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On August 17 2011 04:14 Mjolnir wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 04:05 Truedot wrote:On August 17 2011 03:39 Mjolnir wrote:On August 17 2011 03:10 Aletheia27 wrote:
With regard to infestors being overpowered, I feel like the argument goes along the same lines as how forcefields were considered overpowered for toss players. I think people just haven't learened to adapt to them yet and adjust their play. Just my 2 cents. Forcefield is still jacked. I've seen pros lose games because they can't get out of their main due to the ramp being forcefielded for what appears to be an indefinite period of time (game eventually just ends). That, to me, doesn't even seem remotely fair. I think IdrA actually lost recently to this. He had the proper unit counters but just couldn't field them because the Protoss just FF'd his ramp over and over. With warp in you can bring in fresh sentries as needed. EDIT: Before the flames - I realize Protoss needs FF to stay alive. That doesn't mean the spell isn't borked, though. There could have been far better solutions than a spell that early on in the game is defensive, and later on is just abusive. I am assuming you're talking about zerg. Nydus canals, tons of 100 mineral only dropships hovering around doing nothing.. Assuming theres a large enough force that completely shuts down Ol dropping anyway, then you've (or Idra've) already lost. Now, Terrans have no problem due to tanks and medis.Zerg should have no problem due to OLs with drop and nydus. If you scout a large sentry count, build a nydus or get ultras to pop the fields. If you want to abuse the field against protoss get BLs. If its 6-7 minutes in game and they're abusing FF to wall you in after a 4 gate push, its actually quite easy to either have the amount of units to fight them off, or failing that, to retreat all your drones queens and army into your main and put up spines and keep pumping army while they waste time downing a 300 mineral 1500 hp unit that they will continue to FF your ramp for, leaving you breathing room to build defenses and army to counter attack and push them out. Just came back from a game just like that. won 20 minutes later after losing n expo to a 3 gate mass sentry early rush. I'm sorry but nydus and OL drop tech is hardly a viable solution at the point in the game where this type of push utterly crushes people. Even in late game, picking up your army in OLs to move past a FF line is suicide. Piss-poor design made FF necessary but it is still an utterly absurd spell for an RTS.
it does no damage. it doesnt move. it stops their movement too, and you dont have to drop OLs right in their face in order to drop your units on the other side of an FF. you could, for instance, skirt the sight radius of the enemy units, drop behind them, and then when FFs fall in front you attack in a pincer movement, maximizing your DPS. Or, if they dont let their FF fall, go base trade them while u hole up defensively in your own. Nydus is also effective. it has bad throughput, like a serial cable, but at least it can transport unlimited army at high speed/distance unlike ol.
Im not sure what you're referring to by the timeframe as I've never had a problem midgame vs FF. it just seems easy to me to keep my army midfield and engage them as they attack, retreat when they FF, wasting their mana, and then reengage when they move forwarrd some more, all the while spamming my losses back with my hotkeyed hatcheries.
I just dont seem to have the same problem. can you link me a replay of pros who have had this issue?
as far as the issue goes, it seems like they added FF and then added nydus specifically because of FF and terran map control abilites.
Look at it from the original nydus canal. it only requires 1 network and then each head is attached to the network. any head that dies does not kill the whole network off. ist a 100 100 unit to get positioning against an enemy. if positioning is important as zerg, how can you NOT use some of that floating gas and mineral to put one down?
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On August 17 2011 03:41 BUfels wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:13 xlava wrote:On August 17 2011 03:10 Aletheia27 wrote:
With regard to infestors being overpowered, I feel like the argument goes along the same lines as how forcefields were considered overpowered for toss players. I think people just haven't learened to adapt to them yet and adjust their play. Just my 2 cents. Kind of. Except that Zerg doesn't depend on infestors for surviving. Without sentries Protoss dies to every early game aggression. Zerg can live without infestors. Forcefields aren't overpowered, they're a necessity. Yes, they definitely do. You can't beat turtle protoss 200/200 deathball without them. The deathball is already good enough(and turtle protoss is getting popular again), it does not need a buff.
Neither zerg nor terran is supposed to beat toss in 200/200 fight. Like ever. Zerg loses the initial fight but takes out as much of the deathball as it can and win by resupplying. If zerg is even with protoss in a 200/200 fight, something is wrong. And the current state of the game is so that with hive tech and infestors, zerg can beat protoss deathball. If you break even in a max army fight as protoss, you are as good as dead.
And this "turtle toss" doesn't work on a fundamental level because of broodlords. The only thing more ridiculous than turtling against broodlords would be to turtle against tanks
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On August 17 2011 04:04 pwadoc wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:35 Hollis wrote:
On the other hand, tournament results show that Terran doesn't have any real long-term advantage. The race has been at least solid for the entire life of the game so far, but has never really clearly dominated globally. It could be that the Terran design you're talking about - powerful defense and equally powerful offense - can be effectively countered by the tools at the disposal of the other races.
I don't necessarily believe in my own argument here; I'm just playing devil's advocate to show you that every argument has a counter argument. You can't escape the futility of comparing terminally limited perspectives by drawing outward and including more game design choices in your analysis. We can't really derive anything statistically interesting from the ladder statistics given the way the algorithm works toward a 50% win rate, but terrans outperform the other races in tournaments regularly, and have for months. I don't like statistical arguments though, and I think blizzard relies too heavily on statistical analysis in their balance approach. If we accept that terrans have the most effective defensive abilities of the three races, (if you don't accept this, we have another argument entirely), then the fact that terrans can compete with the other races offensively is guaranteed to generate imbalance. It's almost tautological. The result will be that terran will be able to push and harass effectively, without being similarly vulnerable to harassment. We see exactly this happening in ZvT, where the zerg is forced to directly engage the terran army in the mid and lategame because harassment options are extremely limited, while the terran can choose to make a strong offensive push or remain defensive, all the while harassing with powerful upgrades tier 1 units.
