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On August 19 2011 03:25 AustinCM wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 03:24 Parodoxx wrote:
This Thread need to be partitioned by sc league. I only read page 27 but its clear who is in what league.
No amry should be able to win an engagement guaranteed at any point in the game even if it doesn't result in winning the game.
Protoss army is not as mobile as terran, thinking that is just silly.
As for the arguments saying that a death ball killed off has just as much remacro potential as terran or zerg is also silly. Most protoss dont stock 5k mineral/gas with 20 available chrono and 6 robo bays to get that back in under 2 min.
20 Warpagates can reinforce pretty fast...
Your correct that is rather fast if you have almost 3k mineral staacked for that warp in ONCE. however large that number its not HT with storm and its no collosi, if you had 3k gas I suppose you could get 10 archons and do all right vs hydra or terran bio in same numbers, or lose it all to emp....
The point is that although that allows Protoss to "reinforce" quick its not what they want or need nor does it beat terran on similar numbers.
The best way to compare this is zerg max on roaches, losing everything in a instant and saying well maybe more roaches will work, low tier units in max are not great. unless you terran
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On August 19 2011 03:16 DragonDefonce wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 02:56 Bagi wrote:
You might wanna elaborate on that third point. How is a protoss with 20+ warpgates dead but the terran isnt? How are high templars slower to replenish than for example ghosts?
200/200 mech doesn't always beat a proper 200/200 protoss army either. It doesn't have the OP status, and neither should protoss. Barracks units > gateway units, much more so in a defensive position for obvious reasons. 20 zealots wont break through 10 marauders in a defensive position. Ghosts, while they do ridiculous damage to shield, are not needed if their are no hts capable of using storm. If HTs had amulet I would say you have a point. Honestly man, you should not have a problem with what i said unless you think zealot stalker sentry beats MM. With regards to terran mech, protoss can fight even, not win, it in a straght up fight if it has a good number of well upgraded carriers, which takes just as much time to get as a terran mech army. Otherwise, the only thing that protoss can do is hit and run and not let terran max out.
I can't believe you are saying this with a straight face.
Lets say you have 20 gateways as toss, your lategame army gets destroyed so you need to remake units as quickly as possible. You instantly remake 20 units of your choice, chronoboost all your gateways and make another round of units. In the time that it takes to make 1 round of marauders, you get 2 rounds of units. Barracks units are strong but twice as strong as gateway units? Hardly.
Saying that you can only warp in zealot/stalker/sentry is just plain wrong. Imagine you warp in 10 templar and 10 zealots on the first round, and then 20 stalkers on the next. You make archons out of the templars and you'll have 10 zealot, 20 stalker and 5 archons in little more than half a minute. How can you say terran can replenish as effectively, not to even mention better? Because of the nature of warpgates, protoss will always have 1 extra round of units.
Then you can also throw in instantly 2-3 dark templar to possibly do damage if the terran neglects his detection. You can also chrono out colossi faster than terran can produce vikings... Do I need to go on?
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Blizzard should really be able to balance the different matchups independently.
TvP is already totally different from TvZ and both are totally different from TvT. Why not go one step further and balance the attributes differently for each matchup? For a random example, blizzard could increase seige tank damage in TvP and decrease it in TvZ. Blizzard obviously has the ability to do this because the single-player units in many cases have different attributes from those same units in multi-player.
The advantage is that blizzard wouldn't have to worry about a change that should only effect one matchup from having some unintended consequence in another matchup. Look at the warp gate research time nerf: It was meant to add more variety to PvP, but instead PvP is still mostly 4 gate and protoss is weaker against early all-ins from zerg! Now imagine if blizzard would simply increase the warp gate research time in PvP only, while leaving it at its original duration in ZvP and TvP. Everyone wins.
All you can really say against it is "Well but then our units and upgrades and stuff work differently in different matchups!" So what? You already play differently in the different matchups anyway. It's not like you have one build that you use in both TvZ and TvT and it really messes you up to not be able to do it exactly the same in both cases.
It's just as impossible to balance all of the match-ups simultaneously as it is to balance the game for both pros and beginners.
User was warned for this post
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I'd just like to say to whoever complained about Terran builds, all those builds are scoutable and identifiable within the first 1-2 mins of the game, usually on the first worker scout.
Gas first? Hellion potential banshee play
Rax first? Multi rax play possible tank play or expo
The follow ups can be specifically scouted in the 3rd or 4th minute. Nothing remotely game breaking about any of them except that most North American players, even in master, simply refuse to scout.
