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So, I have run the model with the initialization step changed:
Instead of creating a completely random playerbase, I created 32 (11-11-10) very highly skilled players and 96 random ones. (I have run it with 350 and 399 skillpoints, with the average still at 200)
These 32 players start in the first Code S (as Hider suggested, the best ones should start).
The result for the winrates:
+ Show Spoiler +
No change. What does however happen, is that the amount of mirror matches for race 1 increases (by roughly 20%):
Mirror matches:
race1:64878
race2: 249866
race3: 126794
With the plain explanation, that those first 32 players are really good regardless of race, so even the UP race1 has players that qualify more often.
The amount of participations/wins for such a tournament looks like this then:
+ Show Spoiler +
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I probably could assign it in a way that is is 48%, hence your example would then tell us that there is no "closer to 50%" effect.
No that's a misunderstanding of what the assumptions of my model implies. The numbers were just used as an example. It's not something you should take for granted as a long-term equilibrim. The equilibrium here is gonna be 50/50. To see the intuition behind this, notice how players are chosen for the tournament. It's the top players based on "succes point" (Race points + Skill points). In this selection proces there is no bias towards any race. This means that as long as the sample size is big enough, then the two races are gonna have an equal amount of "succes points". Thus, they are gonna have equal win/rates.
Equilibriumwise, your only gonna have a difference in win/rates when there is a bias towards picking one race for the tournament instead of only focussong choosing those players with the highest probability to win.
Edit: Also about aligulac. I think you are underestimating how many games in aligulac are played by very low level players. Just look at the latests results: http://aligulac.com/results/I actually believe, that the qualification process to get a mentioning in aligulac is much, much lower than the one that I have implemented in my model. Simply, there is no qualification needed to attend a weekly tournament. But the amount of games played in a weekly tournament do probably exceed the amount of games played by professionals. Similarily, the amount of games played in the Dreamhack qualification rounds do exceed the amount of games in the later rounds when only
So here is the thing that I believe your overseeing here. If there is no selection-proces, then the average gold leauge player is just as likely to participate in the 1st round of the tournament as the average GM. Since there are like 50 more gold players than GM's, the assumption of no or a weak selectoin proces, implies that there shuld be many more gold players.
The selection-proces for Aliguac is thus extremely strong. The fact that there still are many weaker players showing up on the list is only a result of there being more of them. And it's exactly due to this strong selection-proces that we are seeing little variation in win/rates, but a high variation in the games played by each race.
Lastly, my model does prevent the players with the lower skill+race to play in Code S, apart from season1.They won't even make it through Code A usually. That's where in the theory the winrates should start growing towards 50, but they don't.
After - say 50 - simulated seasons, only the highest skilled players of the playerbase are left in CodeS in my system. The randomly chosen ones for CodeA have to fight against 16 of those "best" players to have a chance for CodeS and get a mentioning in the statistics. Somewhere in the later seasons, SOME of the effect just HAS TO show up. It's just not probable (like at all), that enough of weaker race1 players make it through CodeA to prevent some higher winrate than 40%.
Well, I don't disagree then since this just seems to be an issue of time. I always phrased as it going "towards", but never specificed when and never had any excessive focus on GSL.
As you point out, it should go towards 50/50, but seems to do that extremely slow/not at all. I believe the issue here is that those playing in Code A are randomly chosen, which makes the adjustment proces a ton slower.
I think higher level players are a ton more likely to participate in the code A qualifications than lower level players. I wonder if you could rerun your simulation, but this time only assume that the code A qualifiers consist of the best players who are not currently in Code S.
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On July 14 2014 00:22 Big J wrote:So, I have run the model with the initialization step changed: Instead of creating a completely random playerbase, I created 32 (11-11-10) very highly skilled players and 96 random ones. (I have run it with 350 and 399 skillpoints, with the average still at 200) These 32 players start in the first Code S (as Hider suggested, the best ones should start). The result for the winrates: + Show Spoiler +No change. What does however happen, is that the amount of mirror matches for race 1 increases (by roughly 20%): Mirror matches: race1:64878 race2: 249866 race3: 126794 With the plain explanation, that those first 32 players are really good regardless of race, so even the UP race1 has players that qualify more often. The amount of participations/wins for such a tournament looks like this then: + Show Spoiler +
Wait so you ran it through skillpoints?
I suggest you select players based on the combined points of "skill and race" points. You cannot seperate these two variables. When you select players based on this the combined amount of skill+race points and let them play a tournament each other, then the average terran player is gonna have a similar amount of points as the average P player regardless of race balance.
Thus, that's gonna end up in a 50/50 winrates.
