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On May 12 2012 08:21 Xpace wrote:
"Why don't you switch to the overpowered race?"
Because that doesn't help the game at all -.-
I agree that it's a bit rude to say that to someone, but I think it is a valid response. If someone says "I play X, I think Y is overpowered", what exactly does he mean by that? Does he mean that he loses to Y disproportionately often? In that case, it's not a balance issue, it's just that he's not as good at that matchup. Or does he mean that if he used race Y, he would be able to beat more people than he does now? In this case, suggesting he change race is a very reasonable response.
On an individual level, you cannot reasonably compare race X to race Y unless it's the same player playing. And once it's the same player playing, saying "my race sucks" is really just saying "I chose not to play the race that I would have been best at". In which case, switch to the race that you would be best at.
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I don't know about balance, but I think it would be cool if mech was a somewhat common long-term strat in TvP, and saw a bit more play.
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There's soooo much more to "balance" than just whether or not a given unit/race/timing is super hard to deal with. The idea of the game being imbalanced can also include things like learning curve.
I'll leave zerg out of it for now simply because I PLAY zerg and anything I say will probably be discarded. That being said, you don't see a lot of terrans at like the platinum, diamond, low masters level (on the NA ladder at least), probably because of a sharp turn in the learning curve at that given skill level. However, you see terran performing well at the highest levels because of all of the potential inherent in the race (the plethora of different openings in all matchups and the potential to micro each individual unit whereas zerg and protoss micro seems to have a lower ceiling).
I'm pretty sure that's where a LOT of the balance complaining comes from.
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It is rather amusing to note that every other post is a Zerg or Protoss arguing how we should forget about balance and simply play the game when, not six months ago, these same players wre crying Terran op and supporting the snipe/emp nerf (which flash specifically addresses as being bad regardless of whether you think he is qualified to make that statement many other pros have echoed the opinion that the snipe nerf was too extreme and poorly execueted). Can you honestly say that the current strength chargelot/ht is good for TvP? can you claim it is good to have feedback counter every unit that comes out of the starport except for the viking? There is a reason no terran (pro or otherwise) is happy with TvP right now. Balance whine happens for reason other than simply wanting "your" race to be stronger.
As far as changes it would be so nice to have the raven seriously looked at; the unit is just short of being viable option in the lategame TvP and TvZ scenario's. It was the vessel that evened the playing field in BW and I doubt terran will feel comfortable in macro games till they have something akin to it back.
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This is actually really true, I switched races a few times, not because the race was imba, but I sucked at the race and it didn't fit my playstyle, or I just couldn't play it well with my level of skill.
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On May 12 2012 10:42 monkybone wrote:
There's no doubt about it, your argument doesn't work, some strategies/tactics simply own others, even though both are properly executed with approximately equal skill on an even playing table. The question becomes whether this is purely a metagame issue which can be overcome by a change of strategies or tactics, or if it transcends the current strategies and actually is an imbalance of the game itself which cannot be overcome in such a way.
Are we comparing strategies, or races? Certainly, some strategies beat others. But no race has a strategy that beats all the strategies of some other race, because then we'd see nothing but that strategy in that matchup.
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On May 12 2012 04:58 KiRiN wrote:
When Boxer started playing BW, everyone thought Terran was underpowered. He responded by innovating and creating new tactics such as his signature high ground siege tank drop. And he didn’t turn out so bad did he?
When I read Flash's comments, I thought of Savior's 3 Hatch Muta almost right away. However to prove your point about switching, it was stated at the Proleague media day that Flash was considering switching to Protoss, but decided to stay Terran because they have to straddle both games.
Honestly I read Flash's interview as mind games more than anything. Any edge you can get, take it.
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On May 12 2012 11:06 monkybone wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2012 11:03 vesicular wrote:
Honestly I read Flash's interview as mind games more than anything. Any edge you can get, take it. It seems like that is something you just want to believe...
No, it's just what I would have done in his shoes.
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On May 12 2012 11:03 monkybone wrote:
But to what degree does no strategy beat another? I don't believe that at face value, there's for example no go-to strat for terran to beat a late game Protoss macroing up his deathball.
Do you mean at the top competitive level, or in casual play?