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On August 19 2011 04:05 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 03:16 DragonDefonce wrote:On August 19 2011 02:56 Bagi wrote:
You might wanna elaborate on that third point. How is a protoss with 20+ warpgates dead but the terran isnt? How are high templars slower to replenish than for example ghosts?
200/200 mech doesn't always beat a proper 200/200 protoss army either. It doesn't have the OP status, and neither should protoss. Barracks units > gateway units, much more so in a defensive position for obvious reasons. 20 zealots wont break through 10 marauders in a defensive position. Ghosts, while they do ridiculous damage to shield, are not needed if their are no hts capable of using storm. If HTs had amulet I would say you have a point. Honestly man, you should not have a problem with what i said unless you think zealot stalker sentry beats MM. With regards to terran mech, protoss can fight even, not win, it in a straght up fight if it has a good number of well upgraded carriers, which takes just as much time to get as a terran mech army. Otherwise, the only thing that protoss can do is hit and run and not let terran max out. I can't believe you are saying this with a straight face. Lets say you have 20 gateways as toss, your lategame army gets destroyed so you need to remake units as quickly as possible. You instantly remake 20 units of your choice, chronoboost all your gateways and make another round of units. In the time that it takes to make 1 round of marauders, you get 2 rounds of units. Barracks units are strong but twice as strong as gateway units? Hardly. Saying that you can only warp in zealot/stalker/sentry is just plain wrong. Imagine you warp in 10 templar and 10 zealots on the first round, and then 20 stalkers on the next. You make archons out of the templars and you'll have 10 zealot, 20 stalker and 5 archons in little more than half a minute. How can you say terran can replenish as fast, not to even mention better? Then you can also throw in instantly 2-3 dark templar to possibly do damage if the terran neglects his detection. You can also chrono out colossi faster than terran can produce vikings... Do I need to go on?
Marauder build time: 30
Marine build time: 25/2
Viking build time: 42/2
Zealot build time: 28+5
Stalker build time: 32+5
Archon build time: 45+5+10
Colossus build time: 75
20 gate vs 15 rax
How is terran behind with these? Cause protoss has infinite chronoboosts? DT's? Cause terran doesnt save up scans lategame? And you know, protoss saves up 3k gas to make archons right? Cause it takes "little more than half a minute" to get 10 zealot 20 stalker and 5 archons? The best you can do is 32+15=47 seconds for that army. Considering proxy pylon in the middle of the map so 10~15 sec travel time thats full minute. Two full rounds of maraunders and two rounds of reactor marines and then some.
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On August 19 2011 04:07 galivet wrote:
Blizzard should really be able to balance the different matchups independently.
TvP is already totally different from TvZ and both are totally different from TvT. Why not go one step further and balance the attributes differently for each matchup? For a random example, blizzard could increase seige tank damage in TvP and decrease it in TvZ. Blizzard obviously has the ability to do this because the single-player units in many cases have different attributes from those same units in multi-player.
The advantage is that blizzard wouldn't have to worry about a change that should only effect one matchup from having some unintended consequence in another matchup. Look at the warp gate research time nerf: It was meant to add more variety to PvP, but instead PvP is still mostly 4 gate and protoss is weaker against early all-ins from zerg! Now imagine if blizzard would simply increase the warp gate research time in PvP only, while leaving it at its original duration in ZvP and TvP. Everyone wins.
All you can really say against it is "Well but then our units and upgrades and stuff work differently in different matchups!" So what? You already play differently in the different matchups anyway. It's not like you have one build that you use in both TvZ and TvT and it really messes you up to not be able to do it exactly the same in both cases.
It's just as impossible to balance all of the match-ups simultaneously as it is to balance the game for both pros and beginners.
You already posted this at least once at the bottom of page 25. Just because people didn't respond doesn't mean you should post it again.
Over the last several pages, the only posts I feel like I can get behind are the ones calling for less emphasis on all-in play. Can't really argue with that, longer games are more dynamic and more interesting. I also think that better early scouting for all races and a better defender's advantage could go a long way to solving this.
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On August 19 2011 04:17 JustTray wrote:
I'd just like to say to whoever complained about Terran builds, all those builds are scoutable and identifiable within the first 1-2 mins of the game, usually on the first worker scout.
Gas first? Hellion potential banshee play
Rax first? Multi rax play possible tank play or expo
The follow ups can be specifically scouted in the 3rd or 4th minute. Nothing remotely game breaking about any of them except that most North American players, even in master, simply refuse to scout.