Then the counter argument is that maybe Terran offensive and defensive power isn't as good as one might think. A hellion harass can be shut down extremely hard, as can marine drops, and both Zerg and Protoss have the tools to deal with what Terran has, if the Zerg or Protoss is good enough and pays attention. Also, your claim about Terran tournament performance is unsupported and inadmissible in a truly objective debate.
The funny thing is I don't think you saw that I'm not debating balance. I'm debating the futility of debating balance.
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On August 17 2011 04:24 DragonDefonce wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:41 BUfels wrote:On August 17 2011 03:13 xlava wrote:On August 17 2011 03:10 Aletheia27 wrote:
With regard to infestors being overpowered, I feel like the argument goes along the same lines as how forcefields were considered overpowered for toss players. I think people just haven't learened to adapt to them yet and adjust their play. Just my 2 cents. Kind of. Except that Zerg doesn't depend on infestors for surviving. Without sentries Protoss dies to every early game aggression. Zerg can live without infestors. Forcefields aren't overpowered, they're a necessity. Yes, they definitely do. You can't beat turtle protoss 200/200 deathball without them. The deathball is already good enough(and turtle protoss is getting popular again), it does not need a buff.
Neither zerg nor terran is supposed to beat toss in 200/200 fight. Like ever. Zerg loses the initial fight but takes out as much of the deathball as it can and win by resupplying. If zerg is even with protoss in a 200/200 fight, something is wrong. And the current state of the game is so that with hive tech and infestors, zerg can beat protoss deathball. If you break even in a max army fight as protoss, you are as good as dead. And this "turtle toss" doesn't work on a fundamental level because of broodlords. The only thing more ridiculous than turtling against broodlords would be to turtle against tanks
looks like shit design
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On August 17 2011 04:24 DragonDefonce wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:41 BUfels wrote:On August 17 2011 03:13 xlava wrote:On August 17 2011 03:10 Aletheia27 wrote:
With regard to infestors being overpowered, I feel like the argument goes along the same lines as how forcefields were considered overpowered for toss players. I think people just haven't learened to adapt to them yet and adjust their play. Just my 2 cents. Kind of. Except that Zerg doesn't depend on infestors for surviving. Without sentries Protoss dies to every early game aggression. Zerg can live without infestors. Forcefields aren't overpowered, they're a necessity. Yes, they definitely do. You can't beat turtle protoss 200/200 deathball without them. The deathball is already good enough(and turtle protoss is getting popular again), it does not need a buff. Neither zerg nor terran is supposed to beat toss in 200/200 fight. Like ever. Zerg loses the initial fight but takes out as much of the deathball as it can and win by resupplying. If zerg is even with protoss in a 200/200 fight, something is wrong. And the current state of the game is so that with hive tech and infestors, zerg can beat protoss deathball. If you break even in a max army fight as protoss, you are as good as dead. And this "turtle toss" doesn't work on a fundamental level because of broodlords. The only thing more ridiculous than turtling against broodlords would be to turtle against tanks
I routinely beat 200 balls that are not based around mass VR with bane/roach/ling/corruptor/hydra. I rarely use infestors at all, even though they are apparently so good, and I have the easier times with TvZ and PvZ MU. I consider PvZ the most fun and likely for me to win. however mass VR deathballs are impossible without infestor, due to their wacky charge damage nature paired with their low supply cost/damage ratio and how good their dps actually is, even against non-armored. they piss me off.
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I generally don't have a problem with forcefield, but when it comes to blocking the ramp of a zerg. I understand those pushes are risky, and hard to pull off. but just because you manage to get into that position, i dont feel like it should be a 100% win from there, which i would argue it is.
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I think a mistake a lot of people are making is that they think the better player should always win. At the end of the day, we should all realize and acknowledge the fact that anyone who plays can beat a gm using a cheesy tactic like a proxy 2 rax/gate. That's just the way this strategy game works.
There is also a difference between imbalanced, and over powered. They get interchanged very often, and I believed they should be used to describe 2 very different things. For example I feel like a midgame tvp battle is imbalanced, but not over powered. I feel like (IMO) a terran player NEEDS to kite to stay alive, whereas a protoss player hits guardian shield and tries to trap using forcefields. slightly later in the game where protoss isn't making more sentries and is using a colossus ball, we get the classic terran whine that toss just 1a's. The logical conclusion is that the micro involved is imbalanced, that is, terran players are required to do more to win the battle than protoss players. (btw, I really really believe in this, if you disagree I would love to hear reasoning). That being said I don't think the protoss deathball is overpowered, it's just very strong.
