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On March 13 2011 23:22 IdrA wrote:
not true at all that youll only get info on the current metagame
some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds, and theyre just now starting to see use and success
that's true. I think HT/Immortal is even better than Colossi etc.
http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors2/vod/61939 third game on shakuras.
Zerg just can't kill this...
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+ Show Spoiler +. Let's address the easiest and least interesting to understand first: bias. This is fairly simple. Players are biased in favor for their own race.
I think most pros are actually biased towards playing a fair game, not tilting balance in their favor. Notice how many pros were terran during the beta and they still managed to nerf 5 rax reaper for example. Despite the QQ in the community and the way we like to bash a lot of pro gamer images, both the pro community and blizzard are looking for a balanced game that gives all players the proper chance of success. You can't just say because pros pick a race, they think their race should by virtue of being the race they like, win 90% of the time.
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On March 14 2011 01:39 supersoft wrote:Show nested quote +On March 13 2011 23:22 IdrA wrote:
not true at all that youll only get info on the current metagame
some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds, and theyre just now starting to see use and success that's true. I think HT/Immortal is even better than Colossi etc. http://www.gomtv.net/2011gslsponsors2/vod/61939 third game on shakuras. Zerg just can't kill this...
Yeah, that game is of course proof that the composition is overpowered.
It wasn't the zerg that totally screwed up and basically threw the game into huks face.
Even if immortal / ht compositions are "overpowered" , i fail to see why you should nerf this, and not instead buff the units / options of the other races.
I think no zerg would complain about ht / immortal if they get a good hydra, a fast, low cost, medium damage, 1 supply swarmy unit instead of the 2 supply expensive damage dealer.
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I agree with some of the guys that said blizzard makes balance patches too often.
They should leave people play a bit more before patching just like we did in BW.
I mean people thought 5 hatch hydras were imba, but protoss players have found a way to deal with this build order.
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The thing is the community act like it knew exactly what the game needs, what unit should be nerfed, etc, to make the game better.
But I think the obvious changes are not what can make the game the best. And in general, we see that the community seek changes that would make the game more reminescent of BW. (bring back lurkers, bring back goliath, bring back the mines, larger macro maps just like in BW, no destructible rocks).
So the community thinks that the game can be fixed by using strategies that were used successfully in the past. What if the game can get better by adding/fixing things that no one even tought about ? That only a experienced creative game designer could come up with ?
Of course that is always contreversial, usually the changes that no one tought about get heavily criticized and denied by the community. Take a look a the old patch notes, the most criticized changes are usually those which probably did the best to the game.
So my point is that we should stop pretending that the community knows better than Blizzard how the make this game good, because the community has many preconceived ideas about how SC2 should be.
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Just because you play an individual race doesn't mean your feedback will be biased in favour of such a race. Do you not think feedback is obtained from more than one player playing one race? Do you not think it natural that a Terran player will voice concerns for Terran game play, and so on and so forth? There is no good reason to suspect bias in advice given; as I'm sure feedback is obtained from multiple players playing multiple races.
I agree that patches should be rolled out more slowly and carefully. Ignore the whining kids and be patient I say.
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On March 14 2011 01:50 SecondChance wrote:
Just because you play an individual race doesn't mean your feedback will be biased in favour of such a race. Do you not think feedback is obtained from more than one player playing one race? Do you not think it natural that a Terran player will voice concerns for Terran game play, and so on and so forth? There is no good reason to suspect bias in advice given; as I'm sure feedback is obtained from multiple players playing multiple races.
I agree that patches should be rolled out more slowly and carefully. Ignore the whining kids and be patient I say.
I hate your ID cause I play black ops in spare time. But this argument is quite on the point.
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That is indeed an amazing post. I hope this gets spotlighted.
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well my view of vortex. Taking a nice position preparing to destroy everything that comes out of the vortex, pretty awesome.
Have archons move into the vortex and move along, and just see a 0.1 second long fight, pretty boring.
