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On September 04 2013 19:39 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 19:26 submarine wrote:On September 04 2013 18:33 ysnake wrote:
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well. Comebacks are only possible if the winning side makes huge mistakes or if the game is very volatile. The first does not happen a lot in pro games because those guys do not make a lot of mistakes, and the second would be pretty bad for every competitive game. There is third option it is when there is defender advantage in the game. In BW defender had advantage therefore comebacks were possible there. In SC2 its attacker who has the advantage thus no comebacks.
That makes no sense. If someone attacks into a good defense position and wastes his advantage he makes a huge mistake. The same is true in BW.
I think your understanding of SC2 might be better then your understanding of BW. Therefore you are able to read the game better.
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Would it work to make mines direct dmg instead of splash, and remove the firing delay. Give them an attack speed about the same as a marauder or a bit slower. Give them drilling claws by default and make the upgrade an attack speed or movement speed upgrade. They would still work as static defense, scouting, positioning units but you will need quite a few more. Instead of only needing a bunker and 1 mine to help with a ling/bane atk you might need 5 or 6 mines. Just thinking out loud here. I'm getting real bored with pro TVZ vods/reps as well.
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On September 04 2013 20:45 submarine wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 19:39 MikeMM wrote:On September 04 2013 19:26 submarine wrote:On September 04 2013 18:33 ysnake wrote:
What do you guys think on "comebacks"? You can tell in pro-games which side is going to win, this ruins the viewership experience for me, not to mention game experience. Rarely have I seen major comebacks from "outplaying" your opponent. One of the very recent ones was MC vs Jaedong where Jaedong just a-moved his remaxed army into a very unfavorable position for a fight and got decimated multiple times. This was just MC staying in the game for as long as he could and Jaedong doing the unthinkable mistakes.
This is partly why I hate watching League of Legends as well (I'm Diamond in SC2 and Platinum in LoL, ironically enough, that's the "a-little-above-average" rating) is that you can tell which team is going to win in the first 15 minutes of game. Rarely are there amazing comebacks in pro-games (since pros know how to extend their lead), but in "normal" games, they tend to occur very often. I do not want to go into the discussion of solo game vs team game as we all know where that will lead. But still, I find Starcraft 2 dull to watch.
Just yesterday, I was watching Jaedong's stream and he was playing a barcode and the game went with the current meta, as soon as Jaedong saw the 4th of Terran and knowing he could not engage into that, he just "gged" out of the game. Why? Because there is no way for him to come back in that game, and from what I've seen, they have been on equal footing.
There are many things here discussed about what Activision/Blizzard should do and I absolutely love Starcraft progaming scene and what are the wrongs of the game. But, quite frankly, if you keep the same boat floating for too long, eventually it's going to have holes and you're going to sink. From almost no tournaments for not-top-tier-players, to completely ignoring the casual gamer to whatever other reason we have discussed here and in many other threads as well. Comebacks are only possible if the winning side makes huge mistakes or if the game is very volatile. The first does not happen a lot in pro games because those guys do not make a lot of mistakes, and the second would be pretty bad for every competitive game. There is third option it is when there is defender advantage in the game. In BW defender had advantage therefore comebacks were possible there. In SC2 its attacker who has the advantage thus no comebacks. That makes no sense. If someone attacks into a good defense position and wastes his advantage he makes a huge mistake. The same is true in BW. I think your understanding of SC2 might be better then your understanding of BW. Therefore you are able to read the game better.
Think he might refer to the High-Ground advantage back from BW.. In SC2 the attacker can easily overcome that, but the HG mechanics ain't bad in SC2 either I think.. In BW ground domination and contain is more important (cause if you attack up a ramp you'll lose A LOT), in SC2 air-domination takes care of that (in some way), which IDK which is better.. I kinda like both TBH.. 
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Comebacks are a tricky subject anyhow.
Fun fact, I searched for "comebacks + game theory" on google and found this unrelated paper. If anyone can explain to me anything in there they should get an award.
