Hello. This is going to be a discussion on the design of Starcraft 2 as a game. Right now I believe Starcraft 2 is at a very important point right now. Starcraft is getting more attention than ever. People are so focused right now on balancing Starcraft, finding sponsors, bringing money into the game, etc. All this is extremely important, but I believe a equally important aspect of the game is being left behind. Something no one is talking about or seem to care about. I'm talking about design of the game.
Now I recognize this is a competitive game. People are going to be more concerned about balance. What do they care about design as long as everything is balanced? But you have to understand, the lifeblood of an e-sport aren't the competitive players. It's the people watching. It's the casuals that might play a couple hours a week. While it is extremely important to keep the game balanced, it is even more important to keep the games exciting and fresh for the casual players, the watchers of the Starcraft tournaments. It is super important to keep the game varied for players of all levels.
The way Blizzard seems to be pulling the direction of the game is very worrying to me. They seem to be streamlining the game, making sure the current metagame strategies remain balanced and remain the dominant strategies. This is extremely dangerous. Now matter how balanced a game is, Starcraft 2 must have variety at the highest level of play. Pros may not care, but the people watching do. Starcraft 2 may be the most balanced game in the world, but if the games play out similarly, observers will become bored and stop watching. Less observers = less interest = less sponsors = the death of SC2 as an esport.
Notice anything different between the Starcraft 1 and Starcraft 2 changes. Starcraft 1 only had tweaks and changes to the stats of units. The tech tree was never altered. No upgrade were ever removed. The only changes were changes to damage, changes to hp, build times. Just pure number changes.
Look at the Starcraft 2 changes. Look how drastic some of these changes are:
Nitro Packs speed upgrade now has a Factory Requirement. Barracks requirement changed from Command Center to Supply Depot. Flux Vanes speed upgrade removed. Khaydarin Amulet upgrade (+25 starting energy) has been removed.
There are several more gameplay changes used to balance the game. Fungal stopping blink, removal of energy, etc. I'm not saying all these changes were bad. Some have proven to be incredibly good for strategic development, such as the Flux Vane removal. Some have proven to be very effective in balancing the game.
However, what should be very worrying to players, is how blizzard is completely OK with just removing gameplay elements from the game to balance it out. Blizzard was completely OK with removing Terran cheese. Blizzard is completely OK with contemplating removing warping storms. The reason Starcraft 1 has always been hailed as one of the best designed strategy games of all time is because back then Blizzard never removed strategies. They tweaked key units in certain strategies to alter their strength and speed. Never did they out right move an upgrade into another tier. Never did they flat out remove a key upgrade.
The point of this post was not to convince you that the way Blizzard is balancing the game is bad. It is to bring awareness to just how Blizzard is balancing the game. Players, casual, enthusiasts, and pros alike, should be wary of gameplay changes. Blizzard has generally been pretty good on keep such changes to a minimum, but it is slowly becoming a disturbing trend. When a balance change is proposed in a patch, think hard about whether or not that change will remove or completely invalidate current strategies. It is OK to make a strategy weaker or strong, but the outright removal of a style of play is something no one should ever hope for. When pros are surveyed for their thoughts on balance, please keep in mind just how far reaching non-number value balance changes are.
This has been some thoughts on design. Please keep it in mind.
I do think that some of the larger balance changes in Starcraft 2 are reasonable. For example, I think that Reapers really were a problem for Zergs and that it had to be changed. The Khydarian Amulet is also a bit too strong, in that it shuts down late game harass a little too easily.
I agree that some of these major changes should stay to a minimum, but I don't find it too much of a problem. The game will work itself out eventually.
It's because SC2 gameplay was much more flawed when it went to beta, and even live. Some concepts just were really poorly thought-out and hence they needed to change a lot of stuff. Like the alpha Roaches and the early Reapers... how could they even put them in the game in the first place?
SCBW had a lot of imba stuff but every race had them so they balanced each other out... And I think there's a pretty significant luck factor as well in that the game became as good as it is. I guess the biggest change was spawning pool cost.
There are still 2 expansions that will bring large gameplay changes including new units, so I wouldn't be too worried about this even if they are removing stuff now.
Terran cheese is not removed, it is still pretty darn rampant.
On March 05 2011 20:47 Animostas wrote: I do think that some of the larger balance changes in Starcraft 2 are reasonable. For example, I think that Reapers really were a problem for Zergs and that it had to be changed. The Khydarian Amulet is also a bit too strong, in that it shuts down late game harass a little too easily.
I agree that some of these major changes should stay to a minimum, but I don't find it too much of a problem. The game will work itself out eventually.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
On March 05 2011 20:51 Shikyo wrote: It's because SC2 gameplay was much more flawed when it went to beta, and even live. Some concepts just were really poorly thought-out and hence they needed to change a lot of stuff. Like the alpha Roaches and the early Reapers... how could they even put them in the game in the first place?
SCBW had a lot of imba stuff but every race had them so they balanced each other out... And I think there's a pretty significant luck factor as well in that the game became as good as it is. I guess the biggest change was spawning pool cost.
I believe it's also the fact that they didn't create the structure from ground up. I read somewhere that the BW designers had a formula for the techtrees. This is not to take anything away from the Starcraft 2 designers. It's a great and very fun game, but it is build up on a system they didnt create and sometimes doing changes on a very stable system you didn't design from ground up can lead to all kinds of unforeseeable outcomes.
To me it is understandable to tweak the game in the way they have to do it now. Suddenly what was in BW plays out completely different in SC2. And what was added might sit way too loose in the system.
On March 05 2011 20:52 Drium wrote: There are still 2 expansions that will bring large gameplay changes including new units.
no. probably not. read the recent interview.
Blizzard has lied before about games, patches, expansions. The game will actually most likely contain more units if it didn't why would anyone pay for it? The hella boring campaign which you can play one race in? No thanks if there are no new units I will pirate it.
I personally think blizzard has a dart board with every in game aspect on it and they also have another board with things like remove, totally modify, increase, decrease, and fuck with the gamer's heads.
All kidding aside I don't think they actually know what they're doing with this game. Some things that probably should be balanced are being ignored where some other things were removed or changed that could have stayed that way. When they said reapers in 2v2 were not balanced that was the end all. They're seriously thinking like this? If so good luck with that pro scene that you guys claim you wanted to support. Hopefully they just STOP patching the game and actually just let the meta game and map pool develop first then see what must be changed. When X strategy is dominating the scene against Y race after 4 weeks then you can spend 2 additional weeks deciding on a logical way to modify something to make the matchup even.
I agree with op. While I like playing SC2 as it is nice and fun game, watching it is pretty boring and uninteresting compared to BW. Units themself lack any excited abilities and its ussually just clash of mass a-move in centar of map with sligh simple micro.Just compare anything in SC2 to late game mayhem between Terran vs Zerg in BW. Hope Hots will bring same interesting twists is game dynamics.
I'm pretty much OK with how Blizzard makes changes to the game. They can make "drastic" changes because they have PTR.
To add, SC2's appeal as an esport not only depends on how good or perfectly balanced the game is but also on how good the progamers appeal to the fans, with their unique gameplays, as well.
I disagree with the spirit and theme of the OP. If they perceive an imbalance, what's so bad about making favourable changes to the metagame as a side consequence of balancing it. 5 rax reaper? Lol.
intention of sc1 was by far no esport title, while it was on the board with sc2 creation. So while sc1 found its balance due to the players. sc2 had it in there already, and now the players find the imbalances the staff never thought of. (and since those imbalances are found one by one and everyone screams imbalance they have to patch it out since when its imba people stop fighting against it in a creative way)
PS: 5 rax reaper was a free win for zerg, because everyone went for reapers, its like you play against a zerg, going for mutas every game around the 10 minute mark. Roaches/queen before the spine done with the aggression, waiting for the marauder gathering energie on queens to heal the spines slowly going for infestors, building a snipeable spire to trick the reapers into a death trap. I miss these times ^^.
Kinda off topic, but in the Patch changes for SC1, patch 1.06 is identical to patch 1.14. I think patch 1.14 has the wrong notes.
On topic. No, I dont like the way they dont seem to have a general idea of how each race should function. This directionless approach has very little appeal to me.
EDIT: It seems its 1.06 that is wrong -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - patch 1.06 - (Battle.net client patch) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Adds Battle.net support for Warcraft II: Battle.net Edition. - Adds command completion to Battle.net chat. It can be accessed by pressing the <tab> key. - Fixes some minor battle.net issues. - Displays cancel dialog in situations when server is busy.
Because SC2 was designed to be an esports, it was designed to be watched, but that doesn't just mean variety, it means clarity as well. If you have too many units, too many upgrades, etc., that sucks as well.
I'm not saying I agree with the changes, but this is my outlook: Blizzard is preparing for HoS and its new units and upgrades (hopefully) by removing the unnecessary ones here now. Not to mention SC2 will have two expansion packs as opposed to SC's only BW
Starcraft 2 and its abilities are much more volatile compared to BW. Back then you had no MBS or even unlimited unit selection and the unit movement AI was terrible. You lost a huge amount of efficiency to that complicated control. Thus it wasnt really that necessary to take out any ability in BW because none of them were able to remove an entire army like the "Archon toilet" is able in SC2.
If you want to blame anything then blame the "unlimited unit selection" and the macro mechanics which make the game much faster compared to BW. Sure they were also put in by Blizzard, but the dev team has to live with them now and a complete redesign on the macro mechanics seems very unlikely. Personally I would think it entirely reasonable to cut the efficiency of MULE, spawn larva and chronoboost in half and that would make the game much more stable.
Actually i think the improved UI is one major reason why SC2 is so much more popular than BW outside of Korea. As a former war3 player i wouldn't tolerate the BW UI at all nowadays.
But i share the OPs apprehension. SC2 doesn't seem to be as well designed (balance wise) as war3 or BW, which now results in forcing Blizzard to make more drastic changes - and this is kinda dangerous. On the other hand i think that even casual gamers and observers notice when something isn't really balanced. It is probably even more likely that a game with a lot of broken units will be more monotone since everybody will do the same thing over and over again. Reapers jumping on and off cliffs for example might be exciting for a while, but there would have been a point where everyone got bored by it.
that's because Dustbin Browder is an idiot. SC2 gameplay and balancing has got to be the dumbest and most backwards in today's RTS standards, which isn't suprising since all the CnC games Browder was involved in were horribly inbalanced.
As an example, back in the days of BW, all races have pretty much equal chances of winning whether it be early, mid, or late game. Of course, Dustbin Browder for some reason thinks that this is a bad thing, thus he changed it so that in SC2, certain matchups have racial specific strengths in early, mid, and late game. TvZ, ZvP is a freaking joke, since T has no hope of defeating Z late game while Z has no hope defeating P late game. I even remembered once in an interview where Dustbin Browder mocks the 2 rax SCV all-in as 'rubbish', when in fact it's his whole rubbish system that's forcing Terran players to all-in every game against every Zerg that goes 14 hatch.
I think the OP is over analysing the situation. The reason why we never saw any tech tree changes in SC:BW was because it was more tedious to implement and test for programmers. I doubt it was because they didn't want to, you have to consider multiplayer and singleplayer was a single game in SC:BW but are two seperate games in SC2. With the new editor and test environment for SC2 changing tech trees are super easy for Blizzard.
This game is not even a year old and you start discussing balance, wait another year or two, then start discussing wether or not blizzard needs to take a drastic turn in their game design, as of right now, the game is too fresh to even be balanced. it took 4-5 years before SC even became close to balanced, still isnt in my opinion.
On March 06 2011 00:01 Tef wrote: I think the OP is over analyse the situation. The reason why we never saw any tech tree changes in SC:BW was because it was more tedious to implement and test for programmers. I doubt it was because they didn't want to, you have to consider multiplayer and singleplayer was a single game in SC:BW but are two seperate games in SC2. With the new editor and test environment for SC2 changing tech trees are super easy for Blizzard.
Yeah but adding or removing even just one unit can break the game
I love blizzard, but some of the stuff they do puzzles me. I do not like how they balance to lower level "casual" players.
•Loss counts are no longer displayed in Profile and Ladder pages for players below Master League...like really tho?
Anyway...I also don't like how they remove abilities from the game. I believe they should be "nerfing" the KA not totally removing it....I mean the game thrives on diversity so don't completely remove abilities....
Totally in agreement with the OP. I sort of think that the SC2 development team have sort of designed themselves into a corner, and are now merely trying to salvage whatever balanced gameplay they can. In a sense, they're treating the symptoms, rather than the illness. Anyone can look at 5RR and yell "nerf reapers!", as anyone can see how overpowered warp-in storms or speedrays can feel in any given game. Thing is, these are just symptoms of some bad core design decisions.
As far as I'm concerned, Reapers were just a badly designed unit, not really cohesive with the rest of the Terran race. In the early game they overlap with hellions, and in the mid to late games, drops are significantly better than reaper harass. Void Rays have been significantly nerfed at least 4 times since beta, and they still create problems in PvZ. And Warp-in Storm is but another artifact of the inherently unbalanced nature of Warpgates. Nothing that comes out of Warpgates can be any good by itself, or the mobility advantage would cause immediate balance problems. Somewhat resigned to some sort of Sentry nerf in the future, to be completely honest.
On March 05 2011 22:50 Rabiator wrote: Starcraft 2 and its abilities are much more volatile compared to BW. Back then you had no MBS or even unlimited unit selection and the unit movement AI was terrible. You lost a huge amount of efficiency to that complicated control. Thus it wasnt really that necessary to take out any ability in BW because none of them were able to remove an entire army like the "Archon toilet" is able in SC2.
If you want to blame anything then blame the "unlimited unit selection" and the macro mechanics which make the game much faster compared to BW. Sure they were also put in by Blizzard, but the dev team has to live with them now and a complete redesign on the macro mechanics seems very unlikely. Personally I would think it entirely reasonable to cut the efficiency of MULE, spawn larva and chronoboost in half and that would make the game much more stable.
I wouldn't blame unlimited unit selection. Macro mechanics, sure, those definitely contribute (although Chronoboost could probably be fine if you couldn't chrono Warpgate Research in the early game). But honestly, you could probably put MBS, automining, and unlimited unit selection in BW, and still have an awesome game (definitely not smartcasting though). An easier game with MUCH easier macro, of course, but a great game still.
Unlimited unit selection wouldn't change that much in BW, imo, because it was the collision size and pathing that made moving large armies difficult. In SC2, I can oftentimes have a 100 food stalker/sentry/Colossus ball all attacking at the same time, which is retarded. In BW, chokes gave you a huge defensive advantage, simply because there was no way to fit a lot of units in a small space.
I really do wonder how SC2 would play with a bigger collision radius for units and more open maps. Can you change that in the editor?
On March 06 2011 00:20 RascaL.253 wrote: I love blizzard, but some of the stuff they do puzzles me. I do not like how they balance to lower level "casual" players.
•Loss counts are no longer displayed in Profile and Ladder pages for players below Master League...like really tho?
Anyway...I also don't like how they remove abilities from the game. I believe they should be "nerfing" the KA not totally removing it....I mean the game thrives on diversity so don't completely remove abilities....
that's not a balance change it's just a change to make the casuals feel better about themselves, and in the end it doesn't actually change anything cause you can still figure out your losses really easy with some simple math.
