EPTDesignated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 1016
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Foreverkul
United States1649 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
But it's kind of sad if you can just roll out some build order and have a good chance of winning, without having to really understand a race/matchup. Even more if it is against one of the better players in the world. Imo that has always been the saddest part about Starcraft. People can easily decide to not play a back and forth dynamic game, by choosing a certain BO-attack. And that's not just Protoss, but with Protoss it's very prevalent. | ||
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r691175002
249 Posts
On June 23 2014 04:59 Foreverkul wrote: So what about Protoss makes it an easy race? Even programers have declared it due to Scarlett v DRG. https://twitter.com/LiquidTaeJa/status/480801666891915264 As Protoss you can essentially choose to turn any game into a blind match of rock paper scissors. If you envision Starcraft as a game of chess, Protoss is like including an additional rule: "Instead of playing chess, one player may elect to instead decide the winner via rock paper scissors". A lot of times when you see an extremely outclassed protoss they will just try a proxy, dts, or gateway allin and pray it works. Neither of the other races have that option, especially when playing against protoss since the mothership core covers everything in the early game. | ||
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kiLen
Finland97 Posts
On June 23 2014 05:38 r691175002 wrote: As Protoss you can essentially choose to turn any game into a blind match of rock paper scissors. If you envision Starcraft as a game of chess, Protoss is like including an additional rule: "Instead of playing chess, one player may elect to instead decide the winner via rock paper scissors". A lot of times when you see an extremely outclassed protoss they will just try a proxy, dts, or gateway allin and pray it works. Neither of the other races have that option, especially when playing against protoss since the mothership core covers everything in the early game. But that is a design fault, not a balance one. You can nerf everything protoss have and yet they will have that ability, this should now be clear as day that if we don't want this rock paper scissor gameplay Protoss will need a redesign. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On June 23 2014 05:46 kiLen wrote: But that is a design fault, not a balance one. You can nerf everything protoss have and yet they will have that ability, this should now be clear as day that if we don't want this rock paper scissor gameplay Protoss will need a redesign. Not really. Sentry/Immortal wouldn't be as great if you could bust down forcefields with banelings. Blink allin wouldn't be as great if it hit 30seconds later. Basically all Protoss allins wouldn't be as great if units were warped in without shields. Canonrushes wouldn't be as great if Canons constructed slower. It worked for 2010-11 Terran. All the "I have gas, you don't see how much because I can kill your slowerlord long before it sees anything and you don't have any mappresence because I'm camping your base starting at 4:30. Now guess whether I'm doing cloaked banshee, double banshee, blue flame, tank/marine, hellion/marine, drops, 5rax reaper, standard bio/tank, standard mech or whatever rolls my mind - of course each of it in 5variations. Oh, and btw, your roaches and queens only have 3range, so anything I have kites them to death, and your spore crawlers can be killed by banshees while trying to root." - builds were nerfed down. People started to play more and more macro, with much fewer unpredictable builds. People love the matchup. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On June 23 2014 05:46 kiLen wrote: But that is a design fault, not a balance one. You can nerf everything protoss have and yet they will have that ability, this should now be clear as day that if we don't want this rock paper scissor gameplay Protoss will need a redesign. I mean first of all it is a balance issue, as well as a design one. Imagine instead that Terran was given a building called the ANNIHILATION BOMB (caps intended) that destroys everything on the map; victory is awarded randomly between the two players. At first glance it seems balanced, if boring, because the win will always be assigned 50/50. But with this dynamic Terran can start playing, and if he's ahead, just finish the game; if he's behind, he always has the option of building one of those and returning his win chance to 50%. This is why "when behind, dark shrine" is so good. That said I'm not certain Protoss all-ins are as bad as all that. I mean I lose to them plenty, but between scouting and overall safe play it's possible to defend (I'm pretty sure there are things I could do to survive most of my losses, I'm just still figuring out which to do and when). Certainly of the three races they have the strongest cheese right now, though. | ||
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kiLen
Finland97 Posts
