EPTThe Battlecry of the Damned: Imbalance - Page 9
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savagebeavers
Canada108 Posts
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EchOne
United States2906 Posts
On January 08 2011 10:15 Disastorm wrote: I wasn't part of the competitive community when Starcraft 1 first came out, but i will never believe in a million years that people weren't raging about imbalance back then just as they are now. I was under the impression people raged about imbalanced, and then one day BW was finally balanced and everyone stopped complaining. I think that will also happen in SC2, or is that just too much to ask for? Currently we are still in the process of balancing the game, once its balanced you will no longer hear all the raging left and right. BW was imbalanced, and people talked about it. Sure some kids would rage and whine, but that point in video gaming there was no self-righteous attitude pervading the culture saying, "I deserve a fair (read: easy) fight." Every video game till then had its imbalances, and they were treated just as facets of the game, albeit very consequential ones. In BW specifically, even after 1.08, there were commonly echoed notions of imbalance, such as the general P>T>Z>P. Such talk was never big deal, unless you count trolling LR threads as a big deal, because a BW player would almost always reap benefits from just practicing that much harder or smarter, no matter what supposed imbalances he was contending with. And the Pro Scene was ever present, reminding him of the pinnacle, the skill gradient, the fact that he has a long way to go, and many, many other players to conquer, and that that relied only on his skill and dedication, not on what race he chose. Incontrol also pointed out another factor as to why balance complaints in the BW era were relatively insignificant: there was no illusion of player agency in game patching. The dynamic back then was simple: developers make games, gamers buy and play the games. Whatever discourse arose among players was dedicated only to the question, "How to win?" because that was the only role of the player, to win... or lose. If you lost, you didn't waste all your energy complaining about it, because that didn't help you win. Now people have all these other extraneous motivations like, "How can I help create a sustainable business model for eSports?" "How can I help diagnose viewership interest deficiencies in game broadcasts?" "How can I help balance the game?" "How can I help remedy one of my community's several attitude problems?" What the fuck. You're not a businessman or investor, you're not a marketer or market analyst, you're not a game designer, and you're not a pundit, priest, or politician, though you may be qualified for that last one. Don't get me wrong, these discussions can be highly interesting and relevant to spectator experience and to our concerns as gamers in general. But as we are largely spectators and/or gamers, we're basically shooting the shit when we talk about these topics, and such discussions should have no bearing on the topic of us winning or watching others win because that is an entirely different discussion of which we should have far more expertise. | ||
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SaYyId
Portugal277 Posts
swell post btw. | ||
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charlie420247
United States692 Posts
On January 08 2011 09:00 Googly wrote: I am very new to TL and don't post often on forums, but visit TL on a daily basis. I feel I need to post here to say, "man this is a great post". Well done to the OP for starting a thread which shows real appreciation for the game and is realistic about challenges. I personally believe imbalances will always be in any game, there will always be a combination of circumstances that will kill you, deal with it, like the OP said, just be pragmatic about it, understand why that combo killed you and work on a mechanism/strat to defend against it. Just look at GSL how the strats evolve every season, the pro's don't shout IMBA, they come up with a strategy that can defeat it and live with it. actually pros scream imbalance all the fucking time are you deaf???? | ||
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Arcanewinds
United Kingdom197 Posts
Of course if they flame back they'd get warned... ^_^ | ||
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FrostOtter
United States537 Posts
On January 08 2011 12:25 charlie420247 wrote: actually pros scream imbalance all the fucking time are you deaf???? Luckily, pros aren't infallible, either. I hate blaming losses on imbalance from pros and bronze leaguers alike. | ||
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red_b
United States1267 Posts
On January 08 2011 12:42 FrostOtter wrote:pros aren't infallible, either. I hate blaming losses on imbalance from pros and bronze leaguers alike. neither is blizzard. if you want to say you cant blame individual losses on imbalance because there was something you could do (since not a single one of us is THAT good) then I can understand why you might look at that negatively. but to suggest that each race takes the same effort on each map is laughable. and that is how a lot of games define balance. take for example third strike; chun li is considered stronger than say ryu because she requires less work to win with. so in the aggregate, there really is something to a discussion about whether the game is balanced or not. at least IMO. | ||