Concerning race mechanics, I looked back at some of the posts describing how terran has amazing defensive capabilities to allow them to sit back, and i agree but it's interesting that they're not used very much. I think the problem is that protoss and zerg late games seem so much scarier than terran, and as a result terran players make a lot of aggressive early and midgame pushes. My mindset is that if i let protoss get their 3 base deathball, or let zerg get on 5 base, it's gg no matter what I do. Part of this is also that a protoss on 10 gate can warp in an additional 20 food in literally 5 in game seconds. with 3 nexus' worth of chrono on those 10 gates, that's like 40 food in less than a minute. Zerg is known for their "300 food pushes" so that's not even worth explaining. Terran on the other hand has no capability of making an army faster, or any mechanism to stockpile structures. Yes terran could make more rax, but that comes at an obvious mineral cost, something that other races do not experience. I choose to never turtle against a protoss or zerg because if I wait too long I feel like I auto lose the game. So terran players experiment using their defensive capabilities as offense (bunkers)
Finally I think the reason everyone complains that terran is op even at the highest levels of plays is because terran has a very high skill cap. I feel like balance is against terran at lower levels and for terran at higher levels. Example, marines vs banelings. At a lower level of play this is ridiculously imbalanced for terran players, where 4 banelings, literally 2 food and kill 20 food of marines. However at higher levels of play, and at a purely theoretical approach, banelings are not nearly as good. A computer terran would dominate a computer zerg, given he could split perfectly. This is not the case, but the spectrum is there. The higher the terran skill, the easier baneling micro aka the whole game is. On the other hand, the best a zerg can do is right click marines and not tanks and hope they can survive.
tl dr; Only mirror matchups will ever be balanced.
Protoss and Zerg late games>terran late game
Terran has highest skill cap
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On August 17 2011 04:19 Olsson wrote:
I think TvZ is abit broken. Both baneling and hellions drops are badly designed. You can deflect four drops but if one gets in and does some damage all those lost drops have been held off. Zerg doesn't have good scouting options and it makes it a coinflip and to make sure that you're safe from the possible scenarios sets you behind ALOT at high level of play - Masters Zerg.
EDIT: I also believe that DT's are badly designed. A zerg can manage to scout the DT shrine in a coinflip or they can't. Even if they do scout it's hard to know how many dt's are being made. You can make one spore and put troops infront of it. The zerg says I need to pressure or secure a third, makes two spines at each base along with spores and moves out with his units. Four DT's get past the defences and manage to take out the spore crawler with only the shield going down on one of them. Overseer takes 17 seconds to morph and four dt's can get down a hatchery and more in that time. I feel that such things as banelings, dt's and hellions make gameplay too volatile and unforgiving even at the highest levels of play and that they need change.
I think its been a pretty standard practice for a long time for zerg to get a sporecrawler at each base if you see a late expo/see less sentries.
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On August 17 2011 04:34 Crovea wrote:
I generally don't have a problem with forcefield, but when it comes to blocking the ramp of a zerg. I understand those pushes are risky, and hard to pull off. but just because you manage to get into that position, i dont feel like it should be a 100% win from there, which i would argue it is.
This only applies to the early game, in which case you should have been watching his natural constantly anyways. If during mid late game you have bunch of shit in your main, you dont notice protoss coming at your natural and get blocked in, I'm pretty sure you deserve to lose.
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On August 17 2011 04:27 constantqt wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 04:24 DragonDefonce wrote:On August 17 2011 03:41 BUfels wrote:On August 17 2011 03:13 xlava wrote:On August 17 2011 03:10 Aletheia27 wrote:
With regard to infestors being overpowered, I feel like the argument goes along the same lines as how forcefields were considered overpowered for toss players. I think people just haven't learened to adapt to them yet and adjust their play. Just my 2 cents. Kind of. Except that Zerg doesn't depend on infestors for surviving. Without sentries Protoss dies to every early game aggression. Zerg can live without infestors. Forcefields aren't overpowered, they're a necessity. Yes, they definitely do. You can't beat turtle protoss 200/200 deathball without them. The deathball is already good enough(and turtle protoss is getting popular again), it does not need a buff.
Neither zerg nor terran is supposed to beat toss in 200/200 fight. Like ever. Zerg loses the initial fight but takes out as much of the deathball as it can and win by resupplying. If zerg is even with protoss in a 200/200 fight, something is wrong. And the current state of the game is so that with hive tech and infestors, zerg can beat protoss deathball. If you break even in a max army fight as protoss, you are as good as dead. And this "turtle toss" doesn't work on a fundamental level because of broodlords. The only thing more ridiculous than turtling against broodlords would be to turtle against tanks looks like shit design
How is MMM tier 1 units supposed to beat a 10x more expensive composition and health and armor ? It is a shitty design race we all know that. Now with ghost and infestor, protoss win 200/200 fight is not true anymore.
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The only thing that confuses me most in the game right now is why Ghost abilities that nullify High Templar are given more range than High Templar abilities. It's common knowledge that Barracks > Gateway with Protoss T3 AoE damage equalizing the fight, so I can't see why Terran is given a theoretically unbeatable edge like that. Maybe the solution lies in Zealots with armour upgrades, they worked pretty well for Puzzle today.
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On August 17 2011 04:19 Olsson wrote:
I think TvZ is abit broken. Both baneling and hellions drops are badly designed. You can deflect four drops but if one gets in and does some damage all those lost drops have been held off. Zerg doesn't have good scouting options and it makes it a coinflip and to make sure that you're safe from the possible scenarios sets you behind ALOT at high level of play - Masters Zerg.
EDIT: I also believe that DT's are badly designed. A zerg can manage to scout the DT shrine in a coinflip or they can't. Even if they do scout it's hard to know how many dt's are being made. You can make one spore and put troops infront of it. The zerg says I need to pressure or secure a third, makes two spines at each base along with spores and moves out with his units. Four DT's get past the defences and manage to take out the spore crawler with only the shield going down on one of them. Overseer takes 17 seconds to morph and four dt's can get down a hatchery and more in that time. I feel that such things as banelings, dt's and hellions make gameplay too volatile and unforgiving even at the highest levels of play and that they need change.
I actually disagree. Or rather, I agree with Hellions being too good at killing workers for their cost and accessibility - which makes a hellion drop or runby a relatively small risk with the potential for huge reward.
