Maybe you shouldn't call people out that not just understand the game but also nearly follow every game on the prolevel in Korea. If you want, you can take me on in a grudgematch, I'd love it.
What the heck is a grudgematch? I can play a best of 5 vs you on ladder maps on EU server if you want, although I've no idea what it has to do with the 'Designated Balance Discussion Thread' except you trying to bully people who expose your arguments for being paper thin. Even your example about Innovation is laughable. You describe a situation where he completely misplays the situation and makes mistakes and then you try to build some kind of a straw man out of it. Hilarious, tbh.
You call me out as a terrible player, thats my response. Usually a grudgematch has something to it. (Ban, change of signature etc) You can also reply to the arguments in my last post "paper thin"
More strawmen I see. Please point out with a quote where I called you a terrible player. I questioned whether you actually play the game since you tried to claim the WM doesn't one shot anything 3 times more expensive. It seems like this stung a little as you've decided to make it your mission to derail the thread since you were proven to be just rambling.
NarutO wrote: How does he completely misplays the situation? What would the proper reaction vs a potential stargate be? (It could have been blink, stargate, proxy dt, proxy robo...) He got an ebay and turrets for both economy lines as well as his production. Please elaborate how he could have potentially reacted better?
Provide the replay or the VOD. All we have currently is your word on what happened, and your word is that he made 3 turrets vs an Oracle which is completely excessive, and he lost 5 Marines despite being completely safe under just 1 turret's radius.
Its great that you call him out as misplaying the situation, when you haven't actually seen the game. The turret at the barracks didn't finish in time because guess what - oracle is fast and proxied its very quick into Terrans base (thats the real problem). He played an as good reaction as possible and still suffered damage, you need your economy lines covered and the production-turret is actually smart, as a potential second oracle or voidray can do massive amounts to you, if you don't have your production covered.
You questioning me if I play the game at all, because I disagree with you? What about question if I potentially play on a higher level than you and actually get to play vs people that can control their oracle and execute builds properly? Saying an oracle is a paperfly dying to everything and has no potential or 1 mine shuts down all oracle play... really. :x
Naruto, really? You provide a link where terran goes CC first, and complain about proxy stargate being too fast? Eventhough it didn't do that much of damage. Logically it should've had killed terran outright there, because terran did economic cheese. I called you biased hundred times, and got cursed for it, but there isn't any other word for this.
The point was that even with a proper response you can suffer damage and the fact that it can be various kind of stuff that hits you. INnovation prepared for a stargate because nowadays its very likely, if its a proxy robo the turrets will be of no use, that was the point. Where did I mention it is too fast? I said it can hit you / your base very quick
You need to find a better example then. If a player is doing an economic cheese, then by any means he should be ready to defend any kind of proxy. In that game Innovation even came out ahead. Thats the protoss who should really be complaining, not terran. gosh. Protoss spent this much against CC first: Stargate 150/150, 2*Oracle 150/150, Pylon 100/0 = 650/450. And killed 17 marine/workers (850) while expanding very late.
Imagine nexus first vs 2rax reaper, should protoss be prepared for it? Or hatch first on 2-player map vs 2rax marine?
Hatch first is the best way to hold 2rax marine, any weird blindcounter aside.
Maybe you shouldn't call people out that not just understand the game but also nearly follow every game on the prolevel in Korea. If you want, you can take me on in a grudgematch, I'd love it.
What the heck is a grudgematch? I can play a best of 5 vs you on ladder maps on EU server if you want, although I've no idea what it has to do with the 'Designated Balance Discussion Thread' except you trying to bully people who expose your arguments for being paper thin. Even your example about Innovation is laughable. You describe a situation where he completely misplays the situation and makes mistakes and then you try to build some kind of a straw man out of it. Hilarious, tbh.
You call me out as a terrible player, thats my response. Usually a grudgematch has something to it. (Ban, change of signature etc) You can also reply to the arguments in my last post "paper thin"
More strawmen I see. Please point out with a quote where I called you a terrible player. I questioned whether you actually play the game since you tried to claim the WM doesn't one shot anything 3 times more expensive. It seems like this stung a little as you've decided to make it your mission to derail the thread since you were proven to be just rambling.
NarutO wrote: How does he completely misplays the situation? What would the proper reaction vs a potential stargate be? (It could have been blink, stargate, proxy dt, proxy robo...) He got an ebay and turrets for both economy lines as well as his production. Please elaborate how he could have potentially reacted better?
Provide the replay or the VOD. All we have currently is your word on what happened, and your word is that he made 3 turrets vs an Oracle which is completely excessive, and he lost 5 Marines despite being completely safe under just 1 turret's radius.