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FrostOtter
United States537 Posts
On January 08 2011 13:30 red_b wrote: but to suggest that each race takes the same effort on each map is laughable. and that is how a lot of games define balance. . Why? Any race can win on any map. That is a fact. People will probably say something about how players of equal skill blah blah blah, but I would guess no one could come up with a coherent method of deciding who is of equal skill. Are there things that need to be tweaked? Perhaps, but those will gradually disappear and Blizzard is going to notice them without thousands of threads of complainers. | ||
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skeldark
Germany2223 Posts
There is no unit or cast in sc2 that dont have his own "this is imba" thread. A week ago a guy raged on me and said he can prove that the matchup is imba. i should go on teamliquid and read the threads there... They use there own rage as prove for a reason to rage. Many people just saw this argument and now use it for there mistakes. Some Pro do the same and the other people think only because a pro dont want to see his mistakes its fine if they do the same. They only stop if they start blaming thereself on there mistakes and this will not happen. Dont get me wrong, a discussion over balance can be fine and usefull but how often and the way this is happening on this and other forums have nothing to do with a discussion. In my Opinion there was a time here on tl where you could stop it with mass banning. But they decided not to do so and now i have the feeling its to late. | ||
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sylverfyre
United States8298 Posts
On January 08 2011 14:36 skeldark wrote: In my Opinion there was a time here on tl where you could stop it with mass banning. But they decided not to do so and now i have the feeling its to late. Instead some rather huge portion of the TL population pretends the SC2 strategy forum doesn't exist. It has been banned from our minds. | ||
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Mr_Kyo
United States269 Posts
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GFree
Singapore71 Posts
On January 08 2011 14:49 sylverfyre wrote: Instead some rather huge portion of the TL population pretends the SC2 strategy forum doesn't exist. It has been banned from our minds. I can't go in there anymore without rolling my eyes. I think the worst argument people like to use for imbalance is a-moving. The only way a battle between 200/200 armies could ever always come out equal is for them to be using the exact same units engaging on a featureless plain. If there is any level of variety in the armies, some units are bound to be better choices than others and thus, one a-moving army is DEFINITELY going to beat another a-moving army. We will always pick the units that are difficult for our opponent's to deal with in one way or another. Mutalisk harrassment, Thor drops, Collosi balls, and about half the rest of the threads in the section will complain about one tactic or another that is hard to deal with. If it were easy to deal with, we'd pick a different strategy. | ||
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Arcanewinds
United Kingdom197 Posts
On January 08 2011 14:49 sylverfyre wrote: Instead some rather huge portion of the TL population pretends the SC2 strategy forum doesn't exist. It has been banned from our minds. This is pretty much what I've done... I just ignore the forum, there's too much rubbish to sift through for me to bother reading any of it. | ||
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Paperscraps
United States639 Posts
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Meapak_Ziphh
United States6784 Posts
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kirkybaby
Korea (South)781 Posts
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HavokTheorem
New Zealand250 Posts
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HavokTheorem
New Zealand250 Posts
When I boil it down in my head, it comes down to these words that I feel are wise and quoteworthy: To claim there is imbalance when one is defeated, is tantamount to one not accepting defeat. In other words, people dont want to lose. If people got over getting thrashes, why would they need to QQ? | ||
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peterra
Finland3 Posts
The points you raise up are good to a valid point but you cannot possibly IN ANY WAY forbid people of talking/writing about points that are obviously -disturbing- the gameplay of the game. I am not a SC:BW player but instead a Warcraft 3 player. In Warcraft 3 the game always was MORE IMBALANCED and OVERPOWERED than the Starcraft:Broodwar ever was and ever will be. And trust me, in Warcraft 3, Blizzard just did not care for the game after the first 3 years at all. People were screaming for changes and people didn't get changes at all. People used years and years to be innovative and to come up with new strategies in the imbalanced matchups: UD vs. Orc was imbalanced back 2004 and back 2011 the matchup is still just as imbalanced as it was the first day of 2004. What your post at its best accomplishes is trying to hide the problem and silence the opposition. Game world does not work like this, real life does not work like