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On January 11 2015 01:47 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:On January 10 2015 08:58 Big J wrote:Nice read. Especially agree on that part: Blizzard can focus on small things and become too indecisive as a result - 150+ official balance updates over the course of Starcraft II’s history is not a staggering amount. When you take that 150+ and realize how many of those changes have either been reversed or patched over, it gets a lot smaller. The Thor and Void Ray alone account for 20 balance updates, most of which have been patched over and over. This type of indecisiveness has lead Blizzard to focus on aspects of the game that aren’t as important to most players, and over the years that has had an impact on the community. When everyone is asking Blizzard for tools to deal with something or to fix a certain aspect of a race and there’s a balance update that changes spine crawler AI, it’s hard not to feel like the balance team is disjointed from the sentiment of the community.There have been way too few patches for my liking. And the ones they do are often not the important ones. And come late. Especially in 2013 they should have patched much more, since HotS was young, yet, patterns were already being explored. (e.g. swarm hosts, blink allins, SCV pulls to name a few ones that have been around and more than annoying up to that day) Meanwhile there is another Starbow patch out with like 30 changes. :p Anyway, I thought the article raised some interesting questions. So, you can see that at some point in 2011 Blizzard stopped balancing the game and the author correlates this to starting work on Heart of the Swarm. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a good hypothesis because it would explain why they took so long with Heart of the Swarm, since they were still focused on Wings of Liberty in late 2011. I also think that if you are focused on a game that this will be reflected in having more changes. I don't buy this idea that Blizzard was taking a cautious approach because they felt that the metagame was developing nicely or whatever, and that's why they were hesitant in patching too much, especially considering how broken the game still was in 2012. So extrapolating this to the low amount of Heart of the Swarm patching, this gives you the idea that the team is not focused on Heart of the Swarm and instead is working on Heroes / LotV. It's a bit of a rough metric, equating patch changes with number of Blizzard employees working on Starcraft, but maybe it's a useful guide? In contrary, I do actually believe blizzard when they say they have changed their balance approach to be more cautious. It makes sense, since they got so much shit in 2010-11 for the heavier patching. And anytime they even just release their thoughts on the tiniest changes it feels like 50% of the comments are "just let the players figure it out on their own". I wouldn't dismiss the other theory either, because why change units when you are already planning on solving the problems with expansion content. However I think the heavy community pressure is the main reason why it often feels like they are hiding in the darkest corners. Basically any of their comments these days gets so much bullshit that I find it somewhat brave that they are communicating at all.
Well, it might be true that they've evolved this new, more cautious patching philosophy, but it's probably matched with less resources allocated to SC2 development. And of course it's awfully convenient for Blizzard; from our perspective it's probably not possible to tell whether it's a genuine conviction or a cynical attempt to cut costs. Personally I didn't get the impression that David Kim and Dustin Browder were occupied with SC2 full-time the last two years.
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On January 11 2015 05:41 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2015 01:47 Big J wrote:On January 11 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:On January 10 2015 08:58 Big J wrote:Nice read. Especially agree on that part: Blizzard can focus on small things and become too indecisive as a result - 150+ official balance updates over the course of Starcraft II’s history is not a staggering amount. When you take that 150+ and realize how many of those changes have either been reversed or patched over, it gets a lot smaller. The Thor and Void Ray alone account for 20 balance updates, most of which have been patched over and over. This type of indecisiveness has lead Blizzard to focus on aspects of the game that aren’t as important to most players, and over the years that has had an impact on the community. When everyone is asking Blizzard for tools to deal with something or to fix a certain aspect of a race and there’s a balance update that changes spine crawler AI, it’s hard not to feel like the balance team is disjointed from the sentiment of the community.There have been way too few patches for my liking. And the ones they do are often not the important ones. And come late. Especially in 2013 they should have patched much more, since HotS was young, yet, patterns were already being explored. (e.g. swarm hosts, blink allins, SCV pulls to name a few ones that have been around and more than annoying up to that day) Meanwhile there is another Starbow patch out with like 30 changes. :p Anyway, I thought the article raised some interesting questions. So, you can see that at some point in 2011 Blizzard stopped balancing the game and the author correlates this to starting work on Heart of the Swarm. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a good hypothesis because it would explain why they took so long with Heart of the Swarm, since they were still focused on Wings of Liberty in late 2011. I also think that if you are focused on a game that this will be reflected in having more changes. I don't buy this idea that Blizzard was taking a cautious approach because they felt that the metagame was developing nicely or whatever, and that's why they were hesitant in patching too much, especially considering how broken the game still was in 2012. So extrapolating this to the low amount of Heart of the Swarm patching, this gives you the idea that the team is not focused on Heart of the Swarm and instead is working on Heroes / LotV. It's a bit of a rough metric, equating patch changes with number of Blizzard employees working on Starcraft, but maybe it's a useful guide? In contrary, I do actually believe blizzard when they say they have changed their balance approach to be more cautious. It makes sense, since they got so much shit in 2010-11 for the heavier patching. And anytime they even just release their thoughts on the tiniest changes it feels like 50% of the comments are "just let the players figure it out on their own". I wouldn't dismiss the other theory either, because why change units when you are already planning on solving the problems with expansion content. However I think the heavy community pressure is the main reason why it often feels like they are hiding in the darkest corners. Basically any of their comments these days gets so much bullshit that I find it somewhat brave that they are communicating at all. Well, it might be true that they've evolved this new, more cautious patching philosophy, but it's probably matched with less resources allocated to SC2 development. And of course it's awfully convenient for Blizzard; from our perspective it's probably not possible to tell whether it's a genuine conviction or a cynical attempt to cut costs. Personally I didn't get the impression that David Kim and Dustin Browder were occupied with SC2 full-time the last two years.
