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The huge ball mechanics of SC2 kind of kill a lot of it I think. It feels like, watching battles in BW, that fights were way more dynamic and exciting. You had far sicker micro it seems (omg rine splits against blings! vs. rotating rines against lurkers). Now a lot of the game is just big, tightly packed balls, that make melee suck and put so much of winning on AOE. The fighting just seems clunkier and more boring.
Besides that though, blizzard should be buffing, not nerfing. And they often take things to an extreme (when they first nerfed the roach, when reaper went bye, etc.). Also notice that zerg doesn't have any of the seemingly "overpowered" units; except maybe banelings en masse or through drops. Even then, you compare it to bio, HT, tanks, etc. the only thing zerg has is spammability/large numbers...which it should.
Meanwhile, they are overnerfing templar. If they instead it made it 63 energy for HT, they could add a huge tension aspect to the game. The audience sees a drop coming "Oh no!" Templar slowly warps in, slowly gathers energy. The drop makes it in, starts shooting stuff, the templar's energy slowly ticks up and up....till it hits 75. Instead, they chose instead of "oh herp derp warp in templar storm instantly" to say "herp derp drop warp in templar does absolutely nothing drop does huge damage".
Blizzard just sometimes has very questionable ideas on balance and design.
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Mainly from a Terran perspective I think Pro input sucks because pretty much all Terrans are marine marauder fanatics and Terran is basically being balanced on how good MMM with occasional support handles in the late game.
A ton of my posts are about promoting Mech but I also don't want Mech only Terran I like variation and especially love watching bio vs Zerg but I think entertainment wise seeing a Metal Terran vs Terran
or Terran vs Protoss just gets super exciting to me. But I also don't want MMM to die completely I just hate seeing it be more potent than Higher Teched Terran units.
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You can't say that; sure Zergs were having a hard time dealing with siege tanks and reaper rushes but you could also say that these styles were being figured out rapidly just before they got neutered. Point being that no-one ever got the chance or the inclinination to explore the game as it was, since whining and leaning back was a much more effective way of dealing with it.
You could say that it was being figured out, but were you right? Are you certain that it would have been "figured out" at all?
See, it's easy to look at something like a 50-damage Marine and call that imbalanced. It's much harder to say that a 7-damage Marine instead of 6 would be imbalanced. Or a 5-damage one instead of 6.
Sure, people might come up with a way to deal with it. Then again, they might not. Or it might take years, during which time people will leave the game in droves due to the "obvious" imbalance. Or people might leave a race. Or whatever.
StarCraft 2 is a young game; unlike SC1, it's future is not ensured. Any appearance of imbalance, particularly in its early days, will be seen as a legitimate reason to drop the game like a bad habit. When SC2 gets a few years under its belt, then we can talk about letting the community "find a way" to deal with something. Until then, any appearance of imbalance must be rectified.
Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
I don't see the problem. It is the nature of the Zerg, even in SC1. If the enemy doesn't get air units, you won't see Scourge. There's a reason that Scourge and Corruptors come from the Spire, which gives the Zerg access to Mutalisks as well. Namely, Zerg are probably going to get Mutas, so give them some anti-air at the same time.
But I also don't want MMM to die completely I just hate seeing it be more potent than Higher Teched Terran units.
What you want is impossible. Because if MMM is not as good as "Higher Teched Terran units," then they will not be used.
The only reason M&M were used against Zerg in SC1 is because Zerg didn't have as good AoE as Protoss or Terrans. STs murdered M&M by the dozens, and a single Reaver could slaughter M&M with ease (not to mention Storm). Lurkers were effective against M&M, but not nearly as much as STs or Reavers. The M&M could at least shoot back before dying, though they needed detection to do so.
Personally, I'm tired of Terran Mech. I would have been happy to see the Siege Tank go away entirely, but Blizzard wouldn't do that. Seeing MMM work better than Mech in a lot of cases is a good thing to me.
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It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
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SC2 is hella boring right now. They should make more things viable instead of remove options for each race. Its sad how overpowered some units are on a cost/value basis and how that combined with a lot of techs being so slow in relation to other things makes entire unit compositions or a lot of more aggressive possibilities totally irrelevant in competitive play.
