harder to play, that is a form of separate but equal. If one is easier to play AND has more options versus a faction that is harder to play and has less options... how is that not unbalanced, regardless of how those different options affect gameplay? Take your wall in example and think about it in depth. When Zerg players are annoyed that they can't wall in, they're annoyed by the fact that not being able to wall in has no obvious corresponding advantages. Does walling in hamper a race's aggression? No. Does walling in put you at a severe economic disadvantage? No. Where's the give and take? If they ask for wall in capability, it's because it's easier to just ask for what everyone else already has than to make up some random nonexistent new ability to make up for not being able to wall in.
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On October 01 2010 22:52 dakalro wrote: Reading all this all I could think about was "Wow, Blizzard gives customers a bone and like all good crowds they go for the whole bloody arm". The company which atm has the best game update/balancing response times, the best community relations management and that actively tries to get customers opinions when creating games and they still get shouted at and yelled and whined.
How can you even expect a company to listen to all the requests of everyone playing. Sure, in beta it was one thing, nothing was set in stone but doing "massive changes" now, on the live game? LOOOOLLL!!! You people are really crazy.
Go read up on what development means and see it's not exactly push 2 buttons and voila you have some software. No wonder most of the idiots actually believe they have a right to try cracked games and software, you know nothing of the work that goes into making something like SC2, time wise it's longer than building sky scrapers and you expect stuff to change at the community's whim?
+1
That said, the, "I don't like playing Zerg but it's fine" comment was pretty atrocious, and not really supporting your claim that they actively try to get customers' opinions. It's obvious that Zerg are broken and need help, but they do not seem to be addressing it. (I play Protoss.)
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On October 02 2010 06:37 kojinshugi wrote: Once the game went live, imbalances crept in, but those can't be dealt with in the same shotgun approach.
Why not?
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On October 02 2010 07:27 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2010 06:37 kojinshugi wrote: Once the game went live, imbalances crept in, but those can't be dealt with in the same shotgun approach. Why not?
Because these are paying customers, not to mention the progamers who are making a living off this.
A game that is constantly going through massive balance changes is going to fail. A good analogy is WoW (or any MMO) and gear resets - if they happen too often, players won't be motivated to play at all because there's no stability. Why do all this work if it's going to be null and void in 6 weeks?
Imagine being a progamer, practicing your strategies for hundreds of hours, and suddenly the game goes through a massive change, making all those strategies useless. Why do all this work if halfway through the GSL all that practice goes down the drain?
Is that a price worth paying to introduce an artificial threeway split in representation? Is one race being the perceived underdog such a terrible thing that it needs to be fixed, no matter the cost?
I hate to bring this up, because I don't intend it to be an argument for "Zerg is fine, l2p", but look at who's playing the GSL finals tomorrow. As long as that can happen, the game is doing well enough for its first two months in retail. Yes, there's imbalances. Terran is too strong. But not so overwhelmingly that it would justify upending the current state of the game completely.
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On October 01 2010 07:44 maliceee wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2010 07:42 blabber wrote: isn't it the general consensus that Orc (specifically Blademaster) is imbalanced? yes. No. That is not the general consensus in WC3 at all.
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On October 02 2010 08:21 kojinshugi wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2010 07:27 a176 wrote:On October 02 2010 06:37 kojinshugi wrote: Once the game went live, imbalances crept in, but those can't be dealt with in the same shotgun approach. Why not? Because these are paying customers, not to mention the progamers who are making a living off this. A game that is constantly going through massive balance changes is going to fail. A good analogy is WoW (or any MMO) and gear resets - if they happen too often, players won't be motivated to play at all because there's no stability. Why do all this work if it's going to be null and void in 6 weeks? Imagine being a progamer, practicing your strategies for hundreds of hours, and suddenly the game goes through a massive change, making all those strategies useless. Why do all this work if halfway through the GSL all that practice goes down the drain? Is that a price worth paying to introduce an artificial threeway split in representation? Is one race being the perceived underdog such a terrible thing that it needs to be fixed, no matter the cost? I hate to bring this up, because I don't intend it to be an argument for "Zerg is fine, l2p", but look at who's playing the GSL finals tomorrow. As long as that can happen, the game is doing well enough for its first two months in retail. Yes, there's imbalances. Terran is too strong. But not so overwhelmingly that it would justify upending the current state of the game completely.
No one is still able to tell me why one methodology is acceptable in one situation but not in the other. Beta, retail, two different words, but the players are the same, the game is the same. There were tournaments then, there are tournaments now. There are even bigger, more high profile tournaments now. The need to have a balanced game is far more important now.
So again, why the need for a slow approach? Whats worse - would you rather take their 'hours of practice' and turn that into weeks, or months?
ps,
I hate to bring this up, because I don't intend it to be an argument for "Zerg is fine, l2p", but look at who's playing the GSL finals tomorrow
Yes, 2 ex-bw progamers who breezed through a tournament of stage-frightened kids. Very convincing of the current balancing of the game.
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On October 02 2010 08:24 Lefnui wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2010 07:44 maliceee wrote:On October 01 2010 07:42 blabber wrote: isn't it the general consensus that Orc (specifically Blademaster) is imbalanced? yes. No. That is not the general consensus in WC3 at all.