Its great that you call him out as misplaying the situation, when you haven't actually seen the game. The turret at the barracks didn't finish in time because guess what - oracle is fast and proxied its very quick into Terrans base (thats the real problem). He played an as good reaction as possible and still suffered damage, you need your economy lines covered and the production-turret is actually smart, as a potential second oracle or voidray can do massive amounts to you, if you don't have your production covered.
You questioning me if I play the game at all, because I disagree with you? What about question if I potentially play on a higher level than you and actually get to play vs people that can control their oracle and execute builds properly? Saying an oracle is a paperfly dying to everything and has no potential or 1 mine shuts down all oracle play... really. :x
Naruto, really? You provide a link where terran goes CC first, and complain about proxy stargate being too fast? Eventhough it didn't do that much of damage. Logically it should've had killed terran outright there, because terran did economic cheese. I called you biased hundred times, and got cursed for it, but there isn't any other word for this.
The point was that even with a proper response you can suffer damage and the fact that it can be various kind of stuff that hits you. INnovation prepared for a stargate because nowadays its very likely, if its a proxy robo the turrets will be of no use, that was the point. Where did I mention it is too fast? I said it can hit you / your base very quick
You need to find a better example then. If a player is doing an economic cheese, then by any means he should be ready to defend any kind of proxy. In that game Innovation even came out ahead. Thats the protoss who should really be complaining, not terran. gosh. Protoss spent this much against CC first: Stargate 150/150, 2*Oracle 150/150, Pylon 100/0 = 650/450. And killed 17 marine/workers (850) while expanding very late.
Imagine nexus first vs 2rax reaper, should protoss be prepared for it? Or hatch first on 2-player map vs 2rax marine?
There really is no build that could harm a MSC core expand (which is why Terrans do complain right now) and while you point out the Protoss did expand very late, it shows a very bad read on his part. If he would have went a simply 3g or even 4g allin after the initial oracle, he would have straight won the game from there. INnovation already had to pull scvs vs the first stalker because the oracle did severe damage. I cannot understand the choice to put down the nexus instead of finishing the game by any means.
Maybe you shouldn't call people out that not just understand the game but also nearly follow every game on the prolevel in Korea. If you want, you can take me on in a grudgematch, I'd love it.
What the heck is a grudgematch? I can play a best of 5 vs you on ladder maps on EU server if you want, although I've no idea what it has to do with the 'Designated Balance Discussion Thread' except you trying to bully people who expose your arguments for being paper thin. Even your example about Innovation is laughable. You describe a situation where he completely misplays the situation and makes mistakes and then you try to build some kind of a straw man out of it. Hilarious, tbh.
You call me out as a terrible player, thats my response. Usually a grudgematch has something to it. (Ban, change of signature etc) You can also reply to the arguments in my last post "paper thin"
More strawmen I see. Please point out with a quote where I called you a terrible player. I questioned whether you actually play the game since you tried to claim the WM doesn't one shot anything 3 times more expensive. It seems like this stung a little as you've decided to make it your mission to derail the thread since you were proven to be just rambling.
NarutO wrote: How does he completely misplays the situation? What would the proper reaction vs a potential stargate be? (It could have been blink, stargate, proxy dt, proxy robo...) He got an ebay and turrets for both economy lines as well as his production. Please elaborate how he could have potentially reacted better?
Provide the replay or the VOD. All we have currently is your word on what happened, and your word is that he made 3 turrets vs an Oracle which is completely excessive, and he lost 5 Marines despite being completely safe under just 1 turret's radius.
Its great that you call him out as misplaying the situation, when you haven't actually seen the game. The turret at the barracks didn't finish in time because guess what - oracle is fast and proxied its very quick into Terrans base (thats the real problem). He played an as good reaction as possible and still suffered damage, you need your economy lines covered and the production-turret is actually smart, as a potential second oracle or voidray can do massive amounts to you, if you don't have your production covered.
You questioning me if I play the game at all, because I disagree with you? What about question if I potentially play on a higher level than you and actually get to play vs people that can control their oracle and execute builds properly? Saying an oracle is a paperfly dying to everything and has no potential or 1 mine shuts down all oracle play... really. :x
Naruto, really? You provide a link where terran goes CC first, and complain about proxy stargate being too fast? Eventhough it didn't do that much of damage. Logically it should've had killed terran outright there, because terran did economic cheese. I called you biased hundred times, and got cursed for it, but there isn't any other word for this.