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On July 14 2014 01:34 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2014 00:22 Big J wrote:So, I have run the model with the initialization step changed: Instead of creating a completely random playerbase, I created 32 (11-11-10) very highly skilled players and 96 random ones. (I have run it with 350 and 399 skillpoints, with the average still at 200) These 32 players start in the first Code S (as Hider suggested, the best ones should start). The result for the winrates: + Show Spoiler +No change. What does however happen, is that the amount of mirror matches for race 1 increases (by roughly 20%): Mirror matches: race1:64878 race2: 249866 race3: 126794 With the plain explanation, that those first 32 players are really good regardless of race, so even the UP race1 has players that qualify more often. The amount of participations/wins for such a tournament looks like this then: + Show Spoiler + Wait so you ran it through skillpoints? I suggest you select players based on the combined points of "skill and race" points. You cannot seperate these two variables. When you select players based on this the combined amount of skill+race points and let them play a tournament each other, then the average terran player is gonna have a similar amount of points as the average P player regardless of race balance. Thus, that's gonna end up in a 50/50 winrates.
The skillpoints are 399. With the balance of 1matchup being 40:60, that would still result in 399*(0.4*2)=319.2 weighted points for the UP race in the imbalanced matchup and 399 in the balanced one. So 99% of the time, those players have to be considered superior to any randomly created player. So yes, since I created those players "strong enough" they are the same ones as if I selected them by a combined skill+balance factor. I can, however if you believe there shouldn't be that many players of the first race in there (not 33%), do the same calucalations for 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 starting players. But the results will always look the same, I'm sure.
There is a bunch of problems with modelling additive race points as you describe them and why I rather use multiplicative matchup factors.
1) I have 3races. When I only want to create an imbalance in 1matchup, how can I go about that?
If give one race less race points, the race is going to be worse against both races...
2) What is the underlying balance assumption? When I use a multiplicator, like in my case, I know that the real winchance of two equally skilled players is 40:60. With the skillpoints, it becomes much more complicated to know what the actual winchance is to begin with. As I said, I may end up with a value at 48%, but I don't know what I actually expected to find. Like, "the closer to 50% argument" at first requires you to have a winrate under 48% to become proveable.
3) Race points don't scale. Like, say we have two races with +50 and +25 points. Then there is a massive difference between having two players with around 100 skillpoints face each other (large influence), or two players with around 1000 skillpoints (hardly any influence). I think it becomes very hard to find an accurate formula to produce reasonable wins on multiple levels.
Actually, thinking about it, point 3) is the whole crux of why your system will show you close to 50/50 stats (with the formula you are using, even if you correct it to be symmetrical). Because if you only pick the players for which the imbalance matters the least (due to no scaling with the player skill), you are actually going to just show that by observing the winrates. It doesn't even have a time component over which it converges to 50. It just shows you that while your average balance may be 45%, your toplevel balance is 48% and your bottom level balance is 42%.
Which is completely due to combining a multiplicative winchance formula, with an additive skill/race-combination.
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I actually don't believe in the 50% effect in your models either. If you assume that players are equally skilled and game balance in skewed toward an OP race, all other things being equal, then top players from the OP race will continue to beat down the top players of the UP race, no matter what. That makes sense.
I however think there are possibilities for the 50% effect to happen in more complex models.
Such problems can arise:
- Players of one race are more skilled: I like to think we can dismiss this hypothesis and continue onto more interesting (but less snarky ;D) ones.
- You have a notion of race per-skill effectiveness, which represents the power output you can get from a race relatively to the skill level of the player. If you assume that one race allows for more power in return as you put more skill in it, compared to others, maybe you'll see the 50% thing. It's essentially equivalent to skewing the skill distribution for one race with a transform function (greater variance for a Gaussian distribution, for example), if you want to test that quickly. The simulation will behave as if players of one race are more skilled, but technically it's just because players from the other races are less able to shine through. Depending of the function you choose to apply to the distribution, it may compensate completely the imbalance (you get 50% winrates all across, but player base stay even), but I believe you can find functions that get both the reduced player base AND the 50% effect.
Do you think that makes sense or am I missing something?
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On July 14 2014 02:25 ZenithM wrote:
I actually don't believe in the 50% effect in your models either. If you assume that players are equally skilled and game balance in skewed toward an OP race, all other things being equal, then top players from the OP race will continue to beat down the top players of the UP race, no matter what. That makes sense.
I however think there are possibilities for the 50% effect to happen in more complex models.
Such problems can arise:
- Players of one race are more skilled: I like to think we can dismiss this hypothesis and continue onto more interesting (but less snarky ;D) ones.
- You have a notion of race per-skill effectiveness, which represents the power output you can get from a race relatively to the skill level of the player. If you assume that one race allows for more power in return as you put more skill in it, compared to others, maybe you'll see the 50% thing. It's essentially equivalent to skewing the skill distribution for one race with a transform function (greater variance for a Gaussian distribution, for example), if you want to test that quickly. The simulation will behave as if players of one race are more skilled, but technically it's just because players from the other races are less able to shine through. Depending of the function you choose to apply to the distribution, it may compensate completely the imbalance (you get 50% winrates all across, but player base stay even), but I believe you can find functions that get both the reduced player base AND the 50% effect.
Do you think that makes sense or am I missing something?
Doesn't the second argument kind of come down to "top players of the UP race are more skilled" though?
Like, the outcome of creating a Gaussian with a higher standard deviation for the UP race, just means that there are more better and more worse players and less average players.
Since the tournament system drops the bad players pretty much regardless of how bad they are actually, what happens is just that your toplevel quantile - the one that is actually being recorded - is better for that race.