I'm pretty pissed at the upgrade removals especially. It feels like the game keeps getting shallower and blizzard doesn't care. There's a problem with it? Oh let's just throw it away completely instead of trying to come up with a tweak to balance it! Easy!
They can't keep this up, variety is already lacking and from what they've said in interviews they aren't even planning to add new units in the addons so that's another addition of complexity down the drain.
On March 06 2011 00:06 HorsetraineR wrote: This game is not even a year old and you start discussing balance, wait another year or two, then start discussing wether or not blizzard needs to take a drastic turn in their game design, as of right now, the game is too fresh to even be balanced. it took 4-5 years before SC even became close to balanced, still isnt in my opinion.
isn't it Blizzard that keeps screwing with this? If they just gave things more time and made less insane changes people could figure things out, but as it stands everyone is just waiting for the next patch where we'll be playing a different game all over again.
Maybe think about it this way: Each Round of SC2 has an average amount of spent ressources. The more ("useless") Stuff Blizzard kicks out to free up these ressources, the easier it will be to implement ("better fitting") Stuff with future Addons.
On March 05 2011 21:04 lunar3force wrote: I agree with op. While I like playing SC2 as it is nice and fun game, watching it is pretty boring and uninteresting compared to BW. Units themself lack any excited abilities and its ussually just clash of mass a-move in centar of map with sligh simple micro.Just compare anything in SC2 to late game mayhem between Terran vs Zerg in BW. Hope Hots will bring same interesting twists is game dynamics.
I think unit spacing / clumping is the issue. You can get too many units into too small of an area.
On March 06 2011 01:33 veE wrote: I love how people think they honestly dont know what they are doing... they made the damn game haha, your obviously just not seeing the whole picture
The fact that they made the game makes me think that they don't know what they are doing. O.o
On March 06 2011 01:33 veE wrote: I love how people think they honestly dont know what they are doing... they made the damn game haha, your obviously just not seeing the whole picture
We don't see the whole picture because they don't give us any information. And Blizzards recent track record has not been that great.
A lot of people are alluding to the 5 rax reaper and how overpowering it was. I'm not saying it wasn't imbalanced. It was incredibly hard for zergs to deal with. However, was the the correct solution just flat out removing the reaper strategy. The Blizzard of Starcraft 1 would've just adjusted the values of the reaper rush. It would not have remained so strong, but the basic strategy is still there. However in starcraft 2, the upgrade was completely moved to another tier and the strategy completely gone.
Again, I'm not saying it is necessarily a bad thing this way of balancing . I am saying from a design perspective people should be worried that blizzard is removing strategies to balance the game. It is on these particular changes when they appear in the patch notes, that they should make extra special care to keep an eye out for.
I enjoy watching sc2 a lot btw. Imho I think the core problem is the lack of scouting possibilities especially in mid-early game. The scouting scheme (which is mostly similar to BW) was ok in BW, because BW had a slower macro, so a scouting miss was not that fatal. In SC2 it is quite easy to do some little fake (proxy tech/production) cut drones and booom. Z as beeing the reactonary race suffers most from that. You are forced to gamble. E.g. an unscouted 4 gate is deadly, however it is easy to fake a FE, cancel and 4 gate or build 2 gates and proxy 2 other gates .. or vice versa fake a 4 gate but do an FE once you are unscouted .. you'll be miles ahead in eco. Zerg start doing similar things meanwhile (early rushes, proxy hatch, all in timing pushes). In SC2 you can have decent success with: cut drones at minute X, pump unit Y and Z when reaching XX supply => A-Move. In BW this works as well, but since macro is slower, the enemy has more time to find out ..
In SC1 all units were designed to be strong in their own right.
In SC2 all units are designed to fill a role and hard counter or be hard countered.
That is why flux vanes was removed, and it's why amulet is being removed. This will hopefully change in an expansion, but who knows if it ever will. The most used units right now transcend their role or are inefficiently hard countered and it's why some matchups are pretty dumb.
Examples of units like this currently:
Mutalisk - despite how fragile it is, it transcends its role because its counters don't really counter it in either matchup due to its move speed and consistent damage output
Banelings - Meant to kill light units, instead they are massed because zerg units die too fast to do any real damage most of the time. The saturation based economy that punishes you for expanding quickly and doesn't jive well with 200 supply cap doesn't help encourage zerg to use other units either.
Colossus - PvZ - I really doubt 5 were supposed to effortlessly kill 600 supply of zerg ground units even if the zerg gets some corruptors
Marine - TvX - It is so cheap and efficient at dealing damage to air and ground that its weaknesses are irrelevant.
Tank - TvX - With smart fire getting more helps more and you aren't forced to split your tanks much. Way too effective against ground units because of this.
Sentry - PvX - If you didn't read FF before beta came out and go "holy shit protoss will be viable if zealots carry around wifflebats and stalkers squirt water" then you aren't very smart.
Note that the units above aren't necessarily imbalanced. They just completely break the SC2 hard counter style game design, which was a terrible design choice to begin with. Until they bring other units on par individually with the above units the game will continue to be mediocre and they will continue making silly balance changes that avoid addressing the real issue.
I think the addition of Medics, Valks, Lurkers, Devourers, DTs, DAs, and Corsairs (plus all their respective upgrads) were pretty big gameplay changes that helped balance SC1 immensely...
On March 06 2011 00:20 Toadvine wrote: Totally in agreement with the OP. I sort of think that the SC2 development team have sort of designed themselves into a corner, and are now merely trying to salvage whatever balanced gameplay they can. In a sense, they're treating the symptoms, rather than the illness. Anyone can look at 5RR and yell "nerf reapers!", as anyone can see how overpowered warp-in storms or speedrays can feel in any given game. Thing is, these are just symptoms of some bad core design decisions.
As far as I'm concerned, Reapers were just a badly designed unit, not really cohesive with the rest of the Terran race. In the early game they overlap with hellions, and in the mid to late games, drops are significantly better than reaper harass. Void Rays have been significantly nerfed at least 4 times since beta, and they still create problems in PvZ. And Warp-in Storm is but another artifact of the inherently unbalanced nature of Warpgates. Nothing that comes out of Warpgates can be any good by itself, or the mobility advantage would cause immediate balance problems. Somewhat resigned to some sort of Sentry nerf in the future, to be completely honest.
On March 05 2011 22:50 Rabiator wrote: Starcraft 2 and its abilities are much more volatile compared to BW. Back then you had no MBS or even unlimited unit selection and the unit movement AI was terrible. You lost a huge amount of efficiency to that complicated control. Thus it wasnt really that necessary to take out any ability in BW because none of them were able to remove an entire army like the "Archon toilet" is able in SC2.
If you want to blame anything then blame the "unlimited unit selection" and the macro mechanics which make the game much faster compared to BW. Sure they were also put in by Blizzard, but the dev team has to live with them now and a complete redesign on the macro mechanics seems very unlikely. Personally I would think it entirely reasonable to cut the efficiency of MULE, spawn larva and chronoboost in half and that would make the game much more stable.
I wouldn't blame unlimited unit selection. Macro mechanics, sure, those definitely contribute (although Chronoboost could probably be fine if you couldn't chrono Warpgate Research in the early game). But honestly, you could probably put MBS, automining, and unlimited unit selection in BW, and still have an awesome game (definitely not smartcasting though). An easier game with MUCH easier macro, of course, but a great game still.
Unlimited unit selection wouldn't change that much in BW, imo, because it was the collision size and pathing that made moving large armies difficult. In SC2, I can oftentimes have a 100 food stalker/sentry/Colossus ball all attacking at the same time, which is retarded. In BW, chokes gave you a huge defensive advantage, simply because there was no way to fit a lot of units in a small space.
I really do wonder how SC2 would play with a bigger collision radius for units and more open maps. Can you change that in the editor?
This is a good post, i feel Terran in particular in SC2 they seemed to add units to just because it sounded cool regardless of its affect to the balance of the game. The reaper is clearly a really badly designed unit that doesn't fit in with what T is supposed to be in the first place. They are no longer the immobile fragile force that had to push it's way across the map cause mobility is barely an issue. But yet they also got upgraded defensively with the PF... Then there's warping in units for P which makes mobility and race distances a complete non-issue. That's obviously going to cause issues.
Plus the point about chokes is really important for defenders advantage, no wonder rush strategies are so popular now. Chokepoints and ramps were 100% vital in team games in BW.. plus firing up cliffs having 50% miss. Now missing is gone and chokes are easier.
I think the reason is that blizzard is rushing the balance a bit which is fair for the pros right now but it might lead to problems in the future since people haven't figured the game out entirely yet. But then again this game probably won't have the game saving bugs that BW had such as muta stacking. So I think the reason is to get faster results and feedback from the patch. It's hard to say really but hope you can follow my thoughts about it .p
Also I think they're realizing that they tried to implement a bit much of the "cool" stuff in this game. For instant the amulet nerf would be quite unexplainable if it hadn't been for the warp in and so on, the flux vanes helped void rays keep their charge and so on. It's all about the new gameplay elements they implemented which made some abilities too strong.
The fact is that Blizzard turned HSM, reapers, now mothership (after the vortex nerf, I don't see a real reason why people would invest infinite time+ chronoboost + 400 gaz in a gigantic ball which does nothing really good) into nearly useless units after over-nerfing them. These were the most interisting spells/units, now they're absolute garbage units and Blizzard seems to not be concerned about it.
I mean what is wrong with them ? It's pretty obvious that no one is using HSM nor reapers (ye i know somebody might make 1 to scout at the beginning...), nor carriers anymore... What are they waiting for to buff these units ? Do they plan to wait an infinite amount of time, until they have the absolute certitude that indeed these units were (almost) useless ?
I guess ex Starcraft Brood War players believe in Blizzard's ability to balance the game (or pro to find innovative ways to make good use of these units), but War3 players such as myself don't share the same faith. People need to keep in mind that War3 balance have always been horrible ... Since day1 people thought at balancing the game themselves (there was even a Korean scandal about it...), and it was just unthinkable to not have balance discussions in the War3 forum. The game ended up being 1 dimensional and very boring and I'm afraid that the same display of incompetence could very well happen once again, in fact I'm not very optimistic about the future. Well to not be too alarming, I have to admit that I'm not that pessimistic either.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
You don't really believe they nerfed reapers because of 2v2 do you?
Morrow (before switching to zerg) popularized a brainless 5rax reaper into marine/marauder that was literally impossible for zerg to stop.
They made less balance patches but many more changes per balance patch..... look at the first balance changes and just see how many there are, so far in sc2 since release they have made a few changes often instead of many changes at once.
On March 06 2011 00:06 HorsetraineR wrote: This game is not even a year old and you start discussing balance, wait another year or two, then start discussing wether or not blizzard needs to take a drastic turn in their game design, as of right now, the game is too fresh to even be balanced. it took 4-5 years before SC even became close to balanced, still isnt in my opinion.
give it a rest.
After reading this, am i still the only one who think some Blizzard employees are paid to post on forums and troll the different SC2 communities threads?
On March 06 2011 00:20 Toadvine wrote: Totally in agreement with the OP. I sort of think that the SC2 development team have sort of designed themselves into a corner, and are now merely trying to salvage whatever balanced gameplay they can. In a sense, they're treating the symptoms, rather than the illness. Anyone can look at 5RR and yell "nerf reapers!", as anyone can see how overpowered warp-in storms or speedrays can feel in any given game. Thing is, these are just symptoms of some bad core design decisions.
Your post is also good, it's a good complement to OP.
I'm pretty sure some "smart" changes would easily fix a lot of problems. About the warp-in mechanics for example, i've always thought that it needs a fix to "invert" the production change time for all units, example: if you choose to mute your gateways into warpgates, then units takes more time to be build instead of less (making the upgrade more logical and balanced imo) - for example 5-10 secs more. This will balance the warp mechanic and add another strategic aspect. Honestly, who has ever switch from warpgate mode to gateway mode? Never seen that, so why give this option? This show how lost Blizzard is with the core of SC2.
Reaper as you said is also a good example, this is the "awesome, fun, new unit" that noone use or just one time per game, and as a stronger scv, to scout ...
The critical problem with Blizzard last patches is that changes are not meant to make the game better, they're just intended to quickly get rid of problems: "Wtf reapers a little too strong in TvZ? Ok let's nerf this shit so we never hear about it anymore". Same with void speed upgrade, same with templar amulet, etc ...
The critical problem with Blizzard last patches is that changes are not meant to make the game better, they're just intended to quickly get rid of problems: "Wtf reapers a little too strong in TvZ? Ok let's nerf this shit so we never hear about it anymore". Same with void speed upgrade, same with templar amulet, etc ...
That's just crazy.
This. For example, if Roaches were buffed to 4 range before they "fixed" 5-rax reaper, it may have never been a problem and Terran could have an added legitimate early game strategy. Instead, Blizzard is looking at what people are having problems with at the time and is just removing them. A few weeks or months is not enough time to flesh out a strategy and solve all of the problems with it. Imbalances may or may not be there, but Blizzard should just be tweaking aspects of the game rather than drastically changing or removing them.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
You don't really believe they nerfed reapers because of 2v2 do you?
Morrow (before switching to zerg) popularized a brainless 5rax reaper into marine/marauder that was literally impossible for zerg to stop.
It wasn't quite impossible, but it was incredibly hard, you basically had to outplay the terran very very well for a long period of time to hold it, and it put zerg into a position where he had no options whatsoever, because if terran decided to go for the 5 rax reaper rush and you didn't do the ONE response that could deal with it, you auto lost. The problem with that is, if the terran didn't go for 5 rax reaper, you're boned.
It was terrible for the matchup. Of course, they completely missed the obvious solution to the problem, which is what a lot of people are arguing for. Put hydralisks back on t1 and roaches on t2, and modify the stats and costs of both units slightly. Hydralisks also shouldn't be light units. I guarantee that hydra/ling would own a reaper rush, even the old style, because on creep hydras were fast enough to keep up with and attack speed reapers. It also fixes so many other problems with the game, and makes ZvZ a hell of a lot less volatile.
the game is young, strategies will come and go but by balancing changing we will see new ones. There is nothing to worry about when a patch comes out but lots of new cool stuff to try out and see where it leads. If blizzard didn't change the reaper pack then we would likely still be seeing 5 rax reaper rushes on zergs with bunkers and scv's rushes.... it would just be a mess that would really limit the game. Design has been done, we are now in the maintaince stage and re design is not a priority til the expansion so don't worry bout it and still keep up the innovation.
Void Ray is an awesome, cool, and balanced unit that was made imbalanced by quite an overpowered upgrade. You either had to rework the unit entirely, or scrap the upgrade completely.
It was an excellent change, imo.
You can't compare how SC1 and SC2 were patched differently. You can, but it would be pretty pointless. It's a different game. Different game, different mechanics, different upgrades, different units. Different almost everything!
I hear what youre saying that it sucks when upgrades are removed, but balance is most important. i know i didnt enjoy playing when every terran was reaper rushing.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
You don't really believe they nerfed reapers because of 2v2 do you?
Morrow (before switching to zerg) popularized a brainless 5rax reaper into marine/marauder that was literally impossible for zerg to stop.
It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you now to have been so condescending.