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On September 04 2013 16:42 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though. What is this "reaction time for a defender" business? Reaction time is from when you see the enemy approaching to when you do something about it. High DPS is only in play once the battle starts, and by the time the battle starts, you really should have already had time to react. Unless you're talking about drops, in which case there's usually not enough units dropping for unit formations to impact DPS. Just look at how long it took to kill a group of units in BW and compare the length of a battle in SC2. In BW the unit density was LOW and as a consequense the "kill speed" was equally low ... which gave the defender (or rather the loser) some time to react and adjust his units. In SC2 many fights betwee much larger armies are over in seconds ... and this means there is a very very short reaction time. The classic example is Marine splitting vs Banelings. Sure enough a progamer will have no problem doing the right thing in half a second - he trains this stuff all day after all - but what about those who only play a few games each day? This "extremely low reaction time" is very bad design, because it means the games are less fun for the not-so-pro players. Losing a game isnt bad, but you need at least have had a chance to affect the outcome. Fungal, Forcefield, Abduct, .... lots of effects are in SC2 which allow no counter and you have to "pre-defend" against them. BW didnt have this problem because the unit density was not as high ...
what a bunch of nonsense, you're somehow linking the archaic controls of BW to be the only possible solution to some of sc2's problems like short battles. wc3 had clumping but still much longer fights than BW, it's a ton of factors that come into play from both unit stats and the engine. Going back to a crappy engine like BW is a silly solution, sure it might prevent clumping and no smart cast sort of prevents caster massing but there are tons of other ways to achieve that..
The flaws in sc2 are just a combination of the engine and unit design. All of it could just be fixed by better unit design really, you can force more spreading by having more AoE etc. Battles could have been longer with just more wc3-esque unit stats etc.
Overall the game is better than BW in many aspects I think but the units and strategies are just a bit too bland. If the balance team actually focussed on diversity and cool unit usage instead of balance mostly it could have been great. Instead there are a ton of terrible and crappy designs but the engine and everything is fine really.
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On September 04 2013 22:26 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 16:42 Rabiator wrote:On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though. What is this "reaction time for a defender" business? Reaction time is from when you see the enemy approaching to when you do something about it. High DPS is only in play once the battle starts, and by the time the battle starts, you really should have already had time to react. Unless you're talking about drops, in which case there's usually not enough units dropping for unit formations to impact DPS. Just look at how long it took to kill a group of units in BW and compare the length of a battle in SC2. In BW the unit density was LOW and as a consequense the "kill speed" was equally low ... which gave the defender (or rather the loser) some time to react and adjust his units. In SC2 many fights betwee much larger armies are over in seconds ... and this means there is a very very short reaction time. The classic example is Marine splitting vs Banelings. Sure enough a progamer will have no problem doing the right thing in half a second - he trains this stuff all day after all - but what about those who only play a few games each day? This "extremely low reaction time" is very bad design, because it means the games are less fun for the not-so-pro players. Losing a game isnt bad, but you need at least have had a chance to affect the outcome. Fungal, Forcefield, Abduct, .... lots of effects are in SC2 which allow no counter and you have to "pre-defend" against them. BW didnt have this problem because the unit density was not as high ... what a bunch of nonsense, you're somehow linking the archaic controls of BW to be the only possible solution to some of sc2's problems like short battles. wc3 had clumping but still much longer fights than BW, it's a ton of factors that come into play from both unit stats and the engine. Going back to a crappy engine like BW is a silly solution, sure it might prevent clumping and no smart cast sort of prevents caster massing but there are tons of other ways to achieve that.. The flaws in sc2 are just a combination of the engine and unit design. All of it could just be fixed by better unit design really, you can force more spreading by having more AoE etc. Battles could have been longer with just more wc3-esque unit stats etc. Overall the game is better than BW in many aspects I think but the units and strategies are just a bit too bland. If the balance team actually focussed on diversity and cool unit usage instead of balance mostly it could have been great. Instead there are a ton of terrible and crappy designs but the engine and everything is fine really.
you want more AoE? really more AoE? more than just colossus and storm and banelings and fungal and widow mines?
there is plenty of easy to use AoE in the game. the problem with the clumping is the high gamespeed and the ability that you can select infinite unit numbers at one time. the high gamespeed enforces the use of this option here - you have simply no time to move around several control groups of (f.e.) 12 units like we all did in BW.
The AoE is much easier massed in SC2 than it was in BW, where AoE units where really hard to make work (with the exception of tanks, they were relatively easy):
Lurker micro was an art of itself (i´m talking here about the offensive use of lurkers), reaver micro too and multiple HTs where also harder to use. We have already tons of strong splash dmg units in the game. The reason why we still see this much clumping is, that the gamespeed enforces to move large numbers of units in one control group and the pathfinding engine clumps up units moved in one control group.
