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On August 15 2013 20:52 Naturedota wrote:
Someone here citated some article from liquipedia which said that game balance and fairness are not the same hence equal winrates do not mean that game is balanced.
That is absolute nonsense. "Game balance" refers ONLY to what is win propability for each player. As long as there are units that have their own respective counter units or other ways to counter them, the game is balanced. It does not even matter if there are inferior units in the game, just as long as there is 50/50 chance for winning by any means for both players. "Game balance" is not related to game design. Sure, if there were inferior units in the game, it would be bad game design but not neccesarily unbalanced.
If I remember correctly, there was some generally bad unit in SC:BW as well, and still the game is widely considered pretty balanced. (even though most achieved players are almoust without exception terrans which is a signal of some form of imbalance)
Game balance is less important than many people think it is. For game design however it is the other way round.
Game design can turn your strategy game into a game where the resource management is more important than the strategy because battles are over extremely quickly and the high army dps means that there is no point in trying to save any of your units because they simply die too quickly. Game design can also turn a game into a coinflip game and thus achieve perfect balance of 50/50, because it simply means that whoever pulls his gun first and hits will win. That doesnt make the game good, because skill should determine the end result and not blind luck.
Game balance is not something you can adjust directly, because the only thing you can change is game design. Hence thinking about good design should be the first thing on the mind of game devs, but sadly for SC2 that isnt the case because they insist on sticking to their "faster and faster and more aggressive is better" mantra of folly. That way lies coinflip, because more dps means a reduction in reaction time, which is a loss of control and an increase of the elements of chance. If you werent looking when the Banelings started rolling towards your Marines you lose ... its as simple as that.
BW had some pretty strong - some might say overpowered - units, BUT they could never kill an entire army with a single shot because the army was spread out due to the 12 unit selection limit ... which the designers back then added on purpose! Maybe they knew or rather though about something which the current dev team didnt think of or chose to ignore. Really bad units were not in BW and the unit design in general made more sense. Since the "new devs" wanted to go away as far from BW as they could they introduced drastically different units which didnt really make sense ... especially since the campaign tells us that there is only a few years of time between the two games and that three races forgetting their old designs is pretty ridiculous. Wraith and Valkyrie make more sense than Viking and Banshee for example; the Thor is a ridiculously impractical "big brother" of the Goliath ...
The "new game design" of making stuff far easier to use has eliminated the balance between defender and attacker by giving full advantage to the attacker. Defensive positions are nearly worthless due to the mobility and due to the "terrain feature ignoring skills" and the concentrated firepower of a tighly clumped up attacking army can ruin your day if you look at the wrong spot at the wrong time. Mobility and constant aggression is what Dustin Browder and David Kim want and they ignore the things they are losing on the path to achieve that goal. BW wasnt like that and the attacker had to WORK for his victory and the defender had time to retreat with some of his forces to regroup back a bit.
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Blizzard could do things like add more units or make more fundamental design changes if not for balance constraints. They can't because the game had to be e-sports ready from the start and had no time to mature by having several years with experimentation and constant fundamental changes.
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For people that feel the need to reply to Naturedota:
Naturedota was just banned by KadaverBB.
That account was created on 2013-08-15 19:37:22 and had 45 posts.
Reason: PBU. Don't come back. Ever.
In another thread he was posing as a child. Creep.
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what's wrong with FINALLY buffing hydras and corruptors? you know, the units that have been shit since beta?
hm?
that way you wouldn't even have to change void rays, and hydra ling bling might be a good composition to set up a hive transition vs terran, and making broods would be easier zvt cause corruptors would actualyl have a use.
and swarm hosts wouldn't dominate zvz.
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the only way of buffing hydras I could think of right now is removing the +1 range upgrade and give them +1 range. Same with speed buff would create possibly imbalanced all-in timings. Buffing dmg would make them way too strong. Upgrading health would make them replacing roaches.
Another approach is to give roaches +1 armor and reduce health a bit so they die faster vs immortals/maurauder and stay alive longer vs marines/zealots. In general I think this would be the right thing to do and after doing this look how other stuff balances out and do other changes. This way alot of roaches could force terran into metal while zerg gives up mobility and the metagame would completely change. ZvZ would not change cause its anyway roach only right now ;-).