You don't have to go gas first for Hellion/Banshee builds. In fact, unless you're trying to hit some really tight timing, it's worse to go gas first because you give away too much scouting information. 12 Rax doesn't slow your gas that much and really provides no scouting information whatsoever to your opponent.
And what follow ups are you talking about? Be specific. A Terran who is truly intent on denying scouting information keeps only 2 Marines by his wall at the front, no add-on on his wall Barracks, and is vigilant about keeping Overlords out of his base. Plus, you can't get useful scouting information from an Overlord until the 5th or 6th minute when the Terran actually commits to a tech or expansion.
Stop talking out of your ass. I agree that most players could scout a lot better, but don't pretend like it's easy before Lair.
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Ok, terran player here and I'm glad a thread is here because I have a lot to get off my chest.
First off, I believe Terran is the strongest race in the game. This isn't necessarily because of there units, but because they have a much higher skill cap than the other races. This is why Terrans are so dominant in Korea and not so hot everywhere else-- with 300 apm Terran can do much more than Zerg or Protoss at a similar apm.
Think about it. Terran has more harassment units than any other race -- reaper, helion, banshee, with medivacs that are durable, fast, and made as a core unit for the army composition. Added to this, Vikings can harrass effectively, as can cloaked ghosts, and nukes. Their buildings can fly, used as scouts, spotters, and as we've seen recently can even block rams or tighten chokes when you are on the offensive.
Terran is the strongest race because they have the most tools.
Zerg is strong because left free to macro they will almost always win. It is up to Terran and Zerg to harrass the zerg, forcing units other than workers and spreading them thin, taxing their apm and impeding constant expansions. While harrassing zerg is easy for terran because they have so many options, Protoss have been struggling because their 2 main forms of harassment-- dts and voidrays, are easily countered and have become protocol to blind counter. Protoss is a turtle race by nature, and letting Zerg take 5+ bases on these big and newer maps simply won't cut it.
Infestor vs Ghost vs HT's
I believe all 3 are too strong. Units that negate micro shouldn't really be in the game because they dumb it down. If 1 infestor lands a fungal on a clump of marines there is nothing they can do except die from the 2nd fungal. Infestors have too much utility. They prevent marines from engaging broodlords, and because its almost impossible to not have stacked vikings they can kill insane amounts of vikings with only a few fungals. They negate heavy thor play with neural or marine play with fungal, and can still snipe an expansion with infested terrans. Just a handful of infestors can delay an army while killing many units for minutes.
Ghosts are too strong vs zerg because all of their units are biological, including overseers. 20 cloaked ghosts can wreck havic during a fight, but without ghosts there would be no way for Terran to defeat a broodlord infestor army.
The ghost vs ht dance is strange. Ghosts and hts can make a 200 vs 200 engagement end with 200 vs 80. Each is too strong in the match up and too vital for their race.
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I just dont understand why balance changes cant be more aggressive.
Why cant they have a permanent PTR that had daily balance tweaks for people of all skill level to play it once or twice and rate the change on a scale of 1 to 10.
The best way would be to do the same thing as genetics. have all sorts of different changes happening simultaneously , the one thats the best is the one that proves the highest balance .We then throw the rest out and keep it.
The answers right in front of us. 100 PTRs with 100 different permutations based around the core concepts of the game. Weed out the bad, continue with the good and propagate 100 more permutations off that good one. each time it gets better.
This is what works. We see it in real life, why don't we do ti here?
Money.
This would cost blizzard almost 1% of their income to do. thats huge for them. they won't do it.
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On August 19 2011 04:20 DragonDefonce wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:05 Bagi wrote:On August 19 2011 03:16 DragonDefonce wrote:On August 19 2011 02:56 Bagi wrote:
You might wanna elaborate on that third point. How is a protoss with 20+ warpgates dead but the terran isnt? How are high templars slower to replenish than for example ghosts?