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On March 14 2011 03:41 BanelingXD wrote:
It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
SC2 design philosophy is implied by the success of SC1. Their goal was to create a similar experience, but improve upon many of the shortcomings of the original game. They've done that. SC2 is an awesome game, and imo, overall better than SC1. Obviously thats my personal point of view, but I think overall blizz has done a great job... created a good game... and I agree with the OP that Blizzard should be a little more patient with the changes.
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cuz pros don't get their ramp bunkered
User was temp banned for this post.
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On March 14 2011 03:41 BanelingXD wrote:
It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
Browder did a better job than you or anyone that slanders him could even dream of doing. Being head of the biggest release in RTS history comes with its challenges and he handled them better than anyone could have. As for the balance of the game, things seem pretty good to me, not perfect, but taking the GSL into account, the games we see there are enjoyable and the currently the most mechanically sound players are winning. You can't ask for much more than that.
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The only problem is that they allowed ball mechanics because of the unit abilities involved. In SC1 ball mechanics were gone because a good dark swarm means you can run right in and destroy it, a reaver scarab could kill 20000 units, and tanks just killed everything. In SC2 they nerfed the tanks, put collosi/templar in instead, and gave no anti-ball to Zerg (except maybe BLs). Well, now late game TvP is kinda going in the same direction, but there is no reason not to just ball up vs Zerg because there is no way for them to have an advantage from you doing so.
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As someone who played at the highest levels in Age of Empires III I can attest that instant use abilities/building units will ruin the game as it did in AoE III. I am glad they got rid of KA not because it isn't balanced (I believe it to be balanced), but because the mechanic takes no thought and allows you to defend positions without any thought. It essentially takes a lot of skill out of the game.
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On March 14 2011 01:23 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 01:16 Dommk wrote:On March 14 2011 00:12 IdrA wrote:On March 13 2011 23:22 Dommk wrote:Dayvi was talking to HuK on his stream and said something along the lines of "every pro thinks their race is the weakest race, I think that is a sign that we are doing a good job with balance" Kind of is really some z's have been saying since the beta that immortal ht compositions are just as overpowered pvz as collosus builds And same T's have been saying that the only way they can beat Zerg is by doing lame shit like Bunker rushing to block early hatcheries, or 2rax, but that isn't exactly the case either. results back one up and not the other Don't see any results for Immo/Templar being overpowered. Even then, the style is only now picking up again, how many months did people think Roaches were overpowered after the range buff? It took quite a long time to realize that range 4 roaches weren't anything special. Why are people saying things like this? You have no experience with it so you think you can judge it? I don't understand this logic, because you seem to be admitting that you don't know what you're talking about. People are starting to use it because of how impenetrable it is. I don't know if that will remain after the KA removal though... That last statement is a little weird considering how mass roach is pretty much the grand ol' strategy vs. toss right now...
Really? What do you have to back this claim? I haven't even seen a single lick of QQ about immortal Templar being overpowered till now. When the Roach change happened, Immortal Templar was THE build to go and no one even complained, but all of a sudden it is "impenetrable"? Aside from Idra saying it is just as good as Colossus builds, I have never seen anyone else even suggest that it is even remotely overpowered...
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Players are biased in favor for their own race.
good players know what works for them, what seems to be both easy and difficult to deal with. there are plenty of players of all races.
you only get data that affects the current metagame... As good as pros are, they arent good enough to predict all the specific strategies that appear in the future.
okay, no one can predict the future though? if anyone will be able to predict that unconventional unit compositions are actually overpowered it's going to be professional players who spend 8 hr/day trying to push the game to its limits. the only consequence of this observation is that changes should be done cautiously, which, as you note, has been the case.
dynamic blah blah blah competitive community sux
and here people were complaining blizzard was catering to the casuals too much...
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On March 14 2011 03:50 Jayrod wrote:
SC2 design philosophy is implied by the success of SC1. Their goal was to create a similar experience, but improve upon many of the shortcomings of the original game. They've done that. SC2 is an awesome game, and imo, overall better than SC1. Obviously thats my personal point of view, but I think overall blizz has done a great job... created a good game... and I agree with the OP that Blizzard should be a little more patient with the changes.