The thing that worries me most about Starcraft 2 in terms of balance is that it might end up like League of Legends, constantly being tweaked every which way because of flavour of the month strategies, leading to the game never really maturing strategically. A pro scene that's nothing but a storm of volatility is hard to get behind. Though maybe I'm just being too impatient.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
You don't really believe they nerfed reapers because of 2v2 do you?
Morrow (before switching to zerg) popularized a brainless 5rax reaper into marine/marauder that was literally impossible for zerg to stop.
It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you now to have been so condescending.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you now to have been so condescending.
On March 06 2011 10:47 Tump wrote: Void Ray is an awesome, cool, and balanced unit that was made imbalanced by quite an overpowered upgrade. You either had to rework the unit entirely, or scrap the upgrade completely.
It was an excellent change, imo.
You can't compare how SC1 and SC2 were patched differently. You can, but it would be pretty pointless. It's a different game. Different game, different mechanics, different upgrades, different units. Different almost everything!
It really wasnt that bad when they nerfed the upgrade to make it considerably slower, it just made voidrays a more effective harass unit late game. They really arent that great for harass anymore it would have been nice if they got a slight speed buff after removal just like a very small one.
The difference is that SC1 already happened by chance to be amazingly balanced right from the start, only needing a few tweaks.
SC2 is riddled with problems, stemming from many things such as the way new units have been designed, to other game elements (unit collision size, macro mechanics, AI, etc.)
On March 06 2011 00:06 HorsetraineR wrote: This game is not even a year old and you start discussing balance, wait another year or two, then start discussing wether or not blizzard needs to take a drastic turn in their game design, as of right now, the game is too fresh to even be balanced. it took 4-5 years before SC even became close to balanced, still isnt in my opinion.
give it a rest.
After reading this, am i still the only one who think some Blizzard employees are paid to post on forums and troll the different SC2 communities threads?
On March 06 2011 00:20 Toadvine wrote: Totally in agreement with the OP. I sort of think that the SC2 development team have sort of designed themselves into a corner, and are now merely trying to salvage whatever balanced gameplay they can. In a sense, they're treating the symptoms, rather than the illness. Anyone can look at 5RR and yell "nerf reapers!", as anyone can see how overpowered warp-in storms or speedrays can feel in any given game. Thing is, these are just symptoms of some bad core design decisions.
Your post is also good, it's a good complement to OP.
I'm pretty sure some "smart" changes would easily fix a lot of problems. About the warp-in mechanics for example, i've always thought that it needs a fix to "invert" the production change time for all units, example: if you choose to mute your gateways into warpgates, then units takes more time to be build instead of less (making the upgrade more logical and balanced imo) - for example 5-10 secs more. This will balance the warp mechanic and add another strategic aspect. Honestly, who has ever switch from warpgate mode to gateway mode? Never seen that, so why give this option? This show how lost Blizzard is with the core of SC2.
Reaper as you said is also a good example, this is the "awesome, fun, new unit" that noone use or just one time per game, and as a stronger scv, to scout ...
The critical problem with Blizzard last patches is that changes are not meant to make the game better, they're just intended to quickly get rid of problems: "Wtf reapers a little too strong in TvZ? Ok let's nerf this shit so we never hear about it anymore". Same with void speed upgrade, same with templar amulet, etc ...
That's just crazy.
Also I totally agree with this entire post and Toadvine's post that was quoted.
I think right now the focus should be on getting the game to a (nearly) perfectly balanced point. From there, Blizzard can switch their efforts to adding more variety and balancing that along the way, but if they don't have a solid point to back up to then it's going to be a hell of a lot harder to balance.
The thing that worries me most about Starcraft 2 in terms of balance is that it might end up like League of Legends, constantly being tweaked every which way because of flavour of the month strategies, leading to the game never really maturing strategically. A pro scene that's nothing but a storm of volatility is hard to get behind. Though maybe I'm just being too impatient.
This is exactly what I'm talking about, I played LoL before SC2's release and quit because I got sick and tired of having to wait for the game to get balanced, only to find out that the patch that balanced it also added a new imbalanced character.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you now to have been so condescending.
Dont over look the amulet upgrade. it is a serious fucking issue. If anyone here has played tvp at a high level they will tell u once the game gets to 3 base toss with HT's.... your hopes of being aggressive to that toss are now gone. There is literally almost no way to be aggressive vs HT into the late game and things just start to stagnate.. its not good for gameplay. and im glad it was removed....It's too strong vs bio...
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
It's going to be a bit embarrassing for you now to have been so condescending.
Now just quote this shit, because this is THE answer to all of your questions, read it each word carefully:
The main focus is the pro level, but our ultimate goal is for players of all levels to be able to play a fair and balanced game.
The most > The best - Quantity > Quality. Period.
I was implying that 2v2 was important in making the Reaper change.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say at all.
Yeye, I've understood what you implied, and my post was friendly don't worry
But regarding the rest of the answer in the interview I also say you have to read between the lines. The reason of the changes is not about 2v2, or 3v3 or 4v4 or even 1v1, it's about pleasing the major part of the players ("players of all levels", ie: casual/newbies). And as I've said many times on those kind of threads, Blizzard don't care about the pro scene, Blizzard cares about profit, which depends on how many "players of all levels" (again) play/buy the game.
So, one more time, i'm repeating that wondering why Blizzard did this or that, is, from a non-casual player point of view, totally useless. The reason is that Blizzard managers themselves think the game from a casual player point of view. In other words and for example, the rush distance time on Lost Temple is really far from their concerns.
I'm actually kind of surprised there are no Terran players complaining about the Depot before Barracks nerf, which is probably the most extreme example of this balancing method to ever go live in SC2. Just think about it, Terran cheese (and I do mean actual cheese, random all-ins don't count) was essentially removed from the game in one stroke. While this may have been good for racial balance at the time, the magnitude of this nerf is just mind-boggling.
In other news, I'd like to propose one interpretation of this patching method. Some of you might be familiar with WoW Arena PvP, and the hilarious rollercoaster of balance changes it's regularly subjected to. Now, at one point, a member of the development team (think it was Ghostcrawler, but not entirely sure), commented upon their balancing method with something akin to "When we make a change, we intend it to fix a specific problem. We'd rather have a decisive, drastic change, that we know would work, than a subtle one, that could work, but offers no guarantee."
Now, this is just one of the possible explanations, but if it were true, it would be pretty catastrophic for the game, I feel.
its not about units and big balling 1a groups into each other
The way the game flows is completely different, and it is much more streamlined and structured than sc2... Its normal for terran to have a huge army advantage over protoss, an army which protoss can never hope to go head up against and win Its normal for zerg to be constantly larvae starved and have minimal drones and use 11 units grouped with an overlord to stall for 5 minutes
Things like this, doesn't happen in SC2 - we compare units constantly in sc2, but its just silly to do this in BW (i mean, try comparing a vulture lol) Its hard to explain, its not even anything to do with the macro/micro mechanics of BW, but just the gameplay itself (ok, so you cant 1a in bw...)
There are a few things in particular - cliffs and true defenders advantage is just so null in sc2 compared to BW expansions are alot more "expensive" in sc2 - in bw expanding is more about the game flow and positioning, like "ah ok i got archons, now i can push out safely and expand", or "ah i got mutas, now im safe for a bit i can expand" In sc2, there is no such parralell really - maybe you can say "well now i got 2 colossi, so its OK to expand" but its hardly the same as seige tanks, mutas or lurkers etc. Its never "ok, i got a really safe timing where you can expand" in sc2 - theres no unit which gives you a massive overwhelming defenders advantage to let you do this (its to the point where protosses all over cannon like crazy to get the chance to expand) Units are a million x more manouverable than in BW - even if you compare tanks now to tanks back then, the difference is huge
----
So what does this mean? Well stuff is balanced differently - like you can actually compare a roach to a stalker (lol sucks to be a stalker) - because battles are frequently calculated by army+supply costs and the like and small things like this really build up quickly
You can actually directly compare unit costs and fights because it genuinely tends to be that you gain such an overwhelming advantage from habving all your army together (as opposed to spreading out and attacking - usually your small force gets crushed and then you only have a small force vs a big force - units don't compare like this to BW)
So as a result, balance is kinda different
At the same time, i really disagree with a lot of the balance changes (especially stuff like depot b4 barracks) (or lol @ amulet) but whether these changes are good or not, is just my opinion. My opinion is they should make the gameflow smoother - but its extremely hard to know how to do this, im not a progamer or a game designer! Don't ask me lol But the way to balance the game is different it just cant be the same as BW because its a mechanically different game
BW was a much less ambitious project. BW had "core" units that did decently well against all units. Terran had goliaths and marines. Zerg had hydras and Toss had goons.
SC2 introduced bonuses for "armored" or "light." In a sense Blizzard introduced more imbalance in the specific units in order to create a more dynamic game. There are a lot more hard counters. Every unit has a hard counter. This is VERY different from BW. Hydras are owned by collossus. Stalkers are owned by marauders. This just did not happen to hydras and goonz in BW.
Blizzard refuses to nerf or buff any of the core units in SC2... so these huge imbalances exist. The marine, hydra, and stalker will not receive any changes because they're afraid that small changes to these units will completely change the game... which might be true. The problem is that there are huge imbalances within these core units which are causing the imbalances in the game. Because Blizzard is too scared to balance the core units, they are using peripheral changes to peripheral units and upgrades in order to balance the game. This may or may not work. We will see.
Examples: Blizzard refuses to change the Stalker when it's clearly the problem with the PvT matchup.... so they have to do drastic changes to Khaydarian Amulet and Stim.
Blizzard refuses to change the marine when it's clearly the problem with TvZ... and therefore they have to do bunker changes and infestor changes.
i think SC2 needs so much work these drastic changes are needed, I just wish they would realize that earlier in beta, and realize that the roach nerf and other such changes were huge swings in the dynamics of the MU and they shoulda played around with it more, I wish they would have more PTR servers and promote them to see what works and what doesnt
honestly if it balances the game then i think its for the best. honestly im surprised they left in the mothership. whether its a good unit or not, the idea you can only make 1 surprises me from an rts.
Honestly, let the players try changing the metagame before you ask Blizzard to. Just like 2 rax pressure was a guaranteed win for TvZ earlier, now FFE seems to be an instawin PvZ. I'm sure someone (IMO TheWind and Moon are almost there) will figure out a way to poke a hole in it and the game will change from there.
EDIT: Yeah, this sounds good on paper, but I realize people are losing money because of this ATM. Unfortunately if Blizz changes the game for that every time nobody will ever be happy because the game itself won't have a chance to stabilize like BW (...still not convinced TvZ is 100% balanced ^.^ but close enough).
Does anyone else get the feeling that orignally the game was balanced around smaller maps because macro maps gave overwhelming advantages to protoss and zerg at varying stages of development? Look at the game in beta when the maps originally came out. As balance changes have been implemented maps have developed as well. Now as maps are being pushed larger it seems this next patch intends to deal with overpowering macro abilities. Both current fungal growth and khaydarin amulet pose alot of problems for late game play and both need to be addressed if maps are to be pushed more into being macro friendly.
The sc2 balance team isn't retarded, they are simply taking a slow and delicate approach to balancing that will allow them to push the game in the direction the community wants whether the community realizes it or not.
Are star1 pros playing Sc or broodwar? Blizzards primary focus ATM is making a balanced WoL. They know where they have to improve and what to make it into an esport. I can guarantee u HotS and LotV will bring a BUNCH of cool tricks and nifty stuff for all the races. Just wait, it's an incomplete game ATM and they are just doing their best to make it playable.
Are star1 pros playing Sc or broodwar? Blizzards primary focus ATM is making a balanced WoL. They know where they have to improve and what to make it into an esport. I can guarantee u HotS and LotV will bring a BUNCH of cool tricks and nifty stuff for all the races. Just wait, it's an incomplete game ATM and they are just doing their best to make it playable.
On March 06 2011 00:06 HorsetraineR wrote: This game is not even a year old and you start discussing balance, wait another year or two, then start discussing wether or not blizzard needs to take a drastic turn in their game design, as of right now, the game is too fresh to even be balanced. it took 4-5 years before SC even became close to balanced, still isnt in my opinion.
give it a rest.
After reading this, am i still the only one who think some Blizzard employees are paid to post on forums and troll the different SC2 communities threads?
On March 06 2011 00:20 Toadvine wrote: Totally in agreement with the OP. I sort of think that the SC2 development team have sort of designed themselves into a corner, and are now merely trying to salvage whatever balanced gameplay they can. In a sense, they're treating the symptoms, rather than the illness. Anyone can look at 5RR and yell "nerf reapers!", as anyone can see how overpowered warp-in storms or speedrays can feel in any given game. Thing is, these are just symptoms of some bad core design decisions.
Your post is also good, it's a good complement to OP.
I'm pretty sure some "smart" changes would easily fix a lot of problems. About the warp-in mechanics for example, i've always thought that it needs a fix to "invert" the production change time for all units, example: if you choose to mute your gateways into warpgates, then units takes more time to be build instead of less (making the upgrade more logical and balanced imo) - for example 5-10 secs more. This will balance the warp mechanic and add another strategic aspect. Honestly, who has ever switch from warpgate mode to gateway mode? Never seen that, so why give this option? This show how lost Blizzard is with the core of SC2.
Reaper as you said is also a good example, this is the "awesome, fun, new unit" that noone use or just one time per game, and as a stronger scv, to scout ...
The critical problem with Blizzard last patches is that changes are not meant to make the game better, they're just intended to quickly get rid of problems: "Wtf reapers a little too strong in TvZ? Ok let's nerf this shit so we never hear about it anymore". Same with void speed upgrade, same with templar amulet, etc ...
That's just crazy.
Honestly i wish gateways were more viable or as viable as warpgates, I would macro like a beast if i put all my gateways on one hotkey and pumped out units to mass up missing warp ins i think is the downside to having warpgates you can queue up another unit just as one is about to finish and never miss a production cycle, but with the way warpgates reinforce and can help get you out of bad situations so easily and just that your units build faster it doesnt make sense to keep them as gateways =(
First of all they're too many freaking patches. Everytime people start to QQ some dramatic patch comes out to address that. The game isn't getting the necessary time to breath and grow.
The advantage BW had is that it didn't have a million fans throwing ideas at Blizz for units to add into the game. From the beginning the BW designers had a vision for the units of each race, so from the ground up, balancing BW was easier, because the roles of the units were well defined. Even in 2v2 or 3v3 matches.
SC2 will take forever to balance, some of the patches balance the game, while creating new balance issues we might not currently see. And the expansions are going to make it even more difficult to balance with any new units or mechanics they introduce. The game just doesn't have a solid structure.
Imo, the main problem is that each of their patches are fixing blatant symptoms, but never the actual cause. So if they keep it up, they will either have to keep patching stuff all the time constantly, or we will end up with bland 1 strategy per race per matchup type of play.