200/200 mech doesn't always beat a proper 200/200 protoss army either. It doesn't have the OP status, and neither should protoss. Barracks units > gateway units, much more so in a defensive position for obvious reasons. 20 zealots wont break through 10 marauders in a defensive position. Ghosts, while they do ridiculous damage to shield, are not needed if their are no hts capable of using storm. If HTs had amulet I would say you have a point. Honestly man, you should not have a problem with what i said unless you think zealot stalker sentry beats MM. With regards to terran mech, protoss can fight even, not win, it in a straght up fight if it has a good number of well upgraded carriers, which takes just as much time to get as a terran mech army. Otherwise, the only thing that protoss can do is hit and run and not let terran max out. I can't believe you are saying this with a straight face. Lets say you have 20 gateways as toss, your lategame army gets destroyed so you need to remake units as quickly as possible. You instantly remake 20 units of your choice, chronoboost all your gateways and make another round of units. In the time that it takes to make 1 round of marauders, you get 2 rounds of units. Barracks units are strong but twice as strong as gateway units? Hardly. Saying that you can only warp in zealot/stalker/sentry is just plain wrong. Imagine you warp in 10 templar and 10 zealots on the first round, and then 20 stalkers on the next. You make archons out of the templars and you'll have 10 zealot, 20 stalker and 5 archons in little more than half a minute. How can you say terran can replenish as fast, not to even mention better? Then you can also throw in instantly 2-3 dark templar to possibly do damage if the terran neglects his detection. You can also chrono out colossi faster than terran can produce vikings... Do I need to go on? Marauder build time: 30 Marine build time: 25/2 Viking build time: 42/2 Zealot build time: 28+5 Stalker build time: 32+5 Archon build time: 45+5+10 Colossus build time: 75 20 gate vs 15 rax How is terran behind with these? Cause protoss has infinite chronoboosts? DT's? Cause terran doesnt save up scans lategame? And you know, protoss saves up 3k gas to make archons right? Cause it takes "little more than half a minute" to get 10 zealot 20 stalker and 5 archons? The best you can do is 32+15=47 seconds for that army. Considering proxy pylon in the middle of the map so 10~15 sec travel time thats full minute. Two full rounds of maraunders and two rounds of reactor marines and then some.
Chronoboosted templars are ~37sec, so its 42 sec if you chrono the gateways that were used for templars on the first round and then whatever you want on the 2nd. I'm not even assuming you chronoboost every single gateway, you could get even more benefit that way. You can let the templars get energy, they'll have enough for a storm in 40 seconds or so. In 42 seconds terran with 15 rax has 15 marauders in his base - protoss has 10 zealot 20 stalker 5 archons anywhere with a pylon.
This travel time is also misleading, terran has the same disadvantage except they can't even proxy. Might as well double the travel time when protoss is a defensive position... Oh wait, you were arguing that terran have it better here? I'm so confused...
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On August 19 2011 04:31 Truedot wrote:
I just dont understand why balance changes cant be more aggressive.
Why cant they have a permanent PTR that had daily balance tweaks for people of all skill level to play it once or twice and rate the change on a scale of 1 to 10.
The best way would be to do the same thing as genetics. have all sorts of different changes happening simultaneously , the one thats the best is the one that proves the highest balance .We then throw the rest out and keep it.
The answers right in front of us. 100 PTRs with 100 different permutations based around the core concepts of the game. Weed out the bad, continue with the good and propagate 100 more permutations off that good one. each time it gets better.
This is what works. We see it in real life, why don't we do ti here?
Money.
This would cost blizzard almost 1% of their income to do. thats huge for them. they won't do it.
I don't think you realize the sort of resources it would take to operate 100 independent PTR's, all with a different version of the game. You're being hyperbolic here.
The reason Blizzard isn't more aggressive with balance changes is because there are always unintended consequences. There have been plenty of times where a group of players complained about a strategy, and the metagame fixed itself with no balance tweaks from Blizzard. Obviously this is preferable to them actually patching the game.
Also, changing something to make the 1/1/1 weaker against Protoss may also make Terran weaker against Zerg. They need to factor in all of these things when making any balance changes.
Quite frankly your solution is impractical at best.
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On August 19 2011 03:17 Acritter wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 02:54 Shiladie wrote:
I'd like to say that overall the balance of the game favors cheese and all-ins too much, and would benefit greatly from increased scouting ability and defensive advantage.
I believe the reason there is such a massive terran dominance in korea is that the korean style of play is to take a cheese/all-in/timing build and perfect it to an absolute science. Terran has the best ability to defend against these kinds of aggression, and thus is able to play a more stable game overall.
That, on top of the fact terran has the most options in their cheese/all-in/timing builds that requires precise scouting and reactions to counter.
You can see the low defensive advantage for zerg and protoss by looking at their mirror matchups. Until infestors come out zvz is dominated by early all-in play, where if you miss the point that your opponent stops droning/pulls his drones from gas to mass speedlings, you can easily be caught off guard and lose without a fight. PvP is similar, where before colossus it's a game of stalker numbers and stalker micro.
