EPTAlso, lurkers and reavers pls =(
[Balance] Weighing the Consequences - Page 2
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Grampz
United States2147 Posts
Also, lurkers and reavers pls =( | ||
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T0MORR0W
United States101 Posts
Basically we cannot know because the game evolves and until a skill cap is reached, it is impossible to make absolute balance statements. So since only relative balance can even be discussed (balance at a given skill level), it just strikes me as futile to even attempt to come to a concrete conclusion as to what would constitute true balance even if we could easily implement it. Anyway good post.  | ||
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Vehemus
United States586 Posts
The fact that carriers never, ever became viable over a year and a half of trial and error is the only item I question when it comes to balance. I feel like every unit has a use and will eventually find its place, but seeing that the carrier never did, it's probably the only one that absolutely needed to be removed or changed. | ||
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-_-
United States7081 Posts
If the choice was between honesty about balance and productivity in improving your play, choosing between the options would be difficult. But I don't think it is. | ||
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WoolySheep
Canada82 Posts
On January 11 2012 11:17 Vehemus wrote: Actually, reapers are making a huge comeback even at the pro level. They're not necessarily massable units, but triple reaper expand and reaper / hellion / medivac are both viable openers that simply require more micro than your average master league player was capable of back when reapers first were nerfed into oblivion. The fact that carriers never, ever became viable over a year and a half of trial and error is the only item I question when it comes to balance. I feel like every unit has a use and will eventually find its place, but seeing that the carrier never did, it's probably the only one that absolutely needed to be removed or changed. Have you seen White-ra's stream? | ||
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UmiNotsuki
United States633 Posts
Still, well written, though I think I disagree with comparing "Imbalance Theory" to the Birther Movement; after all, Obama factually was born in the United States, but there's no "fact" that proves that SC2 is perfectly balanced. Again, it's close, that's enough for now, but it's not an all-or-nothing thing like someone's birth place. | ||
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StarStruck
25339 Posts
On January 11 2012 07:15 OmniEulogy wrote: This is so well written and hits so many good points. I can't tell you how many times I have to go through the replays with my own team members after they complain about balance during a game and show them all the mistakes that lead to their loss. It's much easier to make excuses rather than look for solutions. -_- It comes to putting yourself in the right mindset in order to excel. | ||
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adius
United States249 Posts
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VoirDire
Sweden1923 Posts
The Birther Theory stemmed from Obama’s declaration that he was born in Hawaii, which is, in fact, a state. Theorists claimed that Obama’s birth certificate was forged—that he was born in Kenya or Indonesia, rather than Hawaii. Zero evidence based in fact has been produced, but rather theorists relied on doubt-- they merely doubted that the President is legitimately American, and that was enough. Similarly, people who claim there is imbalance in the game, generally, have little to no solid evidence that there are, indeed, balance issues. There is no doubt that it is possible for a game to be imbalanced, but there literally has not been enough time to discover any potential imbalance since retail. So your argument is this: There was (for a time) no conclusive evidence for the fact that Obama was born in the US, therefore it is similar to the abstract and unprovable concept of balance in sc2? That analogy is about as good as a magical badger, who can tap-dance moderately well (for a badger), is at tap-dancing on a human professional level. | ||
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
Nobody had solved 5 rax reaper. It was still alive and kicking. Fortunately, everybody was downright terrible at the game at that point in time, so even pros were screwing it up more often than properly executing it. It was a horrible strategy that was doing horrible things to the MU as a whole, and looking back at the history of Terran nerfs, it was only one of MANY issues that existed at the time. OPs whole argument becomes irrelevant as soon as he mentions that build IMO. | ||
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Bagi
Germany6799 Posts
On January 11 2012 10:53 mrtomjones wrote: Of course the other issue I have with protoss is that their air is simply a gimmick. You can't go Air Toss and win. Even having voids in your army seems inferior lately as I havnt seen a Toss do that for awhile now. Blizzard wants both mech and bio to viable for Terran so why shouldnt Toss be able to go air as an actual strat rather than a gimmick. I think it is hard to deny that air is a gimmick for toss. Versus zerg it is typically only used as an opener and then largely ignored and against terran it is even more uncommon. I'd love to be able to see a large toss fleet in the endgame... Terran air is just as gimmicky as toss air, if not even more so. A flying DT and a fighter that only shoots at air targets. Zerg is pretty much the only race with a general purpose air unit in the mutalisk, its quite similar to BW. I'm not sure what exactly makes it such a great injustice. Besides, bio is the equivalent of gateway units and mech is the equivalent of robo. Air doesn't really have anything to do with these. | ||
