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The match making system should filter out imbalances lower level.
If there was an imbalance lower down the ladder between races A and B (A being the harder race)
Then a player who always plays as A would be matched against people of lower skill level playing B.
Thus the games would be balanced.
It may be considered unfair as two people with the exact same skill would be in different leagues.
But once someone who plays as A improves and gets past the issues causing imbalance, then he will leap upwards.
I'm a gold Terran player. I think the game is balanced at the top leagues, which is how it should be. Lower down the ladder i do think there are a few small imbalances, mainly down to things in one race requiring more multitasking and micro. Remember this is GOLD level multitasking and micro.
At the end of the day I'm getting matched against people where i win 50% of the time. (except today.. where i only won 10% of the time ) So it is enjoyable.
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On September 22 2011 07:57 doko100 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:48 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
It wouldn't be good if for example race A relied heavily on microed units to win games, while race B didn't have any micro potential at all. Race A might still be 100% balanced with race B at pro level, but race B would be more and more dominant the further down you go from there. Not to mention few people would want to play race A. Basically one race shouldn't have a much higher skill cap and still only come level with the other. Not only will pros shift to the one with the lower skill cap that offers the same success, but that will filter down to all levels of play.
But I'm not 100% sure this problem exists in SC2 atm. Protoss is a *little* more micro intensive, Zerg is a *little* less and Terran is probably somewhere in the middle. But they all have fiddly micro unit opportunities, and unit comps that you can just 1A at your opponent with and win provided you have superior macro. This is wrong, Terran is by far the most micro intense race of all 3, that's also why Terran is the hardest race to play for lower level league players. Zerg and Protoss actually both require very little to no micro compared to terran units.
You are not just wrong, but borderline retarded, roach/ling and marine/marader >>>>> stalker/zealot/sentry by FAR. ESPECIALLY at lower leagues when they cant hit those critical forcefields. There will be more 1a, which favours zerg and terran.
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If they want to get into masters and they believe there race is holding them back. They can easily go look up some builds that are really aggressive and cheesy and be top masters in no time ;D
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On September 22 2011 07:57 doko100 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:48 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
It wouldn't be good if for example race A relied heavily on microed units to win games, while race B didn't have any micro potential at all. Race A might still be 100% balanced with race B at pro level, but race B would be more and more dominant the further down you go from there. Not to mention few people would want to play race A. Basically one race shouldn't have a much higher skill cap and still only come level with the other. Not only will pros shift to the one with the lower skill cap that offers the same success, but that will filter down to all levels of play.
But I'm not 100% sure this problem exists in SC2 atm. Protoss is a *little* more micro intensive, Zerg is a *little* less and Terran is probably somewhere in the middle. But they all have fiddly micro unit opportunities, and unit comps that you can just 1A at your opponent with and win provided you have superior macro. This is wrong, Terran is by far the most micro intense race of all 3, that's also why Terran is the hardest race to play for lower level league players. Zerg and Protoss actually both require very little to no micro compared to terran units.
Terran from Diamond down is just mass MMM then 1AT. Thats micro intensive? Putting all your barracks on one hot key and spamming Marine/Marauder is not tough. And in lower leauge where worker production isn't great, MULEs are completly game breaking
Protoss have to keep Zealots in front of one of the games fastest units. They have to keep Stalkers near slow clunky Collosus. A sentry away from your army should be the stuff of nightmares for a protossm They MUST make units while looking at the place to warp in.
Zerg. Creep spreading and Larvae injecting are things lower leauge players do not do or barely do. I have killed many full mana queens in gold. Thats alot more micro intensive then your giving credit for.
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I'm a low level player, and I only want blizzard to focus on balancing Professional calibur play.
The alternative is them seeing that bronze league marines die to banelings and nerfing banelings cause bronze can't split, etc. That is not what anyone wants.
Most stupid imba rants can be solved by "just play better". If there ever comes a time where no level of play can win against something, that's the time to balance.
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On September 22 2011 08:08 Orcasgt24 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 07:57 doko100 wrote:On September 22 2011 06:48 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
It wouldn't be good if for example race A relied heavily on microed units to win games, while race B didn't have any micro potential at all. Race A might still be 100% balanced with race B at pro level, but race B would be more and more dominant the further down you go from there. Not to mention few people would want to play race A. Basically one race shouldn't have a much higher skill cap and still only come level with the other. Not only will pros shift to the one with the lower skill cap that offers the same success, but that will filter down to all levels of play.