I would say that the game would be a LOT better if every race were given better early game scouting, in the window after your scouting worker/overlord is chased out, and before obs/overseer. On top of that additional defensive advantage all round, make it an investment, but reactive, so if you scout the cheese/all-in/timing build you have the option of trading longer term econ/army for a solid defence that can be up in time. This will make the game a lot more like BW, where pressure builds were king, forcing the opponent to over-commit to defence early on to secure an econ lead going into mid/late game.
This will then raise the skill-cap immensely, as it will reduce the effectiveness of the pure all-ins where a player can have 100% of the game mapped out and increase the effectiveness of a reactive style of play.
I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this, as I know David Kim has made a brief comment along the same lines. I have hope that in HotS we see the game shift towards this and away from where the game is currently headed. I'd have to agree with this. I think the main issues at the moment are Warp Gate, Spawn Larva, and switchable add-ons. Warp Gate allows for too-perfect reactive play from Protoss in the early game, meaning Protoss gateway units have to be unrefined and weak. The inherently broken (underpowered or overpowered, never in between) Colossus and Sentry just worsen the problem. Spawn Larva allows Zerg to make absurd amounts of Drones, forcing their opponents to always put pressure on or lose. Because of the mobility of Zerg units, this pressure almost always has to either deal a significant amount of damage or be annihilated by a superior Zerg force. Situations like these encourage all-in play to punish a greedy Zerg, and allow for all-in play in return from the Zerg if they decide to suddenly switch production to military. Finally, add-on switching allows Terran to hit their entire tech tree ridiculously fast, meaning that the many powerful units at their disposal can be obtained far too quickly and cycled between too quickly, allowing things like the 1-1-1 all-in. No race is definitively broken, but these mechanics skew the game towards all-in aggressive play. My personal solution would be to make Warp Gate require Templar Archives to research, reduce Spawn Larva to 2 (Hive upgrade to 4), make a new add-on to account for certain Terran units and add "adoption times" for add-ons (takes a certain amount of time to link onto a new add-on, but no extra cost), and of course rebalance units so that these drastic changes wouldn't make the game unplayable. Hopefully HotS will take the opportunity of a new expansion to fix a lot of the overarching problems in WoL that can't be fixed with a simple patch.
I entirely agree with you on the current state of the game, but instead of throwing the current mechanics out the window/changing them beyond current recognition, I would rather they introduced new mechanics to help with this.
Most of this thread's complaints/whines (yes they are whines) about balance center around exactly what we are talking about, but instead of looking at the core of the problem everyone is nit picking each race/build. All this does is invite arguments from the race that you say is OP in whatever way instead of constructive discussion. If you want people to take your ideas seriously you have to set aside as much of your racial bias as possible and look at the bigger picture of game design.
I've found the practice of coming up with new mechanics/balanace changes to current units invites everyone to rage at the various things that can be found wrong with the ideas. Regardless I'll give it a try below:
A few statements about the races first:
As said above, a zerg who is given free reign with no pressure on them can drone/expand far faster then the other races and easily overpower their opponent. This forces you to pressure the zerg, but the mobility of the zerg forces means that any units sent out have a very small chance of making it out alive. This then means that the units you send out MUST do a decent amount of damage to the zerg before they die.
A terran base is nearly invincible to ground attacks once siege tanks come out due to the ability to sim city most natural expansions. This as well as the ability for terrans to deny scouting until obs/overseers and the vast amount of different options they have in terms of tech creates a volatile situation for P/Z. The P or Z players must prepare for a large number of possible attacks against them, while having next to no ability to attack the terran with anything but an extreme all-in (baneling bust). When terran moves out with the units/tech they chose, there is rarely enough time for P/Z to prepare reactively, so it becomes either a 'coinflip' or preparing a little for everything and relying on skill to survive (this is how nestea and other top zergs can survive vs terrans) This is why at lower skill levels terran is not dominating as much as upper skill levels, the games are simply the coinflip, where terran wins a number of 'free-wins' where the opponent does not scout them and doesn't prepare correctly at all, and a number of 'free-wins' for the P/Z when they either scout against a terran less skilled at denying scouts, or blind hard-counters the terran. This may create a 50% win-rate, but is not good gameplay.
Protoss has the warp-in mechanic. This mechanic is the defining feature of protoss balance, in the same way spawn larva is for zerg. Protoss are able to entirely remove the defensive advantage gained from reinforcement time at the adjusted cost of 100 minerals. This is because warp-in is not a decision or a loss, the only potential loss is the proxy pylon. Because of this ability Protoss gateway units need to be fundamentally weaker for their cost then they otherwise would be. Otherwise warp-gate all-ins would be entirely unstoppable. Simply think about how overpowered it would be to be able to warp in non-gateway units like voidrays immortals or colossus. Against zerg this enforces the all-in nature of attacks even more, as you need to continually reinforce your army to prevent it from being over-run in the field, especially if your army contains non-gateway units that you cannot afford to lose without doing major damage. In this way the strength of the protoss army pre 100+ food or colossus/HT has been tuned to expect the instant reinforcements.