However, baneling drops on mineral lines are fine, imo. You can actually run workers away from a baneling drop, and a cannon in your mineral line also makes it significantly less effective - Banelings are melee, and barely faster than workers, so there's enough space to be able to deflect a baneling drop with good multitasking and a few units. Also, Baneling drops, unlike Hellions, can actually fail and do no damage. I do think mass baneling drops on the Protoss army are a bit too good for a variety of reasons - for example, there's absolutely no way to make your slow units (like Sentries and HTs) survive, no matter what you do. But harassing mineral lines with them is fine imo.
Similarly, your anti-DT argument is silly, imo. You can apply that argument to all cloaked units basically, Banshees, Lurkers, you name them. DTs were fine in BW, and they're fine in SC2. Your scenario doesn't even make much sense. A Protoss invests 500/500 (and 200/250 for a dark shrine) into harass units, manages to overcome your 75 mineral Spore Crawler, and then maybe kill a 300 Mineral hatchery (since you'll immediately pull drones, which outrun DTs on creep), and then probably lose all of them, because you have an Overseer and an army that's faster than the DTs. Not to mention that if you had the foresight to make an Overseer beforehand, it's even less effective. Do you really think this is unfair and volatile?
Hellions are terrible, because you can actually invest in defending against them, and they'll still do enough damage a lot of the time. But DTs? Banelings? Not nearly in the same ballpark imo.
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On August 17 2011 02:17 IronDoc wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 17 2011 01:52 Truedot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2011 07:00 Condor Hero wrote:
I feel that this thread will have tons of balance whine despite what you say.
The game should be balanced around the absolute HIGHEST level of play.
That's GM Korea because everyone should aspire to be the best therefore it should be balance around that.
As for EU/NA people having problems, that's just a skill thing.
Nobody would ask for a platinum player's opinions on balance right? I will disagree with you on this. You dont make the roof of a house and try to build under it. The game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense. it takes a LOT more skill to defend against 1 mass unit like mass marines at 8 minutes or mass VRs than it takes to fight a well comp'd unit with your well comp'd unit. You numbers of unit comp and units themselves have to be very precise, not to mention micro control. its alot easier to be a micro aggressor with a Mass X unit thats been proven time and again to be extremely powerful versus sub-optimal unit comps.The level of knowledge and skill required to do :Mass X", therefore, is nothing compared to the level of knowledge and skill required to counter "Mass X". hence why so many people can faceroll into plat or diamond easily by finding a BO for one of these unit types and win 2/3 of their games before someone who can deal with the build from actual game knowledge comes along and keeps them from getting higher in leagues, because they actually don't know or understand the game, and simply picked a BO that has been proven to have a high winning rate vs average players, such as 7RR, 2 rax all in, mass VR, banshee mass vs zerg, etc. My point is that the game, if it were to be truly balanced, would be balanced at the lowest levels of play, so that countering people is a decision of making the proper units, and the proper units are about 20% harder to make and use vs the Mass X function, since winning vs it thereby causes you to gain a lead, so it should rightfully be difficult in some aspect. With this in mind, then you would see at the highest levels of play, timing becomes a more critical factor (not that it isnt already), good unit comps are much more valuable, and real skills like micro and strategic and tactical setups and decisions, all start making a bigger impact than "Mass X because this will insta-win since they cant deal with it". In short, balanced at the lowest levels of play would translate into more tactical play in higher levels and make the game much more exciting and interesting. You don't see chess balanced around highest levels of play. there's a baseline balance, via mirror pieces 1 hit kills, that prevents chess "cheese". All truly compettive non-computer games take this into account. There's either a limited number of pieces, a limited number of powerful pieces, and/or everyone gets the same powers/units. SC2 is in complete opposition to that, and I'm surprised its as balanced as it is, yet from the fact that infestor is the only clear counter to mass VR, which in itself has been whined to death as being OP, and that someone was able to micro stimmed mass marines as their only unit and beat all the supposed protoss counter units and win the game, I think that it would be much more useful to balance it from the bottom up. Starcraft 1 felt like this. of course if they did this, casuals wouldnt faceroll so well anymore and they'd lose revenue from people saying SC2 is a tough game and not for "casuals". The game cannot be balanced at both the highest level and the lowest level. Surely you see that? If you balance it for lower levels, then anything which becomes disproportionately stronger as skill increases will be unbalanced for pros. The only way you can achieve both is by there being the exact same reward for increased micro for every race and this must be true at every level. The only way this can be true is just by making the races fundamentally identical. If one concedes that it can only really be balanced at a certain level, I think most would agree that that level should be the one at which money is riding on matches. I have no idea what you're talking about with chess analogy. In chess, there are only 2 races and they are universally agreed to be imbalanced.
chess isnt imbalanced. one is designed to be reactive and the other is designed to have initiative. but they still use all the pieces. in a perfect game the white always wins yes, but the game is meant for the winner to take black afterward. and the true winner would be the person using black and winning, it means they made less mistakes. The game itself is still completely balanced, as both sides have the same options for dealing with everything.
On August 17 2011 03:44 Condor Hero wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 01:52 Truedot wrote:On August 16 2011 07:00 Condor Hero wrote:
I feel that this thread will have tons of balance whine despite what you say.
The game should be balanced around the absolute HIGHEST level of play.
That's GM Korea because everyone should aspire to be the best therefore it should be balance around that.
As for EU/NA people having problems, that's just a skill thing.
