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I'd say reapers are the pinnacle of horrible design. It was seeing good use by morrow, then bam! Blizzard completely rapes the reaper to death with the following nerfs:
Supply b4 rax
+5 build time
Reaper speed requires factory
Roach +1 range (a buff but effectually nerfed the reaper)
Why would you need a factory to get reaper speed? Especially when the hellion is so much better for harassing anyways since it builds and moves so much faster, and is cheaper too? Any one of those nerfs would suffice, but all of them? This is like the mothership: see archon vortex, have it killed.
Instead of adapting, players are crying. This crying->nerfs, narrowing the game down to bioball vs colossi ball every game. Instead of trying to feedback motherships, instead of engaging reapers on creep, just nerf 'em to hell, that works too. I guess this goes with blizzard's goal to simplify the game. After all, a hacker with 60 apm can beat pros with 300+ apm in SC2 (see iGware thread). Wouldn't happen in BW, as hackers would get out-multitasked to death.
Then again, why bother with balance when there are expansions coming out with units that will surely break the game? Starcraft vanilla wasn't balanced for sure, then came BW, then more patches, then balance.
I hate to say it, but I think SC2 is artificially competitive.
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On March 13 2011 23:03 Saechiis wrote:
Good read, I think Blizzard is taking this mythical view of balance way too far. Balance isn't a case of "and God saw that it was good", it's an equilibrium that develops over time. With the fast rate at which Blizzard is patching the game, we never get to settle on certain standards. They're continuously stirring up the water and wondering why it won't smooth down.
Broodwar wasn't balanced, even back then you had Artosis and Idra complaining about imbalance, they just played Terran back then and Protoss was the disgustingly OP race. In fact, I'd say that units and abilites were far more "overpowered" in Starcraft 1.
Tanks did disgusting amounts of damage, Vultures were cheap, fast, 2 shotted workers and could be upgraded to lay invisible mines that could, on their own, blow up entire armies. Carriers could be microed to victory from a practically lost position, Reavers were basically mineshooting caterpillars that would be happily dropped around the map by shuttles and capable of blowing up entire mineral lines at once, High templar were storming shit up too and morphed Archons were actually damn good. Defilers with Dark Swarm, ranged damage? Nope. Mutalisks that are as mobile as now, but are extremely microable and can actually engage armies one on one, yep.
Part of the charm of BW is that it's balanced on imbalances; instead of complaining about other races' overpowered stuff, players just went to the extreme to (ab)use their own overpowered units. If Blizzard took out Reavers, mines, neutered siege tanks, neutered mutalisks, removed Dark Swarm, removed Plague, neutered Carriers ... so it would all be a tame "fair" game, TeamLiquid might not even have existed until this day because no-one would give a shit about watching that game.
Right now Blizzard is busy taking away all units and abilities that could be construed as "OP", but although the game might become more "fair" that won't matter when no-one is interested watching it anymore.
Archon Toilet: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Hell yeah! Removed.
Storms: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: Yes! Overpowered? Probably! Nerfed, making Colossus pretty much the better choice always.
Colossus; visually pleasing? Nope (tripods with lasers, derp). Wow-factor: No. Overpowered? Maybe ... but definitely not gamebreaking ... or interesting for that matter.
Siege Tanks: visually pleasing? Yes. Wow-factor: YES! Overpowered? Sure, why not!? Nerfed until bio was the best and easiest option in all MU's.
Bio; visually pleasing? No. Wow-factor: Yawn. Overpowered? Not enough. "Let's lower infantry upgrade cost and reaper speed so we can increase stim research time and move reaper speed to the factory when people start actually using these units. Requiring Supply Depot as a prerequisite for the Barracks also seems like a good non-random idea, that way we don't have to wrap our heads around Terran rushes or deal with the reaper. I mean, they're actually using it like some sort of .. of.. harassing unit, that pops into bases sniping light units and buildings and kiting stuff, it's disgusting!
"Now let's have coffee and discuss the bunker build time!"
"I'm still kinda on the fence about it Dustin, we can't make changes like these on a whim"
"Agreed, agreed ... what do you think David?"
"Hmmm what? ... I mean, o yeah, Terran definitely seems to be having trouble holding off early pressure builds these days. Btw, do you want one of these choclates SlayerSBoxer had delivered to my house? They're exquisite!"