But I'm not 100% sure this problem exists in SC2 atm. Protoss is a *little* more micro intensive, Zerg is a *little* less and Terran is probably somewhere in the middle. But they all have fiddly micro unit opportunities, and unit comps that you can just 1A at your opponent with and win provided you have superior macro. This is wrong, Terran is by far the most micro intense race of all 3, that's also why Terran is the hardest race to play for lower level league players. Zerg and Protoss actually both require very little to no micro compared to terran units. Terran from Diamond down is just mass MMM then 1AT. Thats micro intensive? Putting all your barracks on one hot key and spamming Marine/Marauder is not tough. And in lower leauge where worker production isn't great, MULEs are completly game breaking Protoss have to keep Zealots in front of one of the games fastest units. They have to keep Stalkers near slow clunky Collosus. A sentry away from your army should be the stuff of nightmares for a protossm They MUST make units while looking at the place to warp in. Zerg. Creep spreading and Larvae injecting are things lower leauge players do not do or barely do. I have killed many full mana queens in gold. Thats alot more micro intensive then your giving credit for.
sorry but protoss is the easiest race to play at low level. its very easy for terran and zerg to lose the whole army if you don't take good care of marines/lings . you also need to scout a bit better as a zerg which makes it more difficult than terran. but its much more easy for terran to lose army when it is badly positioned than it is for toss.
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On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
There's also somewhat common allusions to the fact that BW took 10 years to balance and that we should be patient and not overreact.
It took four balance patches. And that's not four since the release of Brood War, but four since the release of vanilla Starcraft. The last of which came out in spring 2001.
10 years? no. not even close.
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I think you should only balance for the highest level, because at the lower levels, those players can't feel those subtle imbalances.
Unless you have really good macro and mechanics, you're not being disadvantaged by tiny advantages.
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On September 22 2011 08:05 izgodlee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 07:57 doko100 wrote:On September 22 2011 06:48 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
It wouldn't be good if for example race A relied heavily on microed units to win games, while race B didn't have any micro potential at all. Race A might still be 100% balanced with race B at pro level, but race B would be more and more dominant the further down you go from there. Not to mention few people would want to play race A. Basically one race shouldn't have a much higher skill cap and still only come level with the other. Not only will pros shift to the one with the lower skill cap that offers the same success, but that will filter down to all levels of play.
But I'm not 100% sure this problem exists in SC2 atm. Protoss is a *little* more micro intensive, Zerg is a *little* less and Terran is probably somewhere in the middle. But they all have fiddly micro unit opportunities, and unit comps that you can just 1A at your opponent with and win provided you have superior macro. This is wrong, Terran is by far the most micro intense race of all 3, that's also why Terran is the hardest race to play for lower level league players. Zerg and Protoss actually both require very little to no micro compared to terran units. You are not just wrong, but borderline retarded, roach/ling and marine/marader >>>>> stalker/zealot/sentry by FAR. ESPECIALLY at lower leagues when they cant hit those critical forcefields. There will be more 1a, which favours zerg and terran.
http://sc2ranks.com/stats/league/eu/1/all
Terran has by far the most players in bronze and silver, in gold, platinum, diamond and masters there are alot more zergs and protoss players, which is clear evidence that terran at around that level of play (gold-master) is not only the weakest race, no, it's BY FAR the weakest race.
If it goes from being the most player race (by far) to being the least played race, then this is obviously down to imbalance, I don't think you realize how hard it is for gold or platinum league terrans to not lose all their marines to banelings or collossi. Terran units are extremely fragile and for players with bad control (gold-platinum and even up to masters to some extent) it's extremely hard to not lose their entire army in a split second. That's a problem that is exclusive to terran in the lower leagues. I started off as a silver league player and I'm now in low masters on the EU server and it was extremely hard to beat zerg banelings when I was in silver league, simply because I couldn't split my marines, whereas the zerg only a-moved his banelings.
Same goes for collossus, if a terran bio army a-moves into a collossus deathball it all dies, you need to kite to survive and realistically everyone below platinum can't kite for shit.
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Your comparison to broodwar is completely valid, however I feel that the thing that needs to be put out there is you need to play faster than sjow does to just macro in BW. Not attack, not organize army, not scout, just macro. SC2's UI does away with that, so as a result, bad macro between a gold zerg and a gold terran is pretty equal, and also, while banelings will kill a LOT of marines because the marines sit there, more banelings hit tanks, so as a result the game is still balanced. It's not good gameplay, but it's balanced.
I'd still say balance for the highest level because SC2's UI makes it such that instead of needing 100 apm to macro as protoss and 200 to macro as terran, it might take 40 as one race and 50 as another. The differences are there, but it's nowhere near as pronounced.
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Until you play (nearly) perfectly none of those balances will come into play.
Until you stop playing against yourself (meaning you refine your play to the point of Professional) you cannot be expected or allowed to cry "imbalance!".
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On September 22 2011 06:33 Roxy wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 06:31 Shaetan wrote:On September 22 2011 06:29 YumYumGranola wrote:On September 22 2011 06:27 Shaetan wrote:On September 22 2011 06:18 YumYumGranola wrote:
the fact is that almost every single spectator of SC2 events is also a player. If there's anything that dissuades new players it has a negative affect on new spectators which hurts the feasibility foreign tournaments and therefore the entire foreign scene. This is not true. Well I certainly don't know any... Well then by jove it must be true! I think it is more reasonable to assume that most SC2 viewers are also players than it is to assume that most are not players How would someone understand the game if they do not play it? Do you regularly view anything you dont understand?
You incorrectly assume this. There are MANY people who are not players anymore who still watch SC2. This is a fact and get over it. Its actually implausible to assume that something that is watched is also played by everyone watching. Just wrong if you look at it all.