The point was that even with a proper response you can suffer damage and the fact that it can be various kind of stuff that hits you. INnovation prepared for a stargate because nowadays its very likely, if its a proxy robo the turrets will be of no use, that was the point. Where did I mention it is too fast? I said it can hit you / your base very quick
Protoss is taking a huge risk in doing proxy stargate, it would be unreasonable if it didn't do any damage to a CC first build. whether the damage was too high is just subjective and this is a nice counter build to a CC first also should be taken into consideration.
Depends on when you put down the proxy stargate. Also - huge risk? You can put down a nexus after your first oracle and you will be fine. Its not like the oracle either deals damage or dies, you can see and chose what to do. Obviously if it deals zero damage Terran will be ahead, but you have no lost immediately. Terran cannot move out as he doesn't know if you build oracles continously or you stop the production. Usually the advantage you have would result in pressure, but since 3 oracles would murder tons of marines on the open space and the MSC with photon overcharge basically shuts down aggression, Terran has to wait before he can move out and Protoss can be very sneaky behind that.
For reference, Downfall did show a replay vs MC. MC did a proxy oracle and dealt no damage, because it was scouted vs CC first. He lost 0 scvs, 0 units , because he had turrets and a bunker at the front (perfect reaction). MC put down his nexus into a 6gate and while Downfall scanned it, the 6g still dealt damage. I personally believe with a better reaction of Downfall he could have won, but the point is that you can'T always be sure what PRotoss is doing. A scan is a good option but depending on what he does, the reaction time is very limited or you potentially don't spot what you would want to spot.
Terran has a very hard time right now to gather information, especially against allin, because Terran really does lack map control if its a aggressive game of Protoss. (see HasuObs vs MVP on Belshir for example)
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Maybe you shouldn't call people out that not just understand the game but also nearly follow every game on the prolevel in Korea. If you want, you can take me on in a grudgematch, I'd love it.
What the heck is a grudgematch? I can play a best of 5 vs you on ladder maps on EU server if you want, although I've no idea what it has to do with the 'Designated Balance Discussion Thread' except you trying to bully people who expose your arguments for being paper thin. Even your example about Innovation is laughable. You describe a situation where he completely misplays the situation and makes mistakes and then you try to build some kind of a straw man out of it. Hilarious, tbh.
You call me out as a terrible player, thats my response. Usually a grudgematch has something to it. (Ban, change of signature etc) You can also reply to the arguments in my last post "paper thin"
More strawmen I see. Please point out with a quote where I called you a terrible player. I questioned whether you actually play the game since you tried to claim the WM doesn't one shot anything 3 times more expensive. It seems like this stung a little as you've decided to make it your mission to derail the thread since you were proven to be just rambling.
NarutO wrote: How does he completely misplays the situation? What would the proper reaction vs a potential stargate be? (It could have been blink, stargate, proxy dt, proxy robo...) He got an ebay and turrets for both economy lines as well as his production. Please elaborate how he could have potentially reacted better?
Provide the replay or the VOD. All we have currently is your word on what happened, and your word is that he made 3 turrets vs an Oracle which is completely excessive, and he lost 5 Marines despite being completely safe under just 1 turret's radius.
Its great that you call him out as misplaying the situation, when you haven't actually seen the game. The turret at the barracks didn't finish in time because guess what - oracle is fast and proxied its very quick into Terrans base (thats the real problem). He played an as good reaction as possible and still suffered damage, you need your economy lines covered and the production-turret is actually smart, as a potential second oracle or voidray can do massive amounts to you, if you don't have your production covered.
You questioning me if I play the game at all, because I disagree with you? What about question if I potentially play on a higher level than you and actually get to play vs people that can control their oracle and execute builds properly? Saying an oracle is a paperfly dying to everything and has no potential or 1 mine shuts down all oracle play... really. :x
Naruto, really? You provide a link where terran goes CC first, and complain about proxy stargate being too fast? Eventhough it didn't do that much of damage. Logically it should've had killed terran outright there, because terran did economic cheese. I called you biased hundred times, and got cursed for it, but there isn't any other word for this.
The point was that even with a proper response you can suffer damage and the fact that it can be various kind of stuff that hits you. INnovation prepared for a stargate because nowadays its very likely, if its a proxy robo the turrets will be of no use, that was the point. Where did I mention it is too fast? I said it can hit you / your base very quick
You need to find a better example then. If a player is doing an economic cheese, then by any means he should be ready to defend any kind of proxy. In that game Innovation even came out ahead. Thats the protoss who should really be complaining, not terran. gosh. Protoss spent this much against CC first: Stargate 150/150, 2*Oracle 150/150, Pylon 100/0 = 650/450. And killed 17 marine/workers (850) while expanding very late.