For example, zerg doesnt have any counterattacking options very early on, and also doesnt have any defending advantage. So that makes 5 rax reaper pretty good, after all, the zerg cant counter, and has a terribly hard time defending, since they have no defender's advantage. So blizzard patches the blatantly obvious symptom, the reapers, but not the cause. So then toss starts walling in zergs with double pylon and a cannon. ramps get nerfed. Then its 2rax bunkercheese that arrives. So now they are nerfing bunkers slightly. But unless they fix the actual issue and give zergs an effective way to defend early on, there will always be some cheesy pressure build that will get abused, either that, or they will have to keep nerfing every single unit or building that can be used offensively early on. -_-
On March 05 2011 20:47 Animostas wrote: I do think that some of the larger balance changes in Starcraft 2 are reasonable. For example, I think that Reapers really were a problem for Zergs and that it had to be changed. The Khydarian Amulet is also a bit too strong, in that it shuts down late game harass a little too easily.
I agree that some of these major changes should stay to a minimum, but I don't find it too much of a problem. The game will work itself out eventually.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
Well alot ot the is due to small maps and SC2 mechanics. So its like comparing oranges to apples.
On March 06 2011 12:00 FrostyTreats wrote: Dont over look the amulet upgrade. it is a serious fucking issue. If anyone here has played tvp at a high level they will tell u once the game gets to 3 base toss with HT's.... your hopes of being aggressive to that toss are now gone. There is literally almost no way to be aggressive vs HT into the late game and things just start to stagnate.. its not good for gameplay. and im glad it was removed....It's too strong vs bio...
Maybe removing things from the game is the only way to balance at this point? They added a LOT of stuff to SC2 and I have to wonder if they aren't regretting it. 2 more expansion packs to come - there's going to be so much crossover in features and abilities per unit. - Terran already have some very multi-purpose units (Thor, marines) - Zerg has the mutalisk etc.
Imagine in 2 expansion packs time - there's going to be a huge quantity of hotkeys and abilities.
On March 06 2011 12:00 FrostyTreats wrote: Dont over look the amulet upgrade. it is a serious fucking issue. If anyone here has played tvp at a high level they will tell u once the game gets to 3 base toss with HT's.... your hopes of being aggressive to that toss are now gone. There is literally almost no way to be aggressive vs HT into the late game and things just start to stagnate.. its not good for gameplay. and im glad it was removed....It's too strong vs bio...
One point to you sir:
Don't stay on Tier 1 unit seriously, learn how to play. By the time he has HT's which Tier 3 unit and it takes forever to make it useful. Get some Tier 3 unit man, don't stick to MMM.
If you think about it, theres a reason why TvP is mech on every map in BW. Once players realized that storm was too good vs bio, they tried other stuff rather than try to have templars or storm changed.
I dunno... I find the game fun to watch and play, and I think it's balanced. Virtually every unit sees use, and every match-up is unique and exciting.
Seriously, what's with all this boo-hooing? That's an incredible accomplishment by the designers!
I tend to agree that huge changes are bad, but the amulet is a little silly. I mean, it really makes it too easy to defend bio drops in the late game.
However, you do have to wonder if maybe terrans could have made some other unit choice for drops... something less vulnerable to storms... (Of course, nothing comes to mind.)
On March 06 2011 12:00 FrostyTreats wrote: Dont over look the amulet upgrade. it is a serious fucking issue. If anyone here has played tvp at a high level they will tell u once the game gets to 3 base toss with HT's.... your hopes of being aggressive to that toss are now gone. There is literally almost no way to be aggressive vs HT into the late game and things just start to stagnate.. its not good for gameplay. and im glad it was removed....It's too strong vs bio...
One point to you sir:
Don't stay on Tier 1 unit seriously, learn how to play. By the time he has HT's which Tier 3 unit and it takes forever to make it useful. Get some Tier 3 unit man, don't stick to MMM.
So should he mass thors or BCs? Medivacs are a tier 2 or 3 unit, depending on how you define it. This is why the tier "system" is a stupid way of looking at it. You continue to build zealots/stalkers all game just as you build marines and marauders, and supplement them with HT/medivacs.
On March 05 2011 20:51 Shikyo wrote: It's because SC2 gameplay was much more flawed when it went to beta, and even live. Some concepts just were really poorly thought-out and hence they needed to change a lot of stuff. Like the alpha Roaches and the early Reapers... how could they even put them in the game in the first place?
SCBW had a lot of imba stuff but every race had them so they balanced each other out... And I think there's a pretty significant luck factor as well in that the game became as good as it is. I guess the biggest change was spawning pool cost.
WOL is far better on day one that SC1 was. Starcraft, at release, was actually really, really, REALLY poorly balanced. While we tend to think of BW as the big macro game, the standard Z opening for a very long time was the 4pool, because the spawning pool cost 150 minerals.
Indeed, look at these balance changes in patch 1.04
Terran: Wraith: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Increased cooldown rate of ground attack. Increased air to air damage to 20. Dropship: Increased speed slightly. Science Vessel: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 225 gas. Increased acceleration Increased overall damage of Irradiate Increased sight radius Battlecruiser: Increased starting armor to 3 Increased Yamato Cannon damage to 260 Goliath: Increased ground damage to 12 Increased effectiveness of weapon upgrade on ground to air weapon system Nuke: Nuclear Missiles build faster ComSat: Decreased energy cost to 50 Starport: Decrease cost of Starport to 150 minerals, 100 gas Decreased add-on cost of Control Tower to 50 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time
Protoss: Archon: Increased acceleration Dragoon: Decreased cost to 125 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time Increased range upgrade (Singularity Charge) by 1 High Templar: Decreased energy cost of Hallucination to 100 Scout: Increased Air to Air damage to 28 Decreased starting armor to 0 Increased shields to 100 and hit points to 150 Increased cooldown rate of ground attack Carrier: Changed build cost to 350 minerals, and 250 gas Increased hit points of Carrier to 300 Increased starting armor of Carrier to 4 Increased Interceptor shields and hitpoints to 40 Increased Interceptor damage to 6 Decreased Interceptor cost to 25 Arbiter: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 350 gas Shuttle: Increased build time Reaver: Increased build time Templar Archives: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 200 gas. Citadel of Adun: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Stargate: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 150 gas Decreased build time Robotics Facility: Increased build time Robotics Support Bay: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas Observatory: Decreased cost to 50 minerals, 100 gas Forge: Decreased cost to 150 minerals Photon Cannon: Decreased build time Fleet Beacon: Decreased cost of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade to 100 minerals, 100 gas Decreased research time of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade Shield Battery: Increased starting energy to 100 Increased effective range of “Recharge Shields” ability
Zerg: Overlord: Increased speed bonus for "Pneumatized Carapace" upgrade Decreased research time of "Ventral Sacs" upgrade Scourge: Increase hit points to 25 Hydralisk: Increased build time Queen: Increased range of Broodling by 1 Increase energy cost of Parasite to 75 Decreased Parasite casting range to 12 Defiler: Increased cost to 50 minerals, 150 gas Hatchery: Decreased the speed at which the Hatchery/Lair/Hive spawn new larva Decreased build cost to 300 minerals Increased build time Sunken Colony: Decreased cost of Sunken Colony upgrade to 50 minerals Decreased build time Increased attack rate of Sunken Colony Increased damage to 40 Spore Colony: Decreased build time Changed damage type to normal Greater Spire: Increased build time
And that was patch 1.04! Brood War is considered to have gotten good in patch 1.08. i.e., another four of these.
The other problem was that while BW did have a lot of imba stuff that all balanced out, it wasn't like everyone knew how to deal with it all right away. They went to websites like, well, like teamliquid.net, and they cried and cried and cried about how Protoss or Zerg or Terran was imba. We didn't have the concept of "Web shows" like Imbalanced! back then, but trust me, BW wasn't accepted as balanced for a very, very, very long time. Hell, just imagine what would happen if Starcraft came out today. The forums would be filled with people complaining that Dark Swarm or Irradiate or this that and the other was imba, and no one would play the goddamn game.
On March 06 2011 12:40 randplaty wrote: BW was a much less ambitious project. BW had "core" units that did decently well against all units. Terran had goliaths and marines. Zerg had hydras and Toss had goons.
SC2 introduced bonuses for "armored" or "light." In a sense Blizzard introduced more imbalance in the specific units in order to create a more dynamic game. There are a lot more hard counters. Every unit has a hard counter. This is VERY different from BW. Hydras are owned by collossus. Stalkers are owned by marauders. This just did not happen to hydras and goonz in BW.
BW's size system did the exact same thing as light and armored, except it was much more rigid in how it affected every unit.
On March 05 2011 22:50 Rabiator wrote: Starcraft 2 and its abilities are much more volatile compared to BW. Back then you had no MBS or even unlimited unit selection and the unit movement AI was terrible. You lost a huge amount of efficiency to that complicated control. Thus it wasnt really that necessary to take out any ability in BW because none of them were able to remove an entire army like the "Archon toilet" is able in SC2.
If you want to blame anything then blame the "unlimited unit selection" and the macro mechanics which make the game much faster compared to BW. Sure they were also put in by Blizzard, but the dev team has to live with them now and a complete redesign on the macro mechanics seems very unlikely. Personally I would think it entirely reasonable to cut the efficiency of MULE, spawn larva and chronoboost in half and that would make the game much more stable.
I wouldn't blame unlimited unit selection. Macro mechanics, sure, those definitely contribute (although Chronoboost could probably be fine if you couldn't chrono Warpgate Research in the early game). But honestly, you could probably put MBS, automining, and unlimited unit selection in BW, and still have an awesome game (definitely not smartcasting though). An easier game with MUCH easier macro, of course, but a great game still.
Unlimited unit selection wouldn't change that much in BW, imo, because it was the collision size and pathing that made moving large armies difficult. In SC2, I can oftentimes have a 100 food stalker/sentry/Colossus ball all attacking at the same time, which is retarded. In BW, chokes gave you a huge defensive advantage, simply because there was no way to fit a lot of units in a small space.
I really do wonder how SC2 would play with a bigger collision radius for units and more open maps. Can you change that in the editor?
Unlimited unit selection (plus the improved movement AI) are the reason why "Protoss deathball" and "Terran bioball" work. These are very vulnerable to area attacks like Siege tanks, Psi Storm and so on. Thus these attacks got nerfed to smithereens - compared to the BW values - to keep these strategies alive. Personally I hated that because it is one of the reasons why mech isnt working well.
A bigger collision radius would solve some part of the problems with the Colossus at least IMO. If the Colossi are spread out more they cant be protected as easily by the Gateway units on all fronts and the "damage per attacker space" would be reduced.
The game is not ball v ball in the GSL, by and large -- and even ball v ball is pretty interesting to me. It's epic... but the game is not about that, by and large. Especially on bigger maps, there's so much more going on than that.
I really don't get what people don't like. I think it's great and getting better all the time.
On March 05 2011 20:51 Shikyo wrote: It's because SC2 gameplay was much more flawed when it went to beta, and even live. Some concepts just were really poorly thought-out and hence they needed to change a lot of stuff. Like the alpha Roaches and the early Reapers... how could they even put them in the game in the first place?
SCBW had a lot of imba stuff but every race had them so they balanced each other out... And I think there's a pretty significant luck factor as well in that the game became as good as it is. I guess the biggest change was spawning pool cost.
WOL is far better on day one that SC1 was. Starcraft, at release, was actually really, really, REALLY poorly balanced. While we tend to think of BW as the big macro game, the standard Z opening for a very long time was the 4pool, because the spawning pool cost 150 minerals.
Indeed, look at these balance changes in patch 1.04
Terran: Wraith: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Increased cooldown rate of ground attack. Increased air to air damage to 20. Dropship: Increased speed slightly. Science Vessel: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 225 gas. Increased acceleration Increased overall damage of Irradiate Increased sight radius Battlecruiser: Increased starting armor to 3 Increased Yamato Cannon damage to 260 Goliath: Increased ground damage to 12 Increased effectiveness of weapon upgrade on ground to air weapon system Nuke: Nuclear Missiles build faster ComSat: Decreased energy cost to 50 Starport: Decrease cost of Starport to 150 minerals, 100 gas Decreased add-on cost of Control Tower to 50 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time
Protoss: Archon: Increased acceleration Dragoon: Decreased cost to 125 minerals, 50 gas Decreased build time Increased range upgrade (Singularity Charge) by 1 High Templar: Decreased energy cost of Hallucination to 100 Scout: Increased Air to Air damage to 28 Decreased starting armor to 0 Increased shields to 100 and hit points to 150 Increased cooldown rate of ground attack Carrier: Changed build cost to 350 minerals, and 250 gas Increased hit points of Carrier to 300 Increased starting armor of Carrier to 4 Increased Interceptor shields and hitpoints to 40 Increased Interceptor damage to 6 Decreased Interceptor cost to 25 Arbiter: Decreased cost to 100 minerals, 350 gas Shuttle: Increased build time Reaver: Increased build time Templar Archives: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 200 gas. Citadel of Adun: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas. Stargate: Decreased cost to 150 minerals, 150 gas Decreased build time Robotics Facility: Increased build time Robotics Support Bay: Increased cost to 150 minerals, 100 gas Observatory: Decreased cost to 50 minerals, 100 gas Forge: Decreased cost to 150 minerals Photon Cannon: Decreased build time Fleet Beacon: Decreased cost of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade to 100 minerals, 100 gas Decreased research time of "Increased Carrier capacity" upgrade Shield Battery: Increased starting energy to 100 Increased effective range of “Recharge Shields” ability
Zerg: Overlord: Increased speed bonus for "Pneumatized Carapace" upgrade Decreased research time of "Ventral Sacs" upgrade Scourge: Increase hit points to 25 Hydralisk: Increased build time Queen: Increased range of Broodling by 1 Increase energy cost of Parasite to 75 Decreased Parasite casting range to 12 Defiler: Increased cost to 50 minerals, 150 gas Hatchery: Decreased the speed at which the Hatchery/Lair/Hive spawn new larva Decreased build cost to 300 minerals Increased build time Sunken Colony: Decreased cost of Sunken Colony upgrade to 50 minerals Decreased build time Increased attack rate of Sunken Colony Increased damage to 40 Spore Colony: Decreased build time Changed damage type to normal Greater Spire: Increased build time
And that was patch 1.04! Brood War is considered to have gotten good in patch 1.08. i.e., another four of these.
The other problem was that while BW did have a lot of imba stuff that all balanced out, it wasn't like everyone knew how to deal with it all right away. They went to websites like, well, like teamliquid.net, and they cried and cried and cried about how Protoss or Zerg or Terran was imba. We didn't have the concept of "Web shows" like Imbalanced! back then, but trust me, BW wasn't accepted as balanced for a very, very, very long time. Hell, just imagine what would happen if Starcraft came out today. The forums would be filled with people complaining that Dark Swarm or Irradiate or this that and the other was imba, and no one would play the goddamn game.
Like I pointed out, all those changes are only hp, damage, build time changes. Those are just pure numbers. The tech trees were not messed with and the overall general strategies were not. Compared to SC2, where a lot of changes have completely removed strategies. Its a bad trend because we want SC2 to have lots of varied strategies.
On March 06 2011 12:00 FrostyTreats wrote: Dont over look the amulet upgrade. it is a serious fucking issue. If anyone here has played tvp at a high level they will tell u once the game gets to 3 base toss with HT's.... your hopes of being aggressive to that toss are now gone. There is literally almost no way to be aggressive vs HT into the late game and things just start to stagnate.. its not good for gameplay. and im glad it was removed....It's too strong vs bio...