Thing is, the game doesn't feel very similar to BW, to me at least. It's difficult to say if it's better or worse, but it's certainly different. Race design has shifted dramatically - the SC2 Terran is more like the BW Protoss, and SC2 Protoss is a little bit like BW Terran, but it's not a pronounced similarity. SC2 Zerg is a lot different than any of the BW races.
Sometimes I have the feeling that it's the community that's sort of remodelling SC2 into being more like BW, with all the calls for macro maps, disdain for 1 base aggression, and so forth. Because if you look at SC2 mechanics as a whole, it certainly feels like 1 base all-ins is something they wanted to have a lot of.
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Blizzard try to fix the balance the wrong way in my opinion.
What all theses stats showed me is that the game is unstable. It's more about "how to survive this timings so that i crush my opponent in this timing" rather than a strategy game, and that's why every pro think their race is weak, because they all face timing attack that hardcounter their strategies once in a while and get crushed like noobies.
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On March 14 2011 03:41 BanelingXD wrote:
It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
Agree with most of what you said, but firing Browder won't change anything imo, I think it's more about Blizzard global commercial policy. There's a lot of conflicts between making a game interesting, and making the most benefits from a game.
That's why not so many people really play chess while it's the best strategy game ever "made".
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On March 14 2011 03:41 BanelingXD wrote:
It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
lol, SC1 didn't have any design philosophy either except make the three races as distinct as possible. Blizzard didn't want to make "WarCraft in Space." I still have the '97 PCGamer where StarCraft was revealed. RTS balance wasn't even on the radar because no one knew what that term actually meant. Before Bnet, most people just played with their own group of (real-life) friends or on fairly small servers like Kali. Bnet was the first system with mass appeal for online gaming. Bnet was what allowed people to actually play thousands of other people readily and without hassle.
Remember, SC/BW being an esport is basically 100% fluke. Blizzard never had the intention of making SC/BW an esport; the entire concept of esport didn't even exist. It's all just a happy coincidence that BW made it big. It's even more of a fluke that SC/BW was balanced. Blizzard didn't have any intention of doing so; they wanted a fun game that appealed to people. Half of the balance comes from engine bugs/tricks/flaws that were never intended to work in that manner.
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On March 14 2011 00:21 DoubleReed wrote:
If we're talking about Balance and Design, shouldn't we talk about the actual design of some of the units then?
When I see a corruptor, I see a cool looking unit that has the most boring ability in both Starcraft and Starcraft 2. It has good stats and certainly fills a role in the zerg army, but it doesn't do anything more than that. Corruption has absolutely zero strategy in relation to it. It can't be used to harass. It requires absolutely no real micro other than spamming.
How does this affect balance? It's huge. Consider the Viking and the Phoenix both with phenomenal ground-support abilities. Both Lift/Land and Anti-Gravity have tons of uses in actual strategy/tactics. It allows for more dynamic gameplay, harassment etc. etc. Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
Overmaking Corruptors is a common defense against the colossus. It is expensive and deadly. With Terran its much less of an issue because they can actually support the ground with the lift/land. But a lot of zerg's issues lie with these kind of odd design choices, not with the unit stats and costs.
Agree wholeheartedly with this: the issue is that the corruptors are next to useless when the colossi die, whereas the vikings can at least do something even if it's not that strong (it shouldn't be, they aren't made for that).
I think that if corruption became a small AoE spell which had much less effect, we wouldn't have the trouble with the corruptor vs hydroach balance because if you made too many corruptors they wouldn't be flying wastes of supply.
Also, I don't think that phoenixes fall in the same category as corruptors and vikings: phoenixes, mutalisks and banshees are more harassment-oriented while void rays, corruptors and vikings are your more beefy air force which you use in your standing army. Obviously, overmaking void rays still helps against the ground army because void rays shoot down ^^.
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On March 13 2011 21:46 GhostFall wrote:
Now don't get me wrong, pros know the game better than anyone else. If I wanted to change a game with the intent of pure balance, I would do nothing but listen to the pro community. But this brings up several issues. 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. The more of a certain race among the pros, the more biased feedback and analysis comes from the competitive community. If there are more Terran pros, you're going to get more feedback that is Terran biased from the overall community. A simple numbers argument.