this. Problems won't disappear if you ignore them. Imbalances of the game won't disappear when you ignore them and try to hide it "hey it's alright my build order just sucks so much that i cannot win in this situation" First of everything I'll go deeper to this, i am trying to define you what IMBALANCE in matter of fact means to me (dunno if it means the same for the others but it definitely means the following for me): Imbalance is a point or stance of the game when your opponent to a reason irrelevant to his skill level, style or early game success reaches an -undeniable- advantage, which is easier to pull out than it is to pull off. For instance for myself, as a player of the zerg race, i consider protoss the race of problems at this point. Why? Because protoss has relatively good cheeses which _MUST BE_ scouted in order to be countered but along the line protoss has a possibility to expand early which is hard to stop and which automatically leads to a macrogame. This process of protoss going to a macrogame is very hard to stop and requires you to 1) all-in and wish for the best 2) try to play the macrogame where you most likely lose in the long run. A good protoss that knows the basics of his race knows how to get the game to the stage of the macrogame. He knows how to defend early roach pushes, how to defend his early expansion and he also knows to scout his opponent. When protoss gets high tier units (standard units like colossi) the game turns into a nightmare for the opponent automatically. A traditional combination of protoss stalkers, zealots, sentries and colossi and i bet you if both players have reached a traditional army combination of their representive race to that point of time it wouldn't matter if the game was paused and the players would change places - the zerg to become the protoss and the protoss to become the zerg, i bet you the winner would still be the same. That's how I count something is imbalanced: when using a special type of army that both players might consider a standard obviously grants one of the players a huge advantage in the fight. The process or zerg vs. protoss in the midgame when protoss steps to high templars or colossus is so unfair and no matter who controls that protoss army seems to win the game. I've been following the games of pro zerg against pro protoss lately and the only successful zerg at the moment appears to be SEN who always seems to be way ahead his opponent in both thought process and skill. When i watch GSL and see nestea and fruitdealer totally losing to -cheesy strategies- followed by an expansion and lategame i only feel sorry for the zerg players. Also pointing out some noteable facts that everyone in the diamond league is familiar with: protoss seems to be the most played race atm. You usually get 3/5 of the games against protoss and the rest of 2 shared games between zergs and terrans. Protoss seems to also have the best percents in higher leagues and also seems to be represented the best atm. I'd like to see that top 200 and those new percents of each matchup in every realm. Last time Protoss had a slice of 60% vs. terran and a slice of 55% vs. zerg in both Europe and America. And I know that there're tons of things i can still do better but what really hits me hard is the fact that protoss players don't have to do that any better. Good protoss players seem to have fun playing atm since i feel like some of them are making really huge errors during the early game and really losing a lot and even when i watch those replays of mine several times i cannot figure out how did i play worse and that hits me straight to the fact. I sometimes send those games to fellow zerg players and their answers are "well i've got the problem every time so i think you should just to try to finish the game before and all-in" when i am a macroplayer wanting to oriantate to win the game later. I think it's an unfair slice that one race has an army that automatically (independant of positioning and with very little micro required) can so easily win a huge fight vs. equal pop of the opponent race. Think about colossi for instance: they're huge - probably the easiest single unit to micro in the game with a lot of hp and only losing when the opponent gets absolutely close. Comparing this situation to the counters and how much micro do they need to work out _that well_ is a completely unfair situation and that situation is nearly always something you need to go in. The only way to prevent the creation of this type of army of a protoss players is to go mass air which wins when he doesn't know he has phoenix which are buffed for the next patch to further buest protosses chances of adaption. I think the game still has these tweaks and where i agree with you that writing short useless posts without any point or thought about imbalance is waste of the community i also think that trying to hide the imbalance and the overpower of some "traditional" situations and the fact that player neeeds more than a small change into the build order is also wrong. The game is still new and full of small errors, even if the game experience so far has been smoother than in war3 i still think you shouldn't consider that it's balanced yet. | ||
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Perkins1752
Germany214 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + When playing Terran | ||
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