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On November 21 2012 12:31 monk. wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 08:18 SarcasmMonster wrote:On November 21 2012 08:11 avilo wrote:
I have no idea why there was so little Terran brought up in this interview considering the tourney they happen to be at has virtually no Terrans, and the last 8+ months of "statistics" + analyzing the metagame can prove 100% that there are huge balance issues for Terran the most of any race right now. I don't know how monk chose his questions. I'm guessing he's a  .  has been the dominating race from WOL launch until around May 2012. Even then, the imbalance wasn't really obvious until around/after September 2012. (Statisically anyways, since that's what you are talking about). I choose them after conferring with a large variety of people. I talked to 1 high level T, 1 high level Z, and 2 high level Ps. I also talked with a large number of staff on TL, and in the end I spent 4 hours coming up with and compiling these specific questions. Ver specifically actually contributed about 9 questions, about 6 of which I used. I did ask him about why foreigner Terrans are doing poorly, why there are so few Terrans in WCS, and fungal in ZvT. I asked about why Terran doesn't have more units in HotS. I also asked about infestor/broodlord in TvZ, but unfortunately he only focused on ZvZ and I didn't push him on it. I'm not aware of any other really big/major specific issues in TvZ, so I honestly don't know what else I could have asked.
The variety of questions was good and pretty balanced imo. I'm really surprised/happy you guys were able to get a 30 minute interview, so much shit was answered and DB seems to have stepped up his game for interviews (his previous interviews were always good, but some things that were slightly vague or some things that weren't talked about in excruciating detail always seem to end up causing people to say things like "they never listen" or "they don't understand this" etc. etc.)
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i feel that fungal with a slow, and spreading effect like plague in BW would be awesome, would give more micro opportunities to the game. That way you can be able to micro out of it to reduce damage if you're good enough, yet it gives a fun spell to the casual players to use :D. Also i think they shouldn't be able to nerual flying units but they can nerual ground (even colosus) and give nerual range 9 again! i think it would make ht more of a key in the match up and micro battles to control the big units ^_^ just my opinion though. and i am open to hear the cons of said opinion.
P.S i am not a zerg player
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On November 20 2012 21:46 DaveVAH wrote:Show nested quote +On November 20 2012 19:20 monk. wrote:On November 20 2012 19:04 DaveVAH wrote:
Monk you spent 90% of the interview talking about and asking questions about P and Z, you let Dustin skip on his brood-lord infester answer on the TvZ MU (only ZvZ and PvZ broodlord infester usage was discussed).
Does terran not exist anymore or something? how about some questions on mech in TvP hots?
We need more objectivity in these interviews. But I'm wearing a Terran Shirt! Is that supposed to be funny? That was a serious observation.
Calm down dude, I thought it was pretty funny tbh.
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On November 21 2012 09:36 SarcasmMonster wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 09:19 keglu wrote:On November 21 2012 08:39 SarcasmMonster wrote:On November 21 2012 08:36 Diavlo wrote:On November 21 2012 08:18 SarcasmMonster wrote:On November 21 2012 08:11 avilo wrote:
I have no idea why there was so little Terran brought up in this interview considering the tourney they happen to be at has virtually no Terrans, and the last 8+ months of "statistics" + analyzing the metagame can prove 100% that there are huge balance issues for Terran the most of any race right now. I don't know how monk chose his questions. I'm guessing he's a . has been the dominating race from WOL launch until around May 2012. Even then, the imbalance wasn't really obvious until around/after September 2012. (Statisically anyways, since that's what you are talking about). Statistically in what match-up and for whom? Because outside of Korea, winrates have been in Terran disfavor pretty consistently since the patch. In Korea, the winrates have actually gone up since the start of the patch (see WCS Korean qualifier) and only this season of GSL is showing a pretty big swing in the zerg's favor against Terran. The last one had a very good balance even though Life kinda destroyed everyone (just like MVP and Taeja had a big influence on winrates earlier this year) and so did last MLG in pool and championship play. This still begs the question as to why foreign Terran struggle so much... I'm talking about statisically for all matchups in the international scene. So how did you make conclusion that Terran was dominating till May 2012 from this graph? http://imgur.com/a/1iwo8 Because May 2012 is the first time in 22 months that win rate dips below 50%. I don't think it's that controversial to say that is very dominant for an extremely long time.
Long time and till May 2012 is not the sam thing. I would not call Terran dominant in 2012 based on these graphs. Also ZvT was an 54% level since May so i dont know how you concluded that problem occured around september especially since we dont have semptemer winrates. I would add that last time when T had 54%+ in TvZ was in July 2011.