Nobody would ask for a platinum player's opinions on balance right? I will disagree with you on this. You dont make the roof of a house and try to build under it. The game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense. it takes a LOT more skill to defend against 1 mass unit like mass marines at 8 minutes or mass VRs than it takes to fight a well comp'd unit with your well comp'd unit. You numbers of unit comp and units themselves have to be very precise, not to mention micro control. its alot easier to be a micro aggressor with a Mass X unit thats been proven time and again to be extremely powerful versus sub-optimal unit comps.The level of knowledge and skill required to do :Mass X", therefore, is nothing compared to the level of knowledge and skill required to counter "Mass X". hence why so many people can faceroll into plat or diamond easily by finding a BO for one of these unit types and win 2/3 of their games before someone who can deal with the build from actual game knowledge comes along and keeps them from getting higher in leagues, because they actually don't know or understand the game, and simply picked a BO that has been proven to have a high winning rate vs average players, such as 7RR, 2 rax all in, mass VR, banshee mass vs zerg, etc. My point is that the game, if it were to be truly balanced, would be balanced at the lowest levels of play, so that countering people is a decision of making the proper units, and the proper units are about 20% harder to make and use vs the Mass X function, since winning vs it thereby causes you to gain a lead, so it should rightfully be difficult in some aspect. With this in mind, then you would see at the highest levels of play, timing becomes a more critical factor (not that it isnt already), good unit comps are much more valuable, and real skills like micro and strategic and tactical setups and decisions, all start making a bigger impact than "Mass X because this will insta-win since they cant deal with it". In short, balanced at the lowest levels of play would translate into more tactical play in higher levels and make the game much more exciting and interesting. You don't see chess balanced around highest levels of play. there's a baseline balance, via mirror pieces 1 hit kills, that prevents chess "cheese". All truly compettive non-computer games take this into account. There's either a limited number of pieces, a limited number of powerful pieces, and/or everyone gets the same powers/units. SC2 is in complete opposition to that, and I'm surprised its as balanced as it is, yet from the fact that infestor is the only clear counter to mass VR, which in itself has been whined to death as being OP, and that someone was able to micro stimmed mass marines as their only unit and beat all the supposed protoss counter units and win the game, I think that it would be much more useful to balance it from the bottom up. Starcraft 1 felt like this. of course if they did this, casuals wouldnt faceroll so well anymore and they'd lose revenue from people saying SC2 is a tough game and not for "casuals". What the hell. My point still stands that every should be trying to get BETTER, not WORSE to get balance. No one tries to get worse. Blizz trying to make it an ESPORT. You think people like watching low level basketball because they like to think they actually have a chance? Idk about you but I get inspired when I see pro players play at a level I never imagined. Since I started out watching BW, I will say there is nothing like watching Bisu multitask, watching Best simply have a ton of units more than his opponent, watching Boxer marine micro vs lurkers, or watching Jaedong muta harass with two control groups. tl;dr: Basically I think your opinion is pure garbage and you got no idea what you're talking about.
I played SC1 since before brood war existed. I felt that it was balanced at low levels. counters were clear and had their clear counters, and only a disproportionately large anti-force could kill a counter unit all alone. note here that when I say disproportionately, I mean 16 zerglings to a firebat. firebats were countered by hydra, hydra were countered by tank, tank were countered by queen or muta, queen and muta were countered by marine, marine were countered by ling, ling were countered by firebat.
We have similar behaviors in SC2, except that some units stop being countered after a certain critical mass point by their supposed counter parts, and instead counter them, and with upgrades moreso.
I've never seen 20 firebats able to kill 10 hydras is all Im saying. even stimmed.
And yes, things do look amazing and awe inspiring to people with untrained eyes and who have little to no knowledge of fundamentals inherent in what they're seeing. people from bronze watch my gameplay and go 'omg so awesome this is so amazing", when Im sitting here playing thinking "I just lamed my way to a win with an unbeatable unit comp at this timing, feels like time wasted".
On August 17 2011 03:51 Fu[G]u wrote:Show nested quote +the game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense This, Sir, is nonsense and blasphemy. If sc was balanced by the lower levels of play, competitive brood war would never have been what it was, and sc2 would never have been spawned in its current incarnation. The game is so great because it is so difficult. It is so difficult because it is designed to be difficult to master at the very top levels. If lower level players see that the game is balanced even for the top levels, than any balance complaint they have goes out the window when they realize that it is a problem with their play, not with the game.
read above.
Games are and should be fundamentally balanced at lowest levels.
Lets take out all units except T1-T2. balance the game around that. Then reintroduce the T3 units. If balance swings to one race domianting, we know its the fault of T3.
thats how you build anything balanced. you start with the bare minimum, and keep adding onto it in a modular fashion. you dont slap a bunch of stuff together and then tweak parts of it to make it balanced in some crazy ad-hoc fashion that isnt true balance. thats why the infestor is how it is now.
do you think that infestor buff would'nt have happenedhad it not been for the faltering of zerg at the PRO sscene?
they already DO balance the races based on the pros, and look how well thats turning out with things like infestor.
Q.E.D.
I don't think you really have any further argument at this point.
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As a zerg player I feel that Neural Parasite in ZvP needs to be toned down a little bit, simply because being able to take control of ANY unit with range 9 is ridiculous. However, that being said, nerfing NP in any way, shape or form, would require Blizzard to redesign high templar feedback range, for NP is the only way infestors can properly prevent feedback and perhaps feedback other high templar. On some of the new maps forcefields seem to be way too strong in certain spawns, simply because the protoss can rush the zerg aggressively, force units, then shape the battle further with the forcefields forcing more units than on other maps. (E.g. close position searing crater) The solution would be to veto these maps but having poor maps in the map pool is never good, and I know Blizzard doesn't care considering they left Delta Quadrant in the map pool for two seasons >.< Also typhoon peaks blink stalkers can abuse the terrain so hard =(
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On August 17 2011 04:34 Crovea wrote:
I generally don't have a problem with forcefield, but when it comes to blocking the ramp of a zerg. I understand those pushes are risky, and hard to pull off. but just because you manage to get into that position, i dont feel like it should be a 100% win from there, which i would argue it is.
