EPTI'd also posit that most imbalances (however minor) are probably map related, making it even harder to pinpoint where the issues are. And even then... how could you with confidence?
Is balance an impossible goal? - Page 8
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Toxigen
United States390 Posts
I'd also posit that most imbalances (however minor) are probably map related, making it even harder to pinpoint where the issues are. And even then... how could you with confidence? | ||
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Sent
United States120 Posts
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Smigi
United States328 Posts
On January 20 2011 11:41 Skyze wrote: balance is pretty damn close right now. Any race can win in almost any situation. Maps play a small part but definitely not as big as some people claim. Without idra there to say "i only lose because that map favors terran" and etc, no one would be talking about maps really. This is probably the best we're gonna get til HotS comes out, then we start all over again with the balance of new units, yay. Sorry sir, but you're wrong. How can you possibly say maps only play a small part? How the game is played is dependent on the map. Although IdrA is a whiney bad mannered player, it doesn't make him wrong. I think everyone can agree that a map like jungle basin, delta quadrant, or steppes of war is blatantly imbalanced and gives certain races huge advantages. | ||
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terranghost
United States980 Posts
On January 20 2011 11:58 Lennon wrote: They have a hard time balancing because they're too busy deep underground in their testing laboratories completely oblivious to what's happening in the real world aka the pro scene. That's why they come out with ideas like "hmm I wonder what would happen if we reduced the build time of a Bunker by 10 seconds" when Zergs are having an unbelievable amount of difficulty already versus Marine Bunker rushes. Did you even read the OP? Say blizzard data says that Protoss beat terran 60% of the time. What is the current metagame of tvp? MMM +viking/ghost vs warpgate army +collosus/templar. Hmmm well since protoss are winning too much lets make marines shoot faster while stimmed. What is the metagame of zvt right now? Marine/medivac/tank vs zling/bling/muta (with other support units added possibly in the late game on both sides). The change that i mentioned above say it completely balanced tvp but now we have a problem in tvz especially if it were t favored before this change. So blizzard steps in and says that mutas move 50% faster. And this now balances tvz. Then the metagame shifts in tvp because now toss can't beat mass muta. Just like the OP said matchup imbalances are very hard to fix any balancing by blizzard should be done slow. If you rush into balancing all you do is create more problems. Who could of predicted that once upon a time when the reaper speed was decreased in buildtime (and I believe cost as well) that it would completely throw off the metagame of zvt with the 5rax reaper. This was just a very small change that was done. Give it some time eventually the metagame will settle down a bit thats when balancing things becomes easier. And as always wait for HOTS to come out in BW every race seemed to have gotten exactly what they needed. You can argue all you want that zerg requires alot more apm at the low levels to play good (just an example) but BW has problems like this as well sure everything was as closed to balanced as you can get at the tip top level. But at C+ and below some races take significantly more apm to play well. Is this bad? Not really if gives you something to work for. It is absolutely impossible to balance the game for all players. On January 20 2011 12:11 Dragar wrote: I think the matchmaker aims for 50% win ratio against all races, not just in general. This may mean there is a seperate MMR for each matchup. If this were the case that would be awesome but for some reason I'm not quite so sure on that. If it isn't the case where your MMR is matchup specific than I think it should be adopted because this I think would give blizzard alot more useful data. | ||
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clickrush
Switzerland3257 Posts
very eye opening  | ||
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Apolo
Portugal1259 Posts
On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote: So this brings me to the conclusion. I'll put it in bold. There is no way your personal experience can determine which matchups are balanced. You can't even do it with masses of data. Here's where i think you got it wrong. We can probably never determine perfect balance, i.e. prove that the game is balanced. That, as you explained, has too many variables to solve. However, even though we can't prove it, we can go with the next best thing, that you, as a fellow scientist should know, since it's used in science all the time: Inductive reasoning. We can get suspicious of where the game is probably imbalanced by looking at several statistics and using our heads a little. We also can't prove there will be gravity tomorrow, but based on our observations for the last thousands of years, we should believe there will be. Also, based on several specific observations on SC2, can we draw general conclusions for the game. Perfect balance will probably never be achieved, but good enough so that most people will fail to attribute to imbalance the reason why they lost a game should be a more realistic objective. Keep the work going Blizzard. | ||
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Rodeo
United States39 Posts
On January 21 2011 15:18 Apolo wrote: Here's where i think you got it wrong. We can probably never determine perfect balance, i.e. prove that the game is balanced. That, as you explained, has too many variables to solve. However, even though we can't prove it, we can go with the next best thing, that you, as a fellow scientist should know, since it's used in science all the time: Inductive reasoning. I don't quite follow. Inductive reasoning is generalizing results that hold for a small set to a larger set, as you explain with the gravity example. But what are the small and large sets in SC2? For gravity the variable is the attractive force between two massive objects, the small set is all past observations of that force, and the large set is all observations of that force past and future. In SC the variable would be the win % between the races between players of equal skill? I suppose the small set would be the win percentage in all games played under one patch. I'm not clear how you would generalize that to a new balance patch, as you would expect the %s to change. I'm not sure the term "inductive reasoning" gets your point across, but either way you still have the problem of defining equal skill. There is no good way to do that. | ||
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Sterling
United States182 Posts
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On January 21 2011 04:21 Skyze wrote: The amount of "map imbalance" is very VERY small right now, when the game is so new that no one has possibly figured the 100% perfect buildorder/timing like it is in BW. ROFL Lets take Metalopolis ... close ground position spawn ... ZvT. So what "timing / buildorder" will prevent a Protoss cannon blockade at the bottom of the ramp? I am sure the map is perfectly balanced for that and that Blizzard doesnt have to change the ramp mapping so it cant be blocked with two buildings ... oh wait, thats just what they are doing, right? So in a sense Blizzard admits that the map screws up Zerg and you are saying there is no imbalance in the map? I think only one of you two can be right ... Just in case it was missed: Read the above and expect sarcasm. | ||