Imagine nexus first vs 2rax reaper, should protoss be prepared for it? Or hatch first on 2-player map vs 2rax marine?
Hatch first is the best way to hold 2rax marine, any weird blindcounter aside.
The way zerg defends things is so counter intuitive, 3 hatch being the answer to two base all ins, hatch first being the answer to proxy 2 rax etc
Although I really think MsC is far too strong until mid-game. I agree with people saying to wait before nerfing it or buffing some T/Z options. The same way I dislike some part of the Widow Mine, it can be a balance thing or just a metagame tweak (30+ muta against Marines and mines? Really?) When I play Zerg, I have some success with ling/hydra or Infestor play (leaving 1 on each base help you a lot defending). But the randomness of the mine is the worst part of it IMO. Each time i'm targetting with it, I don't know for sure it has worked.
Stay calm and watch. I'll prefer if Blizzard adress some design issues over balance at what cost. If ZvT become Zerg favored but marine/tank play comes back (or marine/tank/mine) I'll agree. Same thing for ZvP, SH need to go, current version is fun on itself, but the result is just meh...
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Then you won't be able to use statistics at all if you are not allowed to pick them, because there will always be statistics that support the opposite side - unless we have hardly any data which leaves us in uncertainty to begin with. Therefore, the argument "you pick your statistics how you want" is, stupid. What you should be arguing is whether or not the statistics someone brings up are meaningful and signficant - or at least more meaningful and significant than the ones that show the opposite side.
Also this fact:
the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
can be interpreted a completely different way. Because you basically say "everything is fine, the representation was extraordinarily good in the early round." I would say, statistically speaking we would have to see a lot more zergs in the later rounds, because in a balanced game with equal winchances more zergs early simply leads to more zergs late in the tournament (statistically). And of course in a balanced game we also shouldn't see that overrepresentation to begin with. This is just math. I won't argue like that, because I know that there is a statistical variance which can show quite hugely in such low numbers. And even more I won't argue like that, because we play a game with a strategical metagame. Zerg may very well be disfavored in a recent month quite hugely and ZvX matchups may be imbalanced, but this may swing back and forth with the discovery of new strategies and their refinement.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
I will never understand the mindset of Naruto and thedwf Just drop a nexus and you will not be behind? Losing 20drones don't matter because it just takes one round of drone cycle? aren't you guys completely forgetting the game time is a relative one? I thought by now at least terran players know that a fail high risk strategy like proxy 2 rax if failed, even when dropping 2 ccs right away doesn't mean you are even, you are vulnerable to certain timings. (unless you consider roach ling baneling is not an all in of cause)
I also don't understand why terran wants to punish asc expand, it's not as greedy as other fast expand options. It's not like zerg can punish the terran for going fast in base 3rd cc or toss ffe without going all in as well.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
Exactly. It was an executive decision (Dustin) to build Terran around the bio instead of the combined arms doctrine of both present modern armies around the world and BW.
Yes, the MULE is in reality the LEAST IMBA of the economic boosters. A Zerg can have up to 300% boost in unit and building construction via Spawn Larvae spell, Protoss can have 20% more units in the same time and 20% faster research in the same time via Chronoboost spell.
The tragic part which IMHO qualifies them as kids is that The Casters Point the MULES out
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
This is a very good post. I knew something was wrong in SC2's core, but I never thought of this. What if we remove chornoboost, larvainject and mules from the game? Its easily doable on a custom map.
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Then you won't be able to use statistics at all if you are not allowed to pick them, because there will always be statistics that support the opposite side - unless we have hardly any data which leaves us in uncertainty to begin with. Therefore, the argument "you pick your statistics how you want" is, stupid. What you should be arguing is whether or not the statistics someone brings up are meaningful and signficant - or at least more meaningful and significant than the ones that show the opposite side.
It is easy to always pick statistics that are significant and favor your side. If you want relevant statistics you need to beforehand tell which statistics are considered relevant, or you need to have a consensus which statistics are relevant.
But currently it is more like people check which tournaments agree with whatever your opinion is, then you think of some reasons to ignore the others, and you present it while claiming race Y is UP. That has very little to do with actual statistics.
the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
can be interpreted a completely different way. Because you basically say "everything is fine, the representation was extraordinarily good in the early round." I would say, statistically speaking we would have to see a lot more zergs in the later rounds, because in a balanced game with equal winchances more zergs early simply leads to more zergs late in the tournament (statistically). And of course in a balanced game we also shouldn't see that overrepresentation to begin with. This is just math. I won't argue like that, because I know that there is a statistical variance which can show quite hugely in such low numbers. And even more I won't argue like that, because we play a game with a strategical metagame. Zerg may very well be disfavored in a recent month quite hugely and ZvX matchups may be imbalanced, but this may swing back and forth with the discovery of new strategies and their refinement.