Dustin Browder is probably hardly working at SC2 at all currently, and in 2012 and 2014 the main focus was probably HotS/LotV for most of the team. However, in 2013 after the HotS release it felt like they were following certain gameplay developments closely (f.e. Mech vs Protoss - they did communicate a lot on that matter). They just didn't act and kept on saying that balance is good for the most part and progamers are approaching them not to patch too the game.
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On January 10 2015 00:28 mCon.Hephaistas wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2015 21:43 Grumbels wrote:On January 09 2015 20:16 mCon.Hephaistas wrote:On January 09 2015 19:46 Grumbels wrote:On January 09 2015 19:03 mCon.Hephaistas wrote:
Ofcourse the winrates will look decent when you have less zergs in tournaments atm.
Better zergs will play vs lesser players of other races since more of them qualified. I'm not sure if that rule holds up in practice. You could think that if zerg is weak vs terran and that only strong zerg players survive, that they're still not favored vs top players of other races because of the (assumed) imbalance, so the win rates won't necessarily be 50/50. Ur right man, in fact i guess Zerg is just slightly too strong in ZvT then according to those winrates :') I can't tell anymore when people are being sarcastic.  Just tell me if this is wrong: Scenario 1: - a tournament with 10 T players vs 10 equally skilled Z players will have an expected win rate of 50% Scenario 2: - let's say you add some imbalance so that all zerg players lose, like, 5 spots in the ranking - now you have a tournament with 10 top T players vs 5 top Z players. The zerg players are going to match up fairly vs the terran players ranked #6-#10, but they're going to lose against the terran players ranked #1-#5 - therefore the expected win rate should be more than 50% in favor of terran I see this argument a lot: win rates will level off to 50% because only good zerg players qualify. It could be true, but I somewhat doubt it. I think it's true that it will become closer to 50% if you're looking at an entire ladder because only at the absolute highest and lowest level will there be unfair match-ups. However, one thing to keep in mind is that players that win games will on average play more games because they get deeper into the tournaments. Therefore stats from the pro scene are biased to resemble this more than ladder and so maybe you should expect >50% win rates assuming imbalance exists. There's more to win rates though. There are legacy spots for tournaments based on old balance that affect win rates and there's also the fact that balance differs per skill level, so maybe zerg is fine at the top level but weak at the level below that (as an example). Anyway, I don't know if my reasoning is sound, but at least I think people should stop just saying that win rates will tend towards 50/50 without adding some caution. :/ No but it's quite obvious Zerg is in a tough spot, I'm also quite sure Terran winrates weren't bad before they got mine/hellbat/thor buffed. Anyway let's have a look at blizzcon. 3 out of 4 Zergs lost to a terran in the first round. But because Life on his own beat a some Terrans the winrates still looked good, but that doesn't mean it's balanced at all.
Just making sure that you know these last 90 games don't include Blizzcon. They do include Proleague, though, where Life's contribution to ZvT is... 0-1. We're looking at over 250 games at this point. Two powerhouse performances from Life definitely make up for some of the slack from others, but not that much. It's not as though INnoVation and Taeja aren't also consistently making deep runs.
Let's actually compare how well the top Protoss were doing against Terran to how well top Terrans are doing against Zerg now.
