If you have criticism, you need to address the content, not the hosts. Idra and Artosis are 2 (1.5) Zerg players, but you can't point that out and then blanket them as biased. Respond to the content.
You can't tell them to "get 2 Terran and Protoss players". That's fucking obtuse advice. "Yo just get 4 more high level players to record with you." Yes, I think everyone sees the value in getting it, but it's not practical.
Respond to the content and use evidence / logic to back up your claims.
On February 04 2011 05:50 Chill wrote: Okay, reopened.
If you have criticism, you need to address the content, not the hosts. Idra and Artosis are 2 (1.5) Zerg players, but you can't point that out and then blanket them as biased. Respond to the content.
You can't tell them to "get 2 Terran and Protoss players". That's fucking obtuse advice. "Yo just get 4 more high level players to record with you." Yes, I think everyone sees the value in getting it, but it's not practical.
Respond to the content and use evidence / logic to back up your claims.
Introducing a new show....a show about Imbalance! IdrA and Artosis will be your hosts. This week we will introduce the show, what imbalance is, and what we plan to do. We will also start tackling the Colossus: is it imbalanced?
IMBALANCED! - EP 01 - Introduction
Discuss!
I respect both of you as players and commentators. I am in no way suggesting biasness by any of you. I am posting this in hopes to that this might improve the content and quality of your discussions.
While your discussion was insightful there is one problem with it. You don't define imbalance.
At the begining Greg "IdrA" Fields comments on the degree of imbalance but not on the basic defenition of imbalance. Both of you provide examples of imbalance of the types of imbalance but you are missing the fundamental defenition.
Here are a couple of thoughts that might help your analysis:
What is strategic imbalance? Strategic Imbalance: A particular best response strategy can dominates another best response strategy. When is the strategic imbalance happening? Examples: Early Game, Mid-Game, Late Game. What tactic employed causes the imbalance? Examples: Siege tank on cliff, Mass reapers, mass void rays, baneling drops. Is there any external factors that contribute to the imbalance? A particular map, UI design etc.
If you prove thru this method that there is an existing imbalance then you must analyze the following question:
How do you measure imbalance? Based on their resource cost, supply cost, HP left?
Now that you have identified and measured the imbalanace for a particular scenario lets say race A vs race B, are there any other counter imbalances like from race B vs race A?
Summing up all the potential imbalances by this method, now you can conclude on the existence of a particular race imbalance.
Discussing balance even from your professional point of view must comply to this game design definitions to assure comparability, better support for your arguments and professionalism.
Idra and Artosis make very coherent arguments about balance. People just don't understand that when they lose, they rage and, like most people, get pissed off at the game.
Well, i heard it all, and i must say it was not really very interesting. In fact, they made several interesting points, but both of them co-hosting a show, it simply doesn't work. They have the same opinions and they personify the same type of character, the nerdy intellectual. If Artosis and Tasteless works so well, it's because they embody two different roles and they have two different functions. Therefore, that's a conversational mechanic that works pretty well.
But they made some interesting comments about the "imbalance". I do believe Colossus are awfully powerful but in PvT, terran has a good counter and they can both take it. In PvZ, not so much, and maps play a huge role. Still, it's not the unit problem, but a maps problem: slightly bigger rush distances, more narrow chokes and an easy third (even a minerals only third for mass zerglings) and Zerg would stand more than a chance to beat a colossus heavy army.
But the most interesting comment was about protoss being just a bad designed race. Protoss do seem very one-dimensional, it always turns into a colossus fest. Blizzard tried to change it buffing phoenixes to incite players to try more air based builds, but it doesn't seem to have work.
On February 04 2011 07:58 PieShopPwner wrote: The only thing i agreed with them was that if collosus get nerfed, gateway units need to be buffed. I think the reason why toss has the best late game, is because our core(gateway units) are so bad against terran and zerg mid to late game, so we need that big time power units such as the collo to even compete.
TBH I felt the same way about the muta ling build when it came out, but protoss found ways around that. Remember the mech zerg couldnt beat? Point is give it time before you label it imbalance, there are probably a million builds that havent been thought of yet that would destroy certain races imba units.
Also once maps like blistering and steppes get eliminated alot of these concerns will go away.
I think it really comes down to the Stalker/Dragoon
The stalker is a weaker form of the dragoon, but in-return, like you stated, the Immortal/Collusi/Amulet Storm were given.