After all I think swarmhosts should become a support unit that doesnt benefit so much from high numbers but gets stronger in low numbers. This could be tested with increasing their supply costs drastically and reducing their building costs or let them spawn more locusts + drastically increased supply costs. Also making them available with lair but keeping the upgrade at infestation pit could work well in combination with this.
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On August 16 2013 04:52 willstertben wrote:
what's wrong with FINALLY buffing hydras and corruptors? you know, the units that have been shit since beta?
hm?
that way you wouldn't even have to change void rays, and hydra ling bling might be a good composition to set up a hive transition vs terran, and making broods would be easier zvt cause corruptors would actualyl have a use.
and swarm hosts wouldn't dominate zvz.
Corruptors are crap because of their design, because Blizzards devs decided that morphing Broodlords from Mutalisks (like Guardians in BW) was a bad idea ... and because of this you have to build "useless AA only units" before morphing them to Broodlords. A "buff" will not fix the problem.
Hydras are fine and deal huge damage ... you just need to get upgrades, so dont be lazy with your upgrades (and creep spread). Huge damage needs to be paired with vulnerability or else the unit becomes OP. Glass cannon is the correct term.
On August 16 2013 04:01 Grumbels wrote:
Blizzard could do things like add more units or make more fundamental design changes if not for balance constraints. They can't because the game had to be e-sports ready from the start and had no time to mature by having several years with experimentation and constant fundamental changes.
They NEED TO make huge changes to make SC2 viable for an extremely long life. If you dont want to make the game "playable" for 10+ years there is no point of trying to turn it into an eSport.
With the current method of adding more and more units to the game they only make the game more complicated and limit their own creativity ever more with each set of new units. We have seen the completely erratic changes to the units added with HotS during the beta and this shows that they have no clue of what will work and what wont. Thus adding a 4th or even 5th expansion will not be possible unless they make drastic changes to the whole game.
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On August 16 2013 05:19 LSN wrote:
the only way of buffing hydras I could think of right now is removing the +1 range upgrade and give them +1 range. Same with speed buff would create possibly imbalanced all-in timings. Buffing dmg would make them way too strong. Upgrading health would make them replacing roaches.
Another approach is to give roaches +1 armor and reduce health a bit so they die faster vs immortals/maurauder and stay alive longer vs marines/zealots. In general I think this would be the right thing to do and after doing this look how other stuff balances out and do other changes. This way alot of roaches could force terran into metal while zerg gives up mobility and the metagame would completely change. ZvZ would not change cause its anyway roach only right now ;-).
After all I think swarmhosts should become a support unit that doesnt benefit so much from high numbers but gets stronger in low numbers. This could be tested with increasing their supply costs drastically and reducing their building costs or let them spawn more locusts + drastically increased supply costs. Also making them available with lair but keeping the upgrade at infestation pit could work well in combination with this.
There is another way to balance hydras. Make their attacks apply "special toxin" that reduces the healing rate/regeneration of enemy units by 50%. This way, it barely affects vs. Protoss or vs. Zerg matchups because the slow regen doesn't matter anyway, and only changes vs. Terran where a drastic change is needed. Zerg can finally use hydra / roach way more efficiently and stand on even ground vs. Terran bio (although 4m will probably still beat it anyway)
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On August 16 2013 13:28 GhostOwl wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 05:19 LSN wrote:
the only way of buffing hydras I could think of right now is removing the +1 range upgrade and give them +1 range. Same with speed buff would create possibly imbalanced all-in timings. Buffing dmg would make them way too strong. Upgrading health would make them replacing roaches.
Another approach is to give roaches +1 armor and reduce health a bit so they die faster vs immortals/maurauder and stay alive longer vs marines/zealots. In general I think this would be the right thing to do and after doing this look how other stuff balances out and do other changes. This way alot of roaches could force terran into metal while zerg gives up mobility and the metagame would completely change. ZvZ would not change cause its anyway roach only right now ;-).