One point to you sir:
Don't stay on Tier 1 unit seriously, learn how to play. By the time he has HT's which Tier 3 unit and it takes forever to make it useful. Get some Tier 3 unit man, don't stick to MMM.
Wish to enlighten me which tier 3 units a terran should transition to, and how to transition into it? Bio openings are very strong against protoss, so it makes sense to open MM(M). 1-1-1 openings can work as well, but leaves the Terran more vulnerable to early pushes as well as gives protoss a fairly decent economic option. This narrows down the 2 base transition for Terran to bio centric play, which means MMM or MM ghost.
However, let's pretend our Terran did decide to go 1-1-1 or at least rax-fact expand and gets onto 2 base with mech based play. If Protoss goes twilight tech, he has ample options to contend with the mech play through the council (blink stalkers). Tanks, thors, and hellions all get creamed by a tier 1.5 unit with a tier 2 upgrade. BUT THAT'S RIDICULOUS! How can such a low tier unit be so good against a tier 3 unit (Thors)?! It's the same story with BCs.
So let's backtrack to our opening. It's pretty ridiculous that heavy mech gets countered pretty hard by all 3 protoss tech trees by the time 2 base saturation is reached. So, that brings us back to rax based openings. These work out pretty well against almost all Protoss openings. There is no standard macro opening Protoss can do that will catch you with your pants down. The natural transitions (at this point in time) are ghosts or medivacs/vikings. If terran chooses ghosts, he has to CONSTANTLY push the front and trade armies, since bio works a lot better in medium numbers (20-40 supply) against Protoss armies due to stim and FFs. If he chooses medivacs, he will have to wait slightly longer to attack to get the medivacs, so the option to drop becomes more favorable. This medium number advantage plays out well for drops, since Protoss has to send a much larger army to counter the drop.
So we make it to 3 bases in our TvP matchup as Terran. Huzzah, what a good game! Now comes the tricky part. If Protoss goes colossus and you went medivacs, then you can win if you pick your battles correctly and continue to just be annoying with drops. If you didn't cause enough damage with bio-ghost aggression, you could find yourself in quite the pickle without a great transition to vikings.
If Protoss instead goes for the templar tech path, this becomes a different game. If you go ghosts, you can still continue your high aggression bio pushes, but they become more risky. Even with EXCELLENT emps, there is still the threat of warp in storms. You'll have to play smart and extra attentive to win at this point with your heavy duty bio play. With the medivac oriented play, your drops suddenly become less effective as less and less is needed to deal with them due to enhanced Protoss mobility through twilight council and the potency of warp in storms. The Protoss is able to devote a smaller army now to counter your drops, while banking a bigger main army. If you aren't able to deal SERIOUS damage with at least 1 drop, your chances of winning drop DRAMATICALLY due to your less efficient army.
If you notice something about the heavy bio play in a general sense, it is a very fast paced, high aggression style meant to slowly whittle down the Protoss army. Terran is forced to CONSTANTLY push and create a new army, leaving very little room to tech switch into tier 3 units. Not only that, but the addition of extra units into the mix complicates the macro involved as well as lowers the food count of your army as you spend more money on production and tech upgrades. When people say, "You should simply transition into higher tier units!" it's not simply a matter of whipping out a BC, thor, or tank out of thin air. There's a lot of complex play behind getting those units out.
Some of the stuff maybe sounds biased because I used to play zerg so most of the problems i have listed are probably zerg problems but I got tired of playing only race so i switched to random. I also forget tons of stuff most likely but thats what iam raging most about right now.
There are lots of problems.
Lets take the Ultralisk it is supposed to counter armored Units - but it gets hardcountered by armored Units (marauders) but hey - even marines kills ultralisks within nanonseconds, there is almost never a way to use ultras costefficient if terran keeps up with upgrades.
Lets talk about the Phenix vs Hydra - why does the "counter" to the phenix actually take extra damage from the phenix once lifted?
Luck based Units vs microable Units
Banelings vs Marines - if the terran is able to micro his marines perfectly banelings arent costefficient - on the other hand you cant micro banelings against marines to make them costefficient as long as the terran player responds correct. Raven vs anything - you will never land a HSM so if you ever hit one your opponent fucked up.
Detection - Terrans gets detection for free - you cant ever catch them totally offguard with dts or burrowed roaches burrowed infestor or banshees like you can, vs Zerg or Protoss - yes i know that you have to use a mule as terran but to be reasonable - if you have 4 dts in your base you can easily waste 5 scans to kill them off and it was still an even trade.
Macromechanics -
Spawn Larva - its the most ridicilous skill of all - miss it once and you die to an early attack, get it perfect in the lategame and you will have so much larva that you cant ever spend them - once protoss or terran lose their army in the lategame Zerg cant lose it anymore given that the map is big and open enough.
Warpgate tech - this mechanic bugs me the most, remove the defenders advantage because you can instantly reeinforce at their doorstep this combined with the fact that the stalker is a really strong Unit early game makes warpgate rushes so ridicilously stupid.
Chronoboost - Compared to Mules and Spawn Larva its like Blizzard slapped every single protoss player in the face. Its like the said "we gave all the cool stuff to Terran and Zerg lets see if we got something shitty left for protoss" - on the other hand its usefull to rush for warpgates even faster, and getting out probes fast, probably the skill that becomes the worst as the game goes on.
Mules/Supply Drop/Scan - Orbital Command - Blizzard thought about a structure that removes any skill from a race - and they inventet the orbital command. So with orbitals you will never be supply stuck, you dont have to worry about detection ever - and if you dealt with these two issues you get a powerful tool that allows terran as the only race to mine effieciently from more than 4 bases - because mules dont take up supply, so terran can mine from 7 bases and only need like 3 but zerg needs like 7 bases and can mine from 3 only. Some logical mistake happend here. On a sidenote - using all Scvs in allin attacks becomes viable because of the orbital command, if you kill enough drones/probes you will instantly have ~6 workers(~1 mule) back home and terran is the strongest race to rebuild from nothing. I almost forgot to mention that Orbitals cant die because they can fly away if they are getting attacked, while they run for their money they build up energy and once they land again you will have enough to cast 6 mules on a gold base.
Other generell imbalances - Killing Scvs is not nearly as powerful as killing Drones and Probes is. Terrans Mineral only Units are still really powerful lategame, compared to Protosses.
To resolve most of the stuff they have to fix the stupid damage system, remove some of the Macromechanics or make them a lot weaker. They should try to spread the Units that require skill to make them costefficient equally over all 3 races or make it so you need to be at least even skilled with every race.(as i said iam random and PvT you can get away with 60 apm being the protoss but you need way over 100 being the terran to do everything) And they probably need to rebalance Lategame Units especially caster - but they are doing a step into the right direction by removing the amulet.
/E there is so much stuff horrible wrong that they have to remove Units and stuff to get the game somewhat balanced - they wont unless they fix all the stupid stuff they did, i really hope that they make a huge patch in the near future or they change tons of stuff with the addon. Right now the biggest problem i see is huge maps - the macromechanics and everything designed to ahve stuff faster leads to problems if the maps are too big - Protoss having 3 base before minute 12 on TerminusRe is ridicilous. That combined with the fact that the "deathball" is the strongest Unit composition in the game right now leads to many problems as well.
On March 06 2011 17:00 GhostFall wrote: [ Like I pointed out, all those changes are only hp, damage, build time changes. Those are just pure numbers. The tech trees were not messed with and the overall general strategies were not. Compared to SC2, where a lot of changes have completely removed strategies. Its a bad trend because we want SC2 to have lots of varied strategies.
I guess I kinda get that you mean you don't like removing an upgrade altogether, but really, is "warp in HTs to storm immediately" *really* a strategy? I mean, strategies make use of the "numbers" to win games... and dramatically messing with those numbers is certainly adding and removing strategies as well.
But really, is warping in storm-capable HTs wherever you like *really* a strategy? Is removing that capability *really* "removing a strategy"??
On March 06 2011 17:00 GhostFall wrote: [ Like I pointed out, all those changes are only hp, damage, build time changes. Those are just pure numbers. The tech trees were not messed with and the overall general strategies were not. Compared to SC2, where a lot of changes have completely removed strategies. Its a bad trend because we want SC2 to have lots of varied strategies.
I guess I kinda get that you mean you don't like removing an upgrade altogether, but really, is "warp in HTs to storm immediately" *really* a strategy? I mean, strategies make use of the "numbers" to win games... and dramatically messing with those numbers is certainly adding and removing strategies as well.
But really, is warping in storm-capable HTs wherever you like *really* a strategy? Is removing that capability *really* "removing a strategy"??
No, but removing flux vanes removed the "mass void rays and kill half a base" strategy. =P
On March 06 2011 17:12 idonthinksobro wrote: Some of the stuff maybe sounds biased because I used to play zerg so most of the problems i have listed are probably zerg problems but I got tired of playing only race so i switched to random. I also forget tons of stuff most likely but thats what iam raging most about right now.
There are lots of problems.
Lets take the Ultralisk it is supposed to counter armored Units - but it gets hardcountered by armored Units (marauders) but hey - even marines kills ultralisks within nanonseconds, there is almost never a way to use ultras costefficient if terran keeps up with upgrades.
Lets talk about the Phenix vs Hydra - why does the "counter" to the phenix actually take extra damage from the phenix once lifted?
Luck based Units vs microable Units
Banelings vs Marines - if the terran is able to micro his marines perfectly banelings arent costefficient - on the other hand you cant micro banelings against marines to make them costefficient as long as the terran player responds correct. Raven vs anything - you will never land a HSM so if you ever hit one your opponent fucked up.
Detection - Terrans gets detection for free - you cant ever catch them totally offguard with dts or burrowed roaches burrowed infestor or banshees like you can, vs Zerg or Protoss - yes i know that you have to use a mule as terran but to be reasonable - if you have 4 dts in your base you can easily waste 5 scans to kill them off and it was still an even trade.
Macromechanics -
Spawn Larva - its the most ridicilous skill of all - miss it once and you die to an early attack, get it perfect in the lategame and you will have so much larva that you cant ever spend them - once protoss or terran lose their army in the lategame Zerg cant lose it anymore given that the map is big and open enough.
Warpgate tech - this mechanic bugs me the most, remove the defenders advantage because you can instantly reeinforce at their doorstep this combined with the fact that the stalker is a really strong Unit early game makes warpgate rushes so ridicilously stupid.
Chronoboost - Compared to Mules and Spawn Larva its like Blizzard slapped every single protoss player in the face. Its like the said "we gave all the cool stuff to Terran and Zerg lets see if we got something shitty left for protoss" - on the other hand its usefull to rush for warpgates even faster, and getting out probes fast, probably the skill that becomes the worst as the game goes on.
Mules/Supply Drop/Scan - Orbital Command - Blizzard thought about a structure that removes any skill from a race - and they inventet the orbital command. So with orbitals you will never be supply stuck, you dont have to worry about detection ever - and if you dealt with these two issues you get a powerful tool that allows terran as the only race to mine effieciently from more than 4 bases - because mules dont take up supply, so terran can mine from 7 bases and only need like 3 but zerg needs like 7 bases and can mine from 3 only. Some logical mistake happend here. On a sidenote - using all Scvs in allin attacks becomes viable because of the orbital command, if you kill enough drones/probes you will instantly have ~6 workers(~1 mule) back home and terran is the strongest race to rebuild from nothing. I almost forgot to mention that Orbitals cant die because they can fly away if they are getting attacked, while they run for their money they build up energy and once they land again you will have enough to cast 6 mules on a gold base.
Other generell imbalances - Killing Scvs is not nearly as powerful as killing Drones and Probes is. Terrans Mineral only Units are still really powerful lategame, compared to Protosses.
To resolve most of the stuff they have to fix the stupid damage system, remove some of the Macromechanics or make them a lot weaker. They should try to spread the Units that require skill to make them costefficient equally over all 3 races or make it so you need to be at least even skilled with every race.(as i said iam random and PvT you can get away with 60 apm being the protoss but you need way over 100 being the terran to do everything) And they probably need to rebalance Lategame Units especially caster - but they are doing a step into the right direction by removing the amulet.
/E there is so much stuff horrible wrong that they have to remove Units and stuff to get the game somewhat balanced - they wont unless they fix all the stupid stuff they did, i really hope that they make a huge patch in the near future or they change tons of stuff with the addon. Right now the biggest problem i see is huge maps - the macromechanics and everything designed to ahve stuff faster leads to problems if the maps are too big - Protoss having 3 base before minute 12 on TerminusRe is ridicilous. That combined with the fact that the "deathball" is the strongest Unit composition in the game right now leads to many problems as well.
So what makes these things imbalances...?
I don't really get it. That's just how the game works. A protoss on 3 bases means the zerg should be shooting for an endgame earlier than that or even more bases. It's not inherently "imbalanced"...
I just don't see any evidence that everything is "horribly wrong" if every unit can be used successfully and all races see strikingly similar levels of success at the highest levels.
Part of the problem is the philosophy that created the Immortal.
Immortals are very effective VS armored units because of their damage bonus. But they are boring. You have Thors, I have Immortals, I have the advantage. Micro does not play a large role in the Immortal's interaction with other units. It is simply strong or it isn't, and lets a-move and get it over with.
The Immortal is defined completely by its relationship with armored units. bleh.
The Lurker is not so one dimensional, the lurker's damage 'type' doesn't define it, its damage 'method' does. The lurker does 20 damage in a straight line it attacks while invisible (burrowed), which can be a down side when it comes to mobility. The Lurker has more depth because it relates to other units in a variety of ways.
A Battle should have the potential to swing with the dramatic flair! Ala the pop of a Reaver scarab, the drag of a mine, the guts of 10 marines who all died to 2 well placed lurker spines, and the list goes on. To be a good Esports game you have to have tension, drama, excitement!
in BW it wasn't just the 'right unit comp' it was using your units right that won you games (this is not to say sc2 doesn't require micro, just that the micro tends to be less important, or less dramatic when done well)
Powerful (potential to be hugely cost effective) multi-dimensional (relates to other units in a variety of interesting ways) units were a large part of what Brood War fun to watch, and fun to play. If Blizzard doesn't return to its roots, sc2 might be easy for a bronze leaguer to play without getting pwned by one unit, but it won't be the next Esports giant.
EDIT: To be fair, the Immortal has its shield, but again, that just makes it 'better' at standing and shooting another type; units that deal high damage and a slow firing rate... Which is something we as spectators see from a mile away (oh, the unit comp is in the Toss' favor), not something that may or may not happen during the battle that will swing the battle. (mine drags, etc).
On March 06 2011 18:04 QuestSeekers wrote: Part of the problem is the philosophy that created the Immortal.
Immortals are very effective VS armored units because of their damage bonus. But they are boring. You have Thors, I have Immortals, I have the advantage. Micro does not play a large role in the Immortal's interaction with other units. It is simply strong or it isn't, and lets a-move and get it over with.
The Immortal is defined completely by its relationship with armored units. bleh.
The Lurker is not so one dimensional, the lurker's damage 'type' doesn't define it, its damage 'method' does. The lurker does 20 damage in a straight line it attacks while invisible (burrowed), which can be a down side when it comes to mobility. The Lurker has more depth because it relates to other units in a variety of ways.