Where as, if the stalker was buffed to say.. how strong the dragoon was, with forcefields they would become way too strong. I don't think buffing warp-gate units are at all the way to go, although the stalker is weaker.. warpgate units can be warped in anywhere and the addition of the sentry with forcefields bolsters that even more. I guess you could slightly buff Warp-gate units, in-return for weakening the collusi and removing amulet. But thats a really sticky situation, although its plausible.. I just don't think blizzard are going to make that drastic of a move.
On February 04 2011 08:04 kawazu wrote: Not to bash Artosis or Idra who are obviously better players than I am, but TvP has the same problem with ZvP and collossi.
They aren't that expensive and they make the protoss death ball unbeatable against a Terran ground army. Marauders do OK but thats like saying roaches are the counter to collossi.
Marine Marauder pressure might be too good, but Collossi very difficult to deal with because of the slow Terran Macro mechanic. You can't just recover after focusing down colossi like you can with zerg. Even with an appropriate amount of vikings, the majority of your ground army will die before the colossi die.
It wouldn't really be that bad if Mech was decent but Siege tanks are very risky against any tech path the protoss player takes and Hellions weren't such a niche unit.
They pointed out though that vikings have the range to stop the protoss from poking at the ground army then retreating to a defendable position, where as with corruptor's shorter range, can do no such thing. Terrans also always have starport with a reactor by that point in the game if they're going bio, so there is no need for an extra building, where as zerg must make a spire, which takes 100 seconds and then make the corruptors.
Way better than I thought it would be! I found it to be relatively level headed and reasonable (For the Idra Artosis combo ). Glad to hear that I am not the only one tiring of War of the worlds.
I think the most valid point made in the video is stated almost in passing by idra. He says at one point that even if the colossus has to be so powerful so that toss can have a chance vs the other races (which i believe to be true), that in itself is a problem. I wish it were not that case that without collo or storm VERY early (relative to the tier 3 techs of the other races) toss will just get stomped by roach hydra and terran bio pushes. Im afraid that until an expansion adds new viable units to toss' early game there is really nothing that can be done.
I'm a lowly masters protoss and I grew tired of the colossi-centric playstyle I'm constantly forced into very long ago.
I wanted to say however that looking purely at colossus and drawing conclusions from there is much too shallow a way of looking at it. The way protoss works right now stems from the fact that blizzard introduced the warpgate mechanic in sc2, which inevitably lead to a series of nerfs on all gateway units. To compensate for this, protosses have had to always rely on a high tier tech to be able to compete in the early mid game, and as such it's more of a necessity than anything that protoss tech is really, really strong. Looking at PvP it gets quite obvious how weak gateway units really are. I know some people have been playing more gateway unit focused styles lately with quick 1-1 to 2-2 but I feel like those styles will always draw the short straw against any tier 1 zerg or terran composition.
Now the problem is this. If blizzard wanted to nerf colossus, they would obviously have to start looking at ways of buffing some other aspect of the race. But buffing gateway units in any shape or form is going to result in broken early game scenarios, probably in all 3 matchups. So then they do what.. Nerf warpgates? I would like to hear how you propose blizzard deal with it.
I think the fundamental problem in protoss is something you really need to expand on in the future. Obviously there's a big problem when all the matchups revolve around a single unit.
On February 04 2011 07:37 PD wrote: It's great to see experts players comment balance in a somewhat neutral way (as neutral as you can get imo). As far as I can tell this is absolutely exceptional analysis
The only complaint I can give is the format. It's basically 30 minutes of two dudes looking into a camera from a sofa. Maybe you could add some footage etc to mix it up? Basically show me why this should be a video instead of a podcast!
In this episode that would for example be some footage of corruptors failing vs collossi where vikings would succeed just as you pointed that out. Sure it would lead to more workload, maybe you should get a third member to help adding in some more production of the kind I mentioned?
Great show, I hope you keep up the quality discussion and I sure hope it gets angled not only to actual imbalance, but also on how to cope with perceived imbalance and show how to cope with it!
I really like this show, and i agree with this post that perhaps having some footage of gameplay examples would really add to the discussion and make the arguments presented more valid to those who aren't familiar with the situations being described.
I think that's a lot more work than it seems. So I don't mind the format - sit down, record it, done.
Any kind of editing takes way more time than most people realize. Since this is a free thing they do out of the kindness of their hearts, expecting editing is too much in my opinion. Having it as a podcast would actually suit my tastes better though.