So yes, it does exaclty that:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/utbbmEP.jpg)
After (very few tournaments), all the better race1 players are in the tournament.
The resulting winrates after - let's be generous - 10seasons then are just higher in both matchups than the balance indicator suggests. Because the playerbase that is actually being played just has a higher skilllevel then the average of the other races.
Of course also the amount of mirror matches increases:
race1: 69845
race2: 256588
race3: 127324
(this was done with the standard deviation being 1.5times of the one for the other races, so uniform(200,75) instead of uniform(200,50))
I think what may be an actual effect causing some 50% convergence in starcraft is simply the fact that your opponents will be training less against your race, if you are of an underpowered/underrepresented race. Basically a "1skill indicator per matchup"-model, that slowly decreases the skill points of the matchups that you don't play as much in.
Also, there may just be build orders in Starcraft that give you close to 50% winchances by randomness, so you may just start to use those as your standard gameplay, since "standard" is worse.
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On July 14 2014 02:57 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2014 02:25 ZenithM wrote:
I actually don't believe in the 50% effect in your models either. If you assume that players are equally skilled and game balance in skewed toward an OP race, all other things being equal, then top players from the OP race will continue to beat down the top players of the UP race, no matter what. That makes sense.
I however think there are possibilities for the 50% effect to happen in more complex models.
Such problems can arise:
- Players of one race are more skilled: I like to think we can dismiss this hypothesis and continue onto more interesting (but less snarky ;D) ones.
- You have a notion of race per-skill effectiveness, which represents the power output you can get from a race relatively to the skill level of the player. If you assume that one race allows for more power in return as you put more skill in it, compared to others, maybe you'll see the 50% thing. It's essentially equivalent to skewing the skill distribution for one race with a transform function (greater variance for a Gaussian distribution, for example), if you want to test that quickly. The simulation will behave as if players of one race are more skilled, but technically it's just because players from the other races are less able to shine through. Depending of the function you choose to apply to the distribution, it may compensate completely the imbalance (you get 50% winrates all across, but player base stay even), but I believe you can find functions that get both the reduced player base AND the 50% effect.
Do you think that makes sense or am I missing something? Doesn't the second argument kind of come down to "top players of the UP race are more skilled" though? Like, the outcome of creating a Gaussian with a higher standard deviation for the UP race, just means that there are more better and more worse players and less average players. [...]
Yes, that's what I meant by:
The simulation will behave as if players of one race are more skilled, but technically it's just because players from the other races are less able to shine through.
It behaves as the "top players of the UP race are more skilled" fallacy, but the causes are hopefully to be found elsewhere.
My personal opinion about the game is that especially top Protosses have less to distinguish themselves with, compared to Zergs and Terrans. It's not that their best players are less skilled, it's simply that the game doesn't let them show their real advantage in skill. I think that's an important distinction, and it's not that unreasonable to think that the races are not equal in the difference in skill they're designed to allow.
Edit: Also one thing I wanted to note:
The more I think about it, the more I believe the 50% effect does not exist. This is my current explanation:
On first glance, it is right that only the better Terrans get to play when they are underpowered against, say Zerg. Now what happens is that Zergs start to replace Terrans in racial distribution. However, they are not overtaking by a degree that would allow the top Terrans to brutalize them and even out the winrates. Why? Because Protoss prevents those Zergs from entering the competition at that level, since that matchup is still balanced. A patchzerg beating a Terran still also has to be able to beat Protoss and Zerg players to reach the tournaments, which he simply does not. Even more since the amount of Terrans is low, his ability to beat Terrans is marginally important!
This is indeed fine if we assume that one race isn't inferior to both the others at the same time, or one race isn't superior to both at the same time. I think that at the moments in Starcraft 2 where the "patch[race]" phenomenon occurred, it's precisely that one race was dominating the other 2. And at the moments of near complete extinction in GSL, that one race was kinda bad against the other 2.
Edit 2: And I recommend reading that translation. Makes me want to leave the game untouched to see what Flash can bring through practice ((if anything :D).
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This looks like a worthwhile endeavor but I don't have the time to focus on it now. I'd like to point out though that 50% statistics only arise if you model several tournaments with players of differing skill levels.
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1) I have 3races. When I only want to create an imbalance in 1matchup, how can I go about that?
If give one race less race points, the race is going to be worse against both races...
If TvZ = 45/55 and TvP = 40/60, then the average win/rate here is 42.5 and you could transform that value into race points (in some way I guess).
Race points don't scale. Like, say we have two races with +50 and +25 points. Then there is a massive difference between having two players with around 100 skillpoints face each other (large influence), or two players with around 1000 skillpoints (hardly any influence). I think it becomes very hard to find an accurate formula to produce reasonable wins on multiple levels.
You could make it: Succes point = Skill points + Race point factor*Skill points.
I actually don't believe in the 50% effect in your models either. If you assume that players are equally skilled and game balance in skewed toward an OP race, all other things being equal, then top players from the OP race will continue to beat down the top players of the UP race, no matter what. That makes sense.