I would argue it isnt. If you scout this push coming, and cant defend your NAT, you take all units out of the nat and let them just herpaderp smash on your expo hatch while they have forcefielded you in where you can mass spines and army without fear of attack. all those drones you saved will still be mining, although at lower efficiency, andwhen you're ready to push out, have your creep spread down the ramp and get those spines moving. they sacrificed something too, because this push, although not all-in, bears some all-in qualities, in that they cut doing other things to pump this army, and now they have to go back and keep teching and probing up. meanwhile, all it cost you was 350 minerals in an attack and you raected by growing more defense and army while not being attacked and you then get to put that back at your nat choke making any more aggression difficult if not impossible.
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On August 17 2011 04:45 Xaerkar wrote:
As a zerg player I feel that Neural Parasite in ZvP needs to be toned down a little bit, simply because being able to take control of ANY unit with range 9 is ridiculous. However, that being said, nerfing NP in any way, shape or form, would require Blizzard to redesign high templar feedback range, for NP is the only way infestors can properly prevent feedback and perhaps feedback other high templar. On some of the new maps forcefields seem to be way too strong in certain spawns, simply because the protoss can rush the zerg aggressively, force units, then shape the battle further with the forcefields forcing more units than on other maps. (E.g. close position searing crater) The solution would be to veto these maps but having poor maps in the map pool is never good, and I know Blizzard doesn't care considering they left Delta Quadrant in the map pool for two seasons >.< Also typhoon peaks blink stalkers can abuse the terrain so hard =(
I'd have to disagree on NP preventing Feedback since Feedback is an instant cast. Not to mention that of the 3 main spellcasters, High Templar are the slowest by quite a chunk (same speed as Thors!) so if you're keeping an eye on what's going on, they should never get in range of your Infestors to begin with.
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On August 17 2011 04:44 Truedot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 02:17 IronDoc wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On August 17 2011 01:52 Truedot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2011 07:00 Condor Hero wrote:
I feel that this thread will have tons of balance whine despite what you say.
The game should be balanced around the absolute HIGHEST level of play.
That's GM Korea because everyone should aspire to be the best therefore it should be balance around that.
As for EU/NA people having problems, that's just a skill thing.
Nobody would ask for a platinum player's opinions on balance right? I will disagree with you on this. You dont make the roof of a house and try to build under it. The game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense. it takes a LOT more skill to defend against 1 mass unit like mass marines at 8 minutes or mass VRs than it takes to fight a well comp'd unit with your well comp'd unit. You numbers of unit comp and units themselves have to be very precise, not to mention micro control. its alot easier to be a micro aggressor with a Mass X unit thats been proven time and again to be extremely powerful versus sub-optimal unit comps.The level of knowledge and skill required to do :Mass X", therefore, is nothing compared to the level of knowledge and skill required to counter "Mass X". hence why so many people can faceroll into plat or diamond easily by finding a BO for one of these unit types and win 2/3 of their games before someone who can deal with the build from actual game knowledge comes along and keeps them from getting higher in leagues, because they actually don't know or understand the game, and simply picked a BO that has been proven to have a high winning rate vs average players, such as 7RR, 2 rax all in, mass VR, banshee mass vs zerg, etc. My point is that the game, if it were to be truly balanced, would be balanced at the lowest levels of play, so that countering people is a decision of making the proper units, and the proper units are about 20% harder to make and use vs the Mass X function, since winning vs it thereby causes you to gain a lead, so it should rightfully be difficult in some aspect. With this in mind, then you would see at the highest levels of play, timing becomes a more critical factor (not that it isnt already), good unit comps are much more valuable, and real skills like micro and strategic and tactical setups and decisions, all start making a bigger impact than "Mass X because this will insta-win since they cant deal with it". In short, balanced at the lowest levels of play would translate into more tactical play in higher levels and make the game much more exciting and interesting. You don't see chess balanced around highest levels of play. there's a baseline balance, via mirror pieces 1 hit kills, that prevents chess "cheese". All truly compettive non-computer games take this into account. There's either a limited number of pieces, a limited number of powerful pieces, and/or everyone gets the same powers/units. SC2 is in complete opposition to that, and I'm surprised its as balanced as it is, yet from the fact that infestor is the only clear counter to mass VR, which in itself has been whined to death as being OP, and that someone was able to micro stimmed mass marines as their only unit and beat all the supposed protoss counter units and win the game, I think that it would be much more useful to balance it from the bottom up. Starcraft 1 felt like this. of course if they did this, casuals wouldnt faceroll so well anymore and they'd lose revenue from people saying SC2 is a tough game and not for "casuals". The game cannot be balanced at both the highest level and the lowest level. Surely you see that? If you balance it for lower levels, then anything which becomes disproportionately stronger as skill increases will be unbalanced for pros. The only way you can achieve both is by there being the exact same reward for increased micro for every race and this must be true at every level. The only way this can be true is just by making the races fundamentally identical. If one concedes that it can only really be balanced at a certain level, I think most would agree that that level should be the one at which money is riding on matches. I have no idea what you're talking about with chess analogy. In chess, there are only 2 races and they are universally agreed to be imbalanced. chess isnt imbalanced. one is designed to be reactive and the other is designed to have initiative. but they still use all the pieces. in a perfect game the white always wins yes, but the game is meant for the winner to take black afterward. and the true winner would be the person using black and winning, it means they made less mistakes. The game itself is still completely balanced, as both sides have the same options for dealing with everything. Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:44 Condor Hero wrote:On August 17 2011 01:52 Truedot wrote:On August 16 2011 07:00 Condor Hero wrote:
I feel that this thread will have tons of balance whine despite what you say.