Did you actually read through this thread and take note of all the other people who agree with that statement? Did you see anyone disagreeing? There's a reason for that. Don't be argumentative just to be argumentative. The sky is blue.
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On October 02 2010 07:26 darkwing.Huzow wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2010 22:52 dakalro wrote: Reading all this all I could think about was "Wow, Blizzard gives customers a bone and like all good crowds they go for the whole bloody arm". The company which atm has the best game update/balancing response times, the best community relations management and that actively tries to get customers opinions when creating games and they still get shouted at and yelled and whined.
How can you even expect a company to listen to all the requests of everyone playing. Sure, in beta it was one thing, nothing was set in stone but doing "massive changes" now, on the live game? LOOOOLLL!!! You people are really crazy.
Go read up on what development means and see it's not exactly push 2 buttons and voila you have some software. No wonder most of the idiots actually believe they have a right to try cracked games and software, you know nothing of the work that goes into making something like SC2, time wise it's longer than building sky scrapers and you expect stuff to change at the community's whim? +1 That said, the, "I don't like playing Zerg but it's fine" comment was pretty atrocious, and not really supporting your claim that they actively try to get customers' opinions. It's obvious that Zerg are broken and need help, but they do not seem to be addressing it. (I play Protoss.)
They may try to actively get opinions on stuff, but they're VERY bad at it. Or all of their balance designers are really bad so they disagree with everything said in the community 100%.
I mean wtf is this shit? I almost thought it was a bad joke, when Chris Sigaty said that Zerg is actually fine at the highest levels. Yeah right. That's why they've been winning tournaments everywhere isn't it?
I mean of course they only look at their ladder, but even they must be smart enough to realize that a player who has >50% winrate and playes 1500 games will be higher than a random toss/terran that has the same winrate but only 750 games. I mean look at the korean top ladder, which is probably what they're referring to when they say high level Zerg is fine. OK, there is a good amount of Zergs on there, but all of them play many many many more games on the ladder than their Terran and Toss counterparts, no wonder they have the rank they do.
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I have a gag reflux every time I read someone saying "it's going to take a long time to balance...", sounds too much like a politician.
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On October 02 2010 08:24 Lefnui wrote:Show nested quote +On October 01 2010 07:44 maliceee wrote:On October 01 2010 07:42 blabber wrote: isn't it the general consensus that Orc (specifically Blademaster) is imbalanced? yes. No. That is not the general consensus in WC3 at all.
Orc is imbalanced vs undead only, specific unit imbalance is irrelevant. Wc3 is pretty balanced except for orc vs undead.
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On October 02 2010 08:43 a176 wrote: So again, why the need for a slow approach?
I explained why, in great detail. I can't really do anything about your inability to read what I actually wrote instead of responding to strawmen.
Let me make it very black and white for you - an irrational desire for some progamers to play an underpowered race even though they can't be successful with it is not valid grounds for massive, frequent balance changes that upset the game for every single player.
Car analogy incoming!
Beta is prototyping. Retail is a production vehicle. If you're designing a car, you can go through tons of iterations, switch out parts, redesign the engine, what have you.
Once the car is on the market, you can't recall it every 3 weeks to swap out the drive train.
Whats worse - would you rather take their 'hours of practice' and turn that into weeks, or months?
I said hundreds of hours, which, oddly enough, can also be expressed as weeks and months. If the game is massively rebalanced every year or two, when the expacs come out, people can deal with that. Again, you missed my point, which was that beta-style gatling gun patching is far too frequent. Major changes aren't inherently bad. They can fix imbalance and also reinvigorate the game.
Show nested quote +I hate to bring this up, because I don't intend it to be an argument for "Zerg is fine, l2p", but look at who's playing the GSL finals tomorrow Yes, 2 ex-bw progamers who breezed through a tournament of stage-frightened kids. Very convincing of the current balancing of the game.
Putting aside the fact that they weren't the only two, that wasn't my point. I specifically said that I don't think that this is proof of amazing balance, just barely adequate balance. Zerg aren't completely unable to compete at high level tournaments. Of course the ultimate goal is to have everyone on equal footing.
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900 Gold here, (as though what level you play at really matters in balance debates)
This is what I think.
Of course it's gonna take more time and effort to balance out sc2 than BW. There's more features to it than BW. With the addition of warpgates and techlabs/reactors Terran and Protoss produce units more differently than before. You can get more larva not only by making more hatches but by making more queens. Creep spread is actually useful. Et cetera.
Starcraft 2 is for the most part, pretty balanced. It needs a few tweaks but as mentioned above it's more complicated and the tweaks can have a larger effect on the way the game is played. Goddamn it I hate void rays (even though I now favor toss whereas I used to play zerg) but I find that in all of my games thus far when I lose to things like void rays or 6pools it's mostly my fault for not scouting or adapting correctly to cheesey play.
Before screaming IMBA!!!! just watch your replays and see what happened. 99% of the time it's your fault. And if you're below platinum level, 99% of the time out of that it's your macro. After watching husky, crota, sahara, and day9 since the beta days, I have yet to watch a game where it could be said that one side won because of game imbalance (post-beta).
These debates are pretty stupid in my opinion. But like everyone else I feel the need to pitch in for no real reason.
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