Our Misguided Quest for Perfect Balance - Page 5

On May 12 2012 12:44 Bodzilla wrote:

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.

On May 14 2012 11:03 svi wrote:
Lol I hate when people tell others to switch race.

In warcraft 3 for example, undead players were crying about orc for years, and the orc players told them to switch race. Then it got to the point where all of the undead pros got sick of the game and all of them retired.

Some of the top undeads (lucifer) even played orc vs undead over undead vs undead because of how stupid the balance is.

Fact is, blizzard doesn't always make balanced games. Its up to the players to whine when the game is retarded, so that blizzard can patch it. If they decide not to patch it then we can move on to a different game.

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

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