What I would then suggest is better early game scouting options for P/Z preventing coin flips.
Hallucinate is the simplest way to provide this, but the requirement for warp gate research as soon as possible makes it impractical to get hallu before WG. WG also cannot have it's time reduced due to the strength of the associated timing pushes. What I would suggest is to make warpgate require a twilight council, but reduce the research time by 60 seconds. Then reduce hallucinate cost to 100/100/50 so it can feasibly be gotten within the window of having a cyber core but being unable to get warp gate.
For Z I would suggest overseers be morphable at hatchery, but they have only slightly faster speed then overlords until the lair upgrade. The reasoning here is a slightly faster overlord and the use of changlings. You may also need to increase changling health to 50 and/or have them launched at 7-9 range (and morph in the air as to not show on minimap if launched into sight range) to allow them to get the needed scouting before being killed.
Unfortunately I am in the same boat as blizzard with terran, I have no idea what they need and/or could use right now, as they have scans/reapers already.
On the front of defence, I keep coming back to spine crawler build time, but it cannot be increased for fear of offensive spinecrawlers dominating early zvz like they did in beta. The reason I want to do something with the spinecrawler is that it costs a drone and cannot be then used to attack the opponent after being built to defend, the only problem is that you cannot build them reactively once you see something coming. My first thought was to make transfuse or another queen ability speed up spinecrawler build-times, but queens right now are expected to be low energy, and pooling that much would be similar to simply building the spines in advance anyways. What I would like ideally is some way to spend more money/drones to have a spinecrawler faster, but only in your own base. For example spending 2 drones to make a spinecrawler build in 10 seconds, but somehow require a queen to do it so you can't do it on your opponent's creep. If anyone has any ideas here let me know...
For protoss they definitely need a way to fight off another protoss stalker army without simply having enough stalkers or a fast immortal. The immediate thought is a shield battery type building, but where it can be set to auto-cast and has 3-4 range, so early game you can sit near it and be fine, later game blinking back stalkers to it to recharge shields would be an excellent mechanic.
Again for T they have the defensive advantage they need already, the only think I think they need is a way to better deal with BF helions other then BF helions of their own. I'm at a loss right now for what, but if I think of something I'll post it...
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On August 19 2011 04:40 ZasZ. wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:31 Truedot wrote:
I just dont understand why balance changes cant be more aggressive.
Why cant they have a permanent PTR that had daily balance tweaks for people of all skill level to play it once or twice and rate the change on a scale of 1 to 10.
The best way would be to do the same thing as genetics. have all sorts of different changes happening simultaneously , the one thats the best is the one that proves the highest balance .We then throw the rest out and keep it.
The answers right in front of us. 100 PTRs with 100 different permutations based around the core concepts of the game. Weed out the bad, continue with the good and propagate 100 more permutations off that good one. each time it gets better.
This is what works. We see it in real life, why don't we do ti here?
Money.
This would cost blizzard almost 1% of their income to do. thats huge for them. they won't do it. I don't think you realize the sort of resources it would take to operate 100 independent PTR's, all with a different version of the game. You're being hyperbolic here. The reason Blizzard isn't more aggressive with balance changes is because there are always unintended consequences. There have been plenty of times where a group of players complained about a strategy, and the metagame fixed itself with no balance tweaks from Blizzard. Obviously this is preferable to them actually patching the game. Also, changing something to make the 1/1/1 weaker against Protoss may also make Terran weaker against Zerg. They need to factor in all of these things when making any balance changes. Quite frankly your solution is impractical at best.
thats the reason for ptrs. you're getting thousands of players to playtest your game FOR FREE, and provide feedback, because they want to improve the game.
There isnt anywhere its been stated that if a change is found to be bad on PTR is HAS to be released to the normal servers. We call the normals servers the wild, and the PTRs the testbeds.
you dont release something into the wild until its proven fit. 100 permutations of balance changes on PTRs with tons of players willingly playing for free to give their response to all the ideas before filtering out only the best PTR changes, and then cycling it down and down to the best PTR change that is unversally agreed upon as good before its released into the wild, sounds good no? thats how things work best. it may be impractical from a human intuitive standpoint, but it is how things have gotten done by man since the beginning of time.
let me give you a real world example: The VOS water bottle.