"Don't mind if I do"
"Yeah, Terran definitely FEELS a little weak lately"
You basically laid out what I think is wrong with SC2 the most. I agree completely with this. Almost all the awesome units you described in BW are the high-skill, high-micro type of units that players have to take good care to use.
Terran:
Players can't A-move siege tanks. They have to be positioned and sieged up properly. Siege tanks were nerfed in SC2.
Players can't A-move spider mines. They have to be planted individually and each vulture only gets 3. Proper placement of mines could obliterate the opposing army. Improper placement of mines could let your opponent drag your mines to your units and kill them instead. This ability was removed in SC2.
Players can't A-move science vessels. They have to cast the spells manually. This unit was replaced by the raven, which has much weaker spells and is only really built as a detector in most pro games.
To compensate for the nerfs, Blizzard buffed the hitpoints and attack speed of marines, the most vanilla and easiest unit to use in the entire Terran arsenal. And they added marauders, a brainless A-move unit.
Zerg:
Players can't A-move lurkers. They are vulnerable when not burrowed and can only attack when burrowed. This unit was removed in SC2.
Players can't A-move defilers. They have to cast the spells manually. This unit was replaced by the infestor, a unit with much, much weaker spells. So much weaker that the unit is barely used.
Blizzard instead added the roach, which is an A-move unit. Sure, players can move them while burrowed to create ambushes but let's not kid ourselves. Roaches don't require close to the micro that lurkers needed and isn't as potent when used properly.
Protoss:
Players can't A-move high templars. They have to cast the spells manually. That's why psionic storm's damage has been nerfed.
Players can't A-move reavers. They are too slow. They have to be moved by a shuttle almost all the time. This unit was essentially replaced by the colossus, a unit that is not as powerful but can be mindlessly A-moved with a player's deathball. The colossus also essentially replaces the high templar, because more micro-intensive units can't be better than simple A-move units in SC2.
Players can't A-move arbiters. They have to cast the spells manually. This unit was replaced by the mothership, a really slow unit that players can only have one of at any given time, thus almost completely defeating the point of having the recall ability. At least the cloaking field is still as potent, since you should have all your units in one single deathball in SC2 anyway. Splitting some units off from your main army to form small harassing squads is so last millennium.
I'm really hoping that every unit they add in Heart of the Swarm is a devastating unit that needs to be planted, positioned carefully, completely babysat, could wreck your own army if not carefully used, relatively immobile or have some other drawback. But those unit could be insanely cost effective in the right hands. SC2 is severely missing those type of units.
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On March 14 2011 06:03 teamsolid wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 01:05 tyCe wrote: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.
Yeah, SC without BW was not that cool if you think about it. Lurker/dt/corsair/medic gave a whole different feeling to the game. WC3 was the same: without TFT units, the game was very one dimensional.
SC2 needs the heart of the swarm.
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It's just a very hard task for blizzard to create an esports game from the getgo. SC1 and BW had years to develop, so that real opness could be patched and strategies could be established. There was no esports scene, so real balance wasn't so immediately necessary.
Now Blizzard needs it to be balanced, at the same time it should have dynamic and interesting units. This is very difficult to do, and the fact that bugs were part of BW's balance was only another issue. The inability to have time to develop counter-strategies because balance is needed only adds to the problems.
Trying to replicate the Brood War success is just so hard, I'm not sure quite how they can achieve it.
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Firstly, kudos on starting a thread on balance that has some intellectual (albeit theoretical) substance to it.
But I would perhaps like to press you on one of the points you made concerning bias stemming from consulting the pros. Do you have any evidence to show that the level of input blizzard receives is actually linked to the race representation percentages of the pros? It seems like this would be a classic case of a self-selection problem: the input they would receive would be linked to those who are most vocal, and it's not immediately clear that the most vocal subset of pros would have a clear link to the overall race breakdown.
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I agree a lot with what you said.. It's a shame that it's in the current state we have.
You know, I've been playing protoss since the very very early days of SC1. In SC2, its pretty much impossible to lose if you keep your observers alive. May sound really arrogant to say it like that, but I know how OP my race currently is. 1gate robo >obs every matchup here, I barely lose. The only time I lose is if its PvT and he pops my early observer... It's as simple as that. Protoss is currently way overpowered late game especially.
I have been playing a lot of zerg recently because I find it more fun. I also get rage when I see how truly impossible it is to beat someone going colossi voidray.