At the pro level, it doesn't look as clear-cut as you say. You can kill or cripple him before you get there, like MVP did a couple of days ago. And MarineKing has shown an ability to go toe-to-toe with Parting in the lategame. These are the two best players at their respective matchups, and below them, no protoss players looks particularly unbeatable in PvT.
At the casual level, people suck at unit control. Wait for the protoss to screw up his position, then go in and snipe his expensive units. If he doesn't screw up at all, then he's not a casual-level player. If he screwed up and you missed it, then you missed your chance.
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Something else that I think is related to this and I believe firmly:
You as a player get NOTHING out of doing balance worrying. The more energy you expend forming an opinion of what is too strong or too weak the less energy gets dumped into improving your play.
So what if the game WERE imbalanced OR balanced at the highest level? As long as I'm improving the late-game transitions of my FE into 3-rax play versus Protoss, I'm fine. What does it matter to me that Queens are much better against early Hellions now? Just a new challenge for me to improve my control and decision-making.
Given that we cannot control in any way what the balancing of the game is (the ultimate decision resting with Blizzard's employees), it makes no sense to complain, even in the hypothetical scenario that it IS crazy imbalanced. The brain learns most from a steep challenge. Treat it like a challenge and not a barrier and you'll get something positive out of it even when you're still losing to it. And then, if and when the balance patches happen, your skill jumps to a whole other level because you were already doing your best with imperfect tools.
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On May 12 2012 04:58 KiRiN wrote:
I read the Flash interview transcript with some disappointment. When asked what difficulties he had so far encountered, he said he thought the game was not balanced. If any outsider (someone who has not played SC2 and has a fresh perspective) has the credit to make a statement on the balance of the game, it would be Flash. But is it right to label balance as a “difficulty” that he had been encountering?
Many things can be fixed. We can always improve our macro, map awareness, force fields, stutter step, larva injects, etc. Yet, most people insist on ignoring these aspects that they have control over and focus instead on aspects they do not. You almost always see someone ragequit a game with “wtf toss 4gate so op”, and never “wtf why did I forget to scout”.
My point here is that we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, if we forget about balance and just fucking play the game.
One of my friends, who is high masters and ladders about 50 games a day, plays Zerg and constantly complains (albeit humorously) about how Terran and Protoss are OP. I asked him, why don’t you switch to Terran so that you can win more? He says, I like Zerg, it’s more fun to play, I’ve been playing Zerg since BW and don’t want to switch.
In fact, every one of you reading this right now, ask yourself the following question. Which race do you think is most OP? Why don’t you switch to that race so that you can win more? Isn’t winning nice? And you will find yourself answering, I think my race has cooler units. I think it’s more fun to play my race. I like professional gamer X who plays my race. I’ve been playing P/T/Z for a long time and don’t want to switch.
Everyone feels an allegiance to their own race. That’s why there are so many balance whines in the first place. Everyone wants their own race to be more powerful. It sucks to feel like you’re playing a race that gets dominated by another race X. There are three options to get rid of this crappy feeling. You can 1) switch to a more powerful race, 2) qq and hope Blizzard buffs your race / nerfs someone else, or 3) look for some undiscovered tactic or strategy that can crush whatever you think is imba. When Boxer started playing BW, everyone thought Terran was underpowered. He responded by innovating and creating new tactics such as his signature high ground siege tank drop. And he didn’t turn out so bad did he?
Starcraft 2 has been out for less than two years. Think about how many years passed before the Brood War metagame became stabilized. We still have a long way to go. By complaining about balance, we’re not helping our own cause at all, which is playing the game because we enjoy doing so. I remember an incident during a high school varsity volleyball game, where our team was losing points because of a crappy ref. Demoralized, we turned to our coach, who responded, “You guys play your game. I’ll deal with the ref.” This translates roughly into, “you guys play your game. Let the pros deal with Blizzard”.
I play Zerg and I approve this message.
tldr; less qq, more pewpew
Fundamentally stupid post.
Just one note - you can stop whining, you can start to improve your micro, macro, timings... whatever the hell you believe you can improve. But you will never be able to play mech against protoss. You will never be able to play Battle Cruisers, unless you are far far ahead your opponent. You will never be able to stop Protos from reinforcement with mass chargelots late game.