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Abort Retry Fail
2636 Posts
On January 11 2012 10:49 Sabu113 wrote: Terrible OP. First the ad hominem by comparing balance complaints to the birther movement somewhat delegitimize what you attempt to do with funny captions and paragraphs. Secondly, you seem to have no understanding about why the 1/1/1 slowly phased out. Map changes played just as large a part as the evolution of the 1gate fe and the immortal range boost. Lastly, you have no sense of context. You ignore the environment surrounding the 5rax reaper and the 1/1/1 time (ignore blanket emps as well). Your argument would sound better if you used the analogy more sparingly rather than batter us with it. Questions regarding balance and the viability of the game were and are legitimate. There are metrics which you mock in this post to demonstrate that the game did not appear to be balanced. Those backed up multiple observations of the state of the game. Even pros who had a vested stake in arguing that the game was a legitimate E-sport have been vocal at times. To not conclude that the game was imbalanced or even broken after watching games or looking at various metrics would be as put in a famous article be "blind." When was BW considered balanced by Bliz? Not in 1.00 but in 1.08. There have been better arguments citing BW's long run trends as an example of waiting for metagame shifts rather than balance issues.There are multiple issues with this line of argument. For my part, I like the marketing one which can be found in my sig. If a pro like Bisu though that then imagine what a refined Korean audience which you are trying to attract must have thought. Oddly timed post. Figured by now most have kind of settled on the quality of the game. I suppose the discussion might be interesting so at least the op sounds goodish While I agree, this post could be written in a less aggressive and more calm manner. These are good and valid points though. | ||
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RedDragon571
United States633 Posts
Sc2 and blizzard sold its soul to the devil because it thought it could attract a more casual (larger) player base by simplifying game mechanics, removing micro relative to bw, speeding up the game pace (macro mechanics mules, inject, chrono) adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) and removing terrain advantages. Sc2 is better looking and way more easy than BW. Yes, we have seen huge growth in western e-sports because we attracted that larger casual, (much less patient and hardworking) player base. All at the cost of reducing the "staying power" and "lasting appeal" of the game. I still love starcraft 2, because compared to every other game out there it has the highest learning curve, greatest strategic depth and biggest challenge of any other RTS. However, All those decisions, to make the game easier, made it much more blurry at top level play. I doubt we will see many repeat GSL winners, I think the jury is out on whether the game has the difficulty and mastery, that will let the top players stay at the top. The player with the best mechanics and decision making should win most of the time. However, In ladder, and elsewhere, I feel there is a problem of mechanically inferior players that copy a timing push, who get out X number of units at X time and simply just win because the copied a pro players build. I think it is too easy to imitate pro players because the mechanical bar is so low. All of this contributes to each game being not as entertaining. 1. Most sc2 games decide the winner in one climatic battle. 2. It is much more difficult for someone to come back from being "behind" because of the macro mechanics. 3. Micro is far less interesting and less rewarding. B team pro can easily copy A team pro's strategy and execute to a similar degree. 4. Macro is power overwhelming, if you have more units, you can kill your opponent, because, terrain advantages positioning and map control are much weaker. 5. Mechanics are so simple even a bronze league player can almost pull of a Korean pro level timing push early in the game. 6.PvP and Z v Z are uninteresting to all but people who play them, due to game design flaws, not spectator friendly. TLDR: a bit of a ramble, but basically, Game Design has simplified Starcraft into something everyone CAN play easily, but simultaneously made it into something less interesting TO play or watch. Expansions are expected to reboot franchise, and will lack the "lasting appeal" that a better designed game like Brood War was unless fundamental game design is altered. | ||
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Haiq343
United States2548 Posts
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Rkie
United States1278 Posts
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Lovedrop/tsl3/finals/g2p1.jpg) | ||
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Lavi
Bangladesh793 Posts
they hate the strength of all ins, timing, mules warpgate, deathball , nondynamic play... etc. but it all comes off interpreted as balance whine most the time | ||
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rd