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The interview was great and the questions pretty precise. That being said the time constraint surely limited it to "only a few questions out of a huge cauldron filled with them" and thus the whole thing becomes somewhat useless again. Sure they see the problems with builds XYZ and dont want to do anything hasty while trying to fix those problems. Thats the wise thing to do, but the biggest question is: Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game.
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On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game.
It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance.
The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage.
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"Another example would be with the infestors"
"And if we look at something like...the infestor"
"So spells like fungal growth.."
"In late game situation infestors"
"Let's talk about something else....what about neuroparasite?!"
"So what about infestor BL's in zvp"
"What about infestors in zvt"
"Some say some units are boring...Lemmie just think of an example....The infestor!"
"What about zerg domination in the foreign scene"
Do I sense a little bias?! :p
Still like the interview though! And <3 D Browder!
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To TeamLiquid: Please keep the feedback coming and please play beta!
I would be happy to get a damn key. Even pre-ordering the game did not help.. I feel bad about this whole beta thing, I bought every single Blizz game since WC2 besides WOW, helped alot in previous betas, pre-ordered the game, and for some unknown reason I won't get picked 
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Good interview but i would have liked a question or two about creep. I would like to know if they would consider reducing the time it takes for creep to recede. With creep covering huge parts of the map it takes alot of scans just o clear some of it. On top of that it takes so long for the creep to actually recede its giving zerg perhaps to much time. We are seeing pro terrans just ignore creep now and take there chances walking out on the creep because otherwise they will never be able to push before BL/infestor. This causes alot of very one-sided battles where terrans get caught unsieged and a 200/200 army gets destroyed in seconds.
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On November 21 2012 17:58 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game. It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance. The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage.
The biggest problem is that you have to balance the game for "few vs few" AND "lots vs lots" ... and this makes it rather terrible. The deathball is a terribly efficient, but equally boring way to play the game and the tight movement and large numbers of units really make micro something that happens only in the first few minutes. This is something they dont seem to think about ... how to get more micro opportunities into the game and even if they would implement "Nony's Carrier micro" I doubt it would make a difference at all, because you will still lose the Interceptors too easily to a tight clump of ground units.
So please Dustin and your merry bunch of devs ... think about the general gameplay more and dont hesitate to admit failings there!
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On November 21 2012 23:30 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 17:58 [F_]aths wrote:On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game. It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance. The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage. The biggest problem is that you have to balance the game for "few vs few" AND "lots vs lots" ... and this makes it rather terrible. The deathball is a terribly efficient, but equally boring way to play the game and the tight movement and large numbers of units really make micro something that happens only in the first few minutes. This is something they dont seem to think about ... how to get more micro opportunities into the game and even if they would implement "Nony's Carrier micro" I doubt it would make a difference at all, because you will still lose the Interceptors too easily to a tight clump of ground units. So please Dustin and your merry bunch of devs ... think about the general gameplay more and dont hesitate to admit failings there!
He did say that they "were not so proud that they wouldn't change it if the community found that made movement better". I think people are taking his comment to say that clumping is awesome(which it kinda is for the player, we need those tiny balls of DPS) and Blizzard won't change it. I took his comments in relation to the specific change found by the community member and how that changed the game. I don't think the was talking about SC2 as a whole or that they were dead set on the current pathing. I get the impression that they do not see a clear way to address the issue, since the players control the units and may just clump them up no matter what change they make.
Forcing players to use units on several screens is a easier way to break up the ball. Units like the tempest, swarmhost and oracle will force players to focus on more than just their army and macroing.
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On November 22 2012 02:39 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 23:30 Rabiator wrote:On November 21 2012 17:58 [F_]aths wrote:On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game. It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance. The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage. The biggest problem is that you have to balance the game for "few vs few" AND "lots vs lots" ... and this makes it rather terrible. The deathball is a terribly efficient, but equally boring way to play the game and the tight movement and large numbers of units really make micro something that happens only in the first few minutes. This is something they dont seem to think about ... how to get more micro opportunities into the game and even if they would implement "Nony's Carrier micro" I doubt it would make a difference at all, because you will still lose the Interceptors too easily to a tight clump of ground units. So please Dustin and your merry bunch of devs ... think about the general gameplay more and dont hesitate to admit failings there! He did say that they "were not so proud that they wouldn't change it if the community found that made movement better". I think people are taking his comment to say that clumping is awesome(which it kinda is for the player, we need those tiny balls of DPS) and Blizzard won't change it. I took his comments in relation to the specific change found by the community member and how that changed the game. I don't think the was talking about SC2 as a whole or that they were dead set on the current pathing. I get the impression that they do not see a clear way to address the issue, since the players control the units and may just clump them up no matter what change they make. Forcing players to use units on several screens is a easier way to break up the ball. Units like the tempest, swarmhost and oracle will force players to focus on more than just their army and macroing.
