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On July 29 2012 21:22 Toadvine wrote: I can only imagine what a pro player, whose livelihood depends on the state of the game, feels when he watches an interview like this. You have my sympathies, guys.
Last time I heard livelihood matters mentioned by progamers in connection with balance issues was in 2010.
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On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier.
Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...
Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant.
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On July 30 2012 02:58 CikaZombi wrote: The muta problem he addresses here is specifically after the initial harassment comes and the Protoss stabilizes, gets his third base and the zerg is maxed on muta/ling for some time.
Yep
Now, the problem with going apeshit 3 freaking stargates and pump only pheonix is the switch to roaches that could just murder you,
This is not very accurate. You can't go reactionary double Stargate because you straight up die against mutas. Your first 2 phoenix wont do shit if you face 10 mutas and it will get even worse. You won't be able to build enough phoenix to match the muta numbers. (I have seen that work in some few cases (when you mix it with stalkers at the beginning) but i don't think its a good/strong way of dealing with it) Roach switches have nothing to do with it.
but if you already have a Sgate, put down another one chrono 10 pheonix, chrono the upgrade and fucking kite and murder his 2000/2000 in mutas.
this sounds easy how you write it. It takes quite some time after you can afford the fleet beacon after investing in 2 Stargates. The upgrade only comes into play if the zerg refuses to tech switch in late game. And they really should imho. I think a switch into brutlords that benefit from the ground melee upgrades (from zerglings) and the upgrades from air is the strongest answer.
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On July 29 2012 19:53 zezamer wrote: 24.50-26.30 tvz fine Can't watch it right now - did he say it's fine or will get fine with time? Because the former might be a bit controversial.
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On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant.
And hence we got not so exciting unit afterward.
p.s. the bolded part wouldn't actually be that bad as every single race would have their imbalances. p.p.s. plagues don't actually kill everything it touches
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On July 30 2012 03:33 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant. And hence we got not so exciting unit afterward. p.s. the bolded part wouldn't actually be that bad as every single race would have their imbalances. p.p.s. plagues don't actually kill everything it touches Honestly, its impossible to say at this point whether it would be "that bad" or not. I'm thinking its more likely that ridiculously OP crap would pop up rather than not.
I do know plague doesn't kill everything (or actually anything), I was just trying to go with the theme "make everything ridiculously OP".
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On July 30 2012 03:37 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:33 Xiphos wrote:On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant. And hence we got not so exciting unit afterward. p.s. the bolded part wouldn't actually be that bad as every single race would have their imbalances. p.p.s. plagues don't actually kill everything it touches Honestly, its impossible to say at this point whether it would be "that bad" or not. I'm thinking its more likely that ridiculously OP crap would pop up rather than not. I do know plague doesn't kill everything (or actually anything), I was just trying to go with the theme "make everything ridiculously OP".
Fungal is better than plague...why would any Zerg want that back? Those items you mentioned would be severely toned down because of the pathing in SC2 clumping so many units together. So...., if you put them in untouched, yes, it would be extremely OP for all the races. It would make fights much much quicker than they are, though a side effect of that is that positioning would become extremely important.
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On July 30 2012 01:42 BoX wrote: God damn someof you guys are so rude and vicious.
No wonder Blizz is so hesitant to communicate with you @.@
I think Browder's "wait-and-see" methodology of dealing with issues in the game is the best way to approach balance in a game that is so complex. There's so much to go through before someone can confidently say, "yes, this is broken and there is NOTHING that can be done about it."
If Blizzard implemented changes rapidly then the metagame would have no time at all to develop. Shit, half of the amazing stuff in BW was discovered because people lhad to scrounge out just that last tiny little advantage. That's how BW was balanced - over huge amounts of playtime.
BW wasn't balanced because Blizzard interfered with it constantly. SC2 is rough, still has 2 expansions to go through, and needs a lot of settling before it can be polished. IMO. BW wasnt even fundamentally balanced, we eventually balanced the game for a particular kind of map, right down to standard mineral types and distance of nats to thirds and so forth. Variation from that typically radically altered balance, and even on more standard maps there was typically 1-2 matchups that simply werent fair. Ultimately, it should be the community's job to recognize the geographical and resource advantages/disadvantages of each race and begin to create a basic balanced template for it. Realistically the game will never be balanced by strategy, but by fair and reasonable map tinkering we can do it.