A designer for Calvin Klein made it. He drew up hundreds of different designs before that one was agreed on. Hundreds. How many different designs have there been of SC2? 30? 20? This is my point. In the real world, when something is important you go through many hundreds of iterations of it to find the best one. you dont quit because you think it cant be improved.
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On August 19 2011 04:22 ZasZ. wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:07 galivet wrote:
Blizzard should really be able to balance the different matchups independently.
TvP is already totally different from TvZ and both are totally different from TvT. Why not go one step further and balance the attributes differently for each matchup? For a random example, blizzard could increase seige tank damage in TvP and decrease it in TvZ. Blizzard obviously has the ability to do this because the single-player units in many cases have different attributes from those same units in multi-player.
The advantage is that blizzard wouldn't have to worry about a change that should only effect one matchup from having some unintended consequence in another matchup. Look at the warp gate research time nerf: It was meant to add more variety to PvP, but instead PvP is still mostly 4 gate and protoss is weaker against early all-ins from zerg! Now imagine if blizzard would simply increase the warp gate research time in PvP only, while leaving it at its original duration in ZvP and TvP. Everyone wins.
All you can really say against it is "Well but then our units and upgrades and stuff work differently in different matchups!" So what? You already play differently in the different matchups anyway. It's not like you have one build that you use in both TvZ and TvT and it really messes you up to not be able to do it exactly the same in both cases.
It's just as impossible to balance all of the match-ups simultaneously as it is to balance the game for both pros and beginners. You already posted this at least once at the bottom of page 25. Just because people didn't respond doesn't mean you should post it again.
I reposted it in response to someone who responded to a different post of mine by stating that some balance suggestions I made would only balance one matchup in favor of another; it's directly relevant.
This thread just goes in circles anyway; everyone in it may as well just be copy-pasting in either their own previous posts or the previous posts of others. I think it's pretty stupid to warn someone for writing a good post twice but let a cacophony of shitty posts that are in direct conflict with the ground rules outlined in the OP to slide by. It's just arbitrariness and selective enforcement that makes me not really give a damn about the mod's opinions anyway.
Here's what I was responding to:
Seriously, if you're even going to THINK about proposing a balance change, stop. Really think. People make terrible suggestions because they think "wow this race has something strong against this other race," provide something that will change it, but give NO consideration to any of the other matchups or uses of that unit. It's very narrow-minded thinking.
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On August 19 2011 04:50 galivet wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:22 ZasZ. wrote:On August 19 2011 04:07 galivet wrote:
Blizzard should really be able to balance the different matchups independently.
TvP is already totally different from TvZ and both are totally different from TvT. Why not go one step further and balance the attributes differently for each matchup? For a random example, blizzard could increase seige tank damage in TvP and decrease it in TvZ. Blizzard obviously has the ability to do this because the single-player units in many cases have different attributes from those same units in multi-player.
The advantage is that blizzard wouldn't have to worry about a change that should only effect one matchup from having some unintended consequence in another matchup. Look at the warp gate research time nerf: It was meant to add more variety to PvP, but instead PvP is still mostly 4 gate and protoss is weaker against early all-ins from zerg! Now imagine if blizzard would simply increase the warp gate research time in PvP only, while leaving it at its original duration in ZvP and TvP. Everyone wins.
All you can really say against it is "Well but then our units and upgrades and stuff work differently in different matchups!" So what? You already play differently in the different matchups anyway. It's not like you have one build that you use in both TvZ and TvT and it really messes you up to not be able to do it exactly the same in both cases.
It's just as impossible to balance all of the match-ups simultaneously as it is to balance the game for both pros and beginners. You already posted this at least once at the bottom of page 25. Just because people didn't respond doesn't mean you should post it again. I reposted it in response to someone who responded to a different post of mine by stating that some balance suggestions I made would only balance one matchup in favor of another; it's directly relevant. This thread just goes in circles anyway; everyone in it may as well just be copy-pasting in either their own previous posts or the previous posts of others. I think it's pretty stupid to warn someone for writing a good post twice but let a cacophony of shitty posts that are in direct conflict with the ground rules outlined in the OP to slide by. It's just arbitrariness that makes me not really give a damn about the mod's opinions anyway. Here's what I was responding to: Show nested quote +Seriously, if you're even going to THINK about proposing a balance change, stop. Really think. People make terrible suggestions because they think "wow this race has something strong against this other race," provide something that will change it, but give NO consideration to any of the other matchups or uses of that unit. It's very narrow-minded thinking.
and I already posted a previous response to your reiterated idea, delineating how badly the sort of divergent tech effect was/is in WoW, and how thats actually just poor game design and patchworking that creates more issues instead of solving them.