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Just let Blizz handle it. They have all the stats. They know what they are doing.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On March 14 2011 06:58 Flying_Cake wrote:
Just let Blizz handle it. They have all the stats. They know what they are doing.
Did you read the OP?
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Good read, and Valid Point.
My Counter argument to this would be, that the meta-game is going to stay similar to how it is now because this is starcraft 2. People were playing Starcraft 1 for 10 years. yes it took them a while to figure it out (mainly because eSports was up and coming). But now we have those players / coaches / and more who dedicate 6 - 12 hours a day figuring out / playing this game. The game is for the most part figured out. Compared to Starcraft 1 when it was in this stage it was about 10% figured out. Starcraft 2 is probably close to 90% figured out. And even if its not, if something like Muta stacking comes up or something that Blizzard did not intend on then they will patch it.
Blizzard has 2 more expansions coming out about a year apart. So its important to Blizzard that every pro stays happy with the current balance. Instead of just waiting it out. Money is on the line and a majority of the pros agreed that
1- Zerg is the weakest race
2- That warping in a storm gave protoss too much of a advantage (GSL Stats and BNET 2.0 Stats proved that much) Especially on bigger maps when you can get stormed a bunch from just walking from your base to theirs. I would also like to point out the fact that SC could not look away for a SECOND to macro up or multi task even after EMP'ing.
Now I would be fine with letting the Meta - Game sort itself out balance wise after the 2 expansions but we have new units that will come up and change up the meta - game anyway. So i actually agree to blizzards approach of balancing the game ASAP and at least doing testing like they do now.
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I don't understand a good chunk of the OP's point. You claim that Blizzard's balancing technique will result in a metagame stagnation, I think, but also acknowledge they've greatly altered the way several matchups are played. It's resulted in a very dynamic metagame! Why is an "artificial" shift any worse than an "organic" one?
Moreover, this:
"Tanks did disgusting amounts of damage, Vultures were cheap, fast, 2 shotted workers and could be upgraded to lay invisible mines that could, on their own, blow up entire armies. Carriers could be microed to victory from a practically lost position, Reavers were basically mineshooting caterpillars that would be happily dropped around the map by shuttles and capable of blowing up entire mineral lines at once, High templar were storming shit up too and morphed Archons were actually damn good. Defilers with Dark Swarm, ranged damage? Nope. Mutalisks that are as mobile as now, but are extremely microable and can actually engage armies one on one, yep."
is overly nostalgic and highly subjective at best. Tanks are still a spectacular unit in every matchup but TvP, where they're seeing more play as time goes on due to their great splash damage. Hellions are fast, cheap, 4 shot workers and can be upgraded to do double damage. Reavers were the dumbest units and had to go in my opinion, not because of any qualities but because their behavior was not reliable or controlled by players. Can you imagine them with upgraded AI in the new engine? No doubt they would have been neutered.
HT still storm stuff up and now have an actually useful second ability. Archons were pretty bad in BW except vs. Z as far as I can recall, maybe in PvP, because their shields took full damage from everything. The change in damage calculation necessitated some form of weakening. And mutalisks never engaged one on one until a deathball formed, just like in SC2. And defilers? I think new fungal (balanced based on player feedback, my god!) will be the new swarm and necessary for late game ZvT. And it will have fantastic spectator value.
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+ Show Spoiler +On March 14 2011 01:06 Dominator1370 wrote:
The approach Blizzard is taking when it comes to balancing the game seems to be (comparatively) aggressive. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's a tight line to walk between waiting to see if difficult scenarios resolve themselves through shifts in gameplay and deciding how long you leave the game in a state that seems broken. There's really no perfect answer. In one case, you may make a change that, once the metagame begins to shift later, turns out to be a bit too strong, and you wind up having to make an additional change to compensate. That's frustrating for players, because it results in having to re-learn how to deal with different timings, compositions, etc. On the other hand, if there is a situation where a legitimate balance issue does exist and you leave it in the game waiting to see if it will work itself out, it's also frustrating for the players, because they're playing a game with serious balance issues for a protracted period of time. In the absence of a correct answer, Blizzard's approach seems as valid as any other.
