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TvZ is at a very delicate place and I believe Blizzard took a cautious approach that I approve. While it is true enough that 3/3 gives an edge to Terran bio, but the balance is at a knife's edge as seen in many pro-level games. Some Z players started saving mutas instead of wasting as a means to fight off and I've seen it works. Once muta count goes over 30+. they do pay for their cost even against 3/3 infantry with their mobility. The game is decided by how each side took each stage of the game to the next.
Many including myself thought that Protoss air might be too much for Zerg. I acknowledge that I was wrong from win-rate point of view. Z players turned out to be more capable than I gave them credits for. Or maybe not? Who knows what the future holds and maybe a new Protoss player will show a new way of using air that might be OP?
The point here is that TvZ isn't as lopsided as some Z makes out to be. It is very very close, with an ever-so-slight edge towards T at certain later stages that can be prevented by Z. I think they should at least play out with the new overseers.
This comes from someone who still believes the queen patch was the right thing to do.
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I mean, if Jaedong thought he had no chance whatsoever, he wouldn't have gone with standard strats AFTER scouting Bomber's standard greedy play. He was confident enough in macro games regardless of mines.
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On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Here's the thing with fighting the AI (or for that matter, the UI): winning at the game is always going to come down to a set of challenges the game gives you which you must overcome. That's the game's source of difficulty (and fun). So then the goal in game design is to have the player spending their time on fun challenges, rather than boring ones.
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
For instance, it is my personal opinion that individually selecting a whole bunch of barracks and hitting 'm' every x seconds isn't really fun gameplay. Some people are of a different opinion, but it seems as though the majority of RTS gamers seem to agree with me. TL has a big faction of old Brood War players who disagree, and it's not as though having to select buildings individually doesn't have interesting strategic implications. It puts a much higher premium on APM so that even at the top level most players can't macro perfectly and micro perfectly at the same time, so you're forced to choose at any given time what is the most important way to spend your attention. You can even make strategic decisions with the sole intention of drawing your opponent's attention somewhere else so you can waste their attention (at the expense of your own, of course).
That said, it makes one of the most important deciding factors in who will win become APM. For a long time, BW tournaments were won more based on superior mechanics than on anything else. Not only does that mean that a lot of strategic elements couldn't develop properly until players' mechanics reached a point where they could reasonably keep up with all the game's actions for a lot of the early game, but also that means that becoming capable of playing the game takes a HUGE overhead of really tedious practice. So, in my opinion, MBS is a good thing, although there's still plenty of high-post-count TL denizens who disagree with a great deal of passion.
I'd say that MBS isnt the "big evil", because only with the gigantic economy of SC2 do you arrive at a game where you spend more time rebuilding troops than actually in battle.
The battles have become far too short and that turns the units into "throw away units" for a large part and I much prefer to have a chance for unit micro being useful for saving units. Even with Blink micro in a battle players only save "small clumps" instead of individual units, so there isnt much precision there.
If you have low production due to a low economy you need to try and keep your units alive. This is something which requires skill to pull off. If you have high production and large and tightly clumped units you cant really keep units alive through micro and the only thing that becomes important is your reproduction capability. You cant affect this with skill, because it has fixed build times and costs. Thus a "low unit count game" brings a feeling of nervousness to your stomach which a "high unit count game" doesnt do.
tl;dr
Low economy/small army games are better, because they force micro and add tension to your stomach.
SC2 is a high economy/large army game, BW wasnt.
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On September 03 2013 14:31 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Here's the thing with fighting the AI (or for that matter, the UI): winning at the game is always going to come down to a set of challenges the game gives you which you must overcome. That's the game's source of difficulty (and fun). So then the goal in game design is to have the player spending their time on fun challenges, rather than boring ones.
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
For instance, it is my personal opinion that individually selecting a whole bunch of barracks and hitting 'm' every x seconds isn't really fun gameplay. Some people are of a different opinion, but it seems as though the majority of RTS gamers seem to agree with me. TL has a big faction of old Brood War players who disagree, and it's not as though having to select buildings individually doesn't have interesting strategic implications. It puts a much higher premium on APM so that even at the top level most players can't macro perfectly and micro perfectly at the same time, so you're forced to choose at any given time what is the most important way to spend your attention. You can even make strategic decisions with the sole intention of drawing your opponent's attention somewhere else so you can waste their attention (at the expense of your own, of course).