Yeh this is an interesting argument, and I think the average succes point of the races participating in tournaments might not be the same as the OP race will have players with a higher amount of points particpating.
When that is said, I still expect this effect to be relatively small when we are talking about larger sample sizes and tournaments where lots of players can play. If on the other hand we are only looking at tournaments where the very best in the world can participate, the equilibrium could indeed be quite a bit away from 50%.
When looking at more casual tournaments like $100 offline tournaments, then I think it's very close to 50%. The very best players in the world (those with high enough succes point) will opt to not participate in those tournaments, and then it will only consist of players that meets a certain requirement but at the same time are not too good.
So that would be one way to extend the model: You assume that there are X GSL'ish tournaments having only the very best players in the game. But then there are also (1-X) tournaments where only the weaker players participate. E.g. GSL = The best 32 (based on succes point). Offline tournament = Rank 32 to 128 (based on succes points).
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On July 14 2014 03:33 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +The more I think about it, the more I believe the 50% effect does not exist. This is my current explanation:
On first glance, it is right that only the better Terrans get to play when they are underpowered against, say Zerg. Now what happens is that Zergs start to replace Terrans in racial distribution. However, they are not overtaking by a degree that would allow the top Terrans to brutalize them and even out the winrates. Why? Because Protoss prevents those Zergs from entering the competition at that level, since that matchup is still balanced. A patchzerg beating a Terran still also has to be able to beat Protoss and Zerg players to reach the tournaments, which he simply does not. Even more since the amount of Terrans is low, his ability to beat Terrans is marginally important!
This is indeed fine if we assume that one race isn't inferior to both the others at the same time, or one race isn't superior to both at the same time. I think that at the moments in Starcraft 2 where the "patch[race]" phenomenon occurred, it's precisely that one race was dominating the other 2. And at the moments of near complete extinction in GSL, that one race was kinda bad against the other 2. Edit 2: And I recommend reading that translation. Makes me want to leave the game untouched to see what Flash can bring through practice ((if anything :D).
Hm, I'm not sure to which degree the highest level of TvZ is imbalanced currently.
I'd say it's Zerg favored. I'd say that mass mutalisks against bio is at least a lategame problem (though, so is mass Raven against Z, just a tiny bit harder to reach).
Still, if TvP wasn't between 20 to 50 percent on GSL/Proleague levels with an average winrate of like 35-40% in the last half year, I doubt Terran would be on the verge of extinction in the GSL, and I could see people actually accepting TvZ balance as "within the margin of balance".
That's actually an interesting observation in the model, since it simulates GSLs. It looks like it only takes a very low amount of seasons to drastically reduce the racial distribution, if you only have one matchup with 40:60 balance.
Even the numbers of mirrors nearly coincide, basically its just that (as I said above) that Zerg is probably a little bit up on T too.
Last 3GSLs:
T: 19 (11%)
Z: 67 (38%)
P: 92 (52%)
model (40:60 r1 vs r3):
race1: 54256 (12%)
race2: 134548 (29%)
race3: 281895 (60%)
About that Flash translation. I'm not the biggest fan of this approach. Creating a game obviously leaves you with very arbitrary stats for units/buldings/built times etc. So obviously you need betas and balancing beyond betas. I find the idea to leave the game as it is at some arbitrary point "just because atm everything is working out and for future imbalances we hope people come up with something" a strange idea.
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On July 14 2014 18:54 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2014 03:33 ZenithM wrote:The more I think about it, the more I believe the 50% effect does not exist. This is my current explanation:
On first glance, it is right that only the better Terrans get to play when they are underpowered against, say Zerg. Now what happens is that Zergs start to replace Terrans in racial distribution. However, they are not overtaking by a degree that would allow the top Terrans to brutalize them and even out the winrates. Why? Because Protoss prevents those Zergs from entering the competition at that level, since that matchup is still balanced. A patchzerg beating a Terran still also has to be able to beat Protoss and Zerg players to reach the tournaments, which he simply does not. Even more since the amount of Terrans is low, his ability to beat Terrans is marginally important!
This is indeed fine if we assume that one race isn't inferior to both the others at the same time, or one race isn't superior to both at the same time. I think that at the moments in Starcraft 2 where the "patch[race]" phenomenon occurred, it's precisely that one race was dominating the other 2. And at the moments of near complete extinction in GSL, that one race was kinda bad against the other 2. Edit 2: And I recommend reading that translation. Makes me want to leave the game untouched to see what Flash can bring through practice ((if anything :D). [...] About that Flash translation. I'm not the biggest fan of this approach. Creating a game obviously leaves you with very arbitrary stats for units/buldings/built times etc. So obviously you need betas and balancing beyond betas. I find the idea to leave the game as it is at some arbitrary point "just because atm everything is working out and for future imbalances we hope people come up with something" a strange idea.
Plus, as he himself said, Flash would like the game to have a last patch before being left untouched, because he thinks it's really too imbalanced, which makes me think players aren't actually that fond of the "let the players figure out the worst imbalance states themselves" idea.
I think Starcraft 2 and BW are 2 different games, nothing wrong with the patching policy being different.
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The problem is that Blizzard patches either too heavily or doesn't.