Having quantified Blizzard's overall balance approach, I find that I disagree with the assertion that their aggressive balancing absolutely prevents the meta-game from shifting. In a lot of ways, balance patches have the potential to allow for new and exciting meta-game environments that were previously impossible. To use an extraordinarily relevant example, changing the function (and thus role) of an Infestor has the potential to allow it to be used in new ways and has the potential to create an interesting shift in the meta-game. Whether this potential is realized depends on the quality of the actual change, but the point remains: balance does not explicitly prevent meta-game shifts, and a good balance change can even cause a shift in the meta-game.
As for the actual content of Blizzard's balance patches, I think Selth makes an excellent point above. It's kind of sad to see that the predominant way this aggressive balancing has been accomplished is through the complete and utter removal of certain strategies, rather than through more delicate and nuanced changes. It's also a shame that while a number of strategies have been eliminated systematically, the changes that are being made tend not to be overly encouraging of new strategies. The point remains that the quickest and easiest way to obtain balance now is to aggressively eliminate things that seem too powerful, and slowly (and incrementally) try to add things back in once some semblance of balance has been achieved. It's a shame, because it means it might take a while before the game really gets back the depth of strategy it needs to shake things up too much. At the same time, I'm not thrilled at the prospect of playing a heavily imbalanced game while Blizzard tried to figure out exactly how much damage a unit needs to do and exactly at what time you should be able to have a certain number of them. It's a bad situation to be in. Of course, the easy answer is to just release a game that's perfectly balanced, but it's kind of difficult to balance something as complex as Starcraft without an extensive amount of data from high-level gameplay.
Given the difficult situation Blizzard finds themselves in, I think they're doing the best they can. There's no way to make everyone happy, and their approach seems as good as any. I'd like to see them testing ways to make new strategies viable, or re-distribute the strength in some existing ones, but that's tough to do until you've got a sound base of balance to iterate on top of.
This sums the issue up perfectly, in my opinion, anyway.
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Australia8532 Posts
Obviously there are significant problems sourcing any form of data; especially balance data; from one singular avenue.. In your first paragraph you say
It is fairly common knowledge that Blizzard takes input from the community, ladder results, in-house testing, and feedback from the competitive player’s community. They also analyze games and replays from the competitive community.
So there is an issue with ONLY using professional player's feedback when balancing the game.. Yet you concede that they use community input, ladder results and in-house testing in conjunction with competitive player's feedback. So essentially there is no problem because they are not relying solely on competitive player's feedback?
You make a fair point that professional players compete in the "now" so that any shift in the game is hard to come by; but i don't really see the point if they aren't only relying on this feedback?
Unless i am missing something hehe i did just wake up?
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On March 14 2011 00:31 karpo wrote:
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.
Sjow did it against Socke in IEM on Delta Quadrant, he had a bunch of vikings and his army was dead, so he landed his vikings and kept reinforcing with only vikings from 2x reactor starports straight from his base to Sockes until Socke GG'd.
That was sick to see.
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.
What a trash post. Stating that SC2 needs a complete overhaul. Cute.
On March 14 2011 04:04 rackdude wrote:, 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.
Banelings and fungal work for zerg.
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@GhostFall
I like your post and I think that your point is completely valid. I think that sometimes people are too eager to patch the game to success, especially since the two expansions will throw in some completely new elements to game-play. If there were zero balance patches until the next expansion was published I think we would see many natural balance shifts among the races.
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On March 14 2011 00:30 Kazang wrote:
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.
wise words. I have a feeling that you actually work for blizzard, lol.
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On March 14 2011 07:12 BetterFasterStronger wrote:
Good read, and Valid Point.
My Counter argument to this would be, that the meta-game is going to stay similar to how it is now because this is starcraft 2. People were playing Starcraft 1 for 10 years. yes it took them a while to figure it out (mainly because eSports was up and coming). But now we have those players / coaches / and more who dedicate 6 - 12 hours a day figuring out / playing this game. The game is for the most part figured out. Compared to Starcraft 1 when it was in this stage it was about 10% figured out. Starcraft 2 is probably close to 90% figured out. And even if its not, if something like Muta stacking comes up or something that Blizzard did not intend on then they will patch it.
Blizzard has 2 more expansions coming out about a year apart. So its important to Blizzard that every pro stays happy with the current balance. Instead of just waiting it out. Money is on the line and a majority of the pros agreed that
1- Zerg is the weakest race
2- That warping in a storm gave protoss too much of a advantage (GSL Stats and BNET 2.0 Stats proved that much) Especially on bigger maps when you can get stormed a bunch from just walking from your base to theirs. I would also like to point out the fact that SC could not look away for a SECOND to macro up or multi task even after EMP'ing.