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On July 30 2012 03:44 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:37 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:33 Xiphos wrote:On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant. And hence we got not so exciting unit afterward. p.s. the bolded part wouldn't actually be that bad as every single race would have their imbalances. p.p.s. plagues don't actually kill everything it touches Honestly, its impossible to say at this point whether it would be "that bad" or not. I'm thinking its more likely that ridiculously OP crap would pop up rather than not. I do know plague doesn't kill everything (or actually anything), I was just trying to go with the theme "make everything ridiculously OP". Fungal is better than plague...why would any Zerg want that back? Those items you mentioned would be severely toned down because of the pathing in SC2 clumping so many units together. So...., if you put them in untouched, yes, it would be extremely OP for all the races. It would make fights much much quicker than they are, though a side effect of that is that positioning would become extremely important. You can substitute plague with dark swarm, its not really the point.
The point is that giving each race unbalanced stuff and expecting perfect balance afterwards is a little naive.
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DB is awesome, I really like to hear him talk about StarCraft, I'm glad SC2 isn't BW, and I'll leave it at that.
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On July 30 2012 03:55 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:44 Wegandi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:37 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:33 Xiphos wrote:On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches...Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant. And hence we got not so exciting unit afterward. p.s. the bolded part wouldn't actually be that bad as every single race would have their imbalances. p.p.s. plagues don't actually kill everything it touches Honestly, its impossible to say at this point whether it would be "that bad" or not. I'm thinking its more likely that ridiculously OP crap would pop up rather than not. I do know plague doesn't kill everything (or actually anything), I was just trying to go with the theme "make everything ridiculously OP". Fungal is better than plague...why would any Zerg want that back? Those items you mentioned would be severely toned down because of the pathing in SC2 clumping so many units together. So...., if you put them in untouched, yes, it would be extremely OP for all the races. It would make fights much much quicker than they are, though a side effect of that is that positioning would become extremely important. You can substitute plague with dark swarm, its not really the point. The point is that giving each race unbalanced stuff and expecting perfect balance afterwards is a little naive.
I agree, however, I think the point of the folks who enjoy those spells (and I do!), is that they are interesting, add unique cool mechanics that can be game changing and alter the pace of the game, but they aren't just spells or units that only have benefits.
This is why I said no Zerg who is worth their salt would ever want plague over fungal. Fungal has no negatives. It is a snare, a major damage spell, and AoE, and relatively cheap (Lair, not Hive). It is not interesting in the least. There's not much tension. It also makes all the other units in the Zerg arsenal so much better - Broodlords, banelings, zerglings, roaches, etc.
The point I'm making is people want unique, interesting mechanics in the game, not boring one dimensional (read: only good) mechanics and units. The reaver was a fun unit -- its drawback was extremely slow, randomness of its ball of death, required lots of attention / micro to be useful, etc. etc. Contrast that to the Colossus. It's night / day.
I don't necessarily want the BW units back; I want something new, but something that hits all the great points and flavor that the BW units did. This is why I like the new Protoss harass unit. It adds more skill and 'oooh ahhh' moments. The war hound is a boring unit, same with the 'fire bat hellion', but the new spider mine is looking good, but I don't like it being a unit you build from the Factory. I'd rather make the spider mine more like the reaver. Make it an upgrade and let the hellion buy them for something like 50 minerals, but get rid of that countdown thing (if the opponent can see it...).
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So from the video, Dustin Browder: (1) About the queen buff: DB: Queen buff is great and TvZ is balanced;
(2) About PvZ 2-base dilemma: DB: Protoss players will figure out something new;
(3) About Broodlord/Infestor composition, or Archon toilet: DB: HOTS new units may fix the problem.
My Response: (1) What? Terran was dominated in TvZ before the queen buff? Did you ever read the TLPD winrate? It was f***ing 50%-50% before the queen buff. It was considered as the most balanced and less whined matchup of all time. DB's answer is such a shocker.