I always have their (his??) response to the dynamic unit movement suggestion in the back of my head. Until I hear a clear "clumped up units are bad and we will do something about it" from them that is the basis of my opinion of them. This answer supports that terrible first response.
IF they made spread out units the standard, but added the option to clump them up if the player chooses, they could add in "penalties" or "risks" to using clumped units. This would be the ideal solution IMO ... just give players the choice and the risk instead of forcing clumped up units and nerfing all potential penalties. If the Siege Tank easily destroys large and tight groups of Zerg there will be a need for them to actually use Vipers and abduct to break that up; the same would work for using hallucinated Immortals to take the tank shots while charging in with the real stuff or other "tricksy tactic" people can come up with. More abilities will be required and could be added to the game ... well you could just use a few Tempest to do that, but I hope we can agree that that unit is boring.
On November 20 2012 15:41 TeamLiquid ESPORTS wrote:- To TeamLiquid: Please keep the feedback coming and please play beta!
Fewer and fewer people (pros) do that ... at least when I am looking at the "Live Streams" list.
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Totally agree with the immortal sentry comment's by browder/blizz
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On November 21 2012 09:43 Destructicon wrote:
I feel that Blizzard doesn't have a clear vision, a plan, an overarching design for how they want their races to work and it makes them at times look clueless and/or buff/nerf units in weird ways.
It feels like they have some awareness of what the issues are, but either aren't truly aware of the real underlying problem and thus want to avoid direct changes, or they are aware of the problems but don't want to alter their flawed game design.
Very insightful comment and I feel the same way. It really does seem like blizzard doesn't have a clear vision overall of how they want each race to be played. . Or at least they have lost sight of that vision a bit, because stuff is getting nerfed/buffed in very strange ways. The fungal not hurting psionic is a perfect example. That really makes no sense at all and as a toss player it would make any kind of sentry timings rediculously easy, as you would never fear your sentrys being destroyed. Blizz would do good to make changes according to the original intent of the races rather than make them according to balance issues strictly speaking. Im not saying don't patch something broken, obviously, as im really getting sick of the deathclock till hive tech, but its possible for blizz to make changes to each race without sacrificing the feel of the game. . I mean I can't be the only one who sees some of these changes and it almost feels like they are breaking the 4th wall. . Just really abritrary changes that imo take the 'starcraft universe' feel out of the game.
Maybe thats just me though
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On November 22 2012 04:35 Channel Pressure wrote:
Totally agree with the immortal sentry comment's by browder/blizz
Totally agree with it as well. I'm glad they took this approach. Last year they were just nerfing and nerfing before giving the players a chance to solve strong builds.
I'm very interested in mutalisk/void ray changes. Those units seem difficult to "balance", wonder what they came up with.
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On November 22 2012 08:23 BraveProbe wrote:Show nested quote +On November 22 2012 04:35 Channel Pressure wrote:
Totally agree with the immortal sentry comment's by browder/blizz Totally agree with it as well. I'm glad they took this approach. Last year they were just nerfing and nerfing before giving the players a chance to solve strong builds. I'm very interested in mutalisk/void ray changes. Those units seem difficult to "balance", wonder what they came up with.
Personally I am more interested in how they will try to make mech and air viable ...
Mutalisks shouldnt really be changed from their short range+bounce attacks IMO, so I am interested in what they do there as well. I dont keep my hopes high though and dread the day when they totally change them into something unrecognizable.
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On November 21 2012 23:30 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 17:58 [F_]aths wrote:On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game. It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance. The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage. The biggest problem is that you have to balance the game for "few vs few" AND "lots vs lots" ... and this makes it rather terrible. The deathball is a terribly efficient, but equally boring way to play the game and the tight movement and large numbers of units really make micro something that happens only in the first few minutes. This is something they dont seem to think about ... how to get more micro opportunities into the game and even if they would implement "Nony's Carrier micro" I doubt it would make a difference at all, because you will still lose the Interceptors too easily to a tight clump of ground units. So please Dustin and your merry bunch of devs ... think about the general gameplay more and dont hesitate to admit failings there!
Interestingly, the advantage shifts with the numbers, generally melee units lose ground and ranged untis gain ground when numbers get higher on both sides. I think this is in general a good thing. It's not just "unit A counters unit B", it also depends on the numbers (and positioning, the upgrades, micromanagement and so on.) This makes the game more complex, since the response to a certain thread could be "build some cost-efficient units type A" or "build a lot of cost-inefficient units type B which gain efficiency through numbers though."
