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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. |
At first I lol'd.
A video about imbalance by two very bias, known to QQ calling everything non zerg imba.
But I put my thoughts aside, and clicked play.
Opening lines:
"Not for those with overinflated egos"
Haha, need 2 new hosts then yeah?
But... A show? its just 2 guys sat on a coach being recorded, droning on about imbalance...for 30 minutes!!
Not many people will want to watch this...
Also,
The best part in the whole video, is how idra tilts his head back slightly every time he talks to artosis.
Anyone who's studied body language will know why this is my favourite part. ^_^
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Honestly, balance is something that you feel, but its pretty difficult to come to an empirical conclusion about (hence, why this game isn't fully balanced). Seeing these gentlemen come to a final "conclusion" is worrying for a few reasons:
1) They have to take a stand for the show to have a point. But a show about balance, which is constantly in flux, is incredibly difficult to take a stand about. Any conclusion they make will have to be heavily qualified (ie: "i think its imbalanced now, but later it may not be") and therefore, not as compelling.
2) The amount of time/energy put into this discussion was not nearly enough to come to a reliable conclusion. We are really being asked to take the opinions of these two as fact. And although their credentials are impressive, the discussion is not long enough nor fleshed out enough to come to a reliable conclusion. This is a discussion the community is still having and from what I saw, they were mostly just repeating assumptions or beliefs I had heard before. Nothing new was really brought to the table.
I would like them to (if they want to have a show on imbalance itself) STAKE A CLAIM and DEFEND IT PROPERLY. If they want to be controversial, they should go the whole way and really go out of their way to show to us why it is worth caring about. As it is, i cannot really take their wishy-washy "conclusion" seriously.
On February 03 2011 11:39 hifriend wrote:
I think blizzard built an interesting dilemma into the game, because the design is as follows;
due to warpgates, gateway units must be relatively bad
to compensate for this, protoss tech is strong and a necessity for early mid game
And therefore, it isn't really possible to nerf colossi or buff gateway units.
This is what they SHOULD be focusing on in my opinion. Not whether something is imbalanced by itself (ie, in a bubble), but holistically with the designs of all three races in mind. And the current "metagame" ("general playstyle" for those who hate that word).
OR they could talk about design. Now i know that most will be opposed to this (since they are not game designers), but as pro gamers, they must surely have something to say about the design of the game.
The example in the quote above sums up my thoughts perfectly:
As a toss player, I think that warpgates are too inexpensive and are too powerful for their cost/time. Once they pop, they vastly increase toss production and mobility. This means that toss gate units have to be inefficient in order to be balanced. But this means that they are weak early game, so sentries have to have forcefield to balance it out. And late game units like colossus, void ray, templar are very very strong to compensate for the general weakness of the gateway army.
If you make warpgates less easy to get, you can change a lot of other things and play around with the design and the balance. This is something that I think blizzard cared too little about. The balance is more or less right. What i find problematic is the design: why are marauders so darn strong early game? Why can forcefield not be dealt with effectively?
It isnt the balance that is lacking, it's the design. Thats just my opinion. I expect no one shall read this but if you did, congratulations!
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I don`t think the show is too bad. I need to watch a few more before I decide is it worth it to watch or not.
I enjoy the concept and with a few improvements it could be more interesting. It started to get slightly boring around 20 minutes onward maybe because they pretty much have the same view I dunno....but I think when they integrating answering user submitted questions it would be much more interesting at the end. Also providing more potential solutions would be cool too. I know it isn`t their job to come up with solutions but it provides more dynamic things to talk about.