You would have been correct if it was an invitational. If for example the best players from each race were invited, and they just happened to invite more zergs than terrans, then yes you would on average expect more zergs in the RO8.
However premier league isn't an invitational, it is essentially an open tournament, everyone can qualify for it (via challenger league). That changes it from 32 picked top players who battle it out, to actually the 32 best players in the Korea (with obviously some randomness, since everyone has sometimes a bad or a good day). Yes in RO8 zerg was underrepresented, you can't deny it. But at the same time you also can't deny that in RO32 they were overrepresented. Since it isn't an invitational the RO32 is also relevant. So the question becomes why on earth you would only consider the RO8 and not the RO32?
Of course just looking at RO8 isn't statistically significant. But even if we ignore that, lets say indeed terran is too strong in skill level where 8 people worldwide are playing at. And zerg is too strong at the level where 32 people worldwide are playing at. Would you then really want to boost zerg because of 8 people? While for everyone else it is a bad idea?
NOTE: This is just purely regarding using the RO8 distribution to abuse statistics. I am now not saying anything regarding the actual balance, just about the way statistics are abused.
I wish they would care about making Terran and Zerg units viable as much as they do with Protoss which currently has their whole unit arsenal in an amazing spot. We see stargate, gateway and robo being utilized in all match-ups and Carriers even used successfully in PvP. The only unit that needs something is Mothership...
Terran and zerg just doesn't have even close the same opportunity to use their units in such a variety, it's way more limited.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
This is a very good post. I knew something was wrong in SC2's core, but I never thought of this. What if we remove chornoboost, larvainject and mules from the game? Its easily doable on a custom map.
Zerg would not be competitive anymore, because they would produce less drones per hatchery than a Terran produces with a single CC. It's a very shitty idea because it is impossible to balance this kind of stuff now and because the production boosts are assymetric. Larva injects make 60% of zergs production, mules make only 20% of a Terrans mineral income and chronoboost is on average a 40% production boost on a single building, probably not even making for 10% of Protoss production. You'd have to at least remove reactors and warp gate as well (as Rabiator writes) and even then you will be lightyears away from anything balanced, because reactors are much more of a BO-thing and can be replaced (at least in bio builds) with extra barracks (which cost roughly the same). Not even going to mention what happens when a Terran 11/11 allins a zerg and has more marine+scv production than the zerg has zergling production of 2 plain hatcheries.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
This is a very good post. I knew something was wrong in SC2's core, but I never thought of this. What if we remove chornoboost, larvainject and mules from the game? Its easily doable on a custom map.
Zerg would not be competitive anymore, because they would produce less drones per hatchery than a Terran produces with a single CC. It's a very shitty idea because it is impossible to balance this kind of stuff now and because the production boosts are assymetric. Larva injects make 60% of zergs production, mules make only 20% of a Terrans mineral income and chronoboost is on average a 40% production boost on a single building, probably not even making for 10% of Protoss production. You'd have to at least remove reactors and warp gate as well (as Rabiator writes) and even then you will be lightyears away from anything balanced, because reactors are much more of a BO-thing and can be replaced (at least in bio builds) with extra barracks (which cost roughly the same). Not even going to mention what happens when a Terran 11/11 allins a zerg and has more marine+scv production than the zerg has zergling production of 2 plain hatcheries.
Hatchery produces more drones than CC. And what about macro hatch? Mule brings 350 minerals, which means additional 700 minerals per minute from each CC. Its quite a loss for terran if we remove mules. Less baracks, less marines, late third CC. Its very debatable which one is the strongest mecanic, but they all are similarly good. Economy and tech will be slowed a lot and map distance will become huge factor. I think we might see more macro oriented games. Cost efficient units such as tanks and immortals will become more important since player's can't just spam mass disposable units.
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Then you won't be able to use statistics at all if you are not allowed to pick them, because there will always be statistics that support the opposite side - unless we have hardly any data which leaves us in uncertainty to begin with. Therefore, the argument "you pick your statistics how you want" is, stupid. What you should be arguing is whether or not the statistics someone brings up are meaningful and signficant - or at least more meaningful and significant than the ones that show the opposite side.
the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
can be interpreted a completely different way. Because you basically say "everything is fine, the representation was extraordinarily good in the early round." I would say, statistically speaking we would have to see a lot more zergs in the later rounds, because in a balanced game with equal winchances more zergs early simply leads to more zergs late in the tournament (statistically).