A Battle should have the potential to swing with the dramatic flair! Ala the pop of a Reaver scarab, the drag of a mine, the guts of 10 marines who all died to 2 well placed lurker spines, and the list goes on. To be a good Esports game you have to have tension, drama, excitement!
in BW it wasn't just the 'right unit comp' it was using your units right that won you games (this is not to say sc2 doesn't require micro, just that the micro tends to be less important, or less dramatic when done well)
Powerful (potential to be hugely cost effective) multi-dimensional (relates to other units in a variety of interesting ways) units were a large part of what Brood War fun to watch, and fun to play. If Blizzard doesn't return to its roots, sc2 might be easy for a bronze leaguer to play without getting pwned by one unit, but it won't be the next Esports giant.
EDIT: To be fair, the Immortal has its shield, but again, that just makes it 'better' at standing and shooting another type; units that deal high damage and a slow firing rate... Which is something we as spectators see from a mile away (oh, the unit comp is in the Toss' favor), not something that may or may not happen during the battle that will swing the battle. (mine drags, etc).
BW had a much slower development than SC2. You imply that good micro brought excitement to BW, but that was because of how long a good strategy lingered in the air. Before somebody could come up with the counter to a certain build, they would have to practice it literally hundreds of times. At the end of the day, the execution is what sealed the fate of the players. Solid mechanics, with a hint of brilliant play is what BW is largely about.
However, since a strategy is a little easier to develop due to simpler mechanics, the excitement comes from the strategies themselves. Brilliant play, with solid mechanics in the background are what makes up the majority of the major results we see. MKP didn't lose GSLs because he had poor execution, but because he had predictable play. That's what the draw is in SC2, and what makes a lot of people excited about watching it.
I tend to think it was a PR mistake of Blizzard to cite 2v2 balance as a reason for a patchchange. A lot of people apparently don't play the game, yet feel free to insult Blizzard about balancing the game around the people who play it, not just a very tiny subset. To me, if Starcraft II was fun to play on all levels but not perfect as an e-sport it would be more of a success then if it was only balanced on the highest levels.
I played WC3 for ages, not competitively, but just because it was amusing to try different things and that was because Blizzard tried to keep most units and strategies at least a little bit valuable and to me this added a lot of depth to it as a casual to semi-competitive game. I'd hate for SCII to be some sort of annoying, hard, completely unforgiving game where you auto-lose if you make the tiniest mistake and play is more frustrating than fun. And at least, if that would actually be best for e-sports purposes, then add it as a special game mode, but I'd rather not have 2v2 and low level play utterly broken if the cost is a minor bit of strategic variety in 1v1 play.
Regarding removing abilities, I don't see how that's a dangerous path to go on, or so. If Blizzard wants to they can add a dozen of seemingly intruiging upgrades to the game next week. Why not let hellions leave trails of fire to damage the enemy (blaze from Diablo II ), require banshees and medivacs to land to be able to be repaired (realism), give reapers spidermines (bringing back old SC:BW abilities), or just introduce several new units and a variety of upgrades giving units increased range, speed, hit points and so on? I bet for a lot of them you could give well-thought out reasons as to why they'd improve the game, but essentially, the argument against it would be the same as to why outright removing the amulet upgrade isn't necessarily bad, namely that there's a cost to diversity and that is that the game becomes less focused, more difficult to balance, harder to guess strategies after scouting maybe.
aksfjh United States. March 06 2011 18:26. Posts 56 PM Profile Quote #
BW had a much slower development than SC2. You imply that good micro brought excitement to BW, but that was because of how long a good strategy lingered in the air. Before somebody could come up with the counter to a certain build, they would have to practice it literally hundreds of times. At the end of the day, the execution is what sealed the fate of the players. Solid mechanics, with a hint of brilliant play is what BW is largely about.
However, since a strategy is a little easier to develop due to simpler mechanics, the excitement comes from the strategies themselves. Brilliant play, with solid mechanics in the background are what makes up the majority of the major results we see. MKP didn't lose GSLs because he had poor execution, but because he had predictable play. That's what the draw is in SC2, and what makes a lot of people excited about watching it.
I agree with you, strategy and mechanics are important and can be interesting.
The main thing I wanted to communicate was that the units in BW tend to interact with the other units in BW in a variety of ways AND those ways have the potential to be dramatic (REEEAVER!) and cost effective. Whereas many of the units in Sc2 have to potential to be cost effective, but not to be dramatic.
On March 06 2011 17:00 GhostFall wrote: [ Like I pointed out, all those changes are only hp, damage, build time changes. Those are just pure numbers. The tech trees were not messed with and the overall general strategies were not. Compared to SC2, where a lot of changes have completely removed strategies. Its a bad trend because we want SC2 to have lots of varied strategies.
I guess I kinda get that you mean you don't like removing an upgrade altogether, but really, is "warp in HTs to storm immediately" *really* a strategy? I mean, strategies make use of the "numbers" to win games... and dramatically messing with those numbers is certainly adding and removing strategies as well.
But really, is warping in storm-capable HTs wherever you like *really* a strategy? Is removing that capability *really* "removing a strategy"??
Okay my problem with this point is, you don't realize you don't HAVE to remove the upgrade to change warp-in storms. You could, i dunno, do what he pointed out and change the numbers?
Instead of increasing the mana by 25 increase it by 15 or 20. Give warp in time and 5 or 10seconds to kill the HT. Hell you could even redesign it so increase the regenerate time. Point being, you dont HAVE to remove it to "fix" the "problem" but you can do what he has been saying over and over, change the numbers, not remove the upgrade. I feel like you missed what he is saying by just saying that stopping a drop with warp-in storms isnt strategy. Basically, and i am coming to agreement so far, you shouldn't just blatantly remove something, rather change its stats to balance it instead of killing an option.
They are different games, and they were developed in different ways.
Starcraft 2 has always, and still to this day suffers from it's design philosophy. That being "let's design some awesome units, and then try to balance them" instead of actually adding units that fix flaws for example.
The team is also very different from the team that was on starcraft 1 as far as I know, so for the current team it's has been one big experimentation, and sometimes drastic measures are needed.
Like someone else said, BW and SC2 were just made with different design philosophy's.
You can't just say, BW was very close to balanced, so every RTS game from now on needs to be balanced in exactly the same way, different games, different approaches.
And if it is their opinion that something needs to be removed to actually make it work instead of altering some numbers, then that is their decision.
We also don't know what is going on behind the screens, maybe they have certain plans for the upcoming expansion (for example remove amulet, but give HT's a new upgrade in HoTs, or give them a unit that fills a gap that is left by the removal off this upgrade), or they don't think that they can actually balance it in a timely manner, and they decide to remove it untill they can get a replacement that is actually very well thought out and balanced, but they decided to remove it because for the time being it is their opinion the game is balanced better without it then with it.
Ofcourse that paragraph is completely made up, but it was just to show that we have no clue what the "bigger picture" is or what is actually going on at blizzard that we don't know.
balancing a game like this is just much more effort then "oh well just give them a 5 sec longer warp in time, whatever that will work"
A big thing is gonna be the first expansion, since that is basicly the first time where they really get to do their thing to fix some of those underlying flaws and use the experience/knowledge they have build up during WoL.
To close off my post,
SC2 is not broodwar, it's starcraft, but it's not BW 2.0 with some new units. They are just different games. Just as WC3 and SC2 are different games.
This is a thing I struggled with at the beginning, and for a long time, I wanted this to be BW 2.0, I wanted units such as the colossus (shoots lasers, shoots lasers, move command back, shoots lasers /yawn, give my reaver back) gone. That is like a WC3 player coming to SC2 and saying that the units are dumb and it needs to add hero's.
But in the end that is just not gonna happen, the only thing we can do from now on is actually give proper feedback to blizzard (that is what the PTR is for) and with this try to help blizzard to steer this game towards an even better game. And ofcourse a lot of the time there will be analogy's to BW, but just don't expect them to throw away theyre goals and design philophosy off the game to make it BW with new graphics.
There are just some things that they see differently, for example I really want those "micro-tricks" in the game, like in other great competitive games, animation cancelling in certain games, muta stacking in bw, and all that kind off stuff. I mean the whole quake series is basicly based on a "bug" like this that was discovered in quake 1, aka strafejumping. But the balance team just thinks otherwise, and the moment something like this pops up they remove it.
If you really feel very strongly about certain points, why not send a well argumented letter/email to blizzard, if it is actually good enough they may actually read it.
Ofcourse you could sit here and think "well that is not gonna happen, why would they ever bother to do that", the same thing as what people think in regards to animals being "abused" (couldn't find the correct english word", but it could make a difference, even if the chances are small, so why not?
On March 06 2011 16:17 suejak wrote: I dunno... I find the game fun to watch and play, and I think it's balanced. Virtually every unit sees use, and every match-up is unique and exciting.
Allow me to venture a guess: You are a Terran player, are you not?
You can already see people complaining about PvX being boring to spectate and repetitive in the recent GSL LR threads. And you know what, I play Protoss, and I mostly agree. And removing KA is obviously only going to make it worse.
On March 06 2011 17:30 suejak wrote: I guess I kinda get that you mean you don't like removing an upgrade altogether, but really, is "warp in HTs to storm immediately" *really* a strategy? I mean, strategies make use of the "numbers" to win games... and dramatically messing with those numbers is certainly adding and removing strategies as well.
But really, is warping in storm-capable HTs wherever you like *really* a strategy? Is removing that capability *really* "removing a strategy"??
It's a huge nerf to non-Colossus builds in PvX. They might still be viable, but I wouldn't be surprised if all Protosses basically opened with Colossus play in all matchups after this change goes live. So, yeah, it does remove a fair bit of strategic variety. No more Double Forge, and no more Immortal/Stalker/Templar in PvZ, most likely.
As a sidenote, it's hilarious how Idra and Artosis lobby for a Colossus nerf with their new show, citing Templar builds as possible alternatives, and the next thing Blizzard does is nerf Templar.
[B]On March 06 2011 18:36 Grumbels wrote: I played WC3 for ages, not competitively, but just because it was amusing to try different things and that was because Blizzard tried to keep most units and strategies at least a little bit valuable and to me this added a lot of depth to it as a casual to semi-competitive game. I'd hate for SCII to be some sort of annoying, hard, completely unforgiving game where you auto-lose if you make the tiniest mistake and play is more frustrating than fun. And at least, if that would actually be best for e-sports purposes, then add it as a special game mode, but I'd rather not have 2v2 and low level play utterly broken if the cost is a minor bit of strategic variety in 1v1 play.
This is actually interesting, because that IS how SC2 feels to me right now. Small mistake, battle lost, no comeback possibility, game over. I've lost PvZs because I looked away from my army/the minimap for ~2 seconds, after having played very well up to that point.
This is me being bad, of course, and I do deserve to lose. But it never really felt like that in BW. Sure, you could react slowly to a reaver behind your mineral line, or walk into a mine field like a total retard. However, even if you did fail, it just put you behind, and you had the possibility of making a comeback if you did something equally damaging, or just expanded and macroed really well.
In SC2, if I don't deny a Blue Flame Hellion drop really decisively, I lose 20+ probes and may as well leave. If I lose a big lategame battle, the opponent walks into my natural and the game is over. It's just really, really easy to lose, at any skill-level.
On March 06 2011 18:04 QuestSeekers wrote: Part of the problem is the philosophy that created the Immortal.
Immortals are very effective VS armored units because of their damage bonus. But they are boring. You have Thors, I have Immortals, I have the advantage. Micro does not play a large role in the Immortal's interaction with other units. It is simply strong or it isn't, and lets a-move and get it over with.
The Immortal is defined completely by its relationship with armored units. bleh.
The Lurker is not so one dimensional, the lurker's damage 'type' doesn't define it, its damage 'method' does. The lurker does 20 damage in a straight line it attacks while invisible (burrowed), which can be a down side when it comes to mobility. The Lurker has more depth because it relates to other units in a variety of ways.
A Battle should have the potential to swing with the dramatic flair! Ala the pop of a Reaver scarab, the drag of a mine, the guts of 10 marines who all died to 2 well placed lurker spines, and the list goes on. To be a good Esports game you have to have tension, drama, excitement!
in BW it wasn't just the 'right unit comp' it was using your units right that won you games (this is not to say sc2 doesn't require micro, just that the micro tends to be less important, or less dramatic when done well)
Powerful (potential to be hugely cost effective) multi-dimensional (relates to other units in a variety of interesting ways) units were a large part of what Brood War fun to watch, and fun to play. If Blizzard doesn't return to its roots, sc2 might be easy for a bronze leaguer to play without getting pwned by one unit, but it won't be the next Esports giant.
EDIT: To be fair, the Immortal has its shield, but again, that just makes it 'better' at standing and shooting another type; units that deal high damage and a slow firing rate... Which is something we as spectators see from a mile away (oh, the unit comp is in the Toss' favor), not something that may or may not happen during the battle that will swing the battle. (mine drags, etc).
The Immortal adds the possibility for the Protoss player to draw Siege Tank fire away from his army for a long enough time to crush through a position. 2 Siege Tanks on a cliff? Move a single Immortal into range of each one at the same time. The tanks won't change target from the Immortal until it dies unless told to shoot something else, meaning your ground army has a long, long time to take them out. That's possible micromanagement for both the Protoss and Terran player in a situation that most players would attack move. There's a ton of possibility for little nuances of micro in Starcraft 2, you just need to give time to let the game develop. I don't think it helps having effectively unlimited units per control group though, it just leads to 1a syndrome at all levels of play, hampering the development of micromanagement.
On March 05 2011 20:52 Drium wrote: There are still 2 expansions that will bring large gameplay changes including new units.
no. probably not. read the recent interview.
The one that said its hard to balance a game around a new campaign? Which would make you think they are trying to balance a game slightly different than the one we are currently playing, while also trying to balance this one and every other game they provide constant support for. Even 1-2 new (or different) units a race and some other changes would dramatically alter game-play (add in even more knew maps too).
making colossus from reaver was most absurd decision blizzard ever made i dont even know where to begin in how many aspects this unit design is fucked up
Back in SC and BW, body was expecting anything. Blizzard just made 3 sci-fi races, added little story and that was about it. Everything was simple.
Since then, a lot of new thing was released. A lot of new games, new books with new sci-fi - and people were expecting something when waiting for SC2.
This way, Blizzard was forced to add a lot of interesting (=hard to balance) stuff. Blackhole? Yeah just 1 click killing whole army... Banshees with splash killing 20 marines in like 3 seconds... Thors so slow to move and turt that it requires like 200 APM to control one, and with about 850 APM you could kill it taking no dmg.
Remember alfa. All this stuff was very interesting - and often based on bad mechanics. A lot of this things vere so strong that 1 missclick could decide whole game. Nothing like that was in BW.
Yeah, there were strong storms. But if you have 100 units and 1 storm can kill 10 of them like instantly, then its a lot about control on hoth sides. But archon toilet or Blackhole are nothing like this, its not about direct comparision of skills of two players. Its about one click deciding game.
Blizzard was forced to add a lot if interesting stuff to this game, to make SC2 popular even before release. But then during alfa, beta and even now ae removing this stuff that is simply wrong or too hard to balance.
