EPTonly the best players are really affected by balance anyway, the others are just bad and need to realise that
Only Balance for the Highest Level? - Page 12
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Tofugrinder
Austria899 Posts
only the best players are really affected by balance anyway, the others are just bad and need to realise that | ||
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Robinsa
Japan1333 Posts
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RaNdOmOwNaGe
Australia51 Posts
On September 29 2011 15:04 BigFan wrote: Wait what? I read the OP a while back and just scanned it again now and he doesn't say that. He mostly presented an idea of how balancing can be done so that lower level players don't have to deal with any imbalances at their level. He cited BW as evidence to show how the imbalance at the lowest level affected the game(much easier time and higher level with P than T). I think he just came from the mindset that you have to have balance at the highest level, and the OP is suggesting to consider balance at lower levels aswell. I kind of thought like that for a couple of minutes aswell because it makes no sense to me to take balance away from the pros and give it to the lower levels of play. (well thats what I think they are saying) | ||
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branflakes14
2082 Posts
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Zergnub
Sweden26 Posts
I think the game needs to be balanced for the skill-levels of the competetive e-sports arena (pro's), and I would concur that if it is balanced for them, the game could be considered "balanced". HOWEVER, to say that it does not affect the lower leagues is just plain false. On the contrary, a worse player (like me) have a much more difficult time to adjust to things that might be a minor inconvenience to pros. Given that the game is balanced for people with much better APM, descision-making, and micro+macro, it's hardly surprising that we at lower levels find some changes difficult to deal with. (For example, I just can't use infestors vs toss now. It requires such good micro +positioning + apm to be able to get an NP off now that it's just not feasible for me anymore. A pro will surely (relatively) find it harder too, but have an easier time adjusting and coping) Playing Zerg as main, but dabbling as protoss, I can honestly say that protoss is MUCH more forgiving of mistakes one might make (again, at my skill-levels) that Zerg, and how forgiving a race is is for such mistakes are MUUUUUUCH more important in lower levels than higher, where such mistakes tend to be much fewer and further apart. Does that mean that it is imbalanced? No, I don't think so. It's not just balanced to cater to my inabilities as a player. It can still be frustrating as hell though. TL:DR Game is balanced around pro's, with their abilities in mind. OFC this will impact the lower brackets where there are much mistakes and lower APM, worse descisionmaking and worse micro-macro. Doesn't mean the game needs to be balanced to cater to the inabilities of these lower players though. | ||
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Yung
United States727 Posts
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On September 29 2011 17:17 Tofugrinder wrote: balancing everything else than the highest level is a joke and should _never_ be done. this would only lead to something like: "oh ghosts are a bad unit in the platin league, lets make them better I think people in this thread are getting kind of the wrong idea about what it means to "balance for lower levels," as well as what Blizzard actually did in the couple of changes they made for that reason. It's certainly not a matter of responding to low-level player complaints as such. Nor is it particularly searching for near-perfect balance at all levels, at the expense of highest-level play. In practice, Blizzard's concept of a game that's balanced in lower leagues is basically one where there aren't specific strategies that allow players of one particular race to win large numbers of games easily simply by switching to that strategy and doing it 100% of the time, without regard to basic macro or micro skills. All-in rushes like 6 pools are an exception to this philosophy because they want the risk of such a rush to be part of the game. A better example is the fast mass-reaper all-in that became popular for a short time right after release -- which they patched out because they were seeing that it was nearly unbeatable for lower-league Zerg players. In other words, the skill level needed to defend it was way out of whack with the skill level needed to execute it, at the low end. Fixing the more extreme such examples that come up helps ensure that when someone encounters a strategy they don't know how to beat, they can reasonably acquire the skills to beat it, at least against similarly-skilled opponents, as opposed to having no option but to switch races. This makes the game more fun for those players and keeps them interested longer, which is ultimately to Blizzard's benefit because they'd like to sell them sequels. No matter how much one waves around a philosophical argument that only perfect play should matter, that is a significant interest for Blizzard, if not the people in this forum. I'd note that there haven't been many such changes since SC2's release, so there's not much to worry about with respect to Blizzard systematically sacrificing high-end play to make low-end play balanced. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On September 29 2011 17:46 Yung wrote: If blizzard wants there game to stay popular, then they should only balance for masters and up levels, because anyone that puts in the time and practices right should at least be in masters. Only 2% of the players of the game can be in master league, so while you might argue that "anyone" can be in master league, they're an extreme minority of players, and ignoring those who aren't there and won't ever be isn't a good way to ensure the game's popularity. | ||