That said, it makes one of the most important deciding factors in who will win become APM. For a long time, BW tournaments were won more based on superior mechanics than on anything else. Not only does that mean that a lot of strategic elements couldn't develop properly until players' mechanics reached a point where they could reasonably keep up with all the game's actions for a lot of the early game, but also that means that becoming capable of playing the game takes a HUGE overhead of really tedious practice. So, in my opinion, MBS is a good thing, although there's still plenty of high-post-count TL denizens who disagree with a great deal of passion. I'd say that MBS isnt the "big evil", because only with the gigantic economy of SC2 do you arrive at a game where you spend more time rebuilding troops than actually in battle. The battles have become far too short and that turns the units into "throw away units" for a large part and I much prefer to have a chance for unit micro being useful for saving units. Even with Blink micro in a battle players only save "small clumps" instead of individual units, so there isnt much precision there. If you have low production due to a low economy you need to try and keep your units alive. This is something which requires skill to pull off. If you have high production and large and tightly clumped units you cant really keep units alive through micro and the only thing that becomes important is your reproduction capability. You cant affect this with skill, because it has fixed build times and costs. Thus a "low unit count game" brings a feeling of nervousness to your stomach which a "high unit count game" doesnt do. tl;dr Low economy/small army games are better, because they force micro and add tension to your stomach. SC2 is a high economy/large army game, BW wasnt.
Big battles have plenty of micro. In fact, they usually have more possible micro than any player can actually do, so you're forced to pick and choose which actions will be more valuable. Small battles don't have as much micro, but you can more reasonably hope to micro all your units optimally. So in small battles you'll make decisions to save or kill an individual unit (e.g. right-clicking a couple marauders onto a different stalker to prevent overkill), whereas in big battles you'll make decisions like "if I blink them, I can save this bunch of stalkers. Or I could right-click that zealot between those doodads to try and keep it alive longer, but saving the stalkers seems more important." Less precision, higher stakes.
Maxing out production to a level where you don't really need more is pretty easy. At that point players win games with micro and positioning, just like they would in a small-economy game. I don't quite understand why you're arguing that BW is better than SC2 because SC2 games are determined by production where BW games are determined by micro; BW is a much easier game to win purely by outmacroing your opponent. Macroing is easier in SC2 than in BW, which means that in BW you could gain a lot more advantage by getting really good at macro. In SC2 sheer macro is still valuable, but because macroing is so much easier, the practical difference between good macro and really good macro is smaller.
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That sounds like Warcraft 3 in a nutshell (sans heroes). Not suer if this crowd really want a W3-esque SC2.
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I doubt Rabiator wants WC3, WC3 had multiple building selection. And personally, I have no problem with the current game engine.
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On September 03 2013 17:00 ChristianS wrote:
I doubt Rabiator wants WC3, WC3 had multiple building selection. And personally, I have no problem with the current game engine.
I doubt he wants WC3, because WC3 wasn't Broodwar.
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Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
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I think boosting probes, throwing mules and injecting larva are very boring actions.
SC2 would have been better without them.
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On September 03 2013 17:16 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
. I think boosting probes, throwing mules and injecting larva are very boring actions. SC2 would have been better without them.
It's not exactly about each action being fun as about each task being fun. That said, there is an argument for that. Larva inject isn't a very fun challenge, at least. MULEs aren't so much of a challenge usually, nor is chrono boost, so they're less obnoxious in that way.
Each one adds interesting strategy, though, just like single building selection does. Auto-inject queens could potentially be overpowered because the game is balanced around injects being less than perfect. But injecting constantly isn't a hell of a lot harder than maintaining macro as Terran, the only harder part is the fact that you have to move the camera and click things instead of just using control groups and hotkeys, but with backspace method its pretty straightforward. Another task that doesn't seem very interesting is keeping up on supply structures. Actually knowing what you're supposed to do is pretty simple; it's just keeping up with it that can get difficult.