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On February 04 2011 11:22 Knee_of_Justice wrote:Honestly, balance is something that you feel, but its pretty difficult to come to an empirical conclusion about (hence, why this game isn't fully balanced). Seeing these gentlemen come to a final "conclusion" is worrying for a few reasons: 1) They have to take a stand for the show to have a point. But a show about balance, which is constantly in flux, is incredibly difficult to take a stand about. Any conclusion they make will have to be heavily qualified (ie: "i think its imbalanced now, but later it may not be") and therefore, not as compelling. 2) The amount of time/energy put into this discussion was not nearly enough to come to a reliable conclusion. We are really being asked to take the opinions of these two as fact. And although their credentials are impressive, the discussion is not long enough nor fleshed out enough to come to a reliable conclusion. This is a discussion the community is still having and from what I saw, they were mostly just repeating assumptions or beliefs I had heard before. Nothing new was really brought to the table. I would like them to (if they want to have a show on imbalance itself) STAKE A CLAIM and DEFEND IT PROPERLY. If they want to be controversial, they should go the whole way and really go out of their way to show to us why it is worth caring about. As it is, i cannot really take their wishy-washy "conclusion" seriously. Show nested quote +On February 03 2011 11:39 hifriend wrote:
I think blizzard built an interesting dilemma into the game, because the design is as follows;
due to warpgates, gateway units must be relatively bad
to compensate for this, protoss tech is strong and a necessity for early mid game
And therefore, it isn't really possible to nerf colossi or buff gateway units. This is what they SHOULD be focusing on in my opinion. Not whether something is imbalanced by itself (ie, in a bubble), but holistically with the designs of all three races in mind. And the current "metagame" ("general playstyle" for those who hate that word). OR they could talk about design. Now i know that most will be opposed to this (since they are not game designers), but as pro gamers, they must surely have something to say about the design of the game. The example in the quote above sums up my thoughts perfectly: As a toss player, I think that warpgates are too inexpensive and are too powerful for their cost/time. Once they pop, they vastly increase toss production and mobility. This means that toss gate units have to be inefficient in order to be balanced. But this means that they are weak early game, so sentries have to have forcefield to balance it out. And late game units like colossus, void ray, templar are very very strong to compensate for the general weakness of the gateway army. If you make warpgates less easy to get, you can change a lot of other things and play around with the design and the balance. This is something that I think blizzard cared too little about. The balance is more or less right. What i find problematic is the design: why are marauders so darn strong early game? Why can forcefield not be dealt with effectively? It isnt the balance that is lacking, it's the design. Thats just my opinion. I expect no one shall read this but if you did, congratulations!
Hey, I read it and agree. The show is a good idea but it needs to flesh things out more. Protoss is just sort of goofily made. We can achieve balance with this set up, but it seems like it'd be better if warpgate was somehow delayed and/or colossus altered. I know for certain that PvP would benefit from this, and I think that in of itself is a cause worth going for.
As per the show: I think Idra and Artosis did let their playing bias show, but so what? They know Zerg the best, so I sort of expect that they'll be capable of talking about it the most. It would be great if they included other players and other races more...but, really, since this was the first episode, I can only assume they weren't concerned with something quite so broad as that.
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I think a healthy discussion about imbalance can be very enlightening to the community.
If anything they will let us know what we can't qq about....
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One of the things that they said at the start of the show was that "imbalance is something that is close to our hearts". Yet, it is a taboo subject within the community because if you're not high-level enough, mechanics are more important than imbalance and low-level players usually have a skewed view anyways. However, Idra and Artosis are qualified to talk about imbalance.
One thing that I hope would appear on the show is suggestions on how to fix this perceived imbalance. They talked about the colossus but how to fix it? Is the colossus issue due to warpgates? If the fix is done, how does it impact PvT?
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On February 04 2011 11:18 arthur wrote:
At first I lol'd.
A video about imbalance by two very bias, known to QQ calling everything non zerg imba.
But I put my thoughts aside, and clicked play.
Opening lines:
"Not for those with overinflated egos"
Haha, need 2 new hosts then yeah?
But... A show? its just 2 guys sat on a coach being recorded, droning on about imbalance...for 30 minutes!!
Not many people will want to watch this...
Also,
The best part in the whole video, is how idra tilts his head back slightly every time he talks to artosis.
Anyone who's studied body language will know why this is my favourite part. ^_^
Please, enlighten us on the body language, I am curious
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I'd like to thank Chill for re-opening this thread.
I really wanted to say I find this new special to be very interesting. I can see why the collosus is questionable when it comes to the issue of balanced or imbalanced. Below the pro level the combination of Phoenix harrass and then collosus + gateway army tends to really do a number on the Zerg. I wonder if there will be some more Phoenix harassing of Zerg at the pro level.