From January 2014 to July 2014 - a six month stretch - Zest, Rain, herO, and PartinG lost to Flash, Maru, Bbyong, TY, Cure, Polt, Gumiho, Bunny, and no one else. Over six months. PartinG lost a single series out of 13. That is simply insane.
From November 2014 until now - just over two months - INnoVation, Taeja, Maru, and Flash have lost to Dark, Losira, Rogue, Life, ByuL, Soulkey, Solar, Leenock, TRUE, soO, DRG. In a third of the time, top Terrans have dropped series to 35% more different Zerg players.
Obviously none of that disproves that there's some kind of problem. But the implied analogy between Life and someone like Maru, who was skewing Terran stats to hell and back by simply refusing to die, is not very accurate.
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On January 11 2015 07:16 pure.Wasted wrote:
From January 2014 to July 2014 - a six month stretch - Zest, Rain, herO, and PartinG lost to Flash, Maru, Bbyong, TY, Cure, Polt, Gumiho, Bunny, and no one else. Over six months. PartinG lost a single series out of 13. That is simply insane.
From November 2014 until now - just over two months - INnoVation, Taeja, Maru, and Flash have lost to Dark, Losira, Rogue, Life, ByuL, Soulkey, Solar, Leenock, TRUE, soO, DRG. In a third of the time, top Terrans have dropped series to 35% more different Zerg players.
That is one of the most contrived uses of statistics I've ever seen.
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On January 11 2015 05:51 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2015 05:41 Grumbels wrote:On January 11 2015 01:47 Big J wrote:On January 11 2015 01:28 Grumbels wrote:On January 10 2015 08:58 Big J wrote:Nice read. Especially agree on that part: Blizzard can focus on small things and become too indecisive as a result - 150+ official balance updates over the course of Starcraft II’s history is not a staggering amount. When you take that 150+ and realize how many of those changes have either been reversed or patched over, it gets a lot smaller. The Thor and Void Ray alone account for 20 balance updates, most of which have been patched over and over. This type of indecisiveness has lead Blizzard to focus on aspects of the game that aren’t as important to most players, and over the years that has had an impact on the community. When everyone is asking Blizzard for tools to deal with something or to fix a certain aspect of a race and there’s a balance update that changes spine crawler AI, it’s hard not to feel like the balance team is disjointed from the sentiment of the community.There have been way too few patches for my liking. And the ones they do are often not the important ones. And come late. Especially in 2013 they should have patched much more, since HotS was young, yet, patterns were already being explored. (e.g. swarm hosts, blink allins, SCV pulls to name a few ones that have been around and more than annoying up to that day) Meanwhile there is another Starbow patch out with like 30 changes. :p Anyway, I thought the article raised some interesting questions. So, you can see that at some point in 2011 Blizzard stopped balancing the game and the author correlates this to starting work on Heart of the Swarm. I don't know if this is true, but it seems like a good hypothesis because it would explain why they took so long with Heart of the Swarm, since they were still focused on Wings of Liberty in late 2011. I also think that if you are focused on a game that this will be reflected in having more changes. I don't buy this idea that Blizzard was taking a cautious approach because they felt that the metagame was developing nicely or whatever, and that's why they were hesitant in patching too much, especially considering how broken the game still was in 2012. So extrapolating this to the low amount of Heart of the Swarm patching, this gives you the idea that the team is not focused on Heart of the Swarm and instead is working on Heroes / LotV. It's a bit of a rough metric, equating patch changes with number of Blizzard employees working on Starcraft, but maybe it's a useful guide? In contrary, I do actually believe blizzard when they say they have changed their balance approach to be more cautious. It makes sense, since they got so much shit in 2010-11 for the heavier patching. And anytime they even just release their thoughts on the tiniest changes it feels like 50% of the comments are "just let the players figure it out on their own". I wouldn't dismiss the other theory either, because why change units when you are already planning on solving the problems with expansion content. However I think the heavy community pressure is the main reason why it often feels like they are hiding in the darkest corners. Basically any of their comments these days gets so much bullshit that I find it somewhat brave that they are communicating at all. Well, it might be true that they've evolved this new, more cautious patching philosophy, but it's probably matched with less resources allocated to SC2 development. And of course it's awfully convenient for Blizzard; from our perspective it's probably not possible to tell whether it's a genuine conviction or a cynical attempt to cut costs. Personally I didn't get the impression that David Kim and Dustin Browder were occupied with SC2 full-time the last two years. Dustin Browder is probably hardly working at SC2 at all currently, and in 2012 and 2014 the main focus was probably HotS/LotV for most of the team. However, in 2013 after the HotS release it felt like they were following certain gameplay developments closely (f.e. Mech vs Protoss - they did communicate a lot on that matter). They just didn't act and kept on saying that balance is good for the most part and progamers are approaching them not to patch too the game.