The game should be balanced around the absolute HIGHEST level of play.
That's GM Korea because everyone should aspire to be the best therefore it should be balance around that.
As for EU/NA people having problems, that's just a skill thing.
Nobody would ask for a platinum player's opinions on balance right? I will disagree with you on this. You dont make the roof of a house and try to build under it. The game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense. it takes a LOT more skill to defend against 1 mass unit like mass marines at 8 minutes or mass VRs than it takes to fight a well comp'd unit with your well comp'd unit. You numbers of unit comp and units themselves have to be very precise, not to mention micro control. its alot easier to be a micro aggressor with a Mass X unit thats been proven time and again to be extremely powerful versus sub-optimal unit comps.The level of knowledge and skill required to do :Mass X", therefore, is nothing compared to the level of knowledge and skill required to counter "Mass X". hence why so many people can faceroll into plat or diamond easily by finding a BO for one of these unit types and win 2/3 of their games before someone who can deal with the build from actual game knowledge comes along and keeps them from getting higher in leagues, because they actually don't know or understand the game, and simply picked a BO that has been proven to have a high winning rate vs average players, such as 7RR, 2 rax all in, mass VR, banshee mass vs zerg, etc. My point is that the game, if it were to be truly balanced, would be balanced at the lowest levels of play, so that countering people is a decision of making the proper units, and the proper units are about 20% harder to make and use vs the Mass X function, since winning vs it thereby causes you to gain a lead, so it should rightfully be difficult in some aspect. With this in mind, then you would see at the highest levels of play, timing becomes a more critical factor (not that it isnt already), good unit comps are much more valuable, and real skills like micro and strategic and tactical setups and decisions, all start making a bigger impact than "Mass X because this will insta-win since they cant deal with it". In short, balanced at the lowest levels of play would translate into more tactical play in higher levels and make the game much more exciting and interesting. You don't see chess balanced around highest levels of play. there's a baseline balance, via mirror pieces 1 hit kills, that prevents chess "cheese". All truly compettive non-computer games take this into account. There's either a limited number of pieces, a limited number of powerful pieces, and/or everyone gets the same powers/units. SC2 is in complete opposition to that, and I'm surprised its as balanced as it is, yet from the fact that infestor is the only clear counter to mass VR, which in itself has been whined to death as being OP, and that someone was able to micro stimmed mass marines as their only unit and beat all the supposed protoss counter units and win the game, I think that it would be much more useful to balance it from the bottom up. Starcraft 1 felt like this. of course if they did this, casuals wouldnt faceroll so well anymore and they'd lose revenue from people saying SC2 is a tough game and not for "casuals". What the hell. My point still stands that every should be trying to get BETTER, not WORSE to get balance. No one tries to get worse. Blizz trying to make it an ESPORT. You think people like watching low level basketball because they like to think they actually have a chance? Idk about you but I get inspired when I see pro players play at a level I never imagined. Since I started out watching BW, I will say there is nothing like watching Bisu multitask, watching Best simply have a ton of units more than his opponent, watching Boxer marine micro vs lurkers, or watching Jaedong muta harass with two control groups. tl;dr: Basically I think your opinion is pure garbage and you got no idea what you're talking about. I played SC1 since before brood war existed. I felt that it was balanced at low levels. counters were clear and had their clear counters, and only a disproportionately large anti-force could kill a counter unit all alone. note here that when I say disproportionately, I mean 16 zerglings to a firebat. firebats were countered by hydra, hydra were countered by tank, tank were countered by queen or muta, queen and muta were countered by marine, marine were countered by ling, ling were countered by firebat. We have similar behaviors in SC2, except that some units stop being countered after a certain critical mass point by their supposed counter parts, and instead counter them, and with upgrades moreso. I've never seen 20 firebats able to kill 10 hydras is all Im saying. even stimmed. And yes, things do look amazing and awe inspiring to people with untrained eyes and who have little to no knowledge of fundamentals inherent in what they're seeing. people from bronze watch my gameplay and go 'omg so awesome this is so amazing", when Im sitting here playing thinking "I just lamed my way to a win with an unbeatable unit comp at this timing, feels like time wasted". Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 03:51 Fu[G]u wrote:the game should be balanced at the lowest levels of play so that there is a clear baseline capability to defend or attack againt standard masses like mass VR and other silly nonsense This, Sir, is nonsense and blasphemy. If sc was balanced by the lower levels of play, competitive brood war would never have been what it was, and sc2 would never have been spawned in its current incarnation. The game is so great because it is so difficult. It is so difficult because it is designed to be difficult to master at the very top levels. If lower level players see that the game is balanced even for the top levels, than any balance complaint they have goes out the window when they realize that it is a problem with their play, not with the game. read above. Games are and should be fundamentally balanced at lowest levels. Lets take out all units except T1-T2. balance the game around that. Then reintroduce the T3 units. If balance swings to one race domianting, we know its the fault of T3. thats how you build anything balanced. you start with the bare minimum, and keep adding onto it in a modular fashion. you dont slap a bunch of stuff together and then tweak parts of it to make it balanced in some crazy ad-hoc fashion that isnt true balance. thats why the infestor is how it is now. do you think that infestor buff would'nt have happenedhad it not been for the faltering of zerg at the PRO sscene? they already DO balance the races based on the pros, and look how well thats turning out with things like infestor. Q.E.D. I don't think you really have any further argument at this point.