Trying to save your whole army in an vortex still is a death sentence, but now it looks more awesome and the opponent can't destroy your base while you are at 200 supply waiting to die to 5 archons. (but yet again this is another good sort out change, people that post they want a harder game and complain about this change = troll)
And yeah immortal ht is the way to go, in pvz ^^ but a good zerg would go old school so he can micro his hydras better and dodge storm. But they are used to roaches that don't have to dodge it, but with immortals they are one shot afterwards hehe.
about the biased pro thing, it can happen that the pro scene considers something imbalanced, and alot of people stop any effort into this direction (see the mass reaper thing or the thor drop on lt). I don't know if there was some effort put into contering it (as i don't think pros normaly try out new stuff in public), but on streams or tournaments, i rarely saw anything special against those strats.
But anyway before it was oh cool some new pro strat lets look for ways to beat it and spread the word, and now it is oh new cool strat lets wait till its nerfed.
PS: stop wanting to change my cute hydra it is so lovely the way it is ;(
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On March 14 2011 01:50 SecondChance wrote:
Just because you play an individual race doesn't mean your feedback will be biased in favour of such a race.
Do you not think it natural that a Terran player will voice concerns for Terran game play, and so on and so forth?
You refuted his point and then backed it up 2 lines later :|
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I like your post but I find your choice of using SanZenith as an example to defend Khaydarin Amulet a bit odd. occasionally people would warp prism HTs in the late game and storm a mineral line, but you still had to get the prism in place, and then get it out in time. My point being, instant on demand defensive storms are exactly what they were trying to get rid of when they nerfed it, at least when I read the patch notes weeks before the aforementioned game it is what came to mind for me. in an offensive push the HT will have had to be warped in ahead of time and moved up into battle unless you have a hidden pylon or a prism, both of which are already your opponents mistake that should give you an advantage.
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I still think almost every problem in SC2 can be traced back to bad decisions in the concept stage. "I have this cool idea for a new unit/mechanic! Let's throw it in the alpha/beta and tweak the numbers to make it balanced!" just doesn't make for a good foundation for a competitive game. Say hello to Colossus, Void Ray, Reaper, Sentry, the macro mechanics, and so forth.
The reason they have to remove things now, is because they've added a bunch of volatile units into the game for the "cool factor", and didn't foresee players taking advantage of their bad design.
On March 14 2011 00:30 Kazang wrote:+ Show Spoiler +Removing KA does not remove gameplay.
This and your previous thread have been centralized around this supposed issue. While you line of thinking is not "wrong" as such, it is not in line with what the design of the game is and you are looking at from the wrong perspective.
KA is mechanic that stagnates, that causes over reliance on a mechanic (warpgates) instead of using a more varied array of styles and more interesting strategies than just warp-in -> storm.
KA is not being removed because it is not balanced (although it can be argued that it is unbalanced, that is not the issue here) who was complaining about it before this? What pros thought it was grievously imbalanced? I would wager there weren't very many who thought KA was the reason they find it difficult to beat Protoss.
The KA change, and in fact the "Design" of the game is centred around being fun, entertaining and skilful.
Warp-in storm is just a dumb mechanic, dumb as in stupid, not clever. There is no thought, no planing, no strategy, no tension, no skill factor.
Where are the intrinsic unit tensions between Ghost and Templar if they are never on the field with enough energy to storm for more than 5 seconds? Where is the multipronged drop harass and skirmished based play if Drops and small attacks that take planning, time and resources to execute are stopped dead by instant warp in?
Ling run-bys? The Muta harass? Infestor harass (although HT can still feedback on warp in)?
All severely hindered by KA.
KA actually reduces the number of viable strategies and tactics that the game can offer, not the other way around.
HT on the other hand do not need to have instant storm on warp in to be viable.
Another example of this similar effect of a nerf making more strategies viable not less.
Bunker build time:
What pro, or indeed who at all is complaining the bunker builds to fast? Quite a few pros have been quite vocal about being annoyed that blizzard is in their opinion wasting their time making tiny changes such as those to the bunker.
The issue is not balance, it's more likely that bunker rushes can too easily end a game and result in that repetitive stagnation that you are keen to avoid. Bunker rushes are so good that they are pretty much always worth doing against zerg. Example July Vs Nada, Nada Bunker rushes every game.
Bunker rushes are not grievously imbalanced, but they are probably too easy and too effective for the cost/risk, making them almost mandatory, like getting siege mode for tanks, it's not overpowered it's just such a good upgrade that it is required if you want to use tanks.
A similar parallel can be drawn with the bunker, but while siege mode increases strategic variety, fast, low risk bunkers reduce it by deciding games very quickly or by simply resulting in dull and repetitive strategy.