The shifting unit balance adds a lot of depth imo.
In my opinion, the core issue is not the option to make a deathball, but the lack of better strategies in many cases. A deathball should be vulnerable to AOE damage and/or slow moving to that counterattacks or drops can force the player to leave some defense in the base.
There are some options already, for example a number of ghosts can EMP a protoss deathball and weaken it considerably.
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On November 22 2012 19:01 [F_]aths wrote:Show nested quote +On November 21 2012 23:30 Rabiator wrote:On November 21 2012 17:58 [F_]aths wrote:On November 21 2012 17:11 Rabiator wrote:
Are they also looking at the BIG PICTURE, which is the GENERAL GAMEPLAY like ...
- the asymmetric production speed boosts and
- the tight movement mechanic and very high concentration of infantry ...
as possible causes for problems? If they do so seriously then thats great, if they keep on ignoring it - as it seems from the answer on the dynamic unit movement suggestion - then that is very worrying and a bad indication on their ability to balance the game. It's not only about balance. Different races should not only look different, but also be actually different and they should create local imbalance. The tight movement has ups and downs, a downside is the effect of AOE damage. The biggest problem is that you have to balance the game for "few vs few" AND "lots vs lots" ... and this makes it rather terrible. The deathball is a terribly efficient, but equally boring way to play the game and the tight movement and large numbers of units really make micro something that happens only in the first few minutes. This is something they dont seem to think about ... how to get more micro opportunities into the game and even if they would implement "Nony's Carrier micro" I doubt it would make a difference at all, because you will still lose the Interceptors too easily to a tight clump of ground units. So please Dustin and your merry bunch of devs ... think about the general gameplay more and dont hesitate to admit failings there! Interestingly, the advantage shifts with the numbers, generally melee units lose ground and ranged untis gain ground when numbers get higher on both sides. I think this is in general a good thing. It's not just "unit A counters unit B", it also depends on the numbers (and positioning, the upgrades, micromanagement and so on.) This makes the game more complex, since the response to a certain thread could be "build some cost-efficient units type A" or "build a lot of cost-inefficient units type B which gain efficiency through numbers though." The shifting unit balance adds a lot of depth imo. In my opinion, the core issue is not the option to make a deathball, but the lack of better strategies in many cases. A deathball should be vulnerable to AOE damage and/or slow moving to that counterattacks or drops can force the player to leave some defense in the base. There are some options already, for example a number of ghosts can EMP a protoss deathball and weaken it considerably.
This is where we differ in our judgement, because not only do you need to look at infantry - and the "Marines vs Zealots" example is rather simple - but also include things like Siege Tanks and Colossi and Fungal and Storm and Banelings in your deliberations. Due to the varied nature of these units it is a really really terrible idea to have a game balanced around such a concept. Against "too few" these units will be "too strong" and against "too many" these units will be like paper. Bad idea.
"Added depth" is just another empty phrase IMO. What kind of "depth" does this shifting balance add? Deathball (tight unit clumping) is efficient? Yeah, well we knew that already. Here is a quote of something I wrote in another thread, which might help explain why tight unit clumping is so terrible:
In todays code A morning cast Wolf said something like "Stalker and Marine have the same dps", BUT if you compare them as a clump of units the Marines come out on top, because they can stack much tighter than the Stalkers. This will give them an edge the bigger the stacks get and probably makes up a lot of the weakness which Stalkers seem to have. If only Blizzard would understand ...
Is it really a good thing that Marines "gain dps" in a clump when compared to Stalkers? I dont think so. Stalkers cost more than Marines and should be more durable, but the higher clump dps of the Marine make them less durable in a direct comparison.
With tight unit clumping you cant "fix" the Siege Tank, because it would become overpowered with more dps. Without a reasonable Siege Tank you cant make mech viable.
With tight unit clumping you have maximized infantry dps against anything "big" and this makes these big things really less viable. Thats why I would see REDUCED DEPTH due to unit clumping, because "the big ones" are really not worth it (mech, Battlecruiser, Carrier, Ultralisk).
Less is more and at least you understand the problem and the math behind it, even if you come to the opposite conclusion.
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I have a great Idea for Balancing the game better, and making the games more fun to play.
What I think is the biggest problem is the clustering up of Units. Why don't they design the units in a way that they can't cluster up that much. No more ball of death. no more one battle decides the hole game.
It would also be more similar to BW.
what do you guys think?
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EPT