Uncultured
United States1340 Posts
What do you think their current plan will be with he implementation of new stuff in the coming ex-pack? | ||
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Reason.SC2
Canada1047 Posts
There is no way your personal experience can determine which matchups are balanced. You can't even do it with masses of data This needs to be in the TL commandments. I see so many people crying imba because their mid-diamond strategies are failing against other mid-diamond players over a series of <100 games. *shakes head* | ||
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Rawenkeke
Norway350 Posts
On January 21 2011 17:01 Uncultured wrote: When brood war came out, the units they added, were they meant to help re-design the balance? Or were they just like "these sound cool as shit, lets put them in? What do you think their current plan will be with he implementation of new stuff in the coming ex-pack? They were like and still will be like" let's put in those cool as shit units in, derp herp" I never played BW, but SC2 feels like; the bigger and cooler ur shit is the better chance of winning you have. | ||
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sqrt
1210 Posts
On January 21 2011 17:01 Uncultured wrote: When brood war came out, the units they added, were they meant to help re-design the balance? Or were they just like "these sound cool as shit, lets put them in? What do you think their current plan will be with he implementation of new stuff in the coming ex-pack? I'm pretty sure the corsair and the valkyre were added to help players vs Muta (can't remember which daily it was). DT's were added when they found a way to balance them in the game. | ||
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MuffinFTW
United States235 Posts
On January 21 2011 09:37 Smigi wrote: Sorry sir, but you're wrong. How can you possibly say maps only play a small part? How the game is played is dependent on the map. Although IdrA is a whiney bad mannered player, it doesn't make him wrong. I think everyone can agree that a map like jungle basin, delta quadrant, or steppes of war is blatantly imbalanced and gives certain races huge advantages. You forgot to mention blistering sands! Also, I agree that maps play a huge part in balance, if they remove blistering sands, steppes, delta, and jungle = greatest day ever... | ||
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taishiro
51 Posts
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LoLAdriankat
United States4307 Posts
On January 21 2011 17:01 Uncultured wrote: When brood war came out, the units they added, were they meant to help re-design the balance? Or were they just like "these sound cool as shit, lets put them in? What do you think their current plan will be with he implementation of new stuff in the coming ex-pack? They were added in for balance. All three races got a new air-to-air unit that dealt splash damage because mutas were fucking bullshit back then. Medics were added in because of the marine's reliance on stim and how they had no regen. Even though Terran got Valkyries, MM became the standard composition to fight off mutas. | ||
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MamiyaOtaru
United States1687 Posts
On January 20 2011 11:39 Rodeo wrote:What happens in the case of a racial imbalance, where, say, A is equally weaker than *both* B and C, which are balanced with respect to each other? This case is a little simpler, though no less infuriating. An A player will win 50% of his/her games against each race and look for all the world to be perfectly balanced. Why you say? Well because the imbalance will lead him to face weaker B and C players on average. He will be lower in the ladder than he should be, but there's no way for him to know (except by the brilliant intuition that he should be higher in the ladder than he is because he is so pro). As long is the imbalance isn't so severe as to cripple the top of the ladder, it is invisible. I've said this in threads where people point out that winrates are very close. AMM means it will be, but a player of a hypothetical weaker race will be lower ranked than he should be. The standard response has always been "play better" :-/ you bring up very interesting points about the difficulty of measuring any imbalance. I think it's taken as a bit of an aphorism that Blizzard accidentally the awesome balance in BW. Hopefully they can do it again. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On January 20 2011 19:34 Omnipresent wrote: This is patently false. You might find some random person calling themselves a "social scientist" doing this, and you might read very specific case studies that only cover 10-15 people, but 10-15 people is not a representative sample for "the whole society" (unless it's like a 60 person "society"). Well, it's off topic, but you are not understanding anything about what is and what is not a fact in social science. You can tell fact based on the interview of 10-15. "Representative sample" is not always a good way to make research in social science. Many social scientist (for exemple Bourdieu, who is a well known one) sometime use the interview of 10 to 15 people: they know it is not representativ but still they can find some truth in their discurse that they will not find in a sample of 5000 individual simply because they can ask way more question and go deeper into a topic in a long interview. I will add that, yes, 10-15 is not representativ but do you think a sample of 500 or even 1000 (which is the commun sample a sociologist use nowadays) is representativ to study a society of 300 millions people like the US ? There is "perfect" sample in social (i want to say "human") science. Personnal experience is a perspective on something, so you can use it to judge a situation, even if it is biased. Every point of view are biased, there is only blind people like you who have faith in "science" who still think that the more stats you have, the more close to some "truth" you are. Basically, what I'm saying is: you can judge a situation based on personnal experience, in fact it's not "you can" it's more "you always" judge a situation based on personnal experience. | ||
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MoreFaSho
United States1427 Posts
Black is OK, l2p. | ||
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dkby
France28 Posts
But right now I think it's a huge lack of respect from Blizzard towards the esport community. They wanted SC2 to be a tip top esport game from the very beginning, but it's clear it lacks qualities compared to BW, and it's sad a lots of people complain about most games from gsl & other big tournaments being boring and/or pointless. I feel very sorry for pro gamers who didn't choose to play T as it's the most represented race in the last round of every tournaments, and the pain it must be to train very hard daily knowing you're probably going to lose. I also feel very sorry for people who pay to watch stupid allins and cheesy games, and pointless tournaments ending with 7 T and 1 Z  GG Blizzard | ||
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