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i think blizzard is doing a good job at balancing the game on every level. While zerg might be an a click to victory race in lower leagues, they still have to survive the early game ^.^ . Most changes are either affecting only people that will fight with a click or will not be noticed by people below 150 apm.
Recent fungal is probably a good example, it mostly does the same, got weaker where it had to. But the timings when to cast etc are now changed, so it grants more time to react and other things most players won't even be able to use.
Or in other words, people like me can still spam it like crazy and kill tons of stuff, but at the upper level you might want to be more effective and save yourself a fungal hear and there.
Or even save a drop of marines with your medivac heal.
(I hope to see a cloud of medivacs now saving a giant blob of fungaled marines with stutter step healing, so they target the weaker saving every marine with a few hp left, but since the zerg thought 2 are enough he is just baffled seeing the marines retreat into safety.)
Oh back on topic, so blizzard is not listening to anyone and still doing their thing, and the game gets better and better. (easier and harder to play at the same time  ).
No one liked the immortal, since you have to move and target fire with them. Now with a range of 6 you only have to targetfire with them, they are still messy, just not as bad. And they are still better if you move them along with target fire.
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BW is balanced through maps, not patches. The last important BW patch was in 2001 (3 years after release) and after that the maps dictated the balance. Blizzard needs to let the community play with the maps to see if balance can be achieved that way.
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On September 22 2011 06:25 YumYumGranola wrote:
You are all making the mistake of thinking that when I was talking about BW imbalance I was talking about the equivalent of Silver league. No this was like huge imbalance at Master's league level players.
Anybody remember that "Gold to Master's Think I can do It?" or whatever thread? If this was BW, the answer would be. "Switch to Toss /thread" I really don't think you're appreciating this.
You still cannot balance a game around anything but the top players. First of all, If you did so, all big tournaments would be a complete joke since race X would be winning them all. Furthermore, you don't really need to balance it at lower levels since there are tons of easy trash strategies that can net you a win in the lower leagues, so balance isn't really a concern there.
Your point about BW being imbalanced at lower levels holds some merit since terran required so much more macro than toss that bad players' games were dominated by toss. However, this does not apply to sc2 at all.
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Just because you were a very bad Terran player, doesn't mean TvP was as imbalanced as you say at lower levels. Every C Terran player in the world (sans one; that is you) could beat a D Protoss 95 times out of a hundred.
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On September 22 2011 08:05 izgodlee wrote:Show nested quote +On September 22 2011 07:57 doko100 wrote:On September 22 2011 06:48 Monkeyballs25 wrote:
It wouldn't be good if for example race A relied heavily on microed units to win games, while race B didn't have any micro potential at all. Race A might still be 100% balanced with race B at pro level, but race B would be more and more dominant the further down you go from there. Not to mention few people would want to play race A. Basically one race shouldn't have a much higher skill cap and still only come level with the other. Not only will pros shift to the one with the lower skill cap that offers the same success, but that will filter down to all levels of play.
But I'm not 100% sure this problem exists in SC2 atm. Protoss is a *little* more micro intensive, Zerg is a *little* less and Terran is probably somewhere in the middle. But they all have fiddly micro unit opportunities, and unit comps that you can just 1A at your opponent with and win provided you have superior macro. This is wrong, Terran is by far the most micro intense race of all 3, that's also why Terran is the hardest race to play for lower level league players. Zerg and Protoss actually both require very little to no micro compared to terran units. You are not just wrong, but borderline retarded, roach/ling and marine/marader >>>>> stalker/zealot/sentry by FAR. ESPECIALLY at lower leagues when they cant hit those critical forcefields. There will be more 1a, which favours zerg and terran.
At the ultra low levels stim is good, but players learn to forcefield shittily before they kite worth a shit, and vs Zerg is where Terran micros most.
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Absolutely balance for the top, the reason is that balance at the top maybe not fully will but can trickle down, say if P is balanced in PvZ at the top but Z is OP (THIS IS HYPOTHETICAL) at mid-levels the mid-level gamers can begin to learn what the pros are doing, obviously this won't be 100% as some things the pros do will just be too difficult but it's mitigation. On the other hand if you make it balanced at mid-levels but by connection make P OP at the top then nothing can be done to fix that, the UP Zerg can't learn from the lower levels, the lower level Zergs would be even only because the lower level P would be using non-optimal play.
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What is the highest level of play? Maybe we should just have Automaton 2000 Micro Bot's play 1v1's in all matchups and balance the game around that?
I agree with the OP for the most part. As a spectator of starcraft 2 I feel its very important to keep the game balanced at its highest level. Keeping the game challenging for all skill levels is obviously very important for maintaining the popular growth of SC2, but also extremely difficult.
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is no one reading his post?!..the bigger theme rather than the obvious answers people keep asking is that for all we know, Zerg or some other race may be far OP, and we have no idea because we aren't playing SC2 on the highest level..and I actually agree. I believe Terran is this easiest to play, so perhaps Terran has reached its ceiling already, but if Jaedong came over and showed Zergs how to play properly, who knows what could happen..
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EPT
