EPTOnly Balance for the Highest Level? - Page 14
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Flossy
United States870 Posts
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FuzzyLord
253 Posts
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PopcornColonel
United States769 Posts
However, I also think that the most important thing to balance is the highest level of play, because that's what people watch, and because one not at the highest level of play can practice to get there. | ||
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Epoch
Canada257 Posts
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rpgalon
Brazil1069 Posts
On September 30 2011 06:11 Slusher wrote: The point the people supporting "ladder balance" are missing is that the ladder will always be artificially balanced by your mmr, this is why when Bliz releases ladder numbers it always reflects balance being withing an error margin of 50%. The cold harsh reality of it is, if you aren't a pro nobody cares what your ladder rank is, so the fact that you are being denied diamond because you play Zerg isn't really a big deal. Your going to say, "But I like to see myself improve" this isn't impaired by the system I have described, if it's balanced at the top level, improvement can always overcome your precived 'imbalance' at your level By contrast if you take the best of each race in the world, for the sake of this argument we'll say it's MVP, Nestea and MC(I know protoss is largely up for debate). If a situation were to arrive, and some say it has where T>Z>P then what option does MC have? You could simply make the argument that MC(or the Protoss hero of your choice) just isn't as good as Nestea and MVP, and while that may be true, there is no basis, unlike the ladder player, to believe that if MC improved he could win. Those are the facts, I'm going to shift to opinion to paint a picture that to me is true. Do you want to know why Terran is so good vZ and vP in the pro leagues right now, because Bio is balanced around ladder play. If you think marine stats are based on the studder step and spreading that we see today, you are kidding yourself. This is an opinion, but I think you'd be hard pressed to disagree. And that is why the game should be balanced ONLY around the top. yeah, people should know why blizz ladder stats does not mean shit. "Only Balance for the Highest Level?" yes. | ||
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Peanut Butter
Canada155 Posts
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BarbieHsu
574 Posts
On September 22 2011 06:41 SeRenExZerg wrote: if the game is balanced at the highest level, IT IS BALANCED. plain and simple. yes, it is frustrating that one person might be able to do better with a race than their skill might suggest, but so long as all races have equal chance of winning when played perfectly, the game is exactly how it should be. The problem with balancing anything but the highest levels is that you don't know if the imba comes from the unit or the lack of skill of the person using it. Balance at all levels can't be done without everything becoming the same. But I do understand that the OP wishes there was some way to take a greater number of skill levels into consideration when balancing. Serious casuals or above or something | ||
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lolocaust_US
United States20 Posts
The simple truth is balance matters less at lower levels. Players will mimic what they see at the highest levels, so strategies "trickle down" to lower leagues. Some silver league player sees a blue flame hellion marine push with medivacs on a ledge in tvz do well in one MLG, boom it lasts as a strat in lower leagues for months. SOTG says unit X is overpowered 2 months ago? Silver league player still thinks this because it is still viable in lower leagues. Balance is almost irrelevant until you get to such a level where skill is super high, and every angle of the game is explored. Until you hit that level, strategies are not executes at such a level that "imbalance" comes into play-- each can be avoided with creativity of simply better mechanics. Even in masters, if your mechanics are good enough, none of the balance everyone bitches about matter. Stop worrying about what;s supposed to be imbalanced and worry about how to get better. | ||
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Zariel
Australia1285 Posts
Lets have some examples: Thor (strike cannons) against protoss: Mana > Cooldown > Mana. - Diamond+: He would know that HTs will have feedback to use against them if they are mana based and knows that it can reduce it's health by 1/2 if full mana/health. Pros may use a warp prism with a HT or 2 to drop HT+Feedback+Pickup+Profit. - Plat and below: Some may immediately think to use HTs feedback, many of them may not have the reaction to use them. Some may end up scratching their head as to what difference does it make to them. - Specifically, (IMO), Thors did not have a second 'soft' counter to them, general gateway units were not effective, going Void Rays would be easily countered via tech shift(Vikings). (I'm not 100% right, but I reckon I'm on the right track with this). Barracks build time up by 5 seconds: - Diamond+: Maybe the difference between having 4 lings and 8 lings to defend a specific rush, ie: live or die change. (Might be a lil overboard, but you get the idea) - Plat and below: 5 seconds.... so what? By balancing at the top level, we assume perfect skill from both subjects with the basis of 'how the game is meant to be played' mentality. There is no imbalance from lack of skill, because IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. If you try to argue this point then......... /facepalm. Balancing adjustments already trickle down the league path even to the platinum league easily, the actual effect may not be felt immediately. | ||
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seupac
Canada148 Posts
like how can you possibly predict what massive holes they have in their play that need patching | ||
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R0YAL
United States1768 Posts
Balancing the game at all levels is an illusion with the current match making system that Blizzard has. If they balanced the game to the highest level of play then their system would flesh everything out. Doesn't make much sense to me. What really blows my mind is balancing a game based on terrible play. Also in bw each match up was significantly different from each other and required their own separate skill sets as well as understanding of the match up. Not to mention the mechanics required to play bw was outrageous and nothing short of astounding to be successful. It was actually something to marvel over when you saw someone play well because it was seemingly impossible. Because of this your skill in each match up would vary significantly. Typically a player on iccup would lose over and over and over until something just clicked and then they would start winning consistently game after game until you hit the next rank where you would hit a wall and the cycle would start over. On September 22 2011 07:10 slam wrote: Would anyone care to explain this warning to me? Seems like a pretty reasonable observation to me since at the end of the post there is "TL;DR" with nothing following. He could have pm'd it. That post didn't contribute anything. | ||