Look at the widow mine. It would be fine if players would have a chance to figure out how to play vs it. Blizzard nerfed it very fast. Now they buff it again.
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On July 15 2014 01:11 ZenithM wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2014 18:54 Big J wrote:On July 14 2014 03:33 ZenithM wrote:The more I think about it, the more I believe the 50% effect does not exist. This is my current explanation:
On first glance, it is right that only the better Terrans get to play when they are underpowered against, say Zerg. Now what happens is that Zergs start to replace Terrans in racial distribution. However, they are not overtaking by a degree that would allow the top Terrans to brutalize them and even out the winrates. Why? Because Protoss prevents those Zergs from entering the competition at that level, since that matchup is still balanced. A patchzerg beating a Terran still also has to be able to beat Protoss and Zerg players to reach the tournaments, which he simply does not. Even more since the amount of Terrans is low, his ability to beat Terrans is marginally important!
This is indeed fine if we assume that one race isn't inferior to both the others at the same time, or one race isn't superior to both at the same time. I think that at the moments in Starcraft 2 where the "patch[race]" phenomenon occurred, it's precisely that one race was dominating the other 2. And at the moments of near complete extinction in GSL, that one race was kinda bad against the other 2. Edit 2: And I recommend reading that translation. Makes me want to leave the game untouched to see what Flash can bring through practice ((if anything :D). [...] About that Flash translation. I'm not the biggest fan of this approach. Creating a game obviously leaves you with very arbitrary stats for units/buldings/built times etc. So obviously you need betas and balancing beyond betas. I find the idea to leave the game as it is at some arbitrary point "just because atm everything is working out and for future imbalances we hope people come up with something" a strange idea. Plus, as he himself said, Flash would like the game to have a last patch before being left untouched, because he thinks it's really too imbalanced, which makes me think players aren't actually that fond of the "let the players figure out the worst imbalance states themselves" idea. I think Starcraft 2 and BW are 2 different games, nothing wrong with the patching policy being different.
The problem with Blizzard patching has and always been
1) Stupid as fuck logic, the reasonings they give to balance something one way or the other makes absolutely no sense at all. Why the hell give oracle faster speed when it wasn't needed at all? WM nerf to increase diversity in play?
2) Random knee-jerks one way or the other. Thors were nerfed after one tournament. They said they weren't going to do any changes, then 1-2 days after TheDwf's article came out, aha - buffs to Terran... that don't address any of the problems at all.
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On July 15 2014 02:37 Chaggi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2014 01:11 ZenithM wrote:On July 14 2014 18:54 Big J wrote:On July 14 2014 03:33 ZenithM wrote:The more I think about it, the more I believe the 50% effect does not exist. This is my current explanation:
On first glance, it is right that only the better Terrans get to play when they are underpowered against, say Zerg. Now what happens is that Zergs start to replace Terrans in racial distribution. However, they are not overtaking by a degree that would allow the top Terrans to brutalize them and even out the winrates. Why? Because Protoss prevents those Zergs from entering the competition at that level, since that matchup is still balanced. A patchzerg beating a Terran still also has to be able to beat Protoss and Zerg players to reach the tournaments, which he simply does not. Even more since the amount of Terrans is low, his ability to beat Terrans is marginally important!
This is indeed fine if we assume that one race isn't inferior to both the others at the same time, or one race isn't superior to both at the same time. I think that at the moments in Starcraft 2 where the "patch[race]" phenomenon occurred, it's precisely that one race was dominating the other 2. And at the moments of near complete extinction in GSL, that one race was kinda bad against the other 2. Edit 2: And I recommend reading that translation. Makes me want to leave the game untouched to see what Flash can bring through practice ((if anything :D). [...] About that Flash translation. I'm not the biggest fan of this approach. Creating a game obviously leaves you with very arbitrary stats for units/buldings/built times etc. So obviously you need betas and balancing beyond betas. I find the idea to leave the game as it is at some arbitrary point "just because atm everything is working out and for future imbalances we hope people come up with something" a strange idea. Plus, as he himself said, Flash would like the game to have a last patch before being left untouched, because he thinks it's really too imbalanced, which makes me think players aren't actually that fond of the "let the players figure out the worst imbalance states themselves" idea. I think Starcraft 2 and BW are 2 different games, nothing wrong with the patching policy being different. The problem with Blizzard patching has and always been 1) Stupid as fuck logic, the reasonings they give to balance something one way or the other makes absolutely no sense at all. Why the hell give oracle faster speed when it wasn't needed at all? WM nerf to increase diversity in play? 2) Random knee-jerks one way or the other. Thors were nerfed after one tournament. They said they weren't going to do any changes, then 1-2 days after TheDwf's article came out, aha - buffs to Terran... that don't address any of the problems at all.
3) They do what they want, less wm seen than expected in last 4months? just buff it. They want see games what/how they want and gives players absolutely no room for other stuff like own "unique" playstyle.
I really hate that they want/have so much influence about early/mid/lategame developing.
Edit: The time before BL+C+Infestor festival, we have seen alot unique playstyles. I guess Blizzard hate/hated it.