Phoenix harrass means Zerg has to get hydras and spread creep well and possibly get some static defense, but all of those are vulnerable to Colossi. It just seems like Protoss really controls the teching path for Zerg in PvZ and I don't think either race should have such an easy time forcing a certain tech tree path. Yes, Zerg can go mass mutas, but Phoenixes hard counter them so well, and blink stalkers and high templar are also viable against them.
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I would like to hear in depth analysis of the hydralisk. It seems to be the source of most zerg problems simply because zerg always needs to compensate for it's difficulties projecting ranged power.
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Cool concept to a show, reputable hosts, unfortunate name lol O well 2 out of 3 isnt bad. Enjoyed it a lot. Agreed with a bunch of what was said and enjoyed how hard Artosis and Idra tried to stay unbiased for the rest of the races. I look forward to future episodes.
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Australia8532 Posts
On February 04 2011 11:18 arthur wrote:
At first I lol'd.
A video about imbalance by two very bias, known to QQ calling everything non zerg imba.
But I put my thoughts aside, and clicked play.
Opening lines:
"Not for those with overinflated egos"
Haha, need 2 new hosts then yeah?
But... A show? its just 2 guys sat on a coach being recorded, droning on about imbalance...for 30 minutes!!
Not many people will want to watch this...
Also,
The best part in the whole video, is how idra tilts his head back slightly every time he talks to artosis.
Anyone who's studied body language will know why this is my favourite part. ^_^
Not many people would want to watch two of the most informed (and one of the best progamers) people in the world giving their opinion on the game?
Ya .. right..
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Cannot believe the children and haters in this thread. Guaranteed that the people being bitches about the show, iEchoic mostly, will be the first people watching episode 2.
Idra and Artosis keep doing what your doing. I respect the hell out of it.
Now onto the show. I tend to agree more with Artosis in that I do not believe there is much of a problem. The corrupter is working very well and completely crushes the colossi. In addition to that I truly believe that contaminate is a fantastic ability that really fits the Zerg race (i love twelve corrupters puking on 12 stalkers).
What I hate most about the colossi (as a 2700 master Zerg) is that they completely negate the hydralisk, by far my favorite unit in the game. Fuck nerfing Collossi, we need to buff the hydralisk into usefulness. God damn 1 supply hydras would be boss and would shut up a lot of the Zerg QQ.
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I would just like to offer some words of encouragement here.
I think a lot of the criticism is valid, but I do think Artosis and IdrA have the capacity to create a compelling show. The concept of centering a show about the design of the game, it's trends and the meta game has a lot of merit, and not many people understand the game well enough to do it well.
It's inarguable that these guys have an intense knowledge of the game, even if it sometimes biased. And I hope they continue doing the show.
They definitely need another voice in the discussion though. The problem is when there isn't a devil's advocate, or alternative perspective, you end up with a pretty dry show, and one that will always be perceived as biased.
The problem with the show isn't Artosis or IdrA's opinions, it's the fact that they have a similar opinions on most issues.
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Here's my argument: If colossus is so OP, why are there so little protoss players in Code A and Code S? Shouldn't they be stomping through all the "Underpowered" zerg players in the qualifiers? Instead, we have an abundance of zerg and terran qualifying. Also, keep in mind no protoss got into the Ro4.
GSL Jan PvZ: 45.5%. Seems balanced to me.
GSL 3: 53,3% seems balanced
GSL 2: 26,9% ummmmm...
GSL 1: 53,6% okay thank god it doesnt get worse for protoss.
Who needs a wall of text, or a 30 minute webcam video, when all you need is some statistics?
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At least not every post in this topic is a personal attack on idra, artosis or someone who posted in this thread..
I, as a random, think that colossus are this prevalent because they are the fastest and therefore only viable first tech. If one were to simply compare protoss' options it becomes very obvious, as going colossus rewards the player much faster than stargate or Templar builds.
HTs, DTs and carriers, which are the respective end of the tech tree, come into play way later than colossi.
Though this has nothing to do with the strength of colossusbuilds, it amplifies the problem in my opinion at least in PvP, which is in my eyes the worst matchup.
Until you have a 3rd base you have no real alternative, because everything else is rightfully considered cheese on less than 3 bases.