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DyEnasTy
United States3714 Posts
On September 22 2011 06:29 QTIP. wrote: Balance at the highest level = Competitive E-Sport. That's it. Truest words. This game cant reach its potential until bliz realizes it cant be as close to balanced as possible without acknowledging that it needs balancing from the top. Dont balance an esport potential game for noobs. | ||
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P3rytt
137 Posts
In other words I agree that the game should be balanced for pro-level play but changes to the races skill requirements are vital as well to keep casual players AND attract more players. | ||
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Lysenko
Iceland2128 Posts
On September 30 2011 13:04 P3rytt wrote: The only way a game thats balanced at the highest level of play isn't at lower levels is if races require overly different levels of skill. You can't realistically have perfectly equal races as far as required skill but I feel the difference in complexity between for example zerg and protoss at low level is way too large in sc2. This is true, but to the (very limited) extent that Blizzard talks about balancing for lower leagues, it's been to address specific strategies that create huge imbalances for weaker players and that aren't key to high level play. Regarding the comment I made earlier about reaper rushes -- I'm pretty sure that's the one change that Blizzard called out as somehow being relevant to lower league balance. However, I might have misremembered, and I can't find the blog I was thinking of. It's been a long time. | ||
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mierin
United States4943 Posts
On September 22 2011 06:29 YumYumGranola wrote: Well I certainly don't know any... I'm one of those people...I spend so much time working and watching BW/SC2, I have absolutely no time to get good at the game myself  | ||
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branflakes14
2082 Posts
On September 30 2011 13:18 Lysenko wrote: This is true, but to the (very limited) extent that Blizzard talks about balancing for lower leagues, it's been to address specific strategies that create huge imbalances for weaker players and that aren't key to high level play. Regarding the comment I made earlier about reaper rushes -- I'm pretty sure that's the one change that Blizzard called out as somehow being relevant to lower league balance. However, I might have misremembered, and I can't find the blog I was thinking of. It's been a long time. There was a Zealot build time nerf a while back due to Zealot rushes at "various skill levels" as the official notes say. I've heard that apparently at the last Blizzcon this was confirmed to be Silver league, but I don't have a link to any confirmation of that. | ||
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ProxyKnoxy
United Kingdom2576 Posts
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Destructicon
4713 Posts
For me, balance would be, assuming equal skill level, 0 or close to 0 lag, that any unit combination and/or strategy/push would have a counter that can be executed equally as efficient as the said unit combination/strategy/push. This means that, it is equally important how easy it is to counter something, not only if it can be countered in theory. For example, I posted a lot on the subject of balance last week and specifically in the regarding TvP match up. What I basically boiled it down to was that not only was Protoss UP because their GW units are UP compared to what they cost, but also because Protoss has to put in a lot more effort to win in a situation of equal armies/tech. Take for example the 1/1/1, the first innate flaw is that, if you prepare for it, you open your self to other harass/pressure or build dangers. Protoss don't have a safe build, however assuming you did guess correctly and your opponent does go 1/1/1 it is still incredibly hard to hold compared to how easy it is for the terran to execute, on top of that there is a flaw in that the terran can stay on 1 base and at the 12 min mark still be equal on supply to a Protoss that was on 2 bases for 66% of the game. Last example, late game army trades. While Colossus do theoretically counter bio, and stalkers do theoretically counter vikings, in practice it is much more easy for the terran to pick off colossus, and then for his army to stim, kite zealots and destroy the remaining stalker army. Also, while HT theoretically counter both bio and Ghosts, in practice the slow speed of HT coupled with the higher range of Ghost's abilities means that Ghosts will always win in the hands of an expert assuming all else is equal. The Protoss is forced to rely on gimiky micro tricks like Warp Prism+HT to even win. So the Protoss is putting in a lot more delicate micro work then the terran, however terran still wins and/or has a higher chance to win. So in my humble opinion Protoss needs to be looked at, it is disturbing to see players like Naniwa and Sase come forward and speak about how Protoss gets demolished in Korea, on how, even if you play perfectly, the terran still wins. It is unbalanced if a race has to rely on the other race to make mistakes in order to win, it is unbalanced if you have to put in significantly more work with a race to win compared to or against another race. I think we have reached a point where we are smart enough to figure out when a "imbalance" is either a learn to play issue or truly and imbalance, and we do have numbers and a lot of smart people that can figure it out. | ||
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VTPerfect
United States487 Posts
On the other hand top level players are reaching the current skill cap/time passed limit so even a small balance change meant for lower level players has overreaching consequences at higher level play, IE zealot gateway/warpgate -10 shield nerf and -5 second on build time nerf, void ray nerf etc. All of these changes were made because Protoss is too strong at low level play, increase the skill level and all of a sudden Protoss isnt very competitive at all with players keeping their current status by getting lucky all in and cheeses off and the not so lucky ones getting demoted from where their true skill level belongs. So I think when everything is considered a 20% winrate disparity among professionals is disastrous from the game but a 20% winrate disparity in diamond league is ok because on the professional level players are already doing everything they can to fix it while diamonds are doing a fraction of the effort etc. | ||
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Toadily
United States837 Posts
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