While I generally like your posts, this seems wrong (unless you can prove player skill does not follow a normal Distribution, in fact it is wrong). As long as we assume player distribution over different skill levels is some form of bell curve, a race overrepresented in early rounds of a balanced tournament is more likely to be equally represented in later rounds, since lower skilled players of that race face off versus higher skilled players of the underrepresented race(s). This is especially true if we assume earlier tournaments to have been imbalanced in favor of the overrepresented race.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
This is a very good post. I knew something was wrong in SC2's core, but I never thought of this. What if we remove chornoboost, larvainject and mules from the game? Its easily doable on a custom map.
Zerg would not be competitive anymore, because they would produce less drones per hatchery than a Terran produces with a single CC. It's a very shitty idea because it is impossible to balance this kind of stuff now and because the production boosts are assymetric. Larva injects make 60% of zergs production, mules make only 20% of a Terrans mineral income and chronoboost is on average a 40% production boost on a single building, probably not even making for 10% of Protoss production. You'd have to at least remove reactors and warp gate as well (as Rabiator writes) and even then you will be lightyears away from anything balanced, because reactors are much more of a BO-thing and can be replaced (at least in bio builds) with extra barracks (which cost roughly the same). Not even going to mention what happens when a Terran 11/11 allins a zerg and has more marine+scv production than the zerg has zergling production of 2 plain hatcheries.
Hatchery produces more drones than CC. And what about macro hatch? Mule brings 350 minerals, which means additional 700 minerals per minute from each CC. Its quite a loss for terran if we remove mules. Less baracks, less marines, late third CC. Its very debatable which one is the strongest mecanic, but they all are similarly good. Economy and tech will be slowed a lot and map distance will become huge factor. I think we might see more macro oriented games. Cost efficient units such as tanks and immortals will become more important since player's can't just spam mass disposable units.
A hatchery produces 4 larva per minute, a CC produces 3.53 workers per minute. Now those 4 larva can go at maximum into 3.5drones and 0.5overlords per minute if a zerg only produces drones and overlords. If a zerg builds any building or any combat unit aside from queens the Terran will just outproduce the Zerg in workers.
Similarily you can do the math on 2barracks (300mineral investment) vs 1hatchery (350mineral investment) for army production. The 2raxes produce 4.8marines per minute, the hatchery produces 3.5 x2 = 7 zerglings + 0.5overlords per minute. The game would be insanely broken especially early on.
On August 07 2013 17:05 newbee123 wrote: Game balance is seriously impaired in Z vs T
After 7/12, Z vs T winning percentage is 3 out of 14 games.(WCS KR)
It's around 20%.
Too small sample size for a decent statistic. - only a handful of players (and they might suck in ZvT) - maps do have an influence on the games - tournament style (and preparation) have an influence on the game
Thus I would advise you to try to base your opinion on a sample size of at least 500 games instead of just 20 ... with lots of different players and maps and tournament styles. Matches where a player has prepared for a specific opponent are rather terrible for "game balance statistics", because that adds a "personality factor" to the whole racial balance which is not the fault of the game and its mechanics. If one player refuses to do X and another player abuses that and wins it seriously screws the statistics ...
Sadly I dont think people will listen to this, because they are too bent on hero worshipping and "my favorite player is better than your favorite player"-whining ... and "high end tournament result"-jerking-off".
Actually as a business professional that relies on statistics even what you are saying is not sufficiently stringent to build a statistical database.
It should have 500 games per player per response (3CC opening vs 1 base SG opening for example) per matchup. This will give very clear picture of balance, for example: - Is proxy double rax into 4x reaper balanced vs. double expand into spawning pool fair?
Should the Terran win outright, favored or par? Should the Terran be behind if defended? Should timings be adjusted, spawning pool be faster, ling production, movement speed, etc?
So yes, all this, OMG WMs are imba, X beat Y because Y got baited into the mine field, is kids complaining about a world they don't understand. There is a reason why RTS take forever to come out, balance is one of those reasons. Lately no one in their right mind is developing one for this very reason, balance can make or break a game's sales.
Personally I think that the Blizzard devs have shot themselves in the foot by making a game that is "super fast" and with a "high economy and production". This adds a factor to the racial balance which is hard to grasp and hard to balance: UNIT REPRODUCTION CAPABILITY (which also includes racially specific economy boosts).
There have been lots of people complaining about Terrans only going bio, but one of the major factors in that is that you simply cant reproduce Siege Tanks as fast as a Zerg or Protoss (or even a Terran bio player) can get their stuff back. The best way to go about it would be to reduce the impact of production as much as possible, because your actual units would become more important and the ability to reproduce them after you "threw them away" becomes less important. Too bad the kiddies here and on the BNet forum havent grasped that concept yet.