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Blizzards rampant and often pointless patches are probably the root cause of the current meta. I keep saying it goes back to at the beginning of HotS they nerfed or removed lots of the game with no reason other than people panicking that they would be too strong when no meta had been established. MSC saw almost no use at the start, now its an essential part of Protoss strategy, but when Terran added the Hellbats right away people complained they were too strong with no basis, the game had only been out a few months! Now its been over a year and the problems are clear but they refuse to fix them.
It all comes back to their hasty patches at the very start of release, they should have trusted their beta tests and waited to see what happened.
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So, I've done some reading through this thread, and others like it. Disliked the proposed Terran Patches, decided to do better on my own. To TL, I submit an alternative set of Patch Notes:
Terran:
Viking:
- Viking air speed increased from 2.75 to 3.25
- Viking base armor in air and ground modes increased from 0 to 1.
Ghost:
- Snipe damage changed from 25 + 25 vs Psionic to 45. Snipe not usable on Massive targets.
- Nuclear Missile damage vs. structures increased from 500 to 800.
Protoss
Mothership Core
- Photon Overcharge now lasts 30 seconds.
Reasoning for Viking Changes:
Mutalisk regeneration changed how players have to deal with Mutalisks. Dealing non-fatal splash damage and letting it add up over time to leave the Mutalisks extremely weak is no longer a solution. This has been apparent in PvZ: Storm vs. Mutalisks has become much less effective, as you can no longer trade Templar for chunks of the flock's health. Templar and Blink Stalkers can buy time, but the better solution is for Protoss to get Phoenix out. While they don't deal splash damage, they pick off individual Mutalisks and force the Zerg to replace Mutas. The resulting battles are micro-intensive between P and Z players.
The intent of the Viking improvements are to give Terrans a buff to their air-to-air fighter. While Terrans can theoretically slaughter Mutalisks that are dumb enough to engage in a clump near a Thor, this seldom happens as Thors are so immobile. Marines can badly wound or kill Mutalisks head to head, but cannot keep up even with Stim. Medivacs cannot help transport anything to shoot up, as Mutalisks will turn around and butcher the transports. With these improvements, the Viking is intended to pick off Mutalisks from a distance, before retreating to the cover of less-mobile Thors or Marines. The extra armor mitigates any hits the Mutas do land.
Side effects of this change include Vikings being somewhat more capable of picking off Colossi in TvP. The Viking as a whole becomes more responsive to micro. Vikings become minutely more capable in head-to-head fights against anything, on the air or ground. In TvT, the Viking can better respond to "doom drops" for a mech player versus a bio player.
Reasoning for Ghost Changes:
Ghosts are under-used outside of TvP, and in TvP their main benefit is dealing with Templar via EMP or Snipe. They briefly enjoyed a spell of usefulness against Zerg before a Snipe nerf rendered them incapable of one-shotting a Zergling. The nerf was intended to prevent Terran players from simply sniping every single thing Zerg made with a critical mass of Ghosts. With a better Snipe, the Ghost becomes more useful in all 3 matchups: picking off smaller Zerg with relative ease (albeit at a high micro cost).
Increasing Nuke damage to 800 allows them to instantly destroy Pylons, Depots, Cannons, Crawlers, etc in a larger radius. Allowing a Terran to test the opponent's multi-tasking skills with a 2 supply unit instead of a 10 supply drop increases Terran late-game options. Also, people like watching nukes. This ability is almost never used, but makes crowds go wild. This will be a rather minor detail that would only come up late game.
Reasoning for Mothership Core Changes:
Photon Overcharge is probably the single biggest TvP ruining factor out there. The huge variety of all-ins available to Protoss against Terran is at least partially due to the fact that a single unit can make a base "safe" to any force that can hit it pre-10 minutes for a full MINUTE of play is crazy.
PvP can get bent. Even before HOTS the matchup was stabilizing beyond its "4gate vs. 4gate" origins. Besides, this matchup is balanced by default. The threat of the Oracle is new, but I'm 100% certain that builds can be worked out that don't die horribly to Oracles while still allowing the game to reach 2 bases.
Extra Ranting:
I dislike Widow Mines, and think that playing around with their damage is the wrong answer to any of the problems Terrans have today. Good Zerg players don't let their muta flock get hit by them - often just swooping in and sniping the mine before it can fire. It's a very binary unit: either it gets a shot off into a clump of units and probably pays for itself instantly, or it doesn't and was largely a waste of supply and money.
I read a lot of suggestions to say "buff tanks", or more particularly "make tanks good TvP". For my two cents, the answer to the first is "they're not bad, if they're not getting sniped by mutas", and "how, exactly?". A large majority of Protoss units are good against them, whether it's Charging Zealots, Stalkers blinking into their faces from a flank, Immortals doing what Immortals do to Armor, Archons absorbing huge amounts of tank fire, any Stargate unit being immune to them, and so on. SC2 Protoss is not weak to tanks. Oh well, I don't make Templar in PvP. It's probably fine to have a unit sit a match out. Do Factory units have a place in TvP? Sure. Is a pure mech composition built around Siege Tanks going to be a strong option in SC2 vs Protoss? Probably not.