Also one thing that makes SC2 that much more less exciting to watch and play then BW is almost complete lack of interesting abilities. BW had crazy deadly stuff like plaque,recolls all over map,stasis on half of your army, science vessel loaded with alway usable irradiate, emp and def. matrix, ect ect. Now in Sc2 when 1.3 go live its by-by HT for any less then 20min game, HSM... whats that?, Vortex? Recoll? 250mm? Fungal Grow? Corruption LoL Spells in SC2 are eather lame, nearfed to death or unexplainable ridiculous like Infested Terran. There is always stim i quess lol.
On March 07 2011 01:46 lunar3force wrote: Also one thing that makes SC2 that much more less exciting to watch and play then BW is almost complete lack of interesting abilities. BW had crazy deadly stuff like plaque,recolls all over map,stasis on half of your army, science vessel loaded with alway usable irradiate, emp and def. matrix, ect ect. Now in Sc2 when 1.3 go live its by-by HT for any less then 20min game, HSM... whats that?, Vortex? Recoll? 250mm? Fungal Grow? Corruption LoL Spells in SC2 are eather lame, nearfed to death or unexplainable ridiculous like Infested Terran. There is always stim i quess lol.
Archon toilet is pretty darn deadly, if you can get a mothership it almost becomes impossible for Zerg to engage Protoss, or rather, incredibly difficult to engage Protoss. But alas, nerfed! But that was probably more deserving than others.
Dunno about you, but Stim is a pretty deadly skill in sc2
Stim in SC2 is nowhere near as powerful as the BW abilities. If Blizzard nerfed archon toilet by making it that you have to move out of it in a split second, it'll be comparable to BW abilities.
Irradiate, plague, dark swarm, spider mines, etc. allows units to punch above their cost so much. However, their damage can be minimized by moving your army properly either by splitting or moving them out of the way.
On March 05 2011 23:19 Rashid wrote: that's because Dustbin Browder is an idiot. SC2 gameplay and balancing has got to be the dumbest and most backwards in today's RTS standards, which isn't suprising since all the CnC games Browder was involved in were horribly inbalanced.
As an example, back in the days of BW, all races have pretty much equal chances of winning whether it be early, mid, or late game. Of course, Dustbin Browder for some reason thinks that this is a bad thing, thus he changed it so that in SC2, certain matchups have racial specific strengths in early, mid, and late game. TvZ, ZvP is a freaking joke, since T has no hope of defeating Z late game while Z has no hope defeating P late game. I even remembered once in an interview where Dustbin Browder mocks the 2 rax SCV all-in as 'rubbish', when in fact it's his whole rubbish system that's forcing Terran players to all-in every game against every Zerg that goes 14 hatch.
Ground units in sc2 gravitate, so all ground units form ball. I like behavior of ground units in sc:bw more. For me, that is the biggest complain on sc2.
This is interesting how more and more people are drawing the same conclusion (and I agree with them):
Blizzard failed about units special abilities, by removing all the good ones (mines, reaver scarab, lurker shot, etc ...) and adding those we know. But, the more i think about it the more i understand that those abilities are, in fact, quite ok, which in a way, makes us wrong.
To explain myself, not so long ago while reading those kind of threads I just realized how much Blizzard is freaking out about those new features, they don't know how to deal with, so they nerf , or even worst, delet upgrades/abilities. This is, as most agree, a critical mistake, and i think Blizzard should really have the exact opposite policy: overboosting all abilities mechanics AND THEN, work on numbers (duration, dmg, cooldown, etc ...) to adjust those.
By overboosting all abilities mechanics i mean, for example and not to be taken seriously, but just enough so you get what i'm thinking: - Give the Thor a really strong 250mm dmg cannon / 400 dmg in 2-3 sec, but with a long casting time and/or cool down - Give the sentry guardian shield a really higher ... shield bonus, like +5, but a higher mana cost, or reduced effect area - Give the infestor the ability to cast neural parasite while burrowed but again at a higher mana cost or infestor cost or whatever - etc ...
I think they need to make (ALL) unit abilities ... real abilities, strong abilities, key abilities, and not just little buff/toys. Try to imagine SC1 with vulture mines dealing 20 dmg to a single unit, lurker having a really small area of damages or reaver's scarab going straight ahead to the target to deal 30 dmg on 3 max units. This would be truly bad.
The problem is that Blizzard will never make those changes, they play safety and will play safety for one, two, maybe three years before they start taking some tiny risks.
On March 06 2011 16:17 suejak wrote: I dunno... I find the game fun to watch and play, and I think it's balanced. Virtually every unit sees use, and every match-up is unique and exciting.
Allow me to venture a guess: You are a Terran player, are you not?
You can already see people complaining about PvX being boring to spectate and repetitive in the recent GSL LR threads. And you know what, I play Protoss, and I mostly agree. And removing KA is obviously only going to make it worse.
On March 06 2011 17:30 suejak wrote: I guess I kinda get that you mean you don't like removing an upgrade altogether, but really, is "warp in HTs to storm immediately" *really* a strategy? I mean, strategies make use of the "numbers" to win games... and dramatically messing with those numbers is certainly adding and removing strategies as well.
But really, is warping in storm-capable HTs wherever you like *really* a strategy? Is removing that capability *really* "removing a strategy"??
It's a huge nerf to non-Colossus builds in PvX. They might still be viable, but I wouldn't be surprised if all Protosses basically opened with Colossus play in all matchups after this change goes live. So, yeah, it does remove a fair bit of strategic variety. No more Double Forge, and no more Immortal/Stalker/Templar in PvZ, most likely.
As a sidenote, it's hilarious how Idra and Artosis lobby for a Colossus nerf with their new show, citing Templar builds as possible alternatives, and the next thing Blizzard does is nerf Templar.
[B]On March 06 2011 18:36 Grumbels wrote: I played WC3 for ages, not competitively, but just because it was amusing to try different things and that was because Blizzard tried to keep most units and strategies at least a little bit valuable and to me this added a lot of depth to it as a casual to semi-competitive game. I'd hate for SCII to be some sort of annoying, hard, completely unforgiving game where you auto-lose if you make the tiniest mistake and play is more frustrating than fun. And at least, if that would actually be best for e-sports purposes, then add it as a special game mode, but I'd rather not have 2v2 and low level play utterly broken if the cost is a minor bit of strategic variety in 1v1 play.
This is actually interesting, because that IS how SC2 feels to me right now. Small mistake, battle lost, no comeback possibility, game over. I've lost PvZs because I looked away from my army/the minimap for ~2 seconds, after having played very well up to that point.
This is me being bad, of course, and I do deserve to lose. But it never really felt like that in BW. Sure, you could react slowly to a reaver behind your mineral line, or walk into a mine field like a total retard. However, even if you did fail, it just put you behind, and you had the possibility of making a comeback if you did something equally damaging, or just expanded and macroed really well.
In SC2, if I don't deny a Blue Flame Hellion drop really decisively, I lose 20+ probes and may as well leave. If I lose a big lategame battle, the opponent walks into my natural and the game is over. It's just really, really easy to lose, at any skill-level.
Huh...? I play zerg when I play at all -- and I watch sc2 farrrrrr more than I play. It's the only game I enjoy watching.
I wouldn't be surprised if all Protoss players opened colossus in every game after this goes live either, because people completely overreact to any change. People will open colossus and become predictable, leading to an overall weakening of protoss that people will blame on the amulet removal, and then protoss players will realize that templar are still useful and things will balance back out.
On March 06 2011 18:04 QuestSeekers wrote: Part of the problem is the philosophy that created the Immortal.
Immortals are very effective VS armored units because of their damage bonus. But they are boring. You have Thors, I have Immortals, I have the advantage. Micro does not play a large role in the Immortal's interaction with other units. It is simply strong or it isn't, and lets a-move and get it over with.
The Immortal is defined completely by its relationship with armored units. bleh.
The Lurker is not so one dimensional, the lurker's damage 'type' doesn't define it, its damage 'method' does. The lurker does 20 damage in a straight line it attacks while invisible (burrowed), which can be a down side when it comes to mobility. The Lurker has more depth because it relates to other units in a variety of ways.
A Battle should have the potential to swing with the dramatic flair! Ala the pop of a Reaver scarab, the drag of a mine, the guts of 10 marines who all died to 2 well placed lurker spines, and the list goes on. To be a good Esports game you have to have tension, drama, excitement!
in BW it wasn't just the 'right unit comp' it was using your units right that won you games (this is not to say sc2 doesn't require micro, just that the micro tends to be less important, or less dramatic when done well)
Powerful (potential to be hugely cost effective) multi-dimensional (relates to other units in a variety of interesting ways) units were a large part of what Brood War fun to watch, and fun to play. If Blizzard doesn't return to its roots, sc2 might be easy for a bronze leaguer to play without getting pwned by one unit, but it won't be the next Esports giant.
EDIT: To be fair, the Immortal has its shield, but again, that just makes it 'better' at standing and shooting another type; units that deal high damage and a slow firing rate... Which is something we as spectators see from a mile away (oh, the unit comp is in the Toss' favor), not something that may or may not happen during the battle that will swing the battle. (mine drags, etc).
The Immortal adds the possibility for the Protoss player to draw Siege Tank fire away from his army for a long enough time to crush through a position. 2 Siege Tanks on a cliff? Move a single Immortal into range of each one at the same time. The tanks won't change target from the Immortal until it dies unless told to shoot something else, meaning your ground army has a long, long time to take them out. That's possible micromanagement for both the Protoss and Terran player in a situation that most players would attack move. There's a ton of possibility for little nuances of micro in Starcraft 2, you just need to give time to let the game develop. I don't think it helps having effectively unlimited units per control group though, it just leads to 1a syndrome at all levels of play, hampering the development of micromanagement.
I agree the Immortal provides opportunities to micro. I am not arguing there is no micro in sc2. I do not think most of the micro options open to us in sc2 are as dramatic OR interesting as those in BW. That is not to say there are no examples of dramatic and powerful units in sc2.
I think Banelings are great, they are very dramatic and very effective, the burrow explode is dramatic, they are more powerful in a battle if you micro other units to keep the enemy from moving, creep helps them get to the enemy, etc.
I think the design philosophy of 'counter units' has resulted in units that relate to each other largely by their damage type (though there are exceptions), instead of relating to each other because of their interesting and powerful abilities.
I am thinking TvP, of mines and siege tanks, both of which would often do hugely more damage than they cost when used well (or they could do huge amounts of damage to their allies). Their abilities led to battles that could be very one sided depending on how the players engaged INSTEAD of depending on (largely) who built the 'right counter units' . Also, not that it is terribly relevant to your point, but the Immortal would take out those siege tanks well enough on its own, without the help of the other units.
idea: what if they made it so that high templar warped in by pylon have 75 energy (w/ khaydarin amulet researched of course)
but high templar warped in by warp prism receive 62 (or maybe even 50!) this would eliminate storm drops but still let protoss deal with terran drops because the main concern of protoss players if amulet is removed is that we wont be able to warp in DEFENSIVE high templar
Blizzard was completely OK with removing Terran cheese
Umm.. what??I dont really understand where that comes from. If you play as zerg on the ladder you will find Terran cheese every second game. just becuase they cant make a barracks before a supply depot doesn't mean they dont go 3 rax and pull all there scv's. I woud say they slightly toned down the power of Terran cheese, because i cry myself to sleep after watching 2 rax after 2 rax after 2 rax...
On March 07 2011 06:28 lilky wrote: idea: what if they made it so that high templar warped in by pylon have 75 energy (w/ khaydarin amulet researched of course)
but high templar warped in by warp prism receive 62 (or maybe even 50!) this would eliminate storm drops but still let protoss deal with terran drops because the main concern of protoss players if amulet is removed is that we wont be able to warp in DEFENSIVE high templar
Defensive high templar are what's broken about amulet. If anything, storm drops are nowhere near as devastating as blueflame hellions.
Yep it does worry me a bit, but not too much. The metagame has still been changing very rapidly and it will keep doing so, although it may slow down for a while.
You leave out and do not consider one important point; you assume that the states of SC1 and SC2 when they were first released were both states of "perfect" game design. However you can't assume this. If SC2 happened to have just been released with poorer design, then you pointing out that SC2 changed design more than SC1 did design doesn't really mean much.
I don't really see this as a problem; the game itself seems to have a lot more flaws than necessary when it was in beta and even after the release date there were a lot of bugs that absolutely needed to nerfed/buffed..
The problem with your entire post is that you seem to assume that SC2 should follow the same path as SC1 (i assume you are referring to BW, not SC1) .. As much as people refuse to acknowledge it - these are two completely different games, with severely different game designs.. This game is in it's infantile state; while these changes seem HUGE to us now, we need to be patient while Blizzard, who are in the best position to do so, work out the kinks in this game.
The current state of game really isn't as terrible as some people claim.. A lot of it is outrage based on racial bias.. So these changes may seem drastic; but we all just need to chill..
Blizzard was completely OK with removing Terran cheese
Umm.. what??I dont really understand where that comes from. If you play as zerg on the ladder you will find Terran cheese every second game. just becuase they cant make a barracks before a supply depot doesn't mean they dont go 3 rax and pull all there scv's. I woud say they slightly toned down the power of Terran cheese, because i cry myself to sleep after watching 2 rax after 2 rax after 2 rax...
That's not cheese. A lot of Zerg players have taken to calling all-in builds from other races "cheese", when it doesn't really fit the definition. Proxy reapers or 6pool are cheese, but there's nothing cheesy about 2 rax - it's just a strong, flexible opening that can transition into an expansion or an all-in with scvs. Calling it cheese, or calling 4gate cheese, makes about as much sense as calling a 10 pool into baneling nest in ZvZ cheese.
The fact that you don't like a particular all-in, does NOT make it cheese.
On March 05 2011 21:31 arbitrageur wrote: I disagree with the spirit and theme of the OP. If they perceive an imbalance, what's so bad about making favourable changes to the metagame as a side consequence of balancing it. 5 rax reaper? Lol.
If the reapers were never changed, there may have been a period of some weeks where Terrans dominated Zerg with the 5 rax reaper.
Then someone would have inevitably come along with a strategy that completely denied it without being bad against any other Terran build too. And it would have evolved the metagame again.
BW wasn't a "perfect" game either. Just because something is statistically balanced doesn't mean much. Rock, Paper, Scissors is perfectly balanced but there's not enough depth and room for skill for it to be interesting.
The people that did the graphics, the programming, the art design; they deserve tons of credit. Compared to them I don't think the Blizzard game designers really deserve much credit and this ultimately comes down to Dustin.
They had the chance to improve and perfect a fantastic game and right from the start they made bad decisions like the removal of the reaver... why remove one of the most exciting units? Then they made roaches, marauders, banshees, thors. All units that go against what made Starcraft so exciting; lots of fragile units and real finesse. It's the streams of cheap units running across the map in TvZ that makes it so exciting. One mistake and the whole army will die.
Having said that they made some great decisions too. Such as banelings, warp-in, blink stalkers. And they've made some good patching decisions too, such as Thor AOE. In the end they'll get it right but not as quickly as I think you would expect from a budget of this magnitude. If the original BW designers had made SC2 I feel like it would be have been a much more polished game.