After all I think swarmhosts should become a support unit that doesnt benefit so much from high numbers but gets stronger in low numbers. This could be tested with increasing their supply costs drastically and reducing their building costs or let them spawn more locusts + drastically increased supply costs. Also making them available with lair but keeping the upgrade at infestation pit could work well in combination with this. There is another way to balance hydras. Make their attacks apply "special toxin" that reduces the healing rate/regeneration of enemy units by 50%. This way, it barely affects vs. Protoss or vs. Zerg matchups because the slow regen doesn't matter anyway, and only changes vs. Terran where a drastic change is needed. Zerg can finally use hydra / roach way more efficiently and stand on even ground vs. Terran bio (although 4m will probably still beat it anyway)
Any "vs race / unit X only" solution is terrible. The spore crawler is bad and this would be the same.
If someone has problems with bio and the healing he should just focus fire the Medivacs or even get a handful of Corruptors. Too often people completely ignore the Medivacs and try to kill a last Marine from the six that are still left while each of them has their own Medivac healing them. Thats stupid and you should just attack the Medivac to help you in the next battle.
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On August 16 2013 04:01 Grumbels wrote:
Blizzard could do things like add more units or make more fundamental design changes if not for balance constraints. They can't because the game had to be e-sports ready from the start and had no time to mature by having several years with experimentation and constant fundamental changes.
The bad design also leads to a very difficult game to balance. The high dps, boosted economy, mobility, no defender advantage, smart casting etc means that even a tiny change will tip off the balance.
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Starcraft 2 is more balanced than it's ever been...and the game is dying.
It's dying because the guy who's been endowed with absolute dominion over the game is an experienced kid who doesn't have a creative bone in his body.
Yes, the game is balanced...but at what cost? There is no variety for Zerg, there is minimal variety for Terran. Protoss has variety, but absolutely no opportunities for harassment and fun, energetic games other than suiciding waves of zealots, like in WoL.
Compare it to DotA2 and it's just not a contest.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On August 16 2013 20:21 GreenGringo wrote:
Starcraft 2 is more balanced than it's ever been...and the game is dying.
It's dying because the guy who's been endowed with absolute dominion over the game is an experienced kid who doesn't have a creative bone in his body.
Yes, the game is balanced...but at what cost? There is no variety for Zerg, there is minimal variety for Terran. Protoss has variety, but absolutely no opportunities for harassment and fun, energetic games other than suiciding waves of zealots, like in WoL.
Compare it to DotA2 and it's just not a contest.
I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason.
SC2 is boring currently due to the lack of variety but that isn't the fault of zerg or protoss, it's the fault of Terran Bio being too good and mech being too bad. Terran Bio forces certain builds out of the other races and it removes a hell of a lot of possible strategies from both zerg and protoss. If both mech and bio were at an even standing we could see Skytoss in PvT, Roach/Hydra more in TvZ and many more bulldog style all ins or more dropping from zerg/protoss.
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On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:
I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason. No variety between heroes? Yes...because I can never tell whether it's Visage or Clockwerk that I'm up against.
On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:SC2 is boring currently due to the lack of variety but that isn't the fault of zerg or protoss, it's the fault of Terran Bio being too good and mech being too bad. Terran Bio forces certain builds out of the other races and it removes a hell of a lot of possible strategies from both zerg and protoss. If both mech and bio were at an even standing we could see Skytoss in PvT, Roach/Hydra more in TvZ and many more bulldog style all ins or more dropping from zerg/protoss. Zerg has basically a single late game tech option against T, which is infestor-ultra. Against Toss it's boring-as-shit swarmhost turtle. Kim never learned from WoL. Every race is broken, not just Terran.
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On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:
SC2 is boring currently due to the lack of variety but that isn't the fault of zerg or protoss, it's the fault of Terran Bio being too good and mech being too bad. Terran Bio forces certain builds out of the other races and it removes a hell of a lot of possible strategies from both zerg and protoss. If both mech and bio were at an even standing we could see Skytoss in PvT, Roach/Hydra more in TvZ and many more bulldog style all ins or more dropping from zerg/protoss.
Zerg and Protoss have a few different options against mainstream bio-centric strategies, Terran is actually the one race being pigeonholed into bio agression because it is the only way to bring under control Zerg's and Protoss' superior production. The weakness of mech is the combined result of this latter point and the existence of absurd hardcounters.
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On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 20:21 GreenGringo wrote:
Starcraft 2 is more balanced than it's ever been...and the game is dying.
It's dying because the guy who's been endowed with absolute dominion over the game is an experienced kid who doesn't have a creative bone in his body.