This is stupid approach by blizz to game balance in general. And you can't do anything with that, even if you improve yourself to death.
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protoss obviously need much less apm than other 2 races. thats why foreign protoss can do well. theres only a few competent zergs and terrans on the other hand.
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I play Random at a highish diamond level, and have been playing Random since the game released, and I feel that Terran is the OP race right now. It's not because I hate Terran - I actually love to play as Terran - but it's because I can objectively say that they have the most effective openings, the best quick-fix scouting and detection option (scanning), and the best scouting denial (wall that can be lowered and raised). All this, plus flying ranged DTs, and infantry that melts everything until Protoss can get out their AOE units. Everyone complains about TvP late game, but doesn't realize you don't ever really have to fight the deathball - just kite it and force a base race and you win.
All this, but I keep playing Random, because I paid $60 for Starcraft 2 when it released and want to get more than $20 worth of the game out of my investment. I don't want any race to be better than the others due to allegiances like the OP said - I just want a fair and balanced game.
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I think terran is the best race. I play terran :D So when people say "terran op" I say "yea that's why I play it, I like winning"
I don't know, maybe I'm in the small minority who likes playing games to win, and doesn't really care about how the game is set up. Sc2 balance is like politics essentially; you can bicker and try to change it, or you can just live life.
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On May 12 2012 11:57 ThePlayer33 wrote:
protoss obviously need much less apm than other 2 races. thats why foreign protoss can do well. theres only a few competent zergs and terrans on the other hand.
Yeah, I think foreign stats have shown that protoss is the easiest zerg second and terran hardest by far. I say this as a protoss player because it's obvious that while zerg and protoss require feats of percision like mc's ffs or zenio's amazing fungals v roaches, terran itself require far too much micro for even NA gms to be great at.
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On May 12 2012 05:08 Darkedge wrote:
I find it interesting that people always find their own race the weakest and it is always the other races that are OP, this just shows how limited and biased people can be. They want to believe that when they win, they did it because of how skilled they are, overcoming the odds stacked against them. It also gives them a nice convenient excuse when they lose, they get to blame it on balance instead of looking at their own mistakes. Ultimately it all comes down to the human ego. People that can't overcome their ego will always be prevented from achieving their true potential.
not always true,
i played zerg from release even though it was unanimous that they where the hardest race to play, up till about 2 months ago when zerg was dominating, i then played random for about a month and i saw terran as the weakest race, so i switched to it to learn and explore new unit compositions.
Like Mech in tvp.
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On May 12 2012 12:11 SnareSpectre wrote:
I play Random at a highish diamond level, and have been playing Random since the game released, and I feel that Terran is the OP race right now. It's not because I hate Terran - I actually love to play as Terran - but it's because I can objectively say that they have the most effective openings, the best quick-fix scouting and detection option (scanning), and the best scouting denial (wall that can be lowered and raised). All this, plus flying ranged DTs, and infantry that melts everything until Protoss can get out their AOE units. Everyone complains about TvP late game, but doesn't realize you don't ever really have to fight the deathball - just kite it and force a base race and you win.
All this, but I keep playing Random, because I paid $60 for Starcraft 2 when it released and want to get more than $20 worth of the game out of my investment. I don't want any race to be better than the others due to allegiances like the OP said - I just want a fair and balanced game.
you need to look into TvP Mech.
my personal way of doing it is
14cc into gas before rax
only stopping scv production for your CC
factory as soon as rax finish's and another refinery
and rushing straight into siege,
if they pressure you or all in you, use 2 bunkers, one at ramp 1 at CC and pull some scv's to defend.
expand as soon as safe using siege tanks and rines to defend, take expo's 2 gas's immediately and then when you have 400 gas banked, through down another 3 fac's, 2 as reactors, another tech lab, an armory and another CC and take your third.
go for hellion, thor production using your seige tanks that you bought earlier to support your army.
it's actually ridiculously good. i have no idea why people just dont do it.
the other way is a 1/1/1 opening with an expo into hellion thor banshee, using shee's to harrass, and once you secure your third you transition into seige tanks when you start trading and then ultimately transition into split map PF's, seige tanks, vikings hellions battle cruiser raven banshee.
never lost a game when i got to that point.
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EPT