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Ryndika
1489 Posts
I usually win easier with T or P against my level of people than zerg WHEN I'm having some sort of problem in my playstyle for example hellion opening or when I make mistakes god knows why. Add that I play 6+ games as zerg per day, watch streams and vods and try to discuss about it. I play 4 to 7 times a week offrace, yet still I see how easily I crush my opponents with funny stuff I lose myself to. If I open doubleport banshee, execute BO well which I found not hard, manage to kill flying OL, I have huge chance of winning. This also comes to macro - I don't get supplyblocked as T, I have nearly 100% production and low resources which leads to continous timing pushes with my army and then take third, there isn't as much thinking process in my T style where I macro up a army, do timing pushes until my enemy dies. As a Zerg I have to play it like poker(react to what your opponent CAN do and try to close his available paths as much as possible, and maybe bluff too  ).TL:DR; To certain point, as T I can just macro up army and do timing push until my enemy dies. Goes up to diamond - master level. Listen radio talk and macro then basically a-move. I can't do this as Zerg and I think that maybe you have to "outsmart your opponent, not outplay" like Idra says. (I don't say it's true or even my opinion). + Show Spoiler + I love playing Zerg and wouldn't ever change race to get into master. There is always someone better than you so league doesn't matter as long as I'm not considering joining a team and going semi-pr | ||
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Phenrock
United Kingdom132 Posts
Because if you was rank 1 in the bronze league owning all the bronzes, are you forced to be promoted? Do you still get to play against lower silver league players? How are these games balanced to get promotion? If you're given the choice, how many would choose being the best of a league or take the step up. If you say bronze league players can stay happy being in their bronze league and silver league players can stay happy being the silver league. They can decide for themselves to take the step up. There is a danger of segregation, how will this encourage and promote competitive gameplay and achievement for improvement? Plus you're still going to have to learn a skill set to be able to compete in the silver league. The question would be, will there be a big shift in the mechanics/units/balances and you'd have to change your style and gameplay to compete. Is that good design? Learning a different style for each league I say is bad design. Custom games are there for a reason, 4v4, 3v3 and 2v2 are great ways to have fun still. 1v1 is designed to be competitive and for high level play so that there is the same level of competitiveness through out regardless if there are disportionate difficulties in races. | ||
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Pzar
New Zealand46 Posts
While top level -should- get the majority of the microscope-level balance tweaks, they cannot leave lower levels too unbalanced, for risk of having an "I'm race A, I only seem to play race A, occasionally B, and the only C I ever see are the new accounts passing through" situation. Now obviously, with the way the MMR system works, it doesn't have to be perfectly balanced, only somewhat balanced. But it can't be too unbalanced either, they do still have 2/3 of the game to sell, after all, and Sub-Masters is 98% of the game's population. As an aside, if balance really became a problem, a tournament could tweak things to match how they think it should be, also. | ||
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willsterben
25 Posts
and the player who makes more mistakes should lose. right now that isn't the case. certain races forgive mistakes much more than others. in a world where you can pull all scvs and lose everything and be in fine shape to play a 30 min macro game or just do the same thing again 2 minutes later and on the other hand misplacing a forcefield by 1 hex or making 1 drone too many instantly loses you the game it's pretty ludicrous to talk about balance. on lower levels that doesn't matter. because, on lower levels players aren't good enough to (as an example) realize mistakes their opponent made quick enough and instantly punish it, therefore allowing you to get away with stuff you shouldn't. even on highest level of play right now you see those kinds of things all the time and certain perceived imbalances result directly from players getting away with things they shouldn't. so a nice balancing move by blizzard i feel would be giving better tools for scouting at certain points in the game. so no i don't think balance is much of an issue at lower levels. however, as the game gets older and the general level of skill rises it will be, and it will have the same balance issues that exist in highest level of play so hopefully those will get sorted out. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Example immortal range 6. Before they walked around like a crab behind the army doing nothing. Now if it would be an aclick vs aclick. The marines are actually in range of the immortal, which is atleast a bit of damage. If you want to poke marauders you still have to do the same thing with your immortal. So its basically just became better for newbies. Staying with the recent patch there is fungal. Before stacking fungal to kill stuff was easy, and there was almost no time to react before the second deadly fungal came. For lower levels nothing will change except one fungal more is needed and they get a bit more damage (units of the opponent survive a bit longer). But once you proceed into high level the fungals can be beastly again were the zerg suddenly needs one fungal less to kill everything. But the important change is probably that the opponents were given a slight increase in reaction time. allowing to outmicro fungal a bit better, no one in master would be able to use that buff against fungal though. Just a few examples that made units easier or harder to use or added micro abilities etc. So blizzard is balancing the game for every level of play. And that is true balance Mastery imo. If they keep on with it, a click vs a click will be totally balanced, while every lil micro move brings you ahead. Until you play with 400 apm and will still fight on a balanced basis against other 400 apm people. Lets see if blizzard got the stamina for it. But so far they made the sc2 multiplayer way more fun to play, with all the micro added, while maintaining the newbie mode. But i agree that races have a different difficult level. But thats due to the problem that there are 10000 levels of play not only low and high. Balancing them all would probably end up in 1 race with 3 different skins lol. Still funny that so many say blizzard should never balance anything else then high level, while blizzard already does the opposite since the sc2 release. | ||
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ceaRshaf
Romania4926 Posts
Still funny that so many say blizzard should never balance anything else then high level, while blizzard already does the opposite since the sc2 release. Maybe that's why at high level of play the game is boring to watch and imbalanced to play. | ||
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chokke
Norway228 Posts
Small balance-fixes, such as a cooldown on Mules wouldn't affect the highest level that use them regurarely, but for the silver hero it would lead to his bad macro not be forgiven by throwing down three mules while his front door is protected by a bunker vs the silver zerg on the other side that misses a ton of injects but has no mechanics that can forgive him. You always have to bear in min that there are more players to the gaem then top 200, | ||
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Black[CAT]
Malaysia2589 Posts
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FlaminGinjaNinja
United Kingdom879 Posts
 If when people get better some new balence issue comes up for example Protoss is suddenly unstopable unless you are twice as good as them then Blizzard will step in and change something to try are solve the issue. Yes Blizzard look mostly at the 'highest level of play' but they also look at the win rates between the races across the leagues and on all the servers. | ||
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ceaRshaf
Romania4926 Posts
On September 29 2011 18:48 chokke wrote: You always have to bear in min that there are more players to the gaem then top 200, Dude, in this world, there will always be more stupid people than intelligent people, but the stupids are the ones that have to rise not the intelligent to lower. This is not an insult to anybody but a fact about the world you and me live in. This is what progress and evolution takes. | ||
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T0fuuu
Australia2275 Posts
On September 29 2011 18:53 Black[CAT] wrote: BW is imbalanced? Are you serious? What? It is? If you looked at it the same way as people do as sc2 Im sure people would also say terran is OP since they have won the most tournaments and protoss is UP cos they lose alot. Im sure a sc2 statistics style of matchup winrates would be pretty skewed as well because of the relatively low number of games played and also because flash and fantasy have been tearing it up lately. Its just that nobody is ever going to say that a pro is undeserving of a win in scbw because of how much effort they put into practice and learning the game. Its a form of respect and something that some current sc2 pros could learn from. Some people could use the argument that terran isnt overpowered in both sc2 and bw, and that the players with the best mechanics and understanding of the game just happened to be terran but thats entirely hypothetical that they would get the same results playing zerg or protoss. People just need to accept that games multiracial games like starcraft will inherently be imbalanced but as long as games can still be won the game isnt broken. If you wanted a perfectly balanced game you could play mirror. | ||
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Tryxtira
Sweden572 Posts
In response, I believe what you're saying to be true, especially the part about the viewers also being players. The thing is though, that if you're, like me, in platinum, the only reason I'm not getting into diamond is my skill. Theoretically, balance really only should be discussed when two perfect players clash. What you're saying about Flash is really spot-on and until we get that level of play, the balance will constantly change, with or without patches. However, who wants to watch a GSL with 32 Terrans or 32 Zergs or 32 Protosses, noone, that's not as fun as watching races fight eachother with equal success. If to achieve this, Blizzard has to change things that in five years will seem ridiculously unbalanced simply because with higher level play, the game isn't balanced. Though, since none is playing at the highest level possible at the moment, the balance needs to be tweaked to make the top players in the world compete with equal success no matter race. That's the reason balancefixes are great. To increase the viewer value. | ||
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