Lots of people have complained about the MULE and yet people dont understand the impact it has on the whole game. If the MULE is nerfed or removed every other economy boost needs to go too ... and due to the "crossover nature" of Inject Larvae and Chronoboost the production speed boosts need to go as well. People will whine that they wont play or watch a game without these mechanics, but that is only a personal opinion and everyone could get used to SC2 games where you dont get to 200 supply at 10-15 minutes (or whenever that happens) but instead never truly reach that.
Designing an RTS is actually pretty easy, but designing an aysymmetric one is hard. Games like Total War have strategic battles and yet they are fairly easy to design because cultural differences only offer a small benefit to some stat and in general the units are identical. The same is true for the culturally specific units in Civ V. An RTS with really asymmetric races is more interesting from an eSports perspective though and I would assume that is what you meant. The "symmetric" nature of games like TA or Supreme Commander makes them less interesting to watch compared to Starcraft and from my perspective I would also add the constant production as a rather boring factor.
This is a very good post. I knew something was wrong in SC2's core, but I never thought of this. What if we remove chornoboost, larvainject and mules from the game? Its easily doable on a custom map.
Zerg would not be competitive anymore, because they would produce less drones per hatchery than a Terran produces with a single CC. It's a very shitty idea because it is impossible to balance this kind of stuff now and because the production boosts are assymetric. Larva injects make 60% of zergs production, mules make only 20% of a Terrans mineral income and chronoboost is on average a 40% production boost on a single building, probably not even making for 10% of Protoss production. You'd have to at least remove reactors and warp gate as well (as Rabiator writes) and even then you will be lightyears away from anything balanced, because reactors are much more of a BO-thing and can be replaced (at least in bio builds) with extra barracks (which cost roughly the same). Not even going to mention what happens when a Terran 11/11 allins a zerg and has more marine+scv production than the zerg has zergling production of 2 plain hatcheries.
Hatchery produces more drones than CC. And what about macro hatch? Mule brings 350 minerals, which means additional 700 minerals per minute from each CC. Its quite a loss for terran if we remove mules. Less baracks, less marines, late third CC. Its very debatable which one is the strongest mecanic, but they all are similarly good. Economy and tech will be slowed a lot and map distance will become huge factor. I think we might see more macro oriented games. Cost efficient units such as tanks and immortals will become more important since player's can't just spam mass disposable units.
A hatchery produces 4 larva per minute, a CC produces 3.53 workers per minute. Now those 4 larva can go at maximum into 3.5drones and 0.5overlords per minute if a zerg only produces drones and overlords. If a zerg builds any building or any combat unit aside from queens the Terran will just outproduce the Zerg in workers.
Similarily you can do the math on 2barracks (300mineral investment) vs 1hatchery (350mineral investment) for army production. The 2raxes produce 4.8marines per minute, the hatchery produces 3.5 x2 = 7 zerglings + 0.5overlords per minute. The game would be insanely broken especially early on.
Ok, maybe there is some advantage on terran side, but zerg can produce solely drones from 3-4 hatcheries and defend with queens. Plus, creep spread gonna be crazy. Terran workers also need time to build all those buildings. Overall larva spawn may need some tweaks, but generally speaking there is no big problem I see. All those mechanics are for speeding up the game and don't pursue other goals. So its pretty one-dimensional nerf to all 3 races.
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Then you won't be able to use statistics at all if you are not allowed to pick them, because there will always be statistics that support the opposite side - unless we have hardly any data which leaves us in uncertainty to begin with. Therefore, the argument "you pick your statistics how you want" is, stupid. What you should be arguing is whether or not the statistics someone brings up are meaningful and signficant - or at least more meaningful and significant than the ones that show the opposite side.
Also this fact:
the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
can be interpreted a completely different way. Because you basically say "everything is fine, the representation was extraordinarily good in the early round." I would say, statistically speaking we would have to see a lot more zergs in the later rounds, because in a balanced game with equal winchances more zergs early simply leads to more zergs late in the tournament (statistically).
While I generally like your posts, this seems wrong (unless you can prove player skill does not follow a normal Distribution, in fact it is wrong). As long as we assume player distribution over different skill levels is some form of bell curve, a race overrepresented in early rounds of a balanced tournament is more likely to be equally represented in later rounds, since lower skilled players of that race face off versus higher skilled players of the underrepresented race(s). This is especially true if we assume earlier tournaments to have been imbalanced in favor of the overrepresented race.
vulgo: purge of the patchzergs. It had to happen.