TLDR You are not wrong, but you are looking at the "issue" from the wrong perspective, even assuming there is an "issue" in the first place negatively colours your thoughts.
Most changes are not directly related to the mythical creature "balance" but how the game actually plays.
Absolutely disagree. At the very least, removing KA does limit Protoss gameplay. If this were BW Protoss, you'd be correct, but SC2 Protoss is such an unbalanced mess, that all this is going to accomplish is shoehorn everyone into Colossus play.
IF the KA removal had been accompanied by a Colossus nerf, and a bunch of buffs to other units, we would probably see some more innovative gameplay. Or even, merge the dark shrine back with templar archive while removing KA, that would be an interesting change.
I can sort of sympathize with the notion that HTs with KA were too good of an anti-harassment unit. And I would wholeheartedly support anything that made harassment better, if it had been relatively equally distributed among the different races. As of now, Terrans have a million different harassment options, most of them fairly easy to utilize; Zerg have some options, but they're either very situational (runbys), or a huge strategy-defining commitment (mutalisks); Protoss have DTs and Phoenix, both of which are expensive and situational.
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I think the way blizzard makes changes is not allways right. more buffing underused units, less nerfing stuff (and taking out strategies) should be the way to go. this way you change the metagame because people start using buffed units and experiment with them... if they seem to become too strong with new tactics, you can still nerf but at least people start to explore the game, instead of being forced into a streamlined metagame. there are cases where you have too nerf though. all in all blizzard should slow down the balancing/patching process and complete the introduction of the larger maps (like the gsl ones) on ladder to get more data.
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It`s true that pros have to find solution instead of waiting for changes, but at the same time, there is real issues concerning the balance of the game. Most of the army compositions have a solution. The void ray-collossus ball is not invincible, but it did appeared to be.
Even if there is a solution to every problem, it doesnt mean that, for example, the Collossus doesn`t need to be nerfed. Its not because of July`s style that render marines abit weak, that it doesnt mean marines needs to be nerfed.
Yes, Brood War isnt balanced per say, and it forced the players to find better solution, but right now, for example, there`s no sollution to Mechs or even the Bisu build. Blizzard isnt patching BW anymore, its interesting to note.
But i absolutly disagree that we shouldnt listen to pro, or even semi pro`s opinions. They make the shifts in the metagame. They know a little better.
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Interesting read. Balancing a game like starcraft is tricky business because it's difficult to tell where to stop the game balancing and let map balancing/meta game take over. However, you neglected to mention that in bw, pvz shifted back to the zerg's favor when they started sniping hts with mutas (though i dont know what's the current state).
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Nice read... i like some views.
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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 spectators. 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.
I know relatively little about BW. I absolutely suck at BW multiplayer. However, out of curiosity I went to check out Day9's earlyer dailies about BW and it was really fun to look at. BW games are just really fun to watch even though I know little about the game.SC2 games are really quite boring to watch, I only watch them to learn from them. SC2 is a fun game, but it isn't quite e-sport material imo.
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The only real mistake they're making is removal of KA. They should nerf Collossus instead.
...and the KA thing isnt even for sure yet.
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On March 14 2011 01:40 Stropheum wrote:+ Show Spoiler +. Let's address the easiest and least interesting to understand first: bias. This is fairly simple. Players are biased in favor for their own race.
I think most pros are actually biased towards playing a fair game, not tilting balance in their favor. Notice how many pros were terran during the beta and they still managed to nerf 5 rax reaper for example. Despite the QQ in the community and the way we like to bash a lot of pro gamer images, both the pro community and blizzard are looking for a balanced game that gives all players the proper chance of success. You can't just say because pros pick a race, they think their race should by virtue of being the race they like, win 90% of the time.
The reason pros are biased isn't because they want their race to be stronger; it's because they understand their own race so much better than they understand the other races. No one is saying pros have bad intentions when suggesting their ideas.
I'm not saying all suggestions by pros are bad either. I think for the most part they are good. But obviously a pro isn't going to seriously suggest stuff for other races, because they just don't understand them as well.
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It's not a matter of Blizzard balancing the game too often, it's that they are trying to balance the game by limiting the options you have, which makes the game very dull to play and watch.
Instead of saying what can we nerf to make the MU balanced, they should be saying what can we buff?
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EPT