On June 23 2014 06:34 ChristianS wrote: I mean first of all it is a balance issue, as well as a design one. Imagine instead that Terran was given a building called the ANNIHILATION BOMB (caps intended) that destroys everything on the map; victory is awarded randomly between the two players. At first glance it seems balanced, if boring, because the win will always be assigned 50/50. But with this dynamic Terran can start playing, and if he's ahead, just finish the game; if he's behind, he always has the option of building one of those and returning his win chance to 50%. This is why "when behind, dark shrine" is so good. That said I'm not certain Protoss all-ins are as bad as all that. I mean I lose to them plenty, but between scouting and overall safe play it's possible to defend (I'm pretty sure there are things I could do to survive most of my losses, I'm just still figuring out which to do and when). Certainly of the three races they have the strongest cheese right now, though. So what is the solution to this? Cause what happend in todays MLG should be revealing in some fashion to the community, I know that the protoss bias has always been strong, but we can't let that bias stop us from seeing a problem where there are one, and the problem is that a off-racing player can beat a top korean Zerg with a good chance of winning, even though DRG most likely have practiced 10x more times holding that all in that Scarlett actually practiced doing it. That is a problem in my eyes. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On June 23 2014 06:42 kiLen wrote: So what is the solution to this? Cause what happend in todays MLG should be revealing in some fashion to the community, I know that the protoss bias has always been strong, but we can't let that bias stop us from seeing a problem where there are one, and the problem is that a off-racing player can beat a top korean Zerg with a good chance of winning, even though DRG most likely have practiced 10x more times holding that all in that Scarlett actually practiced doing it. That is a problem in my eyes. PvZ isn't as much about massing games to practice defending something as it is about getting in your opponent's head. So it's not about "he spent 10,000 games defending a 7-gate all-in and still couldn't!" Because if you spend 10,000 games practicing your defense against a build you know is coming, you're not practicing the hard part – figuring out what's coming. That's partly scouting and partly mind games. DRG didn't scout it and Scarlett mind gamed him. This is such an anomaly, though, this is not a good way to form judgments about balance. | ||
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antiRW
United Kingdom117 Posts
On June 23 2014 06:34 ChristianS wrote: I mean first of all it is a balance issue, as well as a design one. Imagine instead that Terran was given a building called the ANNIHILATION BOMB (caps intended) that destroys everything on the map; victory is awarded randomly between the two players. At first glance it seems balanced, if boring, because the win will always be assigned 50/50. But with this dynamic Terran can start playing, and if he's ahead, just finish the game; if he's behind, he always has the option of building one of those and returning his win chance to 50%. This is why "when behind, dark shrine" is so good. That said I'm not certain Protoss all-ins are as bad as all that. I mean I lose to them plenty, but between scouting and overall safe play it's possible to defend (I'm pretty sure there are things I could do to survive most of my losses, I'm just still figuring out which to do and when). Certainly of the three races they have the strongest cheese right now, though. This is a straw man attack, because this just isn't how it works for protoss. The all-ins occur at the beginning of the game. You cannot play 15 minutes and then decide 'Oh, I am slightly behind. Let's gamble.' The particular example of a dark shrine late in the game is for harassment, not to kill your opponent. For the latter to happen the other player would have to screw up massively - and you can always win if you opponent makes major errors. Agreed with your second paragraph. Protoss has strong all-ins, but - in particular given the overall balance of protoss match-ups - it is hard to argue that they cannot be countered. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On June 23 2014 07:10 antiRW wrote: This is a straw man attack, because this just isn't how it works for protoss. The all-ins occur at the beginning of the game. You cannot play 15 minutes and then decide 'Oh, I am slightly behind. Let's gamble.' The particular example of a dark shrine late in the game is for harassment, not to kill your opponent. For the latter to happen the other player would have to screw up massively - and you can always win if you opponent makes major errors. Agreed with your second paragraph. Protoss has strong all-ins, but - in particular given the overall balance of protoss match-ups - it is hard to argue that they cannot be countered. "Straw man" is an odd accusation, since my point was that the ability to coin flip like that could be a balance issue, not that it is the state of the game at present. My second paragraph clarifies that I don't think Protoss all-ins are so problematic. That said, "when behind, dark shrine" is absolutely hoping to kill your opponent, and it often does. I mean I guess you could say it's "harassment" in the sense that a one-base hellion medivac drop to kill all your opponent's workers is "harassment," but the idea is to bet it all and do game-ending damage. DT's are the closest thing to the ANNIHILATION BOMB that SC2 has, because more than any other unit, they either win big or lose big. That means whatever small advantages your opponent might have eked out will pale compared to the damage a DT does if it isn't responded to correctly; and if it is responded to correctly, you're only more fucked in a game where you were fucked anyway. I'm not saying DT's are imbalanced, because if you're significantly ahead against a Protoss you honestly should just expect dark shrine, so I'm not that sympathetic when you take a lead and then die to DTs. But that's totally the reason DT's are good from a losing position. | ||