I have a couple half-finished ideas that I figured would have to wait to LotV:
1) Siege Tanks gain an alternate ammunition type, and a Hold Fire command
I love the Thor's ability to switch between weapons to pick the best one for a situation. It feels thematically right for the 'adaptable' Terran race, and fits the game design well. Terran, by nature of their production methods, cannot switch the units in their army as fast as Protoss with Warpgate or Zerg with stockpiled larva. Therefore, the units themselves have to adapt to the situation (under the player's control).
Implementing an alternate fire for the tank and giving specific tanks the ability to hold fire until ordered otherwise would add more micro potential to the unit, and would allow for different rounds to be better against different targets. Imagine an anti-armor round with higher point damage with reduced splash, and a 'shredder' or 'proximity' round that does more splash at the cost of single-target damage.
2) Upgrade added for Terran: Adaptive Servos, reducing unit transformation times by 50%. Affects Vikings, Siege Tanks, Hellions/Hellbats, and Thor & Tank ammunition changes.
Like the above, Terrans need to adapt their transforming units. This could come in later in the game to keep Terran adaptive: Tank lines moving quicker, Hellions able to transform faster to Hellbats and vice versa for more firepower/mobility when needed, Vikings better able to pull off landing raids, etc.
I've written all I can write. Feel free to criticize/praise/tear to shreds any of the above. No ad-hominems, please.
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On July 15 2014 11:47 GoStu wrote:
So, I've done some reading through this thread, and others like it. Disliked the proposed Terran Patches, decided to do better on my own. To TL, I submit an alternative set of Patch Notes:
Terran:
Viking:
- Viking air speed increased from 2.75 to 3.25
- Viking base armor in air and ground modes increased from 0 to 1.
Ghost:
- Snipe damage changed from 25 + 25 vs Psionic to 45. Snipe not usable on Massive targets.
- Nuclear Missile damage vs. structures increased from 500 to 800.
Protoss
Mothership Core
- Photon Overcharge now lasts 30 seconds.
Reasoning for Viking Changes:
Mutalisk regeneration changed how players have to deal with Mutalisks. Dealing non-fatal splash damage and letting it add up over time to leave the Mutalisks extremely weak is no longer a solution. This has been apparent in PvZ: Storm vs. Mutalisks has become much less effective, as you can no longer trade Templar for chunks of the flock's health. Templar and Blink Stalkers can buy time, but the better solution is for Protoss to get Phoenix out. While they don't deal splash damage, they pick off individual Mutalisks and force the Zerg to replace Mutas. The resulting battles are micro-intensive between P and Z players.
The intent of the Viking improvements are to give Terrans a buff to their air-to-air fighter. While Terrans can theoretically slaughter Mutalisks that are dumb enough to engage in a clump near a Thor, this seldom happens as Thors are so immobile. Marines can badly wound or kill Mutalisks head to head, but cannot keep up even with Stim. Medivacs cannot help transport anything to shoot up, as Mutalisks will turn around and butcher the transports. With these improvements, the Viking is intended to pick off Mutalisks from a distance, before retreating to the cover of less-mobile Thors or Marines. The extra armor mitigates any hits the Mutas do land.
Side effects of this change include Vikings being somewhat more capable of picking off Colossi in TvP. The Viking as a whole becomes more responsive to micro. Vikings become minutely more capable in head-to-head fights against anything, on the air or ground. In TvT, the Viking can better respond to "doom drops" for a mech player versus a bio player.
Reasoning for Ghost Changes:
Ghosts are under-used outside of TvP, and in TvP their main benefit is dealing with Templar via EMP or Snipe. They briefly enjoyed a spell of usefulness against Zerg before a Snipe nerf rendered them incapable of one-shotting a Zergling. The nerf was intended to prevent Terran players from simply sniping every single thing Zerg made with a critical mass of Ghosts. With a better Snipe, the Ghost becomes more useful in all 3 matchups: picking off smaller Zerg with relative ease (albeit at a high micro cost).
Increasing Nuke damage to 800 allows them to instantly destroy Pylons, Depots, Cannons, Crawlers, etc in a larger radius. Allowing a Terran to test the opponent's multi-tasking skills with a 2 supply unit instead of a 10 supply drop increases Terran late-game options. Also, people like watching nukes. This ability is almost never used, but makes crowds go wild. This will be a rather minor detail that would only come up late game.
Reasoning for Mothership Core Changes:
Photon Overcharge is probably the single biggest TvP ruining factor out there. The huge variety of all-ins available to Protoss against Terran is at least partially due to the fact that a single unit can make a base "safe" to any force that can hit it pre-10 minutes for a full MINUTE of play is crazy.
PvP can get bent. Even before HOTS the matchup was stabilizing beyond its "4gate vs. 4gate" origins. Besides, this matchup is balanced by default. The threat of the Oracle is new, but I'm 100% certain that builds can be worked out that don't die horribly to Oracles while still allowing the game to reach 2 bases.