(2), (3) What exactly does he think protoss is going to do? No one knows, even Startale Protoss are struggling against Zerg. The carrier play doesn't work very well if it got scouted (which is very likely to be scouted). So it left Protoss no choice but to do all those mid-game timing pushes and all-ins. It's the famous phrase: "kill it before broodlord".
The problem is not that Protoss can't win against Zerg on a 50-50 basis. It's just there is only one strategy: "kill it before broodlord". How stupid is that. And Dustin Browder is talking about muta in the interview. Does he even know what's a 2-base dilemma in PvZ? Even that NASL interviewer is much more knowledgeable than DB.
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"Terran used to do well so we'll wait" What a HORRIBLE game design/balancing philosophy. It's like he's living in the Steppes of War era.
Everything else was just the standard PR fluff. I feel like he says the exact same things for every interview.
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On July 30 2012 04:23 oxxo wrote: Everything else was just the standard PR fluff. I feel like he says the exact same things for every interview. This is true.
I find it difficult to take any direct balance comments from Blizzard, because I always feel like theres so much PR involved in it. Even if something was horribly broken, they would never directly admit it - maybe fix it in a later patch, but they would still act like everything was a-ok up front.
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On July 30 2012 03:14 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 03:02 Xiphos wrote: I think that the thing that BW more balanced is because it was balanced upon unbalanced. Every single units have its like "omg this race is so imba!!!" but then your race have its imbalanced weapon in the repertoire to 'counter'.
Yes, and that is exactly the "happy accident" I talked about earlier. Imagine them suddenly giving hellions spider mines, replacing motherships with recalling arbiters, replacing fungal with plague that kills pretty much everything it touches... Could the game be balanced after that? I think that 95% of the time it would not be. Somehow with BW all these imbalances align pretty much perfectly, and its mostly out of chance. I think balacing on imbalance is one of the hardest things you can do, especially when SC2 is much less mechanically dependant. People keep talking about the happy concidence when BW is mentioned but it's not that, it's just how it looks. BW is the way it is because blizzard was freaking lazy that's it, they stopped re-"balancing" it. It's hard to say now but let's go to like 2002, would you at that point of the game as blizzard say, yea the game is perfectly balanced let's not tweak anything. Scouts are fine, storms are fine, reavers are ok. Everything is fine, let's just pack and leave.
No. Blizzard got lazy, didn't tweak the game(i'm not saying they should'have, quite the opposite), it's because of this and the fact that we did get lucky in the sense that there were no MAJOR, outstanding imbalances in the game that the pros(koreans, i bet if foreigners would play in such capacity as koreans and with the same mentality as forum-goers back then - bw wouldn't have gone the way it went with the korean influence) figured out the game.
Leave the game alone for years, have a bunch of people studying it = game gets figured out, stands out as balanced. The reason I personally believe this is because I've seen it in numerous games. EQ/WoW comparison stands the most for me, there was a server in EQ that remained unchanged for ages and bunch of stuff was "IMBA" yet people adjusted to it and moved on, yet the same can't be said about WoW where you have a patch re-balance every other month for PvP -- and then people say it's a crappy unbalanced game.
The more you "balance" the game, less time people focus on improving/adjusting to the game and more on whining and waiting for changes...
But sure BW is perfect, as is the scout and the queen before Zero started using them. Imagine current Blizzard having BW1 in their hands throughout the game's history -- a lot of units would get changed certaintly.