SC1 wasn't balanced at the lower levels as it took high level players years to make Protoss playable vs Zerg.
The problem with balancing at low levels is that they will not innovate.
It would be like Chess: these are your units and that's what they do.
Only high level players using their units really well (or "abusing" as Idra would call it) pushes the limits of their race to the point where you can see how things can be "possible" or "impossible."
You think low level players would've discovered stop lurkers, cloning scourge, stacking mutas?
It's hard to balance around low levels as high levels will just say "well see if you do that better, then you'd will."
Sorry but I just think you're wrong.
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On August 17 2011 04:35 phiinix wrote:
I think a mistake a lot of people are making is that they think the better player should always win. At the end of the day, we should all realize and acknowledge the fact that anyone who plays can beat a gm using a cheesy tactic like a proxy 2 rax/gate. That's just the way this strategy game works.
There is also a difference between imbalanced, and over powered. They get interchanged very often, and I believed they should be used to describe 2 very different things. For example I feel like a midgame tvp battle is imbalanced, but not over powered. I feel like (IMO) a terran player NEEDS to kite to stay alive, whereas a protoss player hits guardian shield and tries to trap using forcefields. slightly later in the game where protoss isn't making more sentries and is using a colossus ball, we get the classic terran whine that toss just 1a's. The logical conclusion is that the micro involved is imbalanced, that is, terran players are required to do more to win the battle than protoss players. (btw, I really really believe in this, if you disagree I would love to hear reasoning). That being said I don't think the protoss deathball is overpowered, it's just very strong.
Concerning race mechanics, I looked back at some of the posts describing how terran has amazing defensive capabilities to allow them to sit back, and i agree but it's interesting that they're not used very much. I think the problem is that protoss and zerg late games seem so much scarier than terran, and as a result terran players make a lot of aggressive early and midgame pushes. My mindset is that if i let protoss get their 3 base deathball, or let zerg get on 5 base, it's gg no matter what I do. Part of this is also that a protoss on 10 gate can warp in an additional 20 food in literally 5 in game seconds. with 3 nexus' worth of chrono on those 10 gates, that's like 40 food in less than a minute. Zerg is known for their "300 food pushes" so that's not even worth explaining. Terran on the other hand has no capability of making an army faster, or any mechanism to stockpile structures. Yes terran could make more rax, but that comes at an obvious mineral cost, something that other races do not experience. I choose to never turtle against a protoss or zerg because if I wait too long I feel like I auto lose the game. So terran players experiment using their defensive capabilities as offense (bunkers)
Finally I think the reason everyone complains that terran is op even at the highest levels of plays is because terran has a very high skill cap. I feel like balance is against terran at lower levels and for terran at higher levels. Example, marines vs banelings. At a lower level of play this is ridiculously imbalanced for terran players, where 4 banelings, literally 2 food and kill 20 food of marines. However at higher levels of play, and at a purely theoretical approach, banelings are not nearly as good. A computer terran would dominate a computer zerg, given he could split perfectly. This is not the case, but the spectrum is there. The higher the terran skill, the easier baneling micro aka the whole game is. On the other hand, the best a zerg can do is right click marines and not tanks and hope they can survive.
tl dr; Only mirror matchups will ever be balanced.
Protoss and Zerg late games>terran late game
Terran has highest skill cap
The only way you can figure out who the better player is between 2 players is to play them against each other. There is NO other metric. By definition the player who wins is the better player in that game (as in: in the said game, he made more mistakes than his opponent). It is generally accepted that if a player beats another in a Bo3, he advances.
And no, Terran doesn't have the highest skill cap. No race does.
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your Country52797 Posts
Exactly how should a lower level terran beat a zerg with mutalisks?
I find that they constantly snipe buildings I am not covering, dart in and out and away from my army, etc.
It seems to cost way more to defend against 6 mutalisks than it does to make them, therefore making zerg have an automatic defense.
Or am I missing something?
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On August 17 2011 04:44 Toadvine wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 04:19 Olsson wrote:
I think TvZ is abit broken. Both baneling and hellions drops are badly designed. You can deflect four drops but if one gets in and does some damage all those lost drops have been held off. Zerg doesn't have good scouting options and it makes it a coinflip and to make sure that you're safe from the possible scenarios sets you behind ALOT at high level of play - Masters Zerg.
EDIT: I also believe that DT's are badly designed. A zerg can manage to scout the DT shrine in a coinflip or they can't. Even if they do scout it's hard to know how many dt's are being made. You can make one spore and put troops infront of it. The zerg says I need to pressure or secure a third, makes two spines at each base along with spores and moves out with his units. Four DT's get past the defences and manage to take out the spore crawler with only the shield going down on one of them. Overseer takes 17 seconds to morph and four dt's can get down a hatchery and more in that time. I feel that such things as banelings, dt's and hellions make gameplay too volatile and unforgiving even at the highest levels of play and that they need change. I actually disagree. Or rather, I agree with Hellions being too good at killing workers for their cost and accessibility - which makes a hellion drop or runby a relatively small risk with the potential for huge reward. However, baneling drops on mineral lines are fine, imo. You can actually run workers away from a baneling drop, and a cannon in your mineral line also makes it significantly less effective - Banelings are melee, and barely faster than workers, so there's enough space to be able to deflect a baneling drop with good multitasking and a few units. Also, Baneling drops, unlike Hellions, can actually fail and do no damage. Hellions are terrible, because you can actually invest in defending against them, and they'll still do enough damage a lot of the time. But DTs? Banelings? Not nearly in the same ballpark imo.
I agree about hellion, however, I tend ot have the same OL that Im dropping with be generating creep too. baneling speed on creep vs workers = good times.
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