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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 08:22 hifriend wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2011 08:19 QTIP. wrote: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... That could never turn out well, right? + Show Spoiler +it's already happening btw
It's one thing to contribute to balance discussions, another one to directly alter them via being hired to the balance panel.
Sure, makaprime, whitera many other programers have been confirmed to have David Kim's email address and have been in contact with him regarding balance. However, they merely contribute and offer their view points. Blizzard is smart enough to realize that these view points have the potential to come biased and take everything with a grain of salt.
For example, if you didn't play terran, I'm sure you would be very uncomfortable if David Kim was participating in the GSL as Terran for $40,000 while altering patch notes as his day job.
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On February 04 2011 08:17 Grend wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2011 07:50 Chill wrote:On February 04 2011 07:44 ariK wrote: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.
they do it because they love it, it might be nice to put in some editing effort to put in one or two videos to go along with what they're talking about. it is not time consuming, at least compared to video translations. as someone mentioned, have a 3rd person in charge of editing and it should be easy, maybe even some sound effects and intro music? heh
if they continue to just talk in front of a camera, podcast will be a better route.
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United Arab Emirates492 Posts
Great idea, more pros need to jump in this topic, blizzard ways are just wrong (balancing team games above competitive 1v1!!!)....
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I heard TLO is ranked 1st in the world playing random
is that imbalanced also ?
User was warned for this post
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Calgary25980 Posts
On February 04 2011 08:27 jinorazi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2011 08:17 Grend wrote:On February 04 2011 07:50 Chill wrote:On February 04 2011 07:44 ariK wrote: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. they do it because they love it, it might be nice to put in some editing effort to put in one or two videos to go along with what they're talking about. it is not time consuming, at least compared to video translations. as someone mentioned, have a 3rd person in charge of editing and it should be easy, maybe even some sound effects and intro music? heh if they continue to just talk in front of a camera, podcast will be a better route.
It's actually ridiculously time consuming. To find specific situations of what they're talking about in replays, cut the video, mix it together, etc. would probably double the production time.
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On February 03 2011 11:43 Saechiis wrote:
Even though I actually enjoyed watching this introductory episode, I still think this entire show is a horrible idea. You've obviously chosen a subject close to your interests and it's obviously going to provide you with a ridiculous amounts of viewers that want to hear all about how their opponents have an unfair advantage. It's not, however, in the interest of the SC2 community.
TeamLiquid is already overrun with hundreds of brainless bronze Zergs that cling to every word IdrA says and will go rampaging through the forums every time the magic word *imbalance* is proclaimed. For every person that can see through obvious bias, oversimplification and exaggeration there are at least two that don't or won't and it shows in the continuous degradation of TL's SC2 Strategy Forums.
You explain how Starcraft 2 should be balanced around top level play since that's where the variable of "skill" relatively has the least influence. You fail to discuss though, the human factor, and what makes someone an objective judge of balance. Because let's face it, both you, IdrA and Artosis, are biased towards Zerg in the same way you were biased towards Terran when you played that race in BW. You're both easily the most vocal and quick in claiming imbalance in both versions of Starcraft and one can't help but notice that the arrow is always pointed at things that are disadvantageous to your race of play.
Even though I can see that you've tried to at least make logical steps of reasoning, it's still so obvious that you're both not objective in your judgement. You talk a little bit about Colossi in TvP and how it's balanced there, but watching that as spectator you just feel your disinterest in the subject and how you seem to be getting that part out of the way to get to the point you "really" want to talk about. Which becomes pretty obvious when Artosis says "now let's talk about Colossi in ZvP" and you both can't help but get a huge grin on your face since you get to tell it's overpowered.
You have both stated to not be familiar enough with other races than Zerg to play them at a competetive level. Doesn't that say enough about the validity of your judgement as two talented, but still biased Zerg players?
You talk about the Colossus being a weapon of choice in all MU's and how it seriously obliterates ground. Concluding that it's too hard for Zerg to balance Corrupter count together with the economy required to churn them out. But that's obviously just 1 side of the story, you don't mention how Protoss gateway units all get totally raped by Roach/ Hydra, which is the reason why Toss needs ranged splash damage in the first place. The relative weakness of the core gateway units needs the additional DPS of Storm and Colossi for it to be cost-efficient. And since Storm is such an expensive and long tech path, Colossi are practically always the unit of choice to survive through midgame.
Basically, I feel that the only ones that are benefited by such a show are yourselves; whilst SC communities like the ones on TL, SCReddit and even the Bnet forums are left to deal with even more irrational balance whines than there are now.