But at least larva inject, supply depot construction, etc. can be learned fairly easily, at which point they don't really determine who wins the game. By the time you get to diamond or masters, most people are injecting and macroing at a level not all that far behind top pros; after that you start winning on something other than having more stuff. That is, learning to macro is an overhead that you have to learn before playing the game properly, but most games have that; and as overhead goes, it's relatively simple to learn. Not only that, but supply depots, macroing, etc. force a certain level of game awareness which seems good. This is pretty different from limiting building selection to one, which a) is so taxing of APM that even fairly high-level pros still drop production cycles, and b) makes a lot of games be determined by who can, for example, click on 15 barracks and hit 'm' on each of them the fastest, rather than any kind of strategic superiority.
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Actually, they should have made it so you could select four buildings at the same time and sixteen units at the same time, with zerglings, broodlings, locusts, marines(?) taking up only half a spot and carriers, tempests, thors and battlecruisers taking up two spots. A good compromise between BW and SC2 maybe.
I played WC3 a lot and there having 12 spots was almost luxurious, but I think it still added to the fun of the game since you would come up to, say, 12 footmen and you'd have to decide whether you wanted to build more for an additional control group or whether you wanted to limit yourself that way. Fun decisions... :o
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On September 03 2013 17:37 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 17:16 MikeMM wrote:On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
. I think boosting probes, throwing mules and injecting larva are very boring actions. SC2 would have been better without them. It's not exactly about each action being fun as about each task being fun. That said, there is an argument for that. Larva inject isn't a very fun challenge, at least. MULEs aren't so much of a challenge usually, nor is chrono boost, so they're less obnoxious in that way. Each one adds interesting strategy, though, just like single building selection does. Auto-inject queens could potentially be overpowered because the game is balanced around injects being less than perfect. But injecting constantly isn't a hell of a lot harder than maintaining macro as Terran, the only harder part is the fact that you have to move the camera and click things instead of just using control groups and hotkeys, but with backspace method its pretty straightforward. Another task that doesn't seem very interesting is keeping up on supply structures. Actually knowing what you're supposed to do is pretty simple; it's just keeping up with it that can get difficult. But at least larva inject, supply depot construction, etc. can be learned fairly easily, at which point they don't really determine who wins the game. By the time you get to diamond or masters, most people are injecting and macroing at a level not all that far behind top pros; after that you start winning on something other than having more stuff. That is, learning to macro is an overhead that you have to learn before playing the game properly, but most games have that; and as overhead goes, it's relatively simple to learn. Not only that, but supply depots, macroing, etc. force a certain level of game awareness which seems good. This is pretty different from limiting building selection to one, which a) is so taxing of APM that even fairly high-level pros still drop production cycles, and b) makes a lot of games be determined by who can, for example, click on 15 barracks and hit 'm' on each of them the fastest, rather than any kind of strategic superiority.
You are completely wrong, the difference between a mid masters player injecting and macroing and a grandmaster player is infinite. Even the difference between a rank 8 master player and a rank 1 master player is very large. It takes alot of practice to learn how to macro perfectly in sc2 you don't just learn it at diamond or low master level.
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On September 03 2013 17:48 MattD wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 17:37 ChristianS wrote:On September 03 2013 17:16 MikeMM wrote:On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
. I think boosting probes, throwing mules and injecting larva are very boring actions. SC2 would have been better without them. It's not exactly about each action being fun as about each task being fun. That said, there is an argument for that. Larva inject isn't a very fun challenge, at least. MULEs aren't so much of a challenge usually, nor is chrono boost, so they're less obnoxious in that way. Each one adds interesting strategy, though, just like single building selection does. Auto-inject queens could potentially be overpowered because the game is balanced around injects being less than perfect. But injecting constantly isn't a hell of a lot harder than maintaining macro as Terran, the only harder part is the fact that you have to move the camera and click things instead of just using control groups and hotkeys, but with backspace method its pretty straightforward. Another task that doesn't seem very interesting is keeping up on supply structures. Actually knowing what you're supposed to do is pretty simple; it's just keeping up with it that can get difficult. But at least larva inject, supply depot construction, etc. can be learned fairly easily, at which point they don't really determine who wins the game. By the time you get to diamond or masters, most people are injecting and macroing at a level not all that far behind top pros; after that you start winning on something other than having more stuff. That is, learning to macro is an overhead that you have to learn before playing the game properly, but most games have that; and as overhead goes, it's relatively simple to learn. Not only that, but supply depots, macroing, etc. force a certain level of game awareness which seems good. This is pretty different from limiting building selection to one, which a) is so taxing of APM that even fairly high-level pros still drop production cycles, and b) makes a lot of games be determined by who can, for example, click on 15 barracks and hit 'm' on each of them the fastest, rather than any kind of strategic superiority. You are completely wrong, the difference between a mid masters player injecting and macroing and a grandmaster player is infinite. Even the difference between a rank 8 master player and a rank 1 master player is very large. It takes alot of practice to learn how to macro perfectly in sc2 you don't just learn it at diamond or low master level.