I don't know about you but whenever I read or hear an interview or just any comment about balance from a pro, it is usually completely unbiased. Players like Jinro openly stating that they realize terran needs a little nerf, the toss players saying end game toss vs zerg is EXTREMLY hard to beat, as a zerg.
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On March 14 2011 03:41 BanelingXD wrote:
It should be clear to anyone reading the interviews that Browder's team never set out with a specific design philosophy. SC1 was successful because they intended to build a balanced game. Browder is trying to do this after the fact. He has mismanaged the biggest release in Blizz history. SC2 needs a complete overhaul, including repairing the ball mechanics and addressing the cool but useless units. The best thing they could do is fire Browder and bring someone in who actually understands game theory.
This is wrong on so many accounts.
-All the interviews with Browder actually show a really tight design philosophy. I'm not sure where you're getting this from at all. You may disagree with his design philosophy, but it's certainly there.
-That is not why SC1 was successful. That may be one reason, but it is FAR from the best reason.
-Trying to balance after what fact? What are you talking about? Do people expect that the game should have been balanced before the first expansion? None of the Blizzard games have ever been like that. Look at the ridiculously massive changes that happened with The Frozen Throne.
-Game Theory. *facepalm* What does this have to do with game theory? Do you know what game theory is? Because it's more about financial strategy and economics than it is about designing a game. I'm just going to assume you meant game design.
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On March 14 2011 01:05 tyCe wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 00:33 DoubleReed wrote:On March 14 2011 00:31 karpo wrote:On March 14 2011 00:21 DoubleReed wrote:
If we're talking about Balance and Design, shouldn't we talk about the actual design of some of the units then?
When I see a corruptor, I see a cool looking unit that has the most boring ability in both Starcraft and Starcraft 2. It has good stats and certainly fills a role in the zerg army, but it doesn't do anything more than that. Corruption has absolutely zero strategy in relation to it. It can't be used to harass. It requires absolutely no real micro other than spamming.
How does this affect balance? It's huge. Consider the Viking and the Phoenix both with phenomenal ground-support abilities. Both Lift/Land and Anti-Gravity have tons of uses in actual strategy/tactics. It allows for more dynamic gameplay, harassment etc. etc. Even if one claims that the Corruptor is better AtA than the Viking and Phoenix, the Corruptor is strategically weaker than those two. It means people will only get corruptors when they need that particular unit role in their army, and not incorporating it into any cool or intriguing tactics.
Overmaking Corruptors is a common defense against the colossus. It is expensive and deadly. With Terran its much less of an issue because they can actually support the ground with the lift/land. But a lot of zerg's issues lie with these kind of odd design choices, not with the unit stats and costs. Lift/land does not have "tons of uses" nor is it a "phenomenal ground support ability". I can count on one hand the times i've seen landed vikings do anything beside fail miserably at GtG combat. What? You've never seen them land to harass a worker line? You've never seen them kill all the Colossi and then immediately land for ground support? Really? Because it actually works really well. That's not exciting at all. I missing shuttle/reaver micro. Now, THAT was exciting. Dark swarm push Spawn broodling on tanks (and ultras at hive tech ZvZ lol) Clutch storms/plague Irradiate erasers Scourge cloning Yamato cloning Mine drags. Marine v lurker micro (sooooooo much more entertaining than "micro" vs banelings) It was even better knowing how damn HARD it is to do most of these things without the easymode AI automation that we get now in SC2.
Dark swarm push - Pioneered largely by Savior ~2005
Spawn broodling on tanks (and ultras at hive tech ZvZ lol) - Only popped up within last couple years
Clutch storms/plague - Can still happen in SC2
Irradiate erasers - Looks cool, but isn't hard to do at all
Scourge cloning - Only cool because it's "difficult", not visually impressive
Yamato cloning - Only cool because it's "difficult", not visually impressive
Mine drags. - Def. cool, wish there were mines in SC2
Marine v lurker micro (sooooooo much more entertaining than "micro" vs banelings) - Really only started becoming common after Oov's dominance
Most of the stuff you listed only popped up like almost a decade into the game, so I'd just give it some time, and hope the expansions add some cool units/abilities.
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EPT