Best post in whole thread! Very well said
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Generally I think Idra is more wellspoken than people give him credit for. I found the point he made about mutalisks the most interesting. Heavy mutalisk pressure feels absolutely horrible and I would have thought mass expo with that pressure forcing a 2 base all in would have been the zerg response. I appreciated that particular bit of Idra's insight.
For future episodes, I think it'd be nice if you could add a little more about what you would do to replace that unit or how the race would need to be tweaked. You touched on it a fair bit already in this episode, but I would have appreciated it if you took a moment to dabble with roaches and templar. At the Diamond level and as a viewer, it feels like another reason why zvp is so colli focused is that HTs dont seem to pack the punch needed to deal with /mass/ roach. Mass immortal doesn't quite seem to do enough damage fast enough to deal with the pack so the toss needs a few collosi to deal with the chance of getting overrun by roaches. (Even straight up unburrowed roaches to an extend. Collosi feel much more effective in getting guaranteed damage down and cutting down roach numbers).
I'd love to hear any opinions on well whether ravens with their mobile dark swarm are under used in sc2 and a show with a cameo sen appearance about sentries. ("You See! You See video!)
*One last question/point: It seems as if Terran has a lot of neat "counters" to what Toss does but zerg lacks this. For instance, Sentries can be shutdown by EMP (zerg will always have to endure being cut up. Possibly works out because of the gas being diverted to more important gas heavy units in the matchup). Collosi have 9 range vikings and 13 range tanks to contend with. Carriers and voids also have the potential for infinite kite vikings (Though this seems to be less true in practice with sufficient void/carrier numbers). Is this all compensated for by the sheer robustness and cost of the roach?
@Terrans -.- Your army will wipe out the toss army without collosi. Every time. It's silly to qq about templar and collosi killing off your army when well... without that the toss army would be dead. Mech is far more difficult to deal with than you give it credit for. It's not as sexy mobile or as fast as bio is but it is definitely a very solid style.
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In my humble opinion the problem with colossus is their mobility relative to their firepower.
The only other unit with comparable amounts of damage and range is a siege tank, which have very obvious drawbacks, such as not being able to move, having a minimum range and quite low HP for the cost.
The only drawback to colossus is it's vulnerability to air to air units, however this only really comes into play in PvT, as Vikings are the only Air to Air unit that really threatens colossus. In PvZ the corruptor doesn't have the range and alpha damage that makes the vikings so good against colossus. The mutalisk and broodlord can hit the colossus without it's "drawback" so it really doesn't add any weakness to exploit. Likewise in PvP, the voidray and carrier can hit ground units anyway and the only Air to Air unit, the phoenix(like the mutalisk) is a short range low damage unit that gets very quickly nullified by stalkers and doesn't hurt colossus much anyway so it's largely the same situation as PvZ.
It's a tenuous balance and there is not easy fix, assuming there is a problem to fix in the first place, which is really not certain.
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Actually it doesn't matter if colossi itself is imbalanced, as long as the racial balance is there between protoss and other races. Put short, imo as long as PvZ winrate hovers around 50%, it is not a balance issue if the colossi are used as the primary backbone of this matchup. In bw, defilers are imabalanced in the sense that modern ZvT relies so heavily on dark swarm, and zerg's early/midgame is to stall until swarm is out. This doesn't make zerg imbalanced against terran, however, and I find that acceptable. The question is, does having the colossi, if they are imbalanced, make the protoss race imbalanced against other races. Unit imbalance itself is not really that important from a racial balance perspective.
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Ok, ill be completely honest about this... Idea of show is great, I know there is a lot of sc2 shows but almost nothing is said about balance in them, thats why I think this show got big potential. On the other hand its very hard topics that unleashed rages and flames in a lot of people.
So idea was great, but I think thats it. They say at the beginning that they want to provide us with profesional point of view on balance issues. So then I ask myself how come that they speak about Collosus in PvT and PvP (the time they spend talking about this was like 3min in total, 18mins about PvZ).
To sum up, If you want to make a great show about balance, take all points of view into consideration, bring a high level protoss and terran point of view on the topic otherwise it will not be taken serious and will bring a lot of rage into community.
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I thought the episode was pretty well done. For the most part I agreed with a lot of their points and their arguments didn't really feel biased at all.
I do think that maps will affect things more than IdrA and Artosis expect though. On larger maps Colossi will definitely be easier to counter due to flanking. True, as they pointed out protoss can use force fields, but I still don't think that's going to keep colossi so strong. I actually think it'll became it'll make battles much more even and entertaining. Instead of just having to force field a line up front the protoss will have to throw down some much more interesting and well thought out fields. I actually think PvZ will be pretty awesome on the bigger maps. I could be wrong though, maybe throwing down perfect force fields isnt as hard as I think it is.