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SirPinky
United States525 Posts
On June 23 2014 07:33 ChristianS wrote: "Straw man" is an odd accusation, since my point was that the ability to coin flip like that could be a balance issue, not that it is the state of the game at present. My second paragraph clarifies that I don't think Protoss all-ins are so problematic. That said, "when behind, dark shrine" is absolutely hoping to kill your opponent, and it often does. I mean I guess you could say it's "harassment" in the sense that a one-base hellion medivac drop to kill all your opponent's workers is "harassment," but the idea is to bet it all and do game-ending damage. DT's are the closest thing to the ANNIHILATION BOMB that SC2 has, because more than any other unit, they either win big or lose big. That means whatever small advantages your opponent might have eked out will pale compared to the damage a DT does if it isn't responded to correctly; and if it is responded to correctly, you're only more fucked in a game where you were fucked anyway. I'm not saying DT's are imbalanced, because if you're significantly ahead against a Protoss you honestly should just expect dark shrine, so I'm not that sympathetic when you take a lead and then die to DTs. But that's totally the reason DT's are good from a losing position. Protoss all-ins aren't that problematic (well, blink is depending on the map TvP) it is the fact they are no longer "all-ins" and cannot be punished b/c of units like the MSC (TvP). "Opps my 2-base blink failed TvP, no matter, I drop 2 forges and tech up, while keeping map control with blink stalkers." Their is high reward with little risk. MSC and the prevailance of other skilless units like the Oracle, DT, Tempest etc is what killed this race and a large part of the game. | ||
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
A) _____ all-in kills too often (specify which all-in). B) _____ all-in is too hard to punish when it fails (specify which all-in). C) _____, _____, and _____ all-ins are too powerful in combination, because they require different responses and it's too hard to scout which is coming (specify which all-ins). D) _____ unit is too easy to use, and has little to no potential for micro (specify which unit). Obviously you might be making a combination of these claims, but I'm not sure which to respond to when you just kind of hint in the direction of several. For instance, it sounds like you're saying B about 2-base blink all-in – but then it seems like the obvious answer is that isn't an all-in. 1-base blink is all-in, and if you defend it you win reliably. 2-base blink is only all-in if they commit heavily with their stalkers in an attempt to kill off everything you have. If they go for 2-base blink, try to threaten, and find that you're not vulnerable, then they pull back with their stalkers and expand. Obviously the more economical sequence is third base -> blink -> lots of stalkers, rather than blink -> lots of stalkers -> third base, and they might find themselves behind in economy because of that, but if they didn't lose the stalkers they shouldn't be dead from that position. Then it sounds like you're complaining that MSC, oracle, DT, and tempest are skilless units, but reading more carefully you complain that a lack of other skilless units is what killed "this race" (the antecedent is unclear, but I assume the complaint is that Terran needs more skilless units?) and a large part of the game, so I'm not actually certain what your claim is. | ||
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SirPinky
United States525 Posts
On June 23 2014 09:25 ChristianS wrote: Okay, there's a lot of claims that might be made here, so let's clarify which, exactly, you're making: A) _____ all-in kills too often (specify which all-in). B) _____ all-in is too hard to punish when it fails (specify which all-in). C) _____, _____, and _____ all-ins are too powerful in combination, because they require different responses and it's too hard to scout which is coming (specify which all-ins). D) _____ unit is too easy to use, and has little to no potential for micro (specify which unit). Obviously you might be making a combination of these claims, but I'm not sure which to respond to when you just kind of hint in the direction of several. For instance, it sounds like you're saying B about 2-base blink all-in – but then it seems like the obvious answer is that isn't an all-in. 1-base blink is all-in, and if you defend it you win reliably. 