Oh, not that there aren't differences. But you stop winning games just on having more stuff, which is all that I was getting at. Particularly since injecting perfectly is most important early game, which is when people still mostly get it right at low levels.
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i think hots pvz and tvz is often won on "having more stuff" these days since zerg late game is not something you look to be playing for most people and that requires very good injects for most of the game, which is actually very hard. My point is its actually very easy to tell the difference between a grandmaster player macroing and a mid master player, even if the mid master player hits most of his injects, the skill gap between them is VERY large despite what some people might think.
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On September 03 2013 17:52 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 17:48 MattD wrote:On September 03 2013 17:37 ChristianS wrote:On September 03 2013 17:16 MikeMM wrote:On September 03 2013 12:35 ChristianS wrote:
Sometimes the challenges a game presents are rooted in how hard it is to make the game do what you want it to (e.g. successfully performing a difficult combo in a fighting game). If this is a fun challenge, that's fun. But oftentimes such challenges are not very interesting, just rote actions that take a lot of tedious practice to get right. Then if with better technology you can help make those challenges easier, and put the difficulty of the game into more fun and interesting problems, that would be an improvement.
. I think boosting probes, throwing mules and injecting larva are very boring actions. SC2 would have been better without them. It's not exactly about each action being fun as about each task being fun. That said, there is an argument for that. Larva inject isn't a very fun challenge, at least. MULEs aren't so much of a challenge usually, nor is chrono boost, so they're less obnoxious in that way. Each one adds interesting strategy, though, just like single building selection does. Auto-inject queens could potentially be overpowered because the game is balanced around injects being less than perfect. But injecting constantly isn't a hell of a lot harder than maintaining macro as Terran, the only harder part is the fact that you have to move the camera and click things instead of just using control groups and hotkeys, but with backspace method its pretty straightforward. Another task that doesn't seem very interesting is keeping up on supply structures. Actually knowing what you're supposed to do is pretty simple; it's just keeping up with it that can get difficult. But at least larva inject, supply depot construction, etc. can be learned fairly easily, at which point they don't really determine who wins the game. By the time you get to diamond or masters, most people are injecting and macroing at a level not all that far behind top pros; after that you start winning on something other than having more stuff. That is, learning to macro is an overhead that you have to learn before playing the game properly, but most games have that; and as overhead goes, it's relatively simple to learn. Not only that, but supply depots, macroing, etc. force a certain level of game awareness which seems good. This is pretty different from limiting building selection to one, which a) is so taxing of APM that even fairly high-level pros still drop production cycles, and b) makes a lot of games be determined by who can, for example, click on 15 barracks and hit 'm' on each of them the fastest, rather than any kind of strategic superiority. You are completely wrong, the difference between a mid masters player injecting and macroing and a grandmaster player is infinite. Even the difference between a rank 8 master player and a rank 1 master player is very large. It takes alot of practice to learn how to macro perfectly in sc2 you don't just learn it at diamond or low master level. Oh, not that there aren't differences. But you stop winning games just on having more stuff, which is all that I was getting at. Particularly since injecting perfectly is most important early game, which is when people still mostly get it right at low levels.
That's true. If you have someone master level play a pro, he will usually be in a lost position by the 12 minute mark, before injecting ability becomes very discriminating. As a result of this, there are very strong players that aren't even that great at injecting because it's not strictly necessary to achieve results.
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Ideas for ZvT balance(keeping in mind ZvP and ZvZ)
Note: These ideas would be implemented independently, or in tandem as appropriate.
#1 -
Viper's Consume ability has been removed.
Units under Blinding Cloud move 30% slower.
Blinding Cloud duration has been reduced from 14 seconds to 10 seconds.
Blinding Cloud AOE has increased from 2 to 3.
#2 -
Widow mine splash damage radius has been reduced from 1.6 to 0.9.
#3 -
Widow mine activation delay has been removed.
#4 -
Widow mine activation range has been reduced from 5 to 3(reveal radius also reduced to 3).
Widow mine activation delay has been removed.
#5 -
Infested Terrans benefit from the Ranged Attack and Ground Carapace upgrades.
Infested Terrans spawn with full health regardless of Egg damage.
#6 -
Ignite Afterburners cooldown increased from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
Remark: Medivacs shouldn't be able to boost in, drop, kill stuff, pick up and boost AGAIN away from mutas.
#7 -
Hydralisk burrow and unburrow time reduced from 1.33/1.00 to 0.50/0.50 respectively(same as infestor/roach).
Remark: Encourages burrowed hydralisks unburrowing and killing medivacs, which is quite exciting. Right now, nothing scares off medivacs except mutalisks. Spores are ineffective.
#8 -
Corruptors now have the Destructive Acids ability, which causes units hit by the corruptor to not be able to use active abilities for 5 seconds.
Remark: Corruptors will actually be a viable weapon vs medivacs, which allows zerg a choice separate from mutas, while not affecting ZvP.
#9 -
The blur visible for undetected burrowed roaches while moving is now less visible.
Remark: A small step for roach/hydra, and pushes an upgrade that is never researched.
#10 -
Spine Crawlers benefit from Ground Carapace upgrade.
Remark: Makes spine crawlers a little less useless against 3/3 bio.
I think these are the kinds of steps Blizzard should take.
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Anyway, I have a new thought that instead of designated balance discussion THREAD, what there should be is a designated balance discussion FORUM, where different proposals can be discussed independently, upvoted, downvoted as appropriate and not fall out of sight/out of mind over time.
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Another thought I have.
TvZ terrans are often saying that widow mines now force zerg to micro just like terran needs to split. This would be great, if it were true. One problem is that well-placed mines with marine support are practically impossible to micro against. The widow mines don't activate if you split the ling/bling army because the marines kill it too fast, and the ling/bling will be ineffective because they need to swarm. If you swarm, the mines just slaughter ling/bling most of the time(even without targetting with mines). I think one solution is to remove the activation delay IMO, then it's actually more controllable.
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On September 03 2013 18:17 hearters wrote:
Anyway, I have a new thought that instead of designated balance discussion THREAD, what there should be is a designated balance discussion FORUM, where different proposals can be discussed independently, upvoted, downvoted as appropriate and not fall out of sight/out of mind over time.
Won't happen. TL only tolerates this thread because it can magnet all the balance whine away from other places. I seriously doubt they want to encourage this kind of thing by creating a forum for it
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On September 03 2013 18:29 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 03 2013 18:17 hearters wrote:
Anyway, I have a new thought that instead of designated balance discussion THREAD, what there should be is a designated balance discussion FORUM, where different proposals can be discussed independently, upvoted, downvoted as appropriate and not fall out of sight/out of mind over time. Won't happen. TL only tolerates this thread because it can magnet all the balance whine away from other places. I seriously doubt they want to encourage this kind of thing by creating a forum for it
If this were true(which I don't believe it is), it would be a disappointing position from TL.
Balance discussion means something to players. Even if (or Especially if) they are weaker players. Having a more organised platform for discussion would let weaker players see what are the most upvoted/downvoted and discussed proposals and rethink their own ideas.
Having a more organised platform for discussion would also let Blizzard access our ideas much more easily instead of sifting through thousands of posts which jump here and there, if they are, as they say(and I believe), "listening to the community".
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I believe balance threads are tolerated on the Blizzard forums. TL doesn't so much. They figure it's no good because a) the quality of the suggestions is generally crap, and b) it doesn't accomplish anything anyway. Proposing solutions to a strategic difficulty is helpful, saying that difficulty is too hard and should be patched is not. If you have balance feedback, head to Blizzard forums, I suppose.
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EPT