Extra Ranting:
I dislike Widow Mines, and think that playing around with their damage is the wrong answer to any of the problems Terrans have today. Good Zerg players don't let their muta flock get hit by them - often just swooping in and sniping the mine before it can fire. It's a very binary unit: either it gets a shot off into a clump of units and probably pays for itself instantly, or it doesn't and was largely a waste of supply and money.
I read a lot of suggestions to say "buff tanks", or more particularly "make tanks good TvP". For my two cents, the answer to the first is "they're not bad, if they're not getting sniped by mutas", and "how, exactly?". A large majority of Protoss units are good against them, whether it's Charging Zealots, Stalkers blinking into their faces from a flank, Immortals doing what Immortals do to Armor, Archons absorbing huge amounts of tank fire, any Stargate unit being immune to them, and so on. SC2 Protoss is not weak to tanks. Oh well, I don't make Templar in PvP. It's probably fine to have a unit sit a match out. Do Factory units have a place in TvP? Sure. Is a pure mech composition built around Siege Tanks going to be a strong option in SC2 vs Protoss? Probably not.
I have a couple half-finished ideas that I figured would have to wait to LotV:
1) Siege Tanks gain an alternate ammunition type, and a Hold Fire command
I love the Thor's ability to switch between weapons to pick the best one for a situation. It feels thematically right for the 'adaptable' Terran race, and fits the game design well. Terran, by nature of their production methods, cannot switch the units in their army as fast as Protoss with Warpgate or Zerg with stockpiled larva. Therefore, the units themselves have to adapt to the situation (under the player's control).
Implementing an alternate fire for the tank and giving specific tanks the ability to hold fire until ordered otherwise would add more micro potential to the unit, and would allow for different rounds to be better against different targets. Imagine an anti-armor round with higher point damage with reduced splash, and a 'shredder' or 'proximity' round that does more splash at the cost of single-target damage.
2) Upgrade added for Terran: Adaptive Servos, reducing unit transformation times by 50%. Affects Vikings, Siege Tanks, Hellions/Hellbats, and Thor & Tank ammunition changes.
Like the above, Terrans need to adapt their transforming units. This could come in later in the game to keep Terran adaptive: Tank lines moving quicker, Hellions able to transform faster to Hellbats and vice versa for more firepower/mobility when needed, Vikings better able to pull off landing raids, etc.
I've written all I can write. Feel free to criticize/praise/tear to shreds any of the above. No ad-hominems, please.
Excellent changes! I applaud your competence and tenacity! These proposed changes should really make TvT more interesting since that is what every top level game would consist of. Terran and people switching to Terran. I assume that you would propose removing the defunct Protoss and Zerg races from the game in your next hypothetical scenario? I mean no one would be masochist enough to play them if these changes go through.
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On July 15 2014 11:47 GoStu wrote:
The nerf was intended to prevent Terran players from simply sniping every single thing Zerg made with a critical mass of Ghosts.
So what makes you think it's a good idea to reintroduce a single unit hard countering an entire race again.
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I don't get those Snipe obsessions. Over and over and over again people keep on suggesting this buff. Why exactly that one? If you want to buff the ghost, there are a hundred ways to do it. If you want to buff Terran, there are a million ways to do it.
But Snipe is a shit spell. It's not fun to play with or against it. It's a spam-click competition.
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Excellent changes! I applaud your competence and tenacity! These proposed changes should really make TvT more interesting since that is what every top level game would consist of. Terran and people switching to Terran. I assume that you would propose removing the defunct Protoss and Zerg races from the game in your next hypothetical scenario? I mean no one would be masochist enough to play them if these changes go through.
Viking changes will !@#$%^&* up banshee's in TvT. Instead, only change transformation time of Vikings here.
I don't get those Snipe obsessions. Over and over and over again people keep on suggesting this buff. Why exactly that one? If you want to buff the ghost, there are a hundred ways to do it. If you want to buff Terran, there are a million ways to do it.
But Snipe is a !@#$%^&* spell. It's not fun to play with or against it. It's a spam-click competition.
This so much. First of all, Snipe cannot fix anything balancewise. Secondly, it's a terrible onedimensional ability. Kinda comparable to PDD I guess. My belief is that it actually was a bit bad for Sc2 that Snipe was nerfed so fast, because then we never had that long period as we had with instant-fungal to clearly demonstrate to everybody how lame an ability it was. Balance aside here.
They briefly enjoyed a spell of usefulness against Zerg before a Snipe nerf rendered them incapable of one-shotting a Zergling.
Noone ever in their right mind ever used Snipe to oneshot Zerglings. It was used vs Broodlords and Ultralisks and was imba vs both of them.
PvP can get bent. Even before HOTS the matchup was stabilizing beyond its "4gate vs. 4gate" origins. Besides, this matchup is balanced by default. The threat of the Oracle is new, but I'm 100% certain that builds can be worked out that don't die horribly to Oracles while still allowing the game to reach 2 bases.
It's really easy to make changes then. Just say I am sure something will be worked out to a matchup that is already extremely volatile. You could justify any type of change by this logic.
But in the end of the day, if late game is the real problem TvP; there are just tons of easier changes here (reduce Ghost cost, Tank + damage vs shield).
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hBpMng6.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dY2XK0P.jpg)