2-base blink is only all-in if they commit heavily with their stalkers in an attempt to kill off everything you have. If they go for 2-base blink, try to threaten, and find that you're not vulnerable, then they pull back with their stalkers and expand. Obviously the more economical sequence is third base -> blink -> lots of stalkers, rather than blink -> lots of stalkers -> third base, and they might find themselves behind in economy because of that, but if they didn't lose the stalkers they shouldn't be dead from that position. Then it sounds like you're complaining that MSC, oracle, DT, and tempest are skilless units, but reading more carefully you complain that a lack of other skilless units is what killed "this race" (the antecedent is unclear, but I assume the complaint is that Terran needs more skilless units?) and a large part of the game, so I'm not actually certain what your claim is. First, I clarified my original post to indicate the overarching prevalence of "skilless" units. It was a mistake when I said "lack of skilless units". I was trying to connote the dominance of skilless (non-micro oriented) units in the Protoss race. Second, my complaint is really with TvP where the Protoss have a plethora of aggressive options, which take little skill to execute but can pretty much end the game. To name a few: One base blink all-in; Oracle into 3-gate stalker; Proxy DT; Proxy immortal Push; Proxy V-ray (or even Oracle into Proxy Tempest - yes, 4GG lost to this on his stream); 2-base colossus all-in; Hidden 4-gate; 2 Base Blink all-in (or there is the good old fake aggression into fast 3rd and tech up, while Terran overacts with bunkers and defense). This is just to name a few. If the Terran "guesses" wrong or doesn't scout every corner of these huge 4-player maps it becomes, "Well, I guessed wrong, looks like I lose." What game ending unit does Terran have in the first 10 minutes? Protoss can click on their Nexus and pretty much defend anything within this timeframe. It takes no skill and really detracts from having a entertaining game. This topic has been beaten to death, so I am not going to get into it further. | ||
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Ottoman042
United States35 Posts
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On June 23 2014 10:07 Ottoman042 wrote: All Terran got in Hots was two units. I mean how does MW and Hellbat compare to MSC, Orcale, Tempest, VR overcharge? Especially when one-basing and cheese is frowned on and unrealistic vs protoss? WM can fill a role it just doesn't do anything...ever... Prismatic Alignment isn't a unit. | ||
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KelsierSC
United Kingdom10443 Posts
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pure.Wasted
Canada4701 Posts
On June 23 2014 11:39 KelsierSC wrote: I love coming here during a big tournament just to soak up tears into a towel and then furiously masturbate with it. I'm sure there are support groups for that! | ||
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iS.Mike
37 Posts
Protoss has won 8 out of 12 of the premier tournaments in 2014 and obtained 15 out of 24 of the top 2 finishes in those tournaments. Even at the end of Wings of Liberty, zerg didn't have this winning percentage. Someone care to explain these results without citing relative race strengths or is it necessary to address balance now? | ||
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Cheren
United States2911 Posts
On June 23 2014 12:55 iS.Mike wrote: I guess I'll post this here since I'm getting hate in the MLG thread for it. Protoss has won 8 out of 12 of the premier tournaments in 2014 and obtained 15 out of 24 of the top 2 finishes in those tournaments. Even at the end of Wings of Liberty, zerg didn't have this winning percentage. Someone care to explain these results without citing relative race strengths or is it necessary to address balance now? You need to stop pretending that the MSC and mine patch had no effect before citing statistics. | ||
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Popkiller
3415 Posts
On June 23 2014 12:55 iS.Mike wrote: I guess I'll post this here since I'm getting hate in the MLG thread for it. Protoss has won 8 out of 12 of the premier tournaments in 2014 and obtained 15 out of 24 of the top 2 finishes in those tournaments. Even at the end of Wings of Liberty, zerg didn't have this winning percentage. Someone care to explain these results without citing relative race strengths or is it necessary to address balance now? hmm, this is the first time I've looked at this. What's more interesting to me is that 7 different protosses make up those 8 tournament wins, the only repeat being Zest. If Classic wins GSL, that will be 8/9 tournament wins going to unique protosses. Expanding to include late 2013, October-December, that adds 5 toss wins and three new players: Dear, Rain, PartinG, which makes 10/13 wins by different players, or 76%. To compare that to Terran, there have been 4 premier tournament wins during that timeframe, and 100% have gone to Taeja. If you add in the rest of 2013, Terran gains a little favor. January-September adds 4 more toss premier tournament wins, and adds Stardust and duckdeok to the mix, bringing it to 12/17 wins going to unique players, or 70%. As for Terran, between all of 2013 and 2014 there have been 16 wins, and 8 unique players (7 of those freaking wins are Taeja, and 3 are Polt). It could suggest a lower skill requirement for toss, that a larger number of unique players have been able to reach the level needed to win a premier tournament. The alternative is that, all of a sudden, in unison, Protoss players have become the most disciplined, hard working players out there. | ||
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