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On September 04 2013 22:42 TeeTS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 04 2013 22:26 Markwerf wrote:On September 04 2013 16:42 Rabiator wrote:On September 04 2013 16:02 ChristianS wrote:The unlimited unit selection and the tight unit clumping (due to "perfect" pathing) maximize the dps per area and thus reduce the reaction time for a defender to almost zero. You do need a balance between attacker and defender in a well designed game though. What is this "reaction time for a defender" business? Reaction time is from when you see the enemy approaching to when you do something about it. High DPS is only in play once the battle starts, and by the time the battle starts, you really should have already had time to react. Unless you're talking about drops, in which case there's usually not enough units dropping for unit formations to impact DPS. Just look at how long it took to kill a group of units in BW and compare the length of a battle in SC2. In BW the unit density was LOW and as a consequense the "kill speed" was equally low ... which gave the defender (or rather the loser) some time to react and adjust his units. In SC2 many fights betwee much larger armies are over in seconds ... and this means there is a very very short reaction time. The classic example is Marine splitting vs Banelings. Sure enough a progamer will have no problem doing the right thing in half a second - he trains this stuff all day after all - but what about those who only play a few games each day? This "extremely low reaction time" is very bad design, because it means the games are less fun for the not-so-pro players. Losing a game isnt bad, but you need at least have had a chance to affect the outcome. Fungal, Forcefield, Abduct, .... lots of effects are in SC2 which allow no counter and you have to "pre-defend" against them. BW didnt have this problem because the unit density was not as high ... what a bunch of nonsense, you're somehow linking the archaic controls of BW to be the only possible solution to some of sc2's problems like short battles. wc3 had clumping but still much longer fights than BW, it's a ton of factors that come into play from both unit stats and the engine. Going back to a crappy engine like BW is a silly solution, sure it might prevent clumping and no smart cast sort of prevents caster massing but there are tons of other ways to achieve that.. The flaws in sc2 are just a combination of the engine and unit design. All of it could just be fixed by better unit design really, you can force more spreading by having more AoE etc. Battles could have been longer with just more wc3-esque unit stats etc. Overall the game is better than BW in many aspects I think but the units and strategies are just a bit too bland. If the balance team actually focussed on diversity and cool unit usage instead of balance mostly it could have been great. Instead there are a ton of terrible and crappy designs but the engine and everything is fine really. you want more AoE? really more AoE? more than just colossus and storm and banelings and fungal and widow mines? there is plenty of easy to use AoE in the game. the problem with the clumping is the high gamespeed and the ability that you can select infinite unit numbers at one time. the high gamespeed enforces the use of this option here - you have simply no time to move around several control groups of (f.e.) 12 units like we all did in BW. The AoE is much easier massed in SC2 than it was in BW, where AoE units where really hard to make work (with the exception of tanks, they were relatively easy): Lurker micro was an art of itself (i´m talking here about the offensive use of lurkers), reaver micro too and multiple HTs where also harder to use. We have already tons of strong splash dmg units in the game. The reason why we still see this much clumping is, that the gamespeed enforces to move large numbers of units in one control group and the pathfinding engine clumps up units moved in one control group.
more of interesting AoE would be really good for the game.
You know, in phases of the game when there is no AoE we get people just playing the best singlefire compositions and win, because singlefire compositions come down mostly to numbers.
Aka roach vs roach, stalker vs stalker battles. That's what makes Mech games so awesome, because it's all about splash. Depending on micro, a Hellion can be a really good or a really bad unit against marines. On the flipside, a roach, stalker, hydralisk will never be a good unit against Marines, unless you can way outnumber it, etc.
Splash doesn't mean that there needs to be Old Fungal and Colossus everywhere, but there could be splash like
Banelings - that can be pick off before it happens
Hellions - which have a very interesting shape of splash
Tanks - which has setup times and is a stationary unit
New Fungal - which is a skillshot
Storm - which you can run out off
Basically stuff that you can avoid or micro against, or is only really good against certain unit types. I do believe that there is too little of that stuff on Zerg/Protoss, and that's why we see this hardcore balancing around bio and roach/hydra compositions in TvP, TvZ and PvZ, as those are simply the strongest singlefire compositions in the matchup and the lack of splash makes it really dicey to prevent MMM or roach/hydra from just killing a Protoss or Zerg before reasonable splash is established. And it also makes ZvZ and PvP early-midgame such a numbers battle, as the defender has to solely rely on his superior positioning and can't really hold rushes by squeezing out a certain amount of power units in time.
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I don't like the word archaic, you might as well call Starcraft 2 newfangled in that case.
