Maps Are indeed an interesting one I left out.

Is It ok that some maps, or some spawning positions 'favor' one race over another?
Should each individual map be completely fair, or it it fine, so long as the entire map pool taken together is fair?

ShadosNeko

United States11 Posts

May 04 2011 22:40 GMT

#23

On May 05 2011 07:16 EnderSword wrote:
Maps Are indeed an interesting one I left out.

Is It ok that some maps, or some spawning positions 'favor' one race over another?
Should each individual map be completely fair, or it it fine, so long as the entire map pool taken together is fair?

I believe that ladder maps should be allowed to have a race bias, although not having a race be overpowered. (See Lost Temple/The Shattered Temple)

In tournaments, they tend to use customized map pools anyway, so the tournament operators should be the deciders of this, although to be considered a legitimate league, they should probably seek to have the most balance possible.

EnderSword

Canada669 Posts

May 05 2011 09:03 GMT

#24

Maps are great for tournaments, because of exactly that. You can actually intentionally design maps to counter perceived imbalances.

For instance if one unit is strong on a type of terrain, tournaments can eliminate maps with that terrain.

I've noticed a tendency for recent maps to have less 'Safe Air' behind the main. Whereas previously maps in general had a lot of space for air units to flee behind the mineral line.

Owarida

United States333 Posts

May 05 2011 09:28 GMT

#25

On May 04 2011 20:53 Rabiator wrote:
The problem with balance in such a game is that everyone has a bias. IdrA really showed this today by claiming that he cant be offensive with Banelings and whatever Zerg units. Banelings very very often are used to bust a Terran wall-in (something said Zerg did complain about as well) or even right-click on a Planetary Fortress and eliminate it and there is NOTHING a Terran can do to prevent it. Yet the "venting" goes on and is declared as "balance discussion" by IdrA.

People really need to take themselves less seriously to be objective and thus progamers who are playing only one race should NEVER EVER whine about balance issues. They might be asked about a certain detail of balance, but judging "A versus B" should be left to others who dont have any stake in it.

Btw. ... Zerg being incapable to wall in is just a map issue. If the initial creep reached up to the ramp they could do it. Obviously its kinda stupid to do that as a Zerg because they have few ranged units early on, but Spine Crawlers can be nice to wall-in as well.

You are pretty off base. The only time zergs can baneling bust is honestly when terran are lazy and bad. If you scan (easy scouting) a 1 base with baneling, you can make a near unbustable wall. Wall the bottom ramp, or at least choke with two rax, and have a wall on top. Focus fire banelings. Its just terran cry when they have to micro (ie focus fire) or think ahead (ie scan and plan accordingly). Like when terran cry about how good infest is vs marines. Just right click them with your tanks, god forbid you have to micro!

Nothing idra said on sotg was off base. It was pretty simple stuff that is very true. Its not tears, its just the facts. And walling off with zerg is pointless because as you said, we have no ranged units. We could as you said, make spinecrawlers. However, these cannot be used offensively like terran marines or protoss sents can. You sink 1 larva and 150G to make an unoffensive piece of junk. Also walling would be pointless because zerg usually need to be one base up, so walling up and giving up map control would pretty much be a death sentence.

Rabiator

Germany3948 Posts

May 05 2011 10:05 GMT

#26

On May 04 2011 22:10 EnderSword wrote:

I'd Really like this to be only About 'Balance' as a Concept....

Balance really is a mythical concept which implies there are the same number of sweets on each side of the scale so the kids are treated equally. That is not how Starcraft works and one kid has a piece of fruit cake instead of two chocolate bars on the scales and now the whining begins because kid A doesnt like fruit cake and would rather have the chocolate bars. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence and thus we get a lot of whining and complaints about it, because most people are only on one side of the fence and dont look at the things objectively.

There is only one way to create balance and this is by looking at the success rates at the highest level and look for reasons why race X loses more than the others. Obvioulsy a lot of things affect this success rate, but there have been many games which showed that "hard counters" can be eliminatied by the unit they supposedly counter, if it is done well enough. So the stats of the units are the last things which really affect balance and Blizzard only fiddles around with them to adjust the gameplay in a way which makes rarely used units desirable in certain situations.

Balance really doesnt exist ... only a certain degree of fairness of the game for all races.

On May 05 2011 18:28 Owarida wrote:
You sink 1 larva and 150G to make an unoffensive piece of junk.

For 150 minerals you can also make six Zerglings ... which die rather easily and cost three larvae instead. So a Spine Crawler is much tougher to deal with and will actually save you money and give you two more larvae for Drones.

If you think the Spine Crawler is "unoffensive" that is your problem, but you can still reposition it and creep can still advance on your opponent.

EDIT: Right now NesTea is making offensive Spine Crawlers in the GSL ... against Anypro.Prime who used Forge fast expand. He took out the expansion and some Gateways with that attack.

Cloak

United States816 Posts

May 05 2011 10:46 GMT

#27

I think the ultimate barometer for balance is the number of viable strategies allowed. All other things, such as difficulty curves, necessarily influence the population of viable strategies, because easier builds procreate more offshoots when skill is applied, while high difficulty builds have far less variability and produce less offshoots. Achievement of build diversity has the most direct correlation to a genuinely interesting game to watch and play.

Balance changes should be under the mindset of whether they increase the net amount of viable strategies or they don't. Obviously a balance between races would be an equivalent population of strategies for each. Should one strategy become too strong, it kills off the potential for other strategies, thus build strength will ultimately even out as a result of builds increasing.

Rabiator

Germany3948 Posts

May 05 2011 11:19 GMT

#28

On May 05 2011 19:46 Cloak wrote:
I think the ultimate barometer for balance is the number of viable strategies allowed. All other things, such as difficulty curves, necessarily influence the population of viable strategies, because easier builds procreate more offshoots when skill is applied, while high difficulty builds have far less variability and produce less offshoots. Achievement of build diversity has the most direct correlation to a genuinely interesting game to watch and play.

Balance changes should be under the mindset of whether they increase the net amount of viable strategies or they don't. Obviously a balance between races would be an equivalent population of strategies for each. Should one strategy become too strong, it kills off the potential for other strategies, thus build strength will ultimately even out as a result of builds increasing.

I doubt the number of strategies is a good indicator for balance simply because flexibility and macro capability have to be figured in as well and Zerg / Protoss have an advantage over Terrans there for the first and Zerg are absolute masters of the second in the late game. Terrans have an absolutely great mix of units which has a lot of synergy, but if you manage to eliminate one piece from the mix of units the whole breaks. So there are totally different styles to play the game and a mathematical comparison of the number of strategies doesnt work.

Early / mid- / late-game are totally different phases as well, so a purely mathematical comparison of the number of strategies doesnt work.

Cloak

United States816 Posts

May 05 2011 11:31 GMT

#29

On May 05 2011 20:19 Rabiator wrote:

Show nested quote +

I don't know if I agree with your assertion that Terran units are dependant on their diversity. Pure Marauder, pure Marine, and pure Thor are all far more successful than other race equivalents (except Roach) and I think that underlies the reason why Terran can mix and match anything to get a good strategy, it's because of how independently strong and versatile each unit is. Diversity per unit only multiplies the diversity of their interactions.

Flexibility and macro capability are merely branches on a strategy flow chart. A more flexible build would have more off shoots, while the variation in macro styles (long term vs short term) would translate to more builds. It still doesn't add a different parameter to measure by, though. For anybody who's taken Linear Algebra, there'd need to be a variable that's linearly independent of number of builds, but so far all these parameters can be explained in those terms.