Not quite true. An overrepresented race has more players in the middle of the curve (average skilled player) and at the sides of the curve (the lesser skilled players on the left of the expectation and the more skilled players on the right of the expectation). So the race has more low, average and highly skilled players. The lesser skilled players are most likely to fall out, the average players might make it through and the highly skilled players should make it through in most cases. This still means that (though there will be more drop outs as well), that the statistical distribution stays intact. 14/32 zergs in the Ro32 would suggest that there are still 3.5 zergs left in the Ro8 and that the amount of zergs in the finals should be 0.875.
On August 07 2013 16:55 purgerinho wrote: wcs EU says it all.. 8/16 P, now we will have min 5/8 or max 7/8 in ro16.. it says everything better than any words
Protoss was always strong in EU. Admittedly they're stronger now. But we need to look at Korea to be able to say anything about balance.
So balance for everyone outside top 8 is irrelevant*? That is a much too small group to base anything of. And lets just assume protoss is too strong (not saying it is, just assuming) for at Code A and below level, but a bit weak on code S level. Then you would seriously want to boost toss, just so it is more balanced for a few people while it is less balanced for 99.999% of the players?
*Yes top 8. Considering that the majority of the top32 (OSL premier league) is still zerg and that is irrelevant to the zerg players, the only thing I can conclude is that only the top 16/top 8 of the players worldwide are considered relevant for balance by some.
... count your horses. Currently we have 0 zergs qualified for the Seasonal Finals (2P, 3T) and 7 Zergs for WCS Korea Season 3 (8P, 9T).
We also do have most tournaments won by Zerg.
5x Premier for Zerg 2x Premier for Protoss 6x Premier for Terran
7x Major for Zerg 6x Major for Protoss 1x Major for Terran
but as I've already mentioned you also have to look at quality and quantity of players to make judgement. One season WCS that doesn't go well for Zerg doesn't mean that its underpowered by all means.
And this wasn't meant as a balance complaint at all. But as he took the time to make an addendum just to tell us how Zerg was overrepresented in a Tournament with only 2players, I thought I'd tell him the numbers that are actually representing the current race distribution of the top 32 in Korea.
Huh? I did?
I didn't complain about zerg being overrepresented, I complained about people abusing statistics/making stupid arguments. For example that they do complain the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
From that there are only two options:
Those people just choose whatever statistics support their argument at that time. But I would *cough* never accuse them of that.
So option B: They only consider the top 8 worldwide relevant and even those at place 9-32 are irrelevant and should train more or something. At which point I wonder who exactly thinks it is a good idea to base balance on 8 players.
Then you won't be able to use statistics at all if you are not allowed to pick them, because there will always be statistics that support the opposite side - unless we have hardly any data which leaves us in uncertainty to begin with. Therefore, the argument "you pick your statistics how you want" is, stupid. What you should be arguing is whether or not the statistics someone brings up are meaningful and signficant - or at least more meaningful and significant than the ones that show the opposite side.
Also this fact:
the top 8 didn't have enough zergs, while the top 32 had that very same season an overrepresentation of zergs.
can be interpreted a completely different way. Because you basically say "everything is fine, the representation was extraordinarily good in the early round." I would say, statistically speaking we would have to see a lot more zergs in the later rounds, because in a balanced game with equal winchances more zergs early simply leads to more zergs late in the tournament (statistically).
While I generally like your posts, this seems wrong (unless you can prove player skill does not follow a normal Distribution, in fact it is wrong). As long as we assume player distribution over different skill levels is some form of bell curve, a race overrepresented in early rounds of a balanced tournament is more likely to be equally represented in later rounds, since lower skilled players of that race face off versus higher skilled players of the underrepresented race(s). This is especially true if we assume earlier tournaments to have been imbalanced in favor of the overrepresented race.
vulgo: purge of the patchzergs. It had to happen.
Not quite true. An overrepresented race has more players in the middle of the curve (average skilled player) and at the sides of the curve (the lesser skilled players on the left of the expectation and the more skilled players on the right of the expectation). So the race has more low, average and highly skilled players. The lesser skilled players are most likely to fall out, the average players might make it through and the highly skilled players should make it through in most cases. This still means that (though there will be more drop outs as well), that the statistical distribution stays intact. 14/32 zergs in the Ro32 would suggest that there are still 3.5 zergs left in the Ro8 and that the amount of zergs in the finals should be 0.875.
- thank god this game is more than numbers
In addition to what you wrote, you also need to keep in mind that 'skill' is nothing that you can determine by numbers and that we have several match ups and matchs in the game, not just one field and one match up. A player can excell at one match up and completely lack skills in the other. So as you said, thank god its more than numbers.
EPT