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it's not just about having the comebacks. It's about perception of the game is over or not. The game doesn't necessarily need the comeback to be interesting.
For example in LoL, you can feed a double kill to their adc and the game won't appear to be over yet because you still have other lanes etc. then sometimes they would get too aggressive and you can ask the jungler to gank and you can even it up a little.
You will be behind for sure and it will snow ball. But you won't be able to tell from there that the game is already over.
In SC2, when you loses out an engagement too badly or lost too many workers to a harassment, the game will snowball so hard that you will lose 99% of the time.
Come back games are always interesting to watch and it mostly happens to T in TvZ.
We have seen games where zerg seemingly in a huge advantage, yet with the amazing flexibility of T's units, Z sometimes plays too carelessly and just snowball back to an even game.
It also sometimes happen in TvP where the terran wins an engagement, then tries to snipe the nexus with the remaining units, protoss warp in ends up pushing the T all the way back and sometimes that gives the P the lead
but they just happen too rarely, especially for PvP and ZvZ and Z in general (z in wol had come back games due to OP infestors though)
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The TvP warpin is more of an example of warpgates being broken anyway, where winning an engagement leaves you even, not advantaged.
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On September 04 2013 23:58 ETisME wrote:
it's not just about having the comebacks. It's about perception of the game is over or not. The game doesn't necessarily need the comeback to be interesting.
For example in LoL, you can feed a double kill to their adc and the game won't appear to be over yet because you still have other lanes etc. then sometimes they would get too aggressive and you can ask the jungler to gank and you can even it up a little.
You will be behind for sure and it will snow ball. But you won't be able to tell from there that the game is already over.
In SC2, when you loses out an engagement too badly or lost too many workers to a harassment, the game will snowball so hard that you will lose 99% of the time.
Come back games are always interesting to watch and it mostly happens to T in TvZ.
We have seen games where zerg seemingly in a huge advantage, yet with the amazing flexibility of T's units, Z sometimes plays too carelessly and just snowball back to an even game.
It also sometimes happen in TvP where the terran wins an engagement, then tries to snipe the nexus with the remaining units, protoss warp in ends up pushing the T all the way back and sometimes that gives the P the lead
but they just happen too rarely, especially for PvP and ZvZ and Z in general (z in wol had come back games due to OP infestors though)
A huge part of that is that we have so many ingame statistics in SC2, so that everybody who understands the game somewhat will always realize when there is a big advantage during a game.
Same cannot be said so much when you watch a MOBA, as a certain carry may be able to win the game on his own if he is left on his own - or not because it may also mean that an enemy carry is also left on his own.
Also, in a MOBA you cannot do real damage to each other as much as in Starcraft. There are those massive defensive advantages like towers and free units everywhere, that slow down the game so much that you cannot really emphasize a temporal advantage.
This is not really SC2 specific however, no strategy game has ever been setup to prevent snowballing. If you get a straight advantage in terms of numbers (economy, army, tech, upgrades) without falling behind in another category, the game becomes very predictable. I guess that's the reason why most people will always prefer non-mirror matchups, as the assymetry means that there always exist timings when one faction may make something happen, even though they are down in pure numbers. (e.g T/PvZ, when Z will always be up in bases and workers)
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It's not about if the game is already won for one side, but the perception of the spectators and the players. Because you tend to get unique match-ups in MOBAs (hero and item combinations) it is highly likely that it's not known whether a given match-up is favorable for one side or the other. However, in many of those cases it will strongly favor one side, but that doesn't matter in terms of having an enjoyable experience. You'll simply accept that next time you will have to be smarter at picking heroes.
Starcraft 2 is different because there is less unique gameflow, so you'll be able to recall whether this situation was won or lost last time this happened. This removes some of the excitement of watching a scenario unfold and just leaves annoyance at having to watch something that you haven't only already seen before, but that also is an unfair fight since it favors one party.
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On September 05 2013 03:32 Grumbels wrote:
It's not about if the game is already won for one side, but the perception of the spectators and the players. Because you tend to get unique match-ups in MOBAs (hero and item combinations) it is highly likely that it's not known whether a given match-up is favorable for one side or the other. However, in many of those cases it will strongly favor one side, but that doesn't matter in terms of having an enjoyable experience. You'll simply accept that next time you will have to be smarter at picking heroes.