What I DO think IdrA and Artosis were 100% right about though, is how central the colossus is to protoss in general. Terran has SOOOO many options.. bio vs mech, ghosts, ravens, banshees... Protoss though pretty much HAS to go zealot/stalker into colossus. boring. It may not have much to do with BALANCE, but Blizzard should really do something about this because honestly, it makes protoss much less entertaining to watch when (barring slight BO changes) you always know what protoss is basically going to do. Though perhaps the buff on phoeniz build time will help this.. again, it's gonna be really interesting to see how things go on the new (bigger) maps.
Overall though I really enjoyed the video. Obviously no one can completely escape their own biases, but I felt like IdrA and Artosis do so as well as anyone can reasonably be expected to do. Their discussion was high level, in depth, and very fair. What more could anyone want?
The only downside, as many have pointed out, is that this incites all the idiots to scream about imbalance... but what are ya gonna do? I for one love to hear what the pros think about imbalance because, let's be honest, we're all thinking about it.
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Thanks for making another weekly thing for me to check out ! You guys rock ! =)
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like they said, a big problem with collosi are force fields which can cut your ground army in half allowing stalkers to tear up your corruptors. maybe they need to make FF a charged ability rather than a spell. That way if you want to make MASS FF u need to sacrifice supply and make LOTS of sentries. this will also help that just 1 sentry with enuf built up mana can permanently block a ramp. although this might hurt protoss ability to stop a Terran bio rush when FEing...
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I really like this show, they talk about alot of things casual gamers don't know!
Come on there is no imbalance at lower levels, Artosis is right! In lower level people make so many mistakes that the imbalance factor is not relevant imo
I see no harm in this show and i hope they don't give up on it, they can't do all of them about Z being UP.. they will talk about some other stuff and i would like to see it!
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Too many of you suffer from tunnel vision, your too focused on the hosts and their race and other minor factors and ignore the content because of it. This show is about getting better not about how the hosts get zerg buffed in patches. Stop pretending Idra and Artosis are bad and try considering their advice/info.
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This is a really good show so far. They are not biased in any way, they both talk about every matchup with a good discussion about the unit in question, efficient strategy to beating it as well. Maybe it was slightly focussed on Zerg and the Colossus this week, but it will be something new next week.
Thanks for making this happen!
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I would like to see some in-game footage as well. As much as I love IdrA and Artosis, watching them talk for thirty minutes is not THAT entertaining. They could've gone into a custom match, Artosis playing Protoss and IdrA Zerg, and demonstrated what they were talking about. In the future I would definitely love to see that.
Regarding a Zerg answer to Colossus, what does everyone think about Roach/Infestor+Parasite combo? I wouldn't know what the timings were for the energy upgrade AND parasite finishing are, but I would think that by only spending your gas on roaches and infestors, you'd be able to have a fairly large army in a decent amount of time.
I saw something else that was pretty interesting, as well. I watched a game on Lost Temple ZvP where Sheth went double Roach Warren to get both upgrades and burrow at the same time, and then hit his opponent who went Forge expand around the 12 minute mark. Sheth made a Hydra Den and then expanded behind it, but ended up winning the game with that push. It seemed very solid to me, and an excellent way of dealing with a Protoss' Force Fields (burrow move under them.)
I like the idea behind this series and will definitely watch future episodes. Just..please make it a little more entertaining, or a little shorter. 
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They talked:
1:07 about PvT
14:00 about PvZ
3:35 about PvP
Idea = great, content without other point of views = no thanks
None of them is high level Toss or Terran, and at the beginning they said they want to provide us with professional point of view... I see some logic issue here.
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This show is really good in my opinion. I think the arguments are reasonnable, and I think it is right. I'm ok with the fact that they focus on 1 mu and 1 unit. Looking forward to next episodes. I like also the fact that they don't asset everything.
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On February 04 2011 08:50 Bulkers wrote:
They talked:
1:07 about PvT
14:00 about PvZ
3:35 about PvP
Idea = great, content without other point of views = no thanks
I think people are focusing too much on the idea that IdrA and Artosis both play Zerg. Did you ever stop and think that maybe those numbers are skewed so heavily because colossus are most imbalanced in PvZ? As they said, Terrans have vikings and PvP is a mirror matchup so that discussion will always be limited, but Zerg can have real trouble against colossus in certain situations. I'm sure that in future episodes, they'll focus more on other races, for example with marauders in TvP.
Anyway, really liked the first episode guys, some great discussion and interesting points, looking forward to the next one.
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