Issues propagate when you patch them with a cheap fix instead of fixing them fundamentally. then something gets big and unstable and falls over and burns down.
Welcome to genetics and programming 101.
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I don't play WoW so I don't really know what you're talking about, but Starcraft 1v1 is really six different RTS games with some common textures and maps. It should be balanced like that too. Why should the performance of zealots against marines have any influence over the performance of zealots against zerglings?
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On August 19 2011 04:59 galivet wrote:
I don't play WoW so I don't really know what you're talking about, but Starcraft 1v1 is really six different RTS games with some common textures and maps. It should be balanced like that too. Why should the performance of zealots against marines have any influence over the performance of zealots against zerglings?
because it's all the same game.
with your logic 2v2 would need different stats for all of these:
zz vs zz
zz vs zp
zz vs zt
zz vs tt
zz vs pp
zz vs pt
pp vs tp
pp vs pz
pp vs zt
pp vs tt
pp vs pp
tt vs pt
tt vs zp
tt vs zt
tt vs tt
I can see where you're coming from, but it will never ever happen, blizzard is selling a whole game experience, It would also be a LOT more confusing to learn, both to play and to watch if units all had different stats every MU.
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On August 19 2011 04:05 Bagi wrote:
Barracks units are strong but twice as strong as gateway units? Hardly.
Maybe not twice as strong but way stronger that's for sure, especially in terms of cost. If they're are any medivacs they at least seem 2x stronger tho, can't tell you how many times I've warped in 8 units that don't even deal with a 4 marauder drop
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On August 19 2011 04:17 JustTray wrote:
I'd just like to say to whoever complained about Terran builds, all those builds are scoutable and identifiable within the first 1-2 mins of the game, usually on the first worker scout.
Gas first? Hellion potential banshee play
Rax first? Multi rax play possible tank play or expo
The follow ups can be specifically scouted in the 3rd or 4th minute. Nothing remotely game breaking about any of them except that most North American players, even in master, simply refuse to scout.
Do you realize that, unlike terran, z and p need to react differently to every build you mentioned?
Consider this situation:
Your scouting worker was killed by a marine when you saw depot-barracks-refinery.
He walls himself in with a second depot and patrols the perimeters of his base with a few marines, and if you scout the front you see a pair of marines shooting at your zergling and nothing else.
Now what do you prepare for?
Hellions? Blue flame hellions? Banshees? Marine/tank? Stim marine timing? Expansion?
EACH of these require a different reaction so what do you do?
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On August 19 2011 05:10 Strike_ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 19 2011 04:17 JustTray wrote:
I'd just like to say to whoever complained about Terran builds, all those builds are scoutable and identifiable within the first 1-2 mins of the game, usually on the first worker scout.
Gas first? Hellion potential banshee play
Rax first? Multi rax play possible tank play or expo
The follow ups can be specifically scouted in the 3rd or 4th minute. Nothing remotely game breaking about any of them except that most North American players, even in master, simply refuse to scout. Do you realize that, unlike terran, z and p need to react differently to every build you mentioned? Consider this situation: Your scouting worker was killed by a marine when you saw depot-barracks-refinery. He walls himself in with a second depot and patrols the perimeters of his base with a few marines, and if you scout the front you see a pair of marines shooting at your zergling and nothing else. Now what do you prepare for? Hellions? Blue flame hellions? Banshees? Marine/tank? Stim marine timing? Expansion? EACH of these require a different reaction so what do you do?
Attack his front with in a manner sufficiently threatening to force him to reveal his tech/army, but that allows you to withdraw after he does so. Protoss has to do this same thing against terran as well in order to execute any opening that doesn't involve getting a robo before nexus. Just build some units, attack his front with something that two marines can't handle, and make him show his hand. There's no rule that says that zerg can only build drones, tech, queens, and static defense in the early game.
Once example from PvT is opening 3 gate expand against a terran who walls his front just like you describe. P needs to find out very quickly if 2 port banshees are coming; if they are P needs to get a robo ASAP. So you take your initial units and attack his front. If he's built a banshee, he'll have to show it to defend your push. If he's going 1-1-1 tank/banshee, he'll have to show a tank.
Don't tell me that zerg can't be threatening early game and still compete economically; as protoss I face plenty of early ling/roach pressure against my walled-off front and zerg does just fine economically despite building a few attacking units early on.
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