Yes, the game is balanced...but at what cost? There is no variety for Zerg, there is minimal variety for Terran. Protoss has variety, but absolutely no opportunities for harassment and fun, energetic games other than suiciding waves of zealots, like in WoL.
Compare it to DotA2 and it's just not a contest. I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason. SC2 is boring currently due to the lack of variety but that isn't the fault of zerg or protoss, it's the fault of Terran Bio being too good and mech being too bad. Terran Bio forces certain builds out of the other races and it removes a hell of a lot of possible strategies from both zerg and protoss. If both mech and bio were at an even standing we could see Skytoss in PvT, Roach/Hydra more in TvZ and many more bulldog style all ins or more dropping from zerg/protoss.
If you analyze Terran you will notice that the reason for the units which are produced and used most is that they can be made by a building with a reactor on it. The only notable exception is the Marauder. I have come to the conclusion that the bad part actually is the asymmetric production speed boosts for the three races and since there is no acceptable way to "fix them" by adding more units to the list of boosted production the only viable option is to take every single one of the production speed boosts out of the game. That would actually solve more issues because you would have to take out economic speed boosts as well since Chronoboost and Inject Larva are both production and economy boosts; people have complained about the MULE for some time and I can understand the problem they have with it (although I dont think it is a problem myself).
With production speed boosts (i.e. the reactor) gone Terrans have a bigger incentive to build gas-heavy units because they offer greater power for each production cycle.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On August 16 2013 20:41 GreenGringo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:
I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason. No variety between heroes? Yes...because I can never tell whether it's Visage or Clockwerk that I'm up against.
When I say that I mean that when you pick a hero, there's little variety to how that hero actually works in the game. Your role in the team won't change throughout any number of games with any single character.
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On August 16 2013 21:20 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 20:41 GreenGringo wrote:On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:
I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason. No variety between heroes? Yes...because I can never tell whether it's Visage or Clockwerk that I'm up against. When I say that I mean that when you pick a hero, there's little variety to how that hero actually works in the game. Your role in the team won't change throughout any number of games with any single character.
not really, your item builds and spell leveling order varies depending on the lane and their team composition
I do agree with him on this.
There is a complete lack of variation in unit composition, especially with Terran matchups.
We need either a straight big buff to mech, or a minor nerf that makes bio mine more map dependent.
Right now bio is just straight out better than pure mech in almost all maps, you aren't going to ask yourself if the map is better for bio or mech or bio mech, you ask yourself how to make bio style work better on this map.
It is just hard for mech to work out against other race unless you are as experienced as Mvp who knows how to switch tech to cope with zerg switching tech.
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On August 16 2013 21:20 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 20:41 GreenGringo wrote:On August 16 2013 20:26 Qikz wrote:
I'd hardly compare an RTS to a moba especially when the heros themselves have very little to no variation when it comes to play them. Also some of the heros may be strong/weak but people rarely use the weak heros for purely that reason. No variety between heroes? Yes...because I can never tell whether it's Visage or Clockwerk that I'm up against. When I say that I mean that when you pick a hero, there's little variety to how that hero actually works in the game. Your role in the team won't change throughout any number of games with any single character. Even though the enormous variety between heroes is probably the single biggest thing about the game that makes it so interesting...
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On August 16 2013 20:58 Rabiator wrote:
With production speed boosts (i.e. the reactor) gone Terrans have a bigger incentive to build gas-heavy units because they offer greater power for each production cycle. It won't work, man. Imagine if Terran couldn't produce reactors. They wouldn't get enough marines out in time to defend against most timing attacks, they wouldn't have helions for controlling creep. It would be a disaster. Make a change that big and would have all kinds of ramifications.
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On August 16 2013 14:31 painkilla wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 04:01 Grumbels wrote:
Blizzard could do things like add more units or make more fundamental design changes if not for balance constraints. They can't because the game had to be e-sports ready from the start and had no time to mature by having several years with experimentation and constant fundamental changes. The bad design also leads to a very difficult game to balance. The high dps, boosted economy, mobility, no defender advantage, smart casting etc means that even a tiny change will tip off the balance.
Yeah, balance is very important. If the balance is off then the game is not very fun, but even a balanced game can be very boring, but then if you were to make changes to the game to make it more fun you could ruin the balance and have it backfire. I think the only solutions are to accept that the game sometimes has to undergo phases where the balance is off for long-term health, and to design the game so that is has robust balance. The first one is painful, the latter is extremely difficult, so it's a hard thing to get right.