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On February 04 2011 11:49 W2 wrote:
Here's my argument: If colossus is so OP, why are there so little protoss players in Code A and Code S? Shouldn't they be stomping through all the "Underpowered" zerg players in the qualifiers? Instead, we have an abundance of zerg and terran qualifying. Also, keep in mind no protoss got into the Ro4.
GSL Jan PvZ: 45.5%. Seems balanced to me.
GSL 3: 53,3% seems balanced
GSL 2: 26,9% ummmmm...
GSL 1: 53,6% okay thank god it doesnt get worse for protoss.
Who needs a wall of text, or a 30 minute webcam video, when all you need is some statistics?
using statistics GSL3 2 protoss/2 terrans semi finals no zerg. Code S there are 9 zergs, 8 protoss, and 15 terrans I think it is? There's more pvt mu's then there are pvz in GSL from what I have watched anyway.
But I hope episode 2 comes out sometime soon wish they gave dates :D
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Saechiis said everything that needed to be said. What a complete piece of garbage. We have all seen Idra enjoying the privilege of explaining his losses once every week with Artosis agreeing, but to actually see a GSL caster and TL icon who is fucking awesome at his job, sink this low... It honestly makes me sad.
Also, Chills pointers in this thread are the most retarded attempt of censorship I've ever seen. What an embarassingly obvious and lame attempt to give himself the right to ban everyone but the bronze level suckups. Jesus fucking christ...
User was temp banned for this post.
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On February 04 2011 10:18 PapaDragon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 04 2011 09:32 rS.Sinatra wrote:On February 04 2011 09:06 SoLaR[i.C] wrote: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. Thank you for this post, it's exceptional. 100% agree with this. Collosus was already slightly nerfed (they brought the damage down but increased firing rate, this is an indirect nerf since all units have armour) for the reasons they brought out. Further nerfing it would just make it an ineffective counter to something that otherwise has no counter (hydra/roach). It's simply too expensive to spam immortal-templar (immortal vs roach templar vs hydra). I have to agree too. I watched like 20 minutes of their show, but then i got bored. Usually i love watching Artosis talking about game matchups etc., but this show didnt seem like a show where they tried to discuss in an objective way about possible imbalances. It more seemed like Idra had a little too much influence on Artosis, and now they felt they had to tell us how overpowered the Collosus is. After Artosis asked Idra what he thinks about the Collosus, idra answered: "I think its too strong". Coming from a zerg player, or should i say from THAT zerg player, it didnt surprise me. But what disappointed me, was that they did talk little about the TvP where the Collosus is doing fine, and not a word about how hard it is for Protoss to GET the collosus without dying to Ling / Roach Army in the early midgame. Roaches scale far better with upgrades than gateway units. Why dont they talk about that? Its kinda easy to talk about the strength of a unit, when ignoring every other aspect of the unit / the background. Its a bit like saying that Broodlords are kinda imbalanced vs. Terrans because they mess up with the bio AI. That comparison may not be the best. I just want to point out, that its not that easy to get Broodlords, and you have to think about that too, when you talk about the strength of a unit.
What you don't understand is that it is not hard for a Protoss to hold off ling/roach all-ins as long as they have sentries and cannons. If they do not have sentries and cannons they are doing the build wrong or are going for 1 base stargate or something.
Roaches are great against the Protoss ball of death. Greg and Artosis addressed that. They said it may be a map imbalance in that we need bigger maps for roaches to get a better concave. Basically they were saying it would have to be a 360° circle around the Protoss ball or something ridiculous like that to have a fair chance in a head on fight against a Protoss with force fields.
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People who watch the video before commenting will note that the show is basically inconclusive, with Artosis leaning toward the collosus being balanced and Idra leaning towards imbalance. The amount of stupidity on this thread is disgusting. Everyone seems to making a base assumption that they both will always argue for Z but in the vid itself...they didn't. Watch the show or don't, but don't spread random bullshit about it.
The only thing that worries me is bronzies justifying their badness via this. I think that's easily solved just by Artosis/Idra putting more emphasis on the fact that this balance doesn't really effect anyone till high diamond - masters.
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This thread is like a minefield. Red text everywhere lol. Awesome show btw.
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