I just hope they bring back Bill Roper to HotS. His magic was what made BW the best game ever made to play and spectate.
For me Protoss is near unwatchable at the moment; Collossus, Immortal, Voidray, auto-shooting Pheonix are so badly designed from a spectator point of view that I do not understand how they were left in the game in alpha. They lack the micro-bility that made me sit in awe watching a pro handle reaver-shuttle-zealot-carpet storms-dragoon micro.
Yeah the biggest downside of this game i think is the REAL micro that is not here anymore , i mean i was inlove of the game just because of the micro battles , here we have no insane marine vs lurkers / reavers vs everything , the true muta micro(remember jaedong control 2 groups of mutas or july insane micro) the multipe irradiate , the templar drops from shuttles and storms , the wraith micro , vulture micro , corsair micro vs scourges , zelot bombs and the list can go on and on ... well the game had a lot of time and they apeard but in sc2 i don't really see them they are so few it's ....marine vs banelings and .... that's all i think that requires good micro ( banshee micro is crap , vikings vs other fleet is ... , void ray micro .... phonix micro ... most of them are just move back and shoot a 5 year old can do a good job with those if told what to do exactly ).
2'nd the big battles i mean what's cooler ? a deathball vs a deathball and ppl push buttons and attack or half a map vs half a map that engages on all sides and ofc attack move but i think it's cooler to see smaller mini balls engageing then 1 big decisive battle . The moment you took an expansion and you could place 2-3 lurkers + 1 defiler and defend it for a decent amout of time , place 4-5 cannons , 1 reaver , 2 templars and the enemy z would sacrifice a lot for it, when you placed mines a wall with 2 supply depots and 4 tanks and the protoss could lose a lot of army in exchange for that expo , now a guy is at your expo you invest those money in defense he has a very cost effective way to take it out unless you bring your ball and engage him. BW will always shine in my heart as the most exciteing and wonderfull pc game i have ever played until 00:48 march 14 2011 server time it seems :D never know what the future brings :D
Having just watched some much older games of BW for another project, I thought I'd throw in my two cents.
Four years after release, pros were still sometimes using (almost pure) hydra against m&m. This shocked me - even as a very casual Protoss player I've learned this doesn't work well. But micro standards were lower, m&m composition (and production) wasn't as refined, and so you could sort of get away with it - how bad it was wasn't yet apparent. Besides, island maps were still common, and lurkers can't shoot down dropships.
Back to today: SC:BW taught the world to macro and micro, so SC2 is starting out with a huge lead in the "basics of the strategy game" department. But what can't be carried over entirely is that development stage. You could make a serious argument that game balance wasn't finished until 2007 with Protoss forge FE (or 2008 with the Flash anti-carrier build, or...), and that "balance" is still easy to disrupt with new maps (Battle Royale? Central Plains?), new builds and tweaks are still coming out - it's entirely possible (if very unlikely) that some B-team practice partner wakes up tomorrow and tries something dumb that "breaks the game" for at least a couple weeks. It's hard to see how... but still.
Even if it only takes 3 or 4 years to work things out instead of 8 or 9, things need to be left alone at some point.
Counterpoint: the problem is that with increased base skill of players, potential imbalances that haven't had a solution found yet have the potential to wreck tournaments. Take 5 rax reaper - you let that build sit around for a while, somebody finds a counter eventually (probably); but when you compare it to early BW nobody was even building 5 raxes. On the other hand, nerfs/buffs are equally dangerous - I know BW better, so I'll put it like this: if, in today's metagame, Blizzard dropped in a patch that gave storm 180 damage (instead of 112), I'd lay about 95% odds a Protoss wins a title in this next season.
The tl;dr version: honestly if Blizzard wanted a balanced enough game for serious tourney play on release, beta should have lasted a couple years. SC2 in it's natural (developing) state can't compete with BW for balance, and if it gets over-"balanced" now it will break later. But that's okay - SC3!
On March 06 2011 12:40 randplaty wrote: BW was a much less ambitious project. BW had "core" units that did decently well against all units. Terran had goliaths and marines. Zerg had hydras and Toss had goons.
SC2 introduced bonuses for "armored" or "light." In a sense Blizzard introduced more imbalance in the specific units in order to create a more dynamic game. There are a lot more hard counters. Every unit has a hard counter. This is VERY different from BW. Hydras are owned by collossus. Stalkers are owned by marauders. This just did not happen to hydras and goonz in BW.
Blizzard refuses to nerf or buff any of the core units in SC2... so these huge imbalances exist. The marine, hydra, and stalker will not receive any changes because they're afraid that small changes to these units will completely change the game... which might be true. The problem is that there are huge imbalances within these core units which are causing the imbalances in the game. Because Blizzard is too scared to balance the core units, they are using peripheral changes to peripheral units and upgrades in order to balance the game. This may or may not work. We will see.
Examples: Blizzard refuses to change the Stalker when it's clearly the problem with the PvT matchup.... so they have to do drastic changes to Khaydarian Amulet and Stim.
Blizzard refuses to change the marine when it's clearly the problem with TvZ... and therefore they have to do bunker changes and infestor changes.
I think that the game is fairly balanced to some point. I still think that zerg needs some more tweaking and I agree the blizz should go about doing this by tweaking stats and making things more powerful for the counter, rather than nerfing things into oblivion (ex. 4 roach range instead of what changed 5 rax reaper). I also dont like how alot of the units now are simply move and shoot types of units (collosus, roach, etc) and all the units that are "interesting" seem to be getting nerfed into oblivion as well by removing things.
However there are 2 expansions to go so I have faith that things will be balanced out with the new units they will be adding during them. Blizz still has roughly a year as I recall to balance out WoL before they have to deal with HoTS balance so I think thats ample time.
I remember seeing a post during or shortly after beta of SCII about the removal of "mobile static defense" and it made a lot of good quality sense.
Personally, as someone who has tried again and again to get "into" SC II, I see this.
SC II is not Brood War at all, it is an entirely different game. Because of the inclusion of these various bonus damage types, the seemingly much faster intake of minerals, and a slew of other things it's got to be balanced like a different game. I still think the way BW was balanced was not always perfect and to this day, all BW players would like to see even a few blips come in (Scouts anyone?)
But, all that comes down to something I noticed and that was very eerie. The units in SC II seemed designed from a gameplay first, story second standpoint. In Brood War, I can conceive and imagine all the ideas going on very well. They make sense. I can understand why a future human army would be equipped the way it was, the way they could invent something like a vulture, and so on. Protoss units fit exactly as I would imagine, down to the alien cloaking fields, shields, and the unique units that seemed totally foreign and high tech. The Zerg as well are shown to be very flavorful and stylized. It almost felt like to me, the creators just took a DnD or tabletop game story they had and came up with the idea to make a game out of it one day. I play DnD, I talk about making games out of campaigns all the times with my friends.
In SCII, why did the zerg abandon evolution and drop the lurker?Aside from gameplay balances, because that could have been patched, which they seem more than happy to shove out every week. Why did the terran go from a hover bike with hidden mines to a dune buggy? The fact is, they were the top dogs pretty much at the end of BW. They should have only upgraded. Instead, I get a "rural and rugged" theme coming now. I don't understand why the Protoss would ever design anything like the phoenix. An AtA unit that lifts stuff, why wouldn't is just shoot the ground too? Why...a fast, mobile unit that does small damage but fast attack speed to both g and a? Sounds like...a scout! The whole zerg race now feels clunky to me and looks more so, I just can't understand why scourge would be abandoned, infestors...like, at all. Why the queen needed legs? Why the defiler, of all units, was removed. It feels like the races were homogenized a little, spreading the uniqueness that made BW so special a little thin
I like some of the game, a lot actually. Some cool ideas. More lame ones, and it showed in the early stages. No LAN, Map pools looked like garbage and Xel Nagas and Rocks in every map, the whole submission system, facebook jank, etc.
It just feels...forced. It feels like unit roles and what the development team thinks we should be doing is playing a much more integral part of this than just the desire and passion to create a GREAT game and letting the natural beauty of the game attract and develop it's base.
The problem is very simple: In Blizzard's attempt to 'one-up' SC1, they introduced non-cast unit capabilities which are generally far more dramatic than in SC1. Units like collosus, the banaling, hellion, thor, planetary fortress, cloak banchees, etc. These units project ridiculous damage and the gameplay mechanics associated with defense and offense with these types of units are much less important than the very fact that you 'have' the units.
These units might be super cool looking and watch compared to SC1 units, but it makes for gameplay that does not complement skill nearly as much as unit compositions which require more mechanical prowess.
An obvious symptom of this change is that tweaks to unit mechanics/stats will be more dramatic.
On March 14 2011 03:13 Hypatio wrote: The problem is very simple: In Blizzard's attempt to 'one-up' SC1, they introduced non-cast unit capabilities which are generally far more dramatic than in SC1. Units like collosus, the banaling, hellion, thor, planetary fortress, cloak banchees, etc. These units project ridiculous damage and the gameplay mechanics associated with defense and offense with these types of units are much less important than the very fact that you 'have' the units.
These units might be super cool looking and watch compared to SC1 units, but it makes for gameplay that does not complement skill nearly as much as unit compositions which require more mechanical prowess.
An obvious symptom of this change is that tweaks to unit mechanics/stats will be more dramatic.
On March 06 2011 12:40 randplaty wrote: BW was a much less ambitious project. BW had "core" units that did decently well against all units. Terran had goliaths and marines. Zerg had hydras and Toss had goons.
SC2 introduced bonuses for "armored" or "light." In a sense Blizzard introduced more imbalance in the specific units in order to create a more dynamic game. There are a lot more hard counters. Every unit has a hard counter. This is VERY different from BW. Hydras are owned by collossus. Stalkers are owned by marauders. This just did not happen to hydras and goonz in BW.
Blizzard refuses to nerf or buff any of the core units in SC2... so these huge imbalances exist. The marine, hydra, and stalker will not receive any changes because they're afraid that small changes to these units will completely change the game... which might be true. The problem is that there are huge imbalances within these core units which are causing the imbalances in the game. Because Blizzard is too scared to balance the core units, they are using peripheral changes to peripheral units and upgrades in order to balance the game. This may or may not work. We will see.
Examples: Blizzard refuses to change the Stalker when it's clearly the problem with the PvT matchup.... so they have to do drastic changes to Khaydarian Amulet and Stim.
Blizzard refuses to change the marine when it's clearly the problem with TvZ... and therefore they have to do bunker changes and infestor changes.
Great post, sums most of my thoughts. Thank you.
Knowing that SC2 core units/mechanics need significal changes, and that Blizzard won't take the risk to do what is needed, I'm really not confident about the future of SC2, at least for a year or two.
People are complaining too much about how bad the state of the game is with all the drastic patch changes and how "limiting" these changes are making gameplay. But has no one else thought that these changes ARE making the game better? Look at the pro matches and see how much more leaner builds are now compared to a few months ago, how much more varied similar strats can be implemented, etc. Deathball vs deathball pushes are becoming less common in favor of multiple smaller battles across the map (unless it's pvp ). Of course this has a lot to do with amount of time passed in order to understand the nuances of the game, but too many people are crying about how each patch takes the game a step back when the game is actually evolving forward. Until gameplay actually takes a step backwards I don't think qq-ing about patch changes is a productive way to use up my time.
BTW, while SC2 did individualize the damage system more than BW, it's not true to say that damage type ("bonuses") are a new idea. Brood War units all got a size classification (small, medium, large) that had nothing to do with actual size and each attack was classified (regular, explosive, concussive) with percentage penalties on attacks vs. these certain unit sizes.
It could be an interesting argument whether the semantic change (from penalties to bonuses) actually a) influenced development of SC2 or b) plays a big role in actual strategy (as opposed to whine). It would also be interesting to see whether the "bonus" system results in dps being a higher % of total unit HP then BW's penalties, but unless it's a significant difference (say 5%+ across the board) then it's going to depend so much on builds it's not actually a useful measure.
And in theory I'm all in favor of individualizing penalties/bonuses. While it simplified theory-crafting in BW, it's kind of silly (when you think about it) that a firebat and vulture have the same "kind of attack" damage penalties - never mind things like the sunken's explosive (!) attack.
I agree with the OP. Though I never got into BW competitively, I've read some stuff on it and really like how Blizzard got even the most overpowered abilities to fit by making the other races have their own answers. The current trend they've adopted of seeing a problem and then removing it is leading StarCraft 2 to become one dimensional.
On March 14 2011 02:52 woofwoof wrote: you people saying SC1 was balanced from the get go obviously never played the game.
Everyone who says SC1 was unbalanced just sucks at the game.
Anyways back on topic.
I think the problem here is that blizzard is focusing to make the game too "balanced" for its own good. I don't think this is bad IMO. But what annoys me is that they remove certain tech even the game is already out of beta.
I think blizzard is probably aware of how their changes effect the game. Though eliminating upgrades and such may eliminate some strategies blizzard knows what theyre doing, and i think that blizzard wants esports to grow as much as we do since that means more people buying their games, so i doubt they would implement changes that would make sc2 less viable as an esport.
On March 06 2011 12:40 randplaty wrote: BW was a much less ambitious project. BW had "core" units that did decently well against all units. Terran had goliaths and marines. Zerg had hydras and Toss had goons.
SC2 introduced bonuses for "armored" or "light." In a sense Blizzard introduced more imbalance in the specific units in order to create a more dynamic game. There are a lot more hard counters. Every unit has a hard counter. This is VERY different from BW. Hydras are owned by collossus. Stalkers are owned by marauders. This just did not happen to hydras and goonz in BW.
Blizzard refuses to nerf or buff any of the core units in SC2... so these huge imbalances exist. The marine, hydra, and stalker will not receive any changes because they're afraid that small changes to these units will completely change the game... which might be true. The problem is that there are huge imbalances within these core units which are causing the imbalances in the game. Because Blizzard is too scared to balance the core units, they are using peripheral changes to peripheral units and upgrades in order to balance the game. This may or may not work. We will see.
Examples: Blizzard refuses to change the Stalker when it's clearly the problem with the PvT matchup.... so they have to do drastic changes to Khaydarian Amulet and Stim.
Blizzard refuses to change the marine when it's clearly the problem with TvZ... and therefore they have to do bunker changes and infestor changes.
You know Goliaths don't do a full 20 damage to Mutas right... And you also know that Hydras don't do a full 10 vs Marines right... keke.
The reason reapers were nerfed is because reaper/ling 2s were dominating the 2s scene. It was literally impossible for comps like P/P to beat this. I do not have a source I think it was in an interview.
You don't really believe they nerfed reapers because of 2v2 do you?
Morrow (before switching to zerg) popularized a brainless 5rax reaper into marine/marauder that was literally impossible for zerg to stop.
Actually, the reaper build time nerf was more than enough to make mass reaper beatable. But additionally to that blizzard did the reaper speed change, which was explicitally because of 2on2.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://media.skateboard.com.au/forum/images/my_hair_is_a_bird-257x300.jpg)
). Of course this has a lot to do with amount of time passed in order to understand the nuances of the game, but too many people are crying about how each patch takes the game a step back when the game is actually evolving forward. Until gameplay actually takes a step backwards I don't think qq-ing about patch changes is a productive way to use up my time. 