On August 16 2013 11:41 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2013 04:01 Grumbels wrote:
Blizzard could do things like add more units or make more fundamental design changes if not for balance constraints. They can't because the game had to be e-sports ready from the start and had no time to mature by having several years with experimentation and constant fundamental changes. They NEED TO make huge changes to make SC2 viable for an extremely long life. If you dont want to make the game "playable" for 10+ years there is no point of trying to turn it into an eSport. With the current method of adding more and more units to the game they only make the game more complicated and limit their own creativity ever more with each set of new units. We have seen the completely erratic changes to the units added with HotS during the beta and this shows that they have no clue of what will work and what wont. Thus adding a 4th or even 5th expansion will not be possible unless they make drastic changes to the whole game.
Well, it's one thing for the game to not be very good in its first iteration because there are always opportunities to fix it. We know that the game has potential because it is based on the same premise as the original Starcraft, so even if Blizzard did not get everything in the sequel right on their first try they could always have improved upon it. However, they could not make fundamental gameplay changes later on because the game always had to be e-sports ready, so in retrospect some of the subtler aspects of Brood War that they overlooked in building Starcraft 2 were lost forever and now all that is left is damage control. That is to say, continue the direction they have chosen and try their best to make it work.
It's difficult to talk about this without factoring in Blizzard's (imo) general incompetence. For instance, even if you were to agree with their direction for the game, Brood Lord / Infestor for six months is simply inexcusable. We could argue about whether fundamental design aspects allowed things like this to happen, but even working inside the constraints they set themselves they had ample opportunity to avoid this. You could say that this incompetence colors everything they do and that it's difficult to take their design decisions seriously because of this, but I don't think so. It's difficult to do your job when you are forced to be conservative due to Blizzard business decisions. A lot of the more dubious changes they have made to the game start to make sense once you factor in various of the pressures that are on their shoulders. This doesn't excuse all of their design decisions but I think that Blizzard did have ways to justify them.
For instance, there was general disillusionment with the game at the end of WoL and Blizzard had to find ways to add more engagements and harassment all over the map because that was what the community demanded. It could honestly be true that their best bet in this was to rev up the game and add medivac, mutalisk, warp prism speed boosts. This direction has other unfortunate implications, of course, and us forum-people can sneer about it all we want, but the goal of the designers at this point is not to create a perfect long-lasting e-sports game, but rather to appease the fans Right Now. -- and they did succeed because reception to HotS was fairly positive.
I will say that my main annoyance with the game was that they did not take HotS as an opportunity to make many fundamental changes that I wanted to see, but could Blizzard really have done such things anyway? The pro scene would turn into a joke while the game was stabilizing, there was no guarantee that those changes would even have improved the game and why would they risk destroying the Starcraft 2 scene for this? I think they should have taken the risk, but on the other hand, do we really trust the Blizzard design team to not mess this up anyhow?
Starcraft 2's curse is that it's not bad enough to warrant a complete make-over, but not good enough to keep everyone happy, I guess.
And mind you that the community might think this is an e-sports, but for Blizzard it is just a business opportunity.
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Starcraft 2's curse is that it's not bad enough to warrant a complete make-over, but not good enough to keep everyone happy, I guess.
This is very true. Because we saw with D3 that they are willing to make major changes/additions/large patches to games that severely need it so there is precedent for big changes without an expansion. But the game isn't bad enough for a total makeover but not so good it doesn't need major help.
Listening to David Kim on CtL was disappointing. No creativity and a total disconnect between him and the community. I just feel we are getting the game he thinks is fun, and not what actually is. I mean he defended force fields as something in the game that can really display high level pro skill. Really? Spamming and clicking? It's the most forgiving spell in RTS history. Even gold level players can spam decent force fields. If I had a dollar everytime a caster said "those were some bad force fields" I'd have 2 dollars. All you ever hear is great force fields! Sorry it is not fun to watch Toss players spam FF.
He also didn't understand why warp gate was broken stating they don't want Protoss to make units the same way Terran does. Really? Do we care?
Game might be balanced with him in charge but it will never be creative or dynamic.
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