United States2586 Posts
On January 11 2012 07:24 mbr2321 wrote: Consider, then, that perhaps there is something wrong with the Protoss mindset within the general trend of strategic evolution. Perhaps Protoss should be looking for different ways of dealing with Zerg and Terran strategy instead of blaming the game. But, given this perspective, you can then make the exact same argument that protoss is underpowered and it's a balance issue. (I'm not arguing whether or not there is any balance issues) You can't blanket such large and vague generalizations without REALLY good evidence and fairly specific examples. The same is true towards balance complaints. Each attempt to pin balance/skill deficits on a player should be analyzed objectively, case by case. Problem is, very few if anyone is really qualified to do so. No one is able to predict the meta game shifts or uprising of players, and evolving meta games definitely have a tendency to skew win rates. | ||
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kochujang
Germany1226 Posts
On January 11 2012 12:21 RedDragon571 wrote: [...]adding simplified unit counters (bonus dmg) [...] How long will this misconception persist? | ||
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hummingbird23
Norway359 Posts
Proof? Well, the 1/1/1 might be a good example to start with? Knowing four minutes ahead of time that this is going to hit, pro-players still struggle to beat this. The result is really bad games. OP acknowledges this. Yet somehow, manages to completely skip past the point. And seriously, stop confusing the mindset that maximizes one's morale and motivation to improve with the actual state of the game. It's fucking annoying and a logical fallacy. | ||
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Humanfails
224 Posts
assault marine building bombs reaper building bombs assault marine cliff jump Reaper cliff jump [...can leap over cliffs...] Tyranid-hydralisk hydralisk Also, the reaper and assault marine both use DUAL wield pistols. maybe you're trying to equate real world racism which is why people bring up the birth certificate to in game racism (or race favoritism) to explain why people continually cy imbalance? If so you could've said it simpler. Also the game isn't balanced, because it should be at all levels of play. brood war is actually quite balanced, that even a new player can learn how to counter build relatively quickly. sc2 requires lots of build order learning and cutting down costs and focus to counter something, or you get rolled. Its that simple. It means that other units and build orders and timings are so strong that unless you know exactly how to beat it, you fail every time but the time you execute the counter 100% perfectly. such as the 3 rax all in. And dustin browder said in his interview "..We want degrees of success in this game..". if by degrees of success, he meant you must have a full 100% degee of success or die, then he succeeded. It took ungodly numbers of games to figure out how to fight off colossus rush with pure raoch and survive. That is not balanced, because the solution doesn't come easily. A game is more balanced where the ability to counter your opponent is neither too hard nor too easy. We could take innumerable fighting games as examples, and I'll take DoA4. DoA4 routinely had the ninjas at the S rank spot, while christie was routinely rank F. The reason is that christie doesn't have an equal number of counters or crushing blows to ninjas, and she actujally has the least crushing blows and "soft" counters in the game, even though she's faster than all but ninja. To win with christie you had to be ungodly better, and it basically ended up as ninja users have a slight advantage if you were actually better than them in all regards, because while you're better, one luck hit will turn the tables on you simply because a worse player got lucky. This is what idra is talking about for sc2. Now back to DoA4, christie got crushed by almost all other character's moves. She has the same health bar, she has the same or more variations of punches and kicks, but at the end of the day, her tools are still weaker and more prone to being abused by everyone else, particularly ninja users, since ninjas have the best speed in the game and more tools that fake/trick opponents into countering wrong. So if a ninja user can trick a christie user into countering wrong once, they open up a hug lead with follow up attacks. If a christie user tricks a ninja user into countering wrong once, she gets a "slight" lead advantage, which can then be used again to gain another "slight" advantrage, until she finally wins. In one hand, you have a ninja that can create a big advantage and outright win, or make it much more difficult for you to come back, on the other hand you have christie who must be played supremely at all points or you lose. I played christie because she was fun and because I liked the fighting style, not because I wanted to win more. if I wanted to win more, I would've taken ninja. I play sc2 zerg too. take of this what you will, the analogy and the basic concepts behind balance and such translate to sc2 just as much as DoA4. Its like I said about terrain advantage. No, zerg doesnt need siege tank to abuse terrain like terran, but zerg could use something DIFFERENT and racially their own, by having the ability to crush terran with a counter for taking that terrain, if th zerg acts on time. Thats called giving all races equal opportunity toolsets. | ||
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