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On July 30 2012 02:58 CikaZombi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 01:26 Toadvine wrote:On July 29 2012 23:26 Na_Dann_Ma_GoGo wrote:On July 29 2012 23:14 Toadvine wrote:On July 29 2012 23:11 Talin wrote:Despite all that I think about SC2 development and direction (none of it being very good in my eyes), I still can't help but like Dustin Browder.  He does seem like a nice, reasonable person. It's kind of unfortunate that he ended up in a position that is way out of his depth. What do you mean "way out of his depth"? Who would you recommend as a Lead RTS Designer? I mean there may be some other guys within Blizzard, but that doesn't really matter, as they'll share a similar vision and do communicate together anyways. And considering that other than Starcraft 2 there haven't been any great RTS lately and even less so RTS with that kind of gameplay, who's a better fit for Lead Designer? Or is there just none? ;P That is actually a very difficult question, one which I don't know how to answer. It's a lot easier to criticize specific decisions the SC2 team had made, than to point out a person who could make it all work right. And yes, SC2 is a very good RTS, probably one of the best in recent memory. So in that sense, Browder has proven his qualifications. Where he is out of his depth, is as an overseer of the most competitive e-sport on the planet. When I listen to his interviews, he still seems like he's balancing C&C for a relatively small online community, and thinking in terms that would make sense there, but are woefully misplaced for SC2. I mean, listen to him talk about Phoenix, and how maxed Protosses lose to mass Muta, and how they could've easily afforded some Phoenix with the range upgrade. That's the kind of naive counter-based thought process that would be fine for most RTSes, but for a game with as powerful of a pro community as SC2, it's just stupid and inadequate. There's a very good reason you don't see reactive Phoenix against Mutas, and the fact that Browder doesn't understand it even after 2 years of professional SC2, is, to me, more proof of how out of place he is. You can see this every time some kind of high level problem with the game gains traction in the community and he gets asked about it in an interview, and is surprised that this kind of thing even happens. See the MLG interview on Mothership vs Broodlord/Infestor for an example.On July 29 2012 23:43 monkybone wrote: Funny thing is that Browder is 1000 times better at balancing this game than anyone in this thread. The stuff he says is at about the level of a typical b.net forum poster. Listen to his opinion on Phoenix vs Muta again and repeat what you just said with a straight face. How long are you people are gonna take this and similar things that have been explained a 100 times before, most frequently in the same damn thread the interview was posted out of context to prove your point and/or discredit everything DB says. Enough. Someone might actually take you seriously if he had been following his interviews closely. The muta problem he addresses here is specifically after the initial harassment comes and the Protoss stabilizes, gets his third base and the zerg is maxed on muta/ling for some time. Now, the problem with going apeshit 3 freaking stargates and pump only pheonix is the switch to roaches that could just murder you, but if you already have a Sgate, put down another one chrono 10 pheonix, chrono the upgrade and fucking kite and murder his 2000/2000 in mutas. Slight exaggeration in this example aside, if you try and miss the point in a time constrained interview in everything he or any other Blizzard representative says, they might as well be speaking Protoss to you because you wouldn't understand crap either way.
Well, your understanding of PvZ is clearly similar to that of Dustin Browder, so no wonder you found a way to agree with him.
Again, there is a reason why you don't see reactive Phoenix, and it has nothing to do with what you said.
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Phoenix are also terrible to micro. The way they glide makes it practically impossible to engage muta flocks when you don't have a crushing number of phoenix.
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If you are still talking about muta, then you don't know what's the current stage of PvZ.
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"I'm not clear on what the most awful way to play StarCraft is apparently, but we're gonna find 'em all eventually."
I nearly died... great interview. I really hope they implement the automatic tournaments on bnet like they did in warcraft 3.
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On July 30 2012 03:52 whatevername wrote:Show nested quote +On July 30 2012 01:42 BoX wrote: God damn someof you guys are so rude and vicious.
No wonder Blizz is so hesitant to communicate with you @.@
I think Browder's "wait-and-see" methodology of dealing with issues in the game is the best way to approach balance in a game that is so complex. There's so much to go through before someone can confidently say, "yes, this is broken and there is NOTHING that can be done about it."
If Blizzard implemented changes rapidly then the metagame would have no time at all to develop. Shit, half of the amazing stuff in BW was discovered because people lhad to scrounge out just that last tiny little advantage. That's how BW was balanced - over huge amounts of playtime.
BW wasn't balanced because Blizzard interfered with it constantly. SC2 is rough, still has 2 expansions to go through, and needs a lot of settling before it can be polished. IMO. BW wasnt even fundamentally balanced, we eventually balanced the game for a particular kind of map, right down to standard mineral types and distance of nats to thirds and so forth. Variation from that typically radically altered balance, and even on more standard maps there was typically 1-2 matchups that simply werent fair. Ultimately, it should be the community's job to recognize the geographical and resource advantages/disadvantages of each race and begin to create a basic balanced template for it. Realistically the game will never be balanced by strategy, but by fair and reasonable map tinkering we can do it.
I guess we should be happy that all tournaments are consistently changing their map pools then ^^
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