Now I would be fine with letting the Meta - Game sort itself out balance wise after the 2 expansions but we have new units that will come up and change up the meta - game anyway. So i actually agree to blizzards approach of balancing the game ASAP and at least doing testing like they do now.
You're making a lot of assumptions there, namely that SC2 is indeed figured out, and that Blizzard would patch anything unexpected that appears. (Muta magic boxing for instance hasn't gotten fixed, whereas Thor aoe was intended to combat the Mutas, clearly not intended).
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On March 14 2011 08:09 Dalavita wrote:Show nested quote +On March 14 2011 07:12 BetterFasterStronger wrote:
Good read, and Valid Point.
My Counter argument to this would be, that the meta-game is going to stay similar to how it is now because this is starcraft 2. People were playing Starcraft 1 for 10 years. yes it took them a while to figure it out (mainly because eSports was up and coming). But now we have those players / coaches / and more who dedicate 6 - 12 hours a day figuring out / playing this game. The game is for the most part figured out. Compared to Starcraft 1 when it was in this stage it was about 10% figured out. Starcraft 2 is probably close to 90% figured out. And even if its not, if something like Muta stacking comes up or something that Blizzard did not intend on then they will patch it.
Blizzard has 2 more expansions coming out about a year apart. So its important to Blizzard that every pro stays happy with the current balance. Instead of just waiting it out. Money is on the line and a majority of the pros agreed that
1- Zerg is the weakest race
2- That warping in a storm gave protoss too much of a advantage (GSL Stats and BNET 2.0 Stats proved that much) Especially on bigger maps when you can get stormed a bunch from just walking from your base to theirs. I would also like to point out the fact that SC could not look away for a SECOND to macro up or multi task even after EMP'ing.
Now I would be fine with letting the Meta - Game sort itself out balance wise after the 2 expansions but we have new units that will come up and change up the meta - game anyway. So i actually agree to blizzards approach of balancing the game ASAP and at least doing testing like they do now. You're making a lot of assumptions there, namely that SC2 is indeed figured out, and that Blizzard would patch anything unexpected that appears. (Muta magic boxing for instance hasn't gotten fixed, whereas Thor aoe was intended to combat the Mutas, clearly not intended).
True, and also i believe that they were planning to nerf thors splash to mutas before the magic boxing came out. So figuring that out changed ZvT lotz (kind of shoots my opinion even more in the foot)
But i still think that blizzard should keep balancing the game as they are now until the expansions come out. waiting for the meta game to shift can take anywhere from a day to a year and you might as well just keep the game balanced for entertainment value simply because the meta game is guaranteed to change after a expansion.
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Supply b4 rax
+5 build time
Reaper speed requires factory
Roach +1 range (a buff but effectually nerfed the reaper)
Why would you need a factory to get reaper speed? Especially when the hellion is so much better for harassing anyways since it builds and moves so much faster, and is cheaper too? Any one of those nerfs would suffice, but all of them? This is like the mothership: see archon vortex, have it killed.
I completely disagree. +5 build time wasn't that big a deal. Supply depot before rax imo was a general nerf to terran because everything was coming out too fast, and there wasn't any downside to 10raxing every game (faster MULEs after all). If we took those two then the ridiculous 5rax reaper crap would still be containing zergs all friggin' day.
While its true that hellions do seem generally better. Reapers do have cliffjumping and building-destroying at their side. Personally I think the real reason that reapers aren't used is because terran has no reason to experiment just because they're doing so well. Nothing is giving them any issues with MMM and Marine/Tank, so why change what you're doing?
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This is an excellent post. I also feel we are seeing changes so fast that the meta game doesn't really have a chance to develop and change. I want to see these strats play out and then see what counters fall out of the game. If we keep calling everything OP and nurfing everything, we might as well be playing Warcraft 1 where every unit is identical.
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On March 14 2011 02:03 NikonTC wrote:Show nested quote +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 :|
The point I was trying to make was:
1. You shouldn't be concerned with a Terran player giving feedback from a Terran perspective.
2. You shouldn't assume that a Terran player's feedback will be unfairly biased towards his race.
It wasn't backtracking, I was trying to make a distinction between the two. How does x player giving feedback for x race imply that it will be unfairly biased towards x race?
(i.e, How does point 2 contradict point 1 in your view?)
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EPT