I know trying to divine the inner workings of Blizzard is a bit pointless, but personally I'm quite curious about the relation between the size of the development team and the following:
1. Blizzard inadequately addressing balance concerns in 2012
2. HotS being very cautious in terms of changes to the gameplay
3. The first expansion being released three full years after the vanilla game.
4. The meager number of patches for HotS post-release
5. As the article said, the sudden drop-off in patch changes for WoL in the middle of 2011
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What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it.
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On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it.
Were you also watching Gumiho vs Hydra? 
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On January 13 2015 02:19 RaFox17 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. Were you also watching Gumiho vs Hydra?
 or any other Gumiho vs Zerg game.
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On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it.
That's why area control and zoning are really important in lategame Z v T mech. You have to dance between spore fields, grab raven with abduct whenever possible, dodge Seeker missiles, micro locusts (target fire + repositioning), and always time your actions when locust waves spawn.
Retreat into more spores and reposition swarm hosts as necessary. In an even game, you should eventually win the war of attrition through abducts and keep raven energy low. But I agree, once too many ravens are on the field when the T is ahead (infinite PDD), then the T starts to trade much more efficiently and eventually wins.
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On January 13 2015 02:24 EngrishTeacher wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. That's why area control and zoning are really important in lategame Z v T mech. You have to dance between spore fields, grab raven with abduct whenever possible, dodge Seeker missiles, micro locusts (target fire + repositioning), and always time your actions when locust waves spawn. Retreat into more spores and reposition swarm hosts as necessary. In an even game, you should eventually win the war of attrition through abducts and keep raven energy low. But I agree, once too many ravens are on the field when the T is ahead (infinite PDD), then the T starts to trade much more efficiently and eventually wins.
This like never happens in games i watch
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watch some soulkey games:D
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I became curious about the average education level in this thread after reading this ABL post by DBDT veteran SatedSC2:
On January 14 2015 00:42 SatedSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2015 10:56 dAPhREAk wrote:omg, this is hilarious. On January 10 2015 12:59 lichter wrote:
Further discussion of Naniwa's mental health (unless you know him personally or you email me your phd diploma) will be dealt with severely. I suggest you talk about the games instead. So if I send a picture of my PhD diploma* I get to shit-talk NaNiwa for no reason whatsoever? Seems like a good deal. Does it apply to other pros because I actually like NaNiwa? =P *It's in biochemistry but Lichter didn't specify! Technicality! xD
I think even if the average education level is high it doesn't really show anything about the quality of the thread, but I am curious whether people with a certain propensity in their real life will converge on this thread or not. To stop anonymous trolling, and to simultaneously avoid spamming the thread, I'd like to ask people to spam me with PMs instead and I'll make a new post with the results. Just send me a message with your highest degree (e.g. primary, secondary, tertiary, graduate, PhD, or suitable) and mention the field as well if it's relevant (for example, medical doctors versus PhD).
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On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it.
Mass ravens is the most broken thing I've seen in this entire game
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On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it.
There is no more talking about it because it's not a problem at pro level. Mech is very rarely played and that has a reason.
Why should you nerf something which is seen in maybe 10% of the games. No need to make the game even more stale than it is.
Funny how zergs always complain that terran wins with just tier 1 units (because medivacs and thors are tier 1 lol) but when terran builds expensive high tier units they cry even harder. Guess terran isn't supposed to have a lategame.
If you want to nerf ravens, swarmhosts have to be fixed first or mech will be never seen again.
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On January 14 2015 04:13 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2015 03:59 parkufarku wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. There is no more talking about it because it's not a problem at pro level. Mech is very rarely played and that has a reason. Why should you nerf something which is seen in maybe 10% of the games. No need to make the game even more stale than it is. Funny how zergs always complain that terran wins with just tier 1 units (because medivacs and thors are tier 1 lol) but when terran builds expensive high tier units they cry even harder. Guess terran isn't supposed to have a lategame. If you want to nerf ravens, swarmhosts have to be fixed first or mech will be never seen again.
Are u serious? You never see Mass Ravens in pro level? We're not talking about just mech.
We know you are trying to prevent your race from being nerfed, but that's a horrible argument. You don't leave something completely broken as it is just because every game doesn't get to that point. Zergs complaints are legitimate because Terran T3 units completely demolish the opponent, while T T1 units can still demolish opponents as well.