I'll be honest, coming into watching it I was a little worried at first. One, you have Artosis, a great player and amazing caster, someone I have the utmost respect for, but at the same time he has been known to whine a lot about balance, however subtle it may be. Secondly, IdrA, the "king of bm and racial imbalance" I was concerned that it might turn into thirty minutes of "Apologize for playing that race" talk, but I was suprised. At first I was worried that it would be half an hour of 1.5 zerg players saying how "IMBA" the game is and how hard ZvP and ZvT are for the zerg player. But as I continued to listen to them I realized that they were bringing up some good points. I'm not necessarily agreeing with everything they said, but I can see where they are coming from. Over all I think they did a great job staying as impartial as they could and look forward to even more great discussion.
But the most interesting comment was about protoss being just a bad designed race. Protoss do seem very one-dimensional, it always turns into a colossus fest. Blizzard tried to change it buffing phoenixes to incite players to try more air based builds, but it doesn't seem to have work.
It's likely that it didn't work because they didn't increase the power of the unit at all, or it's cost effectiveness, merely moving the timing up a little. The issue with phoenix is how weak they are in general however, they don't fill their role as well as the terran and zerg equivalents, and they don't help you deal with an MMM ball or a Roach Hydra push well enough for their cost.
It all comes back to the colossus, because the other tech is pretty inviable most of the time. We're forced into colossus, because it's the only thing we have that's strong enough to do the job required.
Now the problem is this. If blizzard wanted to nerf colossus, they would obviously have to start looking at ways of buffing some other aspect of the race. But buffing gateway units in any shape or form is going to result in broken early game scenarios, probably in all 3 matchups. So then they do what.. Nerf warpgates? I would like to hear how you propose blizzard deal with it.
I suspect this is a good place to look, buff gateway units and increase warp gate research time required. This would force protoss players to stay on gateway tech without warp gates longer, but would allow them to survive and apply pressure because their units are more valuable. Warp gates, when they come online, would be too late for the big massive timing push that crushes unprepared players entirely, but would allow the protoss to utilize more tech paths effectively.
I enjoyed the episode despite not being a Zerg player and you can clearly see they both took it seriously and tried to present a good show.
This show is desperatly needed because the whole "I dont want to talk about balance!" Mentality that so many pros seem to have has a major negative impact on the game. Blizzard is good but even they need help and the pros arent helping them with various points of views, then who is? That is right, Mr. Gold 2v2 player on Bnet forums raising a storm.
This show (and State of the Game, which needs to tackle these issues more if you ask me and spend less time on gags and "lulz") can be a view to draw attention from Blizzard to at least take a look and maybe view some of the units in a different way.
Again, thank god that someone took the initiative (other than JP) to actually voice things out, if you dont speak up then you will get the game balanced around 2v2 and some Bronze strats which just ends up pissing progamers off.
Take the nostalgia glasses off and remember how much people whined during SC and BW, if you were around you would know, it is no different than things are now, and even back then we had people with a good handle on the game giving their take.
Ill take 99% of the pointless balance "whining" if that means we get 1% good feedback from top players in hopes Blizzard listens.
Great idea and much needed for those of us who want to get things going
I have to completely disagree on the idea that protoss has no other viable tech than the colossi in the lategame, especially in PvZ. Immortal/ high templars for one, zealot/voidrays, with the carrier tech unexplored, not to mention how many forcefields the toss player can gradually build up and how many ways you can win early game (yes toss units are weak early, but protoss is strong against zerg early as a race, due to the way the timings are set up). I've seen games where protoss did not make a single colossus and still win very convincingly in the lategame against hydra/roach. In PvT protoss generally go for high templars first anyway. Removing the colossi still leaves the toss player with more than enough stable options
If you think these 2 are not qualified to talk about imbalance in every MU in the game, then you're silly.
I'm very happy to hear what they have to say, not that I'll necessarily agree. I just think, of anyone, these two are the most qualified to speak on this subject, in the entire world.
On February 04 2011 08:15 gibb wrote: Wow I really liked this actually! Maybe they should actually hire some players to the balance team on blizz....
lol terrible idea
Yeah man having top tier gamers that earn their living playing starcraft getting involved in balance discussions with blizzard rather than having their own mediocre players making decisions solely based on bnet statistics...
EPT
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