Starcraft 2 is different because there is less unique gameflow, so you'll be able to recall whether this situation was won or lost last time this happened. This removes some of the excitement of watching a scenario unfold and just leaves annoyance at having to watch something that you haven't only already seen before, but that also is an unfair fight since it favors one party.
The only reason a sense of "comebacks" can be felt in MOBA games is because of Towers and minions. Even if one side loses a bunch of fights they can always just run to a different part of the map and kill creeps. So it looks like they're being active when they're really turtling.
Turtling in SC2 leads to sitting motionless in a base. It's passive.
Turtling in MOBA is running around the map retreating from big dudes while you kill mooks. It's active.
They're both equally boring tactically, but one is less boring visually.
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Well, what I mean is: suppose you would always have the same match-up in LoL with the same heroes. And let's say that in this match-up there is always one side that has an advantage, say 60% to 40%, ratios that stay the same over time because of the stable metagame with item and lane choice never diverting from the norm since they are fairly easy to figure out with such limited diversity.
I don't think people would enjoy playing this game. It's one thing to come across this scenario once in a blue moon because there is such a wide selection of heroes, and quite another to see it every single game. It changes the nature of the game, because all of a sudden you don't need to make decisions anymore, they were made for you by whomever pioneered the currently most popular strategies. And the imbalance in the match-up becomes exposed for all the world to see, because you played through it so much, whereas previously it was only lying dormant.
That's why hero diversity is important for Riot, even though the level of play would be much higher if there were only 10 heroes to choose from. With a stable metagame all the flaws of the game become exposed, and there really are very few games that can stand up to this sort of scrutiny. I don't think SC2 would have survived for long if they had never patched it or if they hadn't released HotS. And I guess it's why the beta was an exciting time for SC2. It's fun to see new stuff, it's also fun to see high level play, so there needs to be a balance, but becoming stale and predictable is certainly the worst thing that can happen to a sport.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
On September 05 2013 05:03 Grumbels wrote:
Well, what I mean is: suppose you would always have the same match-up in LoL with the same heroes. And let's say that in this match-up there is always one side that has an advantage, say 60% to 40%, ratios that stay the same over time because of the stable metagame with item and lane choice never diverting from the norm since they are fairly easy to figure out with such limited diversity.
I don't think people would enjoy playing this game. It's one thing to come across this scenario once in a blue moon because there is such a wide selection of heroes, and quite another to see it every single game. It changes the nature of the game, because all of a sudden you don't need to make decisions anymore, they were made for you by whomever pioneered the currently most popular strategies. And the imbalance in the match-up becomes exposed for all the world to see, because you played through it so much, whereas previously it was only lying dormant.
That's why hero diversity is important for Riot, even though the level of play would be much higher if there were only 10 heroes to choose from. With a stable metagame all the flaws of the game become exposed, and there really are very few games that can stand up to this sort of scrutiny. I don't think SC2 would have survived for long if they had never patched it or if they hadn't released HotS. And I guess it's why the beta was an exciting time for SC2. It's fun to see new stuff, it's also fun to see high level play, so there needs to be a balance, but becoming stale and predictable is certainly the worst thing that can happen to a sport.
Actually, LoL is quite "stale" with champion picks, only sometimes does someone pick something out of the ordinary, I believe it was M5 that picked Draven as ADC one game and everyone went bananas (he actually did exceptionally well against pro-players and Draven is VERY easily countered). Because you never see Draven in competitive play. And you can see what kind of play will be expected of a team just based on champion picks. It's the overall action and the accessibility of the game that gives it the following it has.
But the problem is, in SC2, you know what will each side build every goddamn game. That's boring and stale, and it's all about macro mechanics and execution. I honestly abandoned playing SC2 for a while now, it is even boring to play knowing that I have to play the same game every goddamn time (I hate all-in play as I'm a Zerg). I hate to use SH but when I lose a ZvP (actually, it's my worst MU), I just look at the game and say "yeah, I should've used SHs".
Blizzard needs to conduct big changes to casual gamer experience to increase the willingness for players to actually stay online other than fapping to Kerrigan on the main screen.
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I'm quite boring and have never played or watched LoL, but mathematically, even if you have only twenty viable heroes and two teams get to pick five heroes each you'll still have ~100k unique match-ups. And with 25 viable heroes you'll get over a million unique match-ups.
(..the math was wrong, I forgot to divide by something, so the numbers are more like 1k and 10k  )
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
On September 05 2013 07:25 Grumbels wrote:
I'm quite boring and have never played or watched LoL, but mathematically, even if you have only twenty viable heroes and two teams get to pick five heroes each you'll still have ~100k unique match-ups. And with 25 viable heroes you'll get over a million unique match-ups.
Actually, the meta dictates the junglers, therefore, in LoL, there's tops 5-7 different jungler picks.
For ADCs, it depends on your entire team setup, but usually, Twitch, Caitlyn, Varus, Ashe and Vayne are picked.
Most of the pros go for Zyra, Sona, Janna or Leona support.
The only difference now is mid and top lane, they deviate a lot.
You usually see most of these champions in a single game. Watch a couple of them and you'll see most of the champions that are picked in high-end play.
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On September 05 2013 06:42 ysnake wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2013 05:03 Grumbels wrote:
Well, what I mean is: suppose you would always have the same match-up in LoL with the same heroes. And let's say that in this match-up there is always one side that has an advantage, say 60% to 40%, ratios that stay the same over time because of the stable metagame with item and lane choice never diverting from the norm since they are fairly easy to figure out with such limited diversity.
I don't think people would enjoy playing this game. It's one thing to come across this scenario once in a blue moon because there is such a wide selection of heroes, and quite another to see it every single game. It changes the nature of the game, because all of a sudden you don't need to make decisions anymore, they were made for you by whomever pioneered the currently most popular strategies. And the imbalance in the match-up becomes exposed for all the world to see, because you played through it so much, whereas previously it was only lying dormant.
That's why hero diversity is important for Riot, even though the level of play would be much higher if there were only 10 heroes to choose from. With a stable metagame all the flaws of the game become exposed, and there really are very few games that can stand up to this sort of scrutiny. I don't think SC2 would have survived for long if they had never patched it or if they hadn't released HotS. And I guess it's why the beta was an exciting time for SC2. It's fun to see new stuff, it's also fun to see high level play, so there needs to be a balance, but becoming stale and predictable is certainly the worst thing that can happen to a sport. Actually, LoL is quite "stale" with champion picks, only sometimes does someone pick something out of the ordinary, I believe it was M5 that picked Draven as ADC one game and everyone went bananas (he actually did exceptionally well against pro-players and Draven is VERY easily countered). Because you never see Draven in competitive play. And you can see what kind of play will be expected of a team just based on champion picks. It's the overall action and the accessibility of the game that gives it the following it has. But the problem is, in SC2, you know what will each side build every goddamn game. That's boring and stale, and it's all about macro mechanics and execution. I honestly abandoned playing SC2 for a while now, it is even boring to play knowing that I have to play the same game every goddamn time (I hate all-in play as I'm a Zerg). I hate to use SH but when I lose a ZvP (actually, it's my worst MU), I just look at the game and say "yeah, I should've used SHs". Blizzard needs to conduct big changes to casual gamer experience to increase the willingness for players to actually stay online other than fapping to Kerrigan on the main screen.
This is something true for all sports...
How often does something brand new happen in tennis? Bowling? Sprinting?
Usain Bolt did not innovate by doing something different, he innovated by doing something well.
The esports viewer base is eager to see something different and don't appreciate pure execution.
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Well, even in the case of having set hero choices for LoL the game isn't necessarily boring. The developers could still balance the game and it would still require skill to play. In fact, it'd require more finesse and the level of play would be higher. It'd still be a bad idea of course.
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The BW idea is so stupid it makes my head hurt. Want to instantly have most of the SC2 player base walk away? Re-instate a BW style control scheme.
You have a huge majority of players in SC2 used to using 1, maybe 2 control groups, and using somewhere from zero micro to a little bit of micro. Then all of a sudden you ask them to individually click on temps to storm, and to move across the map or engage an enemy go from 1a to 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a... ? Come on. You'd lose everyone below diamond to MOBA games in the blink of an eye.
One solution is to add 4 or 5 units to each race in LOTV. It would require constant balance tweaks probably for at least a couple of years, but at least the builds would be all over the place. New builds and strats would be hitting the scene all the time.
Also, the maps suck. Every map is the same. Ramped main. Easy access, easily defended natural. reasonably easy 3rd. Every single map is like this. Where are the island maps? Where are the open main maps? Where are the maps with no easy expansions?
90% of the games i've seen lately go like this: both players mass expand with little or no aggression for up to 15 minutes. Then a few little battles with small armies because both players have most of their supply locked up in workers. Someone makes a mistake. GG. The game doesn't allow for play from 1 base behind. Rinse and repeat.
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EPT