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On January 14 2015 04:20 parkufarku wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2015 04:13 Charoisaur wrote:On January 14 2015 03:59 parkufarku wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. There is no more talking about it because it's not a problem at pro level. Mech is very rarely played and that has a reason. Why should you nerf something which is seen in maybe 10% of the games. No need to make the game even more stale than it is. Funny how zergs always complain that terran wins with just tier 1 units (because medivacs and thors are tier 1 lol) but when terran builds expensive high tier units they cry even harder. Guess terran isn't supposed to have a lategame. If you want to nerf ravens, swarmhosts have to be fixed first or mech will be never seen again. Are u serious? You never see Mass Ravens in pro level? We're not talking about just mech. We know you are trying to prevent your race from being nerfed, but that's a horrible argument. You don't leave something completely broken as it is just because every game doesn't get to that point. Zergs complaints are legitimate because Terran T3 units completely demolish the opponent, while T T1 units can still demolish opponents as well.
where did i say it's never played at pro level? i said it's rare which is true. you see it in maybe 10% of the games which is not much. if it would be op every terran would abuse it and not just 10%.
even flash, who has rocksolid mech play didn't play it lately because he knows any competent zerg will crush it.
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On January 14 2015 04:29 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2015 04:20 parkufarku wrote:On January 14 2015 04:13 Charoisaur wrote:On January 14 2015 03:59 parkufarku wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. There is no more talking about it because it's not a problem at pro level. Mech is very rarely played and that has a reason. Why should you nerf something which is seen in maybe 10% of the games. No need to make the game even more stale than it is. Funny how zergs always complain that terran wins with just tier 1 units (because medivacs and thors are tier 1 lol) but when terran builds expensive high tier units they cry even harder. Guess terran isn't supposed to have a lategame. If you want to nerf ravens, swarmhosts have to be fixed first or mech will be never seen again. Are u serious? You never see Mass Ravens in pro level? We're not talking about just mech. We know you are trying to prevent your race from being nerfed, but that's a horrible argument. You don't leave something completely broken as it is just because every game doesn't get to that point. Zergs complaints are legitimate because Terran T3 units completely demolish the opponent, while T T1 units can still demolish opponents as well. where did i say it's never played at pro level? i said it's rare which is true. you see it in maybe 10% of the games which is not much. if it would be op every terran would abuse it and not just 10%. even flash, who has rocksolid mech play didn't play it lately because he knows any competent zerg will crush it.
Either way, that's still a horrible argument that you shouldn't nerf something because you don't see it often. On the contrary, "any competant zergs' can't crush Mass Raven TvZ. That's the problem. Even lesser Terrans beat better Zerg players through this build.
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Terran needs the Raven really hard with its PDD: Swarmhost and tempest and reduce damage for the viking/thors when fighting mass muta's. Without the raven terran wouldnt stand a change. Want to get rid of the PDD? fix SH, tempest and muta's vs terran.
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On January 14 2015 04:13 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2015 02:17 keglu wrote:
What about PDD?. Terran air againts Zerg seems more broken then WoL infestor bl againts Protoss (at least Protoss had archon toilet). Nerf it or restore upgrades for infested Terrnas. Interesting that there is no more talking about it. There is no more talking about it because it's not a problem at pro level. Mech is very rarely played and that has a reason. Why should you nerf something which is seen in maybe 10% of the games. No need to make the game even more stale than it is. Funny how zergs always complain that terran wins with just tier 1 units (because medivacs and thors are tier 1 lol) but when terran builds expensive high tier units they cry even harder. Guess terran isn't supposed to have a lategame. If you want to nerf ravens, swarmhosts have to be fixed first or mech will be never seen again.
Im was Terran player and i support Terran pro players. I only talk about pro level since i dont play sc2. I feel like Mech into mass raven is getting more popular lately. I dont agree with statement abotu swarmhost. I think that with tanks terran an deal with swarmhost without abillity to completely negate its damage (can be wrong here of course). I prefer watching bio TvZ so less mech is not bad change for me.
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On January 14 2015 04:36 PinoKotsBeer wrote:
Terran needs the Raven really hard with its PDD: Swarmhost and tempest and reduce damage for the viking/thors when fighting mass muta's. Without the raven terran wouldnt stand a change. Want to get rid of the PDD? fix SH, tempest and muta's vs terran.
Mass muta's really?
Even in mech you still have Thors